John Dewey's Democracy and Education 100 Years On
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
CONTENTS Editorial Experience is Not The Whole Bob Davis Story: The Integral Role of the JOURNAL OF EDUCATION OF PHILOSOPHY 52: ISSUE 2 VOLUME 2018 MAY Situation in Dewey’s Democracy Original Articles and Education 287 Philosophy, Translation and the David L. Hildebrand Anxieties of Inclusion 197 Growth and Growing in Education: Journal of Naoko Saito Dewey’s Relevance to Current Teaching as an Immortality Malaise 301 Project: Positing Weakness in Ruth Heilbronn Philosophy of Education Response to Terror 216 Courage, Uncertainty and Cathryn van Kessel and Kevin Burke Imagination in Deweyan Work: Inferentialism at Work: The Challenging the Neo-Liberal Significance of Social Educational Agenda 316 Epistemology in Theorising Vasco D’Agnese Education 230 Devil, Deceiver, Dupe: Hanno Su and Johannes Bellmann Constructing John Dewey Peirce and Aesthetic from the Right 330 Education 246 Kelley M. King Juliana Acosta López de Mesa ‘To Be Is To Respond’: Realising Working through Resistance to a Dialogic Ontology For Resistance in Anti-racist Teacher Deweyan Pragmatism 345 Education 262 Rupert Higham Jenna Min Shim Dewey as Virtue Epistemologist: Open-Mindedness and the The Journal of John Dewey and Democracy Training of Thought in Democracy and Education and Education 359 John Dewey’s Democracy and Ben Kotzee Philosophy of Education Education 100 Years On 284 Philosophy of Education Book Series Christine Doddington, Ruth Heilbronn Society of Great Britain and Rupert Higham 52: ISSUE 2 VOLUME JJOPE_52_2_cover.inddOPE_52_2_cover.indd 1 117/09/187/09/18 99:50:50 AAMM Volume 52 Issue 2 May 2018 Contents Editorial Bob Davis Original Articles Philosophy, Translation and the Anxieties of Inclusion Naoko Saito 197 Teaching as an Immortality Project: Positing Weakness in Response to Terror Cathryn van Kessel and Kevin Burke 216 Inferentialism at Work: The Significance of Social Epistemology in Theorising Education Hanno Su and Johannes Bellmann 230 Peirce and Aesthetic Education Juliana Acosta Lopez´ de Mesa 246 Working through Resistance to Resistance in Anti-racist Teacher Education Jenna Min Shim 262 John Dewey and Democracy and Education John Dewey’s Democracy and Education 100 Years On Christine Doddington, Ruth Heilbronn and Rupert Higham 284 Experience is Not The Whole Story: The Integral Role of the Situation in Dewey’s Democracy and Education David L. Hildebrand 287 Growth and Growing in Education: Dewey’s Relevance to Current Malaise Ruth Heilbronn 301 Courage, Uncertainty and Imagination in Deweyan Work: Challenging the Neo-Liberal Educational Agenda Vasco D’Agnese 316 Devil, Deceiver, Dupe: Constructing John Dewey from the Right Kelley M. King 330 ‘To Be Is To Respond’: Realising a Dialogic Ontology For Deweyan Pragmatism Rupert Higham 345 Dewey as Virtue Epistemologist: Open-Mindedness and the Training of Thought in Democracy and Education Ben Kotzee 359 Philosophy of Education Book Series Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 00, No. 0, 2018 John Dewey’s Democracy and Education 100 Years On CHRISTINE DODDINGTON, RUTH HEILBRONN AND RUPERT HIGHAM EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION In September 2016, a four-day conference to mark the centenary of the publication of John Dewey’s Democracy and Education was held in Home- rton College, Cambridge University, jointly sponsored by the college, the Faculty of Education, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain and the History of Education Society of the UK. Four years in the plan- ning, it proved to be an ambitious project which captured and encouraged a renewed interest in Dewey and his work. While rightfully celebrating his significance in the history and philosophy of education, the conference also focused on Dewey’s broader reach in current interdisciplinary study, as well as his extensive influence on professional educators and the practice of education within and beyond schools. The call for papers exceeded expectations, with submissions from across the world. After double blind review, just over 100 papers from 25 coun- tries were selected. PESGB’s financial support was instrumental in making attendance affordable, particularly for international delegates. The intention was to integrate theory and practice throughout and, as well as traditional parallel sessions, the conference distinctively featured practitioners and stu- dents. UK and Spanish schools demonstrated Philosophy for Children as a basis for student dialogue, and an international school network showed how it was engaging with research to promote democracy. Delegates also had op- portunities to experience the Alexander Technique (developed by a lifelong friend of Dewey’s and which