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John DeweyDemocracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1916A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 16-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 16 Summary and Analysis: “The Significance of Geography and History”
In chapter 16, Dewey examines the way education should enhance a student’s experiences by emphasizing the meaning of this experience through implications. One such way is “normal communication” because it allows for enhancing shared interests and connecting the results with a group (166). In Dewey’s view, history and geography are the two fields particularly suited for amplifying one’s direct, individual experience. History “makes implications explicit,” while geography acts in the same way for “natural connections” (167). The chapter comprises three sections.
1. The Extension of Meaning of Primary Activities
Dewey suggests that a mere physical activity may provide a plethora of meanings. For example, a child and an astronomer looking through telescopes would derive very different meanings from this activity. Deriving meanings means that education is “something else than the manufacture of a tool or the training of an animal” (159). The way learning occurs depends on the way the instructor teaches it. If history is presented as a vast number of statements disconnected from daily life, then that is the way in which it would be perceived by the student. In contrast, history may be formulated in an empathetic, engaging way—as a “body of known facts about the activities and sufferings of the social group with which our own lives are continuous” (161).
2. The Complementary Nature of History and Geography
Geography and history complement each other. History focuses on social aspects, whereas geography targets the physical counterparts. Their purpose is to “enrich and liberate the more direct and personal contacts of life by furnishing their context, their background and outlook” (161). History is not simply the memorization of a sequences of dates, but a link to the society and civilization of the past. Geography is “an account of the earth as the home of man” (162). History gives geography meaning by describing human actions in specific places. Here too, Dewey argues in favor of greater integration of these distinct academic disciplines, “The specialization of these topics are for the specialists; their interaction concerns man as a being whose experience is social” (163).
3. History and Present Social Life
The discipline of history cannot be divorced “from present modes and concerns of social life” (163). Learning about the past helps one understand the present circumstances because history exists in a continuity. Dewey highlights some approaches to history, such as the genetic method and the biographic method. The genetic method traces the process of an event. The biographic method focuses on the great man in history such as political and military leaders. Field-specific histories, such as economic and political counterparts are also relevant. Dewey also views the development of history as directional and linear, “from savagery to civilization,” based on technological progress, as was common in his time (166). In the 21st century, there is a variety of other approaches to studying history. For example, social history focuses on the lives of ordinary people. Overall, Dewey argues for the use of history to foster “a socialized intelligence” (166).
Chapter 17 Summary and Analysis: “Science in the Course of Study”
“Science in the Course of Study” follows on the heels of Dewey’s examination of the study of history in school. Dewey defines science as “the fruition of the cognitive factors in experience” and has a logical character (176). The role of science lies in its ability to liberate “from local and temporary incidents of experience” (176). This field of inquiry can also open “intellectual vistas unobscured by the accidents of personal habit and predilection” (176). This chapter comprises three sections.
1. The Logical and Psychological
According to Dewey, science “signifies a realization of the logical implications of any knowledge” and a “proper form of knowledge as perfected” (168). The problem with learning science at school is like that of other disciplines: isolating science from “significant experience” (168). Students often study science without linking it to the physical world. Textbooks feature an order organized by specialists rather than targeting beginners. By ignoring the way in which ordinary activities translate into scientific form, scientific material presented in a “technically correct scientific form” remains nothing more than “inert information” (169). Dewey compares this approach to knowing the components of a machine but not their purpose. One partial solution to this problem is laboratory work.
2. Science and Social Progress
Scientific knowledge should serve social interest, in Dewey’s view. For example, it is science that gives humans the “intellectual command of the secrets of nature” (171). Science allows for the development of technological progress and the improvements in the standard of living. Dewey identifies one key trajectory for scientific education in the creation of “an intelligence pregnant with belief in the possibility of the direction of human affairs by itself” (172). Once again, he is concerned with the practical aspects of education as they pertain to one’s experience with the outside world, one’s community, and society at large. Empirical knowledge, for example, must surpass simply being an accumulation of “past instances without intelligent insight into the principles of any of them” (172). In this framework, Dewey identifies abstraction as “an indispensable trait in reflective direction of activity” (173). Abstraction and generalization allow using one experience to analyze another and develop critical thinking.
3. Naturalism and Humanism in Education
One of the fundamental problems in education is setting humanities up against sciences. In turn, this approach assumes that humanities are purely humanistic, and science is purely physical. Dewey asserts that this perception “tends to cripple the educational use of both studies” (174). Dewey links this issue to other types of compartmentalization such as subordinating the value of applied knowledge to that of pure knowledge. He believes that real life is more complex, and so should these disciplines.