he practised himself); to enjoy displays co- created and hosted by the Faculty Library and to visit the newly opened and research-active University of Cambridge Primary School. Strong keynotes and panel sessions by educational philosophers, historians, practitioners and journalists were streamed and shared online. Given the diversity of themes, disciplines and backgrounds, the sense of rapport and community during the conference was remarkable, opening a space in which Dewey’s humane and progressive values were shared. Key to this was the character and scope of Dewey and his work: he was an interdisciplinary polymath, whose texts encompass different disciplines and contexts. This suite of papers offers a glimpse of the diverse philosophical C 2018 The Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. 2 C. Doddington, R. Heilbronn and R. Higham themes discussed during the conference; others with a more practical focus were published in Education (Vol. 46.4, 2018). Opening this collection, David Hildebrand’s article boldly argues that the concept of ‘the situation’ should be considered the equal, if more im- plicit, partner to ‘experience’ in Dewey’s philosophy: ‘experience unfolds in a variety of situations; situations are comprised of experiences’. This in turn becomes the key to Dewey’s view of the teacher’s pedagogical im- perative, which is to act as a bridge between powerful codified forms of knowledge and experience and students’ prior experiences and motivations. The creation of relevant, rich and challenging situations enable children’s growth by doing and undergoing—and inasmuch as they are motivated by situations that engage their genuine interest, invoke a moral response of caring. These themes are extended in Heilbronn’s paper, which uses Dewey’s metaphor of growth to examine a scene from Etre et Avoir (2002), a film about an experienced primary teacher in a small school in rural France. She highlights the skill and empathy with which the teacher turns the situation of a hurtful dispute between two boys into an opportunity for personal growth. The scene demonstrates the role of the teacher in promoting ‘democracy as a form of associated living’—present in the intimate details of life in- teractions. The power of this embedded curriculum, she argues, can only be unleashed through a more inclusive understanding of growth that goes beyond metrics and examinations. Vasco D’Agnese identifies further concepts that he argues are central in Dewey’s work but are not often discussed—risk, courage and imagination. Taking his cue from Dewey’s claim that ‘all thinking involves a risk . the invasion of the unknown is of the nature of an adventure’, D’Agnese contrasts Dewey’s provisional, exploratory, innovative approach to learning with the neo-liberal assumption that the purpose of learning is to adapt children to predetermined socioeconomic contexts and conditions. Like Heilbronn, he points out how the space for imaginative, valuable responses to unique situations is increasingly squeezed out by the imperatives of standardised comparison and competition. Kelley King’s paper uses discourse analysis to examine how Dewey is viewed by the American far-right. She reveals that Dewey’s profound influence on progressive and democratic educators is mirrored by both neo- conservatives and authoritarian populists. For them Dewey is a talismanic figure of loathing, the mastermind behind a system of public schooling that has brought about catastrophic moral and social decline. Key to this representation is the creation, in blogs and popular books, of a distorting echo chamber of misrepresentations and misquotations, interwoven with other conspiracy theories. Rupert Higham continues this theme by examining Dewey’s exhortation to students, in Experience and Education, to ally themselves to the scientific method as a defence against an increasingly irrational and bellicose global political environment. He argues that Dewey’s pragmatism, by studiously avoiding issues of ontological foundation, fails to provide the motivating imperative for humane thought and action he was searching for. Drawing C 2018 The Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain. Editors’ Introduction 3 on Bishop Berkeley’s early pragmatic thought, Higham argues that a non- metaphysical, dialogic ontology of ‘original difference’ is fully compatible with Dewey’s philosophy: it enriches his metaphor of growth, affords new possibilities for critical curricular study and develops the intrinsically moral and motivating disposition to be open and responsive to difference. In the final article in this collection Ben Kotzee makes the case for Dewey as a virtue epistemologist, with the concept of open-mindedness, as explicated in Democracy and Education, representing the cardinal