Chapter 18 Summary and Analysis: “Educational Values”
In this chapter, Dewey focuses on the value of education and points out that value has different definitions. One is “an attitude of prizing a thing” linked to “complete experience” 191). The second definition of “value” means a “distinctively intellectual act”—of evaluation (191). The latter happens when the aforementioned type of experience is lacking. Dewey also terms these as appreciative and instrumental, respectively. He argues against separating these in the context of the curriculum. “Educational Values” comprises three sections.
1. The Nature of Realization or Appreciation
First, Dewey suggests that “the scope of personal, vitally direct experience is very limited” (177). Instead, much of human experience is indirect and linked to symbols and language. Therein lies the danger, especially in formal education, that symbols may not be “truly representative” (178). This danger clashes with the realm of direct appreciation in which students have the necessary direct realization.
Appreciation relies on three principles: the nature of real value standards; imagination linked to “appreciative realizations”; and fine arts in the curriculum (179). The first principle of real value standards is important. However, caregivers and educators teach it at such a young age that it is divorced from concrete experience. One such example is being taught what is conventionally good in music—this approach fixes one’s attitude regarding future musical experiences and affects the formation of taste. However, the scope of appreciation is “the work of education itself” (180).
Next, Dewey argues that “[a]ppreciative realizations are to be distinguished from symbolic or representative experiences” but not from “the work of the intellect or understanding” (180). It is imagination that acts as “a medium of appreciation in every field” because it makes activities surpass their mechanical level (180). However, imagination is not limited to mythology and the arts, but is applicable across the board. Dewey thus defines imagination as “the full taking in of the situation” (180). Imagination is something that is “beyond the scope of direct physical response” (181).
2. The Valuation of Studies
Dewey points out that valuation involves not only a measure but also the direction in which valuations happen. “Value” in the sense of evaluating something is linked to an order of preference, a relationship with another thing—a comparison. However, it is impossible to create a hierarchy of disciplines and types of studies based on the least and most value. After all, any study has a unique or irreplaceable function in experience, in so far as it marks a characteristic enrichment of life” (184). Comparing studies based on value means that the valuation occurs depending on a specific situation beyond these studies. For example, in some cases science may have technological value; in others—a military counterpart.
After this, Dewey moves onto instrumental values for topics studied because there is a reason (such as a pragmatic reason) for their study beyond them. Dewey argues that instrumental values have “intrinsic value as a means to an end” (186).
3. The Segregation and Organization of Values
General aspects of life, such as health, happiness, or wealth, are merely abstract terms. Using them as a standard for valuation of different concepts like education is limiting. In the realm of education, pedagogues often assign value to the existing curricula because they accept their design and methodology. In other words, some educators believe that certain powers of education reside in the subject per se. Dewey argues that this approach is linked to perceiving interests and disciplines as isolated rather than interrelated. He links this compartmentalization to the different epochs in education each of which left a “cultural deposit” (189). The latter ended up as “distinct courses of study” (189). Later, additional studies got added on rather than integrating these different “geological strat[a]” (189). It is the “unity or integrity of experience” that is at the heart of the question of education (190). Dewey classifies this question of values as “the moral question of the organization of the interests of life” (190).
Chapter 19 Summary and Analysis: “Labor and Leisure”
Next, Dewey reviews the question of the “segregation of educational values” between “culture and utility” as a fundamental problem (199). He traces its origins to historical development. For example, some educational practices link back to ancient Greece, in which the privileged few “subsisted upon the results of the labor of others” (199). This situation—rooted in “a political theory of permanent division of human beings”—affected numerous educational factors such as the relationship between theory and practice (199). These distinctions then got carried over to educational terms, for instance, the distinction between liberal education and “useful, practical training for mechanical occupations” (200). Dewey argues that the purpose of a democratic society is “to do away with the dualism” of this historical phenomenon (200). Chapter 19 comprises two sections.
1. The Origin of the Opposition
Dewey resumes his argument against artificial dualisms such as an “isolation of aims and values” (191). He traces the separation of liberal arts from pragmatic, technical education to ancient Greece. At that time, only men of the highest classes were able to focus on pursuing a liberal education. In contrast, the majority worked to survive and to sustain the top of the social hierarchy. As a result, men of the highest social status did not focus on the type of training that “trains men for useful pursuits” (192). Some ancient Greek thinkers like Aristotle differentiated between liberal and “menial” education. He even included painting, sculpture, and music in the latter category. These historical circumstances left significant impact on education for centuries to come.
2. The Present Situation
Despite the profound political and social changes between the time of Aristotle and the early 20th century, this division within education remained. At the same time, Aristotle was “permanently right in assuming the inferiority and subordination of mere skill in performance” to “the free play of ideas” (196). Dewey finds his error not in this hierarchy but “in supposing that there is a natural divorce” between the two (196). Dewey finds a similar separation in the perception of “mind and matter, mind and body, intelligence and social service” (195). He frames this separation of education as “the split between inner mental action and outer physical action” (199).
There also remains a persistent perception that an “education which is fit for the masses must be a useful or practical education” in contrast to a “truly cultural or liberal education” (197). However, some of the changes in the field of pedagogy created an “inconsistent mixture” of approaches (197). Significant changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution also affected education, such as the creation of more accessible leisure.
Chapter 20 Summary and Analysis: “Intellectual and Practical Studies”
“Intellectual and Practical Studies” continues to analyze the relationship between ancient Greek thought and the field of education. Dewey argues that the “Greeks were induced to philosophize by the increasing failure of their traditional customs and beliefs to regulate life” (211). Their philosophy undervalued action and exalted thinking. As a result, this “influence fell in with many others to magnify, in higher education, all the methods and topics which involved the least use of sense-observation and bodily activity” (211). Dewey believes that both technological developments, the scientific method, and psychological advancement “make another conception of experience explicitly desirable and possible” (211). For example, in this new reality, reason is no longer isolated, but “signifies all the resources by which activity is made fruitful in meaning” (211). This chapter comprises three sections.
1. The Origin of the Opposition of Experience and True Knowledge
Dewey begins by reminding the reader of the existent perceptual opposition between knowledge and activity, and theory and practice. He returns to the ancient Greeks because they believed that knowledge came from a higher source (201). In contrast, they linked experience with lack and need, according to Dewey. As a result, “the practical life was in a condition of perpetual flux, while intellectual knowledge concerned eternal truth” (201). Dewey situates Athenian philosophy as “a criticism of custom and tradition as standards of knowledge and conduct” because they were the same as experience (201). Similarly, Plato argued that it is intelligence rather than habits that should control human affairs, hence his concept of the philosopher-king.
Dewey describes Athens as a city-state in flux due to colonization, migration, trade, and war. Philosophers described reason as a faculty with links to universal principles. In contrast, they linked experience to handicraft skills and considered it untrustworthy and mutable. To do meant to change or to consume. Plato, for instance, viewed change as corruption. This brief overview is necessary to identify the roots of dualism in the field of education which Dewey has been criticizing throughout this book. Ultimately, he argues that the Greek philosophical tradition and Roman education had “the tremendous power exercised by the persistent preference of the ‘intellectual’ over the ‘practical’ not simply in educational philosophies but in the higher schools” (203).
2. The Modern Theory of Experience and Knowledge
Dewey moves onto the establishment of modern theories linked to education. For example, “the development of experimentation as a method of knowledge makes possible and necessitates a radical transformation” of the aforementioned dualist view (203-4). At first, appealing to experience “marked a breach with authority” (204). This change led to discovery and openness to new things, and as a result, experience no longer had a strictly practical meaning.
However, despite elevating experience to one of the ways of knowing, practice became “not so much subordinated to knowledge as treated as a kind of tag-end or aftermath of knowledge” (204). Experience also became linked to physical sensations. In practice, this change in thinking reconfirmed the general “exclusion of active pursuits from the school” (204). Ultimately, a “thoroughly false psychology of mental development underlays sensationalistic empiricism” (207). For example, empiricism became linked to political ideas criticizing the political order, for instance, during the Enlightenment. However, Dewey argues that education must be constructive not critical.
3. Experience and Experimentation
Dewey reiterates that “sensational empiricism represents neither the idea of experience justified by modern psychology nor the idea of knowledge suggested by modern scientific procedure” (207). He argues that experimentation is active, not passive, for example, a baby learning about the world around him and reacting to sensory stimuli through motor responses. Dewey contrasts the ancient Greek conception of knowledge coming from “a reason above experience” and the 17th-century scientists performing controlled physical experiments (208).
Ultimately, the logical conclusion of science based on the scientific method and the new philosophy based on experience is the type of thinking that “no longer puts experience in opposition to rational knowledge and explanation” (209). Dewey points out that experience “consists of the active relations subsisting between a human being and his natural and social surroundings” (209). Societal changes should ideally lead to the changes in education involving both play and work. Earlier, Dewey suggested that not only does society impact education but that education and its instructors must do their best to facilitate positive social changes. Furthermore, experimental science dealt the “most direct blow to the traditional separation of doing and knowing and at the traditional prestige of purely ‘intellectual’ studies’” (210).
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