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5-2012 A Deweyan-Based Curriculum for Teaching Ethical Inquiry in the Language Arts Maria Aurora L. Buenaseda-Saludo Montclair State University

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This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by Montclair State University Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects by an authorized administrator of Montclair State University Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A DEWEYAN-BASED CURRICULUM FOR

TEACHING ETHICAL INQUIRY IN THE LANGUAGE ARTS

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to the Faculty of

Montclair State University in partial fulfillment

of the requirements

for the degree of Doctor of Education

by

MARIA AURORA L. BUENASEDA-SALUDO

Montclair State University

Montclair, New Jersey

2012

Dissertation Chair: Dr. Maughn Gregory

Copyright ⓒ 2012 by Maria Aurora L. Buenaseda-Saludo. All rights reserved.

ABSTRACT

A DEWEYAN-BASED CURRICULUM FOR TEACHING ETHICAL INQUIRY

IN THE LANGUAGE ARTS

by Maria Aurora L. Buenaseda-Saludo

Informed by Dewey’s account of ethical experience and the nature of philosophical inquiry, my theory of ethical inquiry has four components: body-based reasonableness, moral imagination, emotions as judgments, and ethical content. Body- based reasonableness is thinking that is critical, creative, committed, contextual, and embodied (Sprod, 2001). Exercising embodied reasonableness in aesthetic education means that we pay critical attention and seek to address the ethical and social aspects of art. We pay attention to fiction that will potentially engage students in a constant process of ethical judgment, depicting characters and situations that call for our moral evaluation.

In a similar vein, exposure to certain art can sensitize us to the right reasons and objects for our emotions. Vehicles for ethical inquiry are those by which human situations can be understood and are found in the English Language Arts curriculum and the arts, such as:

The Odyssey by Homer, Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare, Prokofiev, and Tchaikovsky,

The Joy Luck Club by Tan, and works by the artists Frida Kahlo and Kiki Smith.

Highlighted are the issues of body, sexuality and gender, principal areas of ethical concern and central to adolescence. The pedagogy by which students can adequately address ethical concerns is Philosophy for Children, where characters in a narrative text exemplify discursive modes of thought and the conduct of ethical inquiry. iv

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the immeasurable contribution of my advisor Dr.

Maughn Gregory, for his unfailing guidance and support over the years, especially after my work remained unfinished with the passing away of Professor Ann Margaret Sharp. I am also thankful to the members of my dissertation committee, Dr. Monica Taylor, for her keen interest in my work, and Dr. David Kennedy, for introducing me to Philosophy,

Philosophy for Children, and the late Professor Matthew Lipman. It was Professors Sharp and Lipman, who encouraged me to write stories and provided the initial impetus for this dissertation. In this regard, I am grateful to the Dean of the Graduate School, Dr. Joan

Ficke.

For making it the exemplar of all it espouses, I wish to thank those in the College of Education and Human Services: Dean Ada Beth Cutler, Associate Dean Tamara

Lucas, Dr. Richard Wolfson, Dr. Jeremy Price, Ms. Brenda Sheehan, and Ms. Aditi Patel at International Services, for their collective support in the journey I began in Hong

Kong.

At Montclair High School, I have Dr. Pam Joyce to thank for the many hours I spent there learning to negotiate the culture of adolescence in the United States.

Thanks to my students, friends, and family, on both coasts, across the pond, and

Asia: Beatrice Bolwell, Arlene Hijara, Ed.D., Susan Irby, Jeanette Oostlander, Renato

Orara, Ana Sanchez, Ph.D., and Elana Wong for love and patience in fulfilling my lifelong aim.

v

To the memory of my mentor, Professor Ann Margaret Sharp,

and Dr. Matthew Lipman

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION: Overview of a Theory of Ethical Inquiry ...... 1

CHAPTER TWO: Embodied Reasonableness in Ethical Inquiry ...... 32

CHAPTER THREE: Moral Imagination ...... 78

CHAPTER FOUR: Emotions as Moral Judgments ...... 122

CHAPTER FIVE: A Curriculum for Ethical Inquiry ...... 167

REFERENCES ...... 204

APPENDIX ...... 242

vii

1

Introduction: Overview of a Theory of Ethical Inquiry

[T]he important thing about knowledge in its moral aspect is . . . the active desire

to examine conduct in its bearing upon the general good. . . . There is always the

possibility of being on the alert for opportunities to widen and deepen the

meaning of existing moral ideas. . . . The need for constant revision and expansion

of moral knowledge is one great reason why there is no gulf dividing non-moral

knowledge from that which is truly moral. (Dewey & Tufts, 1932, pp. 311-312)

“The value of knowledge is in being ‘instrumental to the enrichment of immediate

experience through the control over action that it exercises.’” (Dewey, 1934, p.

294, as cited in Shusterman, 2000, p. 18)

As a teacher of art appreciation and the language arts, I am keenly aware that moral growth occurs in the transactions that students have in their encounter with art, including that of the process of making art. Growth includes meaning, self-discovery, and a desire to contribute to the world. The focus of my research is education in ethical inquiry, that is, education that aims at preparing students to practice ethical inquiry and to make and act on sound ethical judgments. My objective is to present a pedagogical framework and novella in ethical inquiry guided by the ramifications of Dewey’s metaphor of the experiential flow in nature. My aim is in some ways more modest than that of preparing students to develop ethical character, lead ethical lives or to become moral selves. However, in that the components of ethical inquiry do not presuppose any particular model of an ethical character, life, or self, the former aim could also be said to 2

be broader.

This chapter begins with a brief introduction to John Dewey, in order to give a sense of the philosopher in the aspects of his thinking that bear on this project. It is followed by a discussion encapsulating the main features of his experiential aesthetic theory and his theory of knowledge, as they relate to ethics and inquiry. First, one must learn to recognize just what an experience is. Second, one should recognize that a non- discursive meaning is the aesthetic aspect of an experience. Third, we can improve the experience, if we are aware of its aesthetic qualities. I describe a theory of ethical inquiry comprising embodied reasonableness, moral imagination, emotions as judgments, and ethical content. The third section of this chapter relates in practical terms the role of an education in ethical inquiry. In succeeding chapters, I present arguments to support my contention that ethical inquiry is best served by a curriculum in the arts because the subject matter opens horizons of feeling and imaginative vistas that are known to shed light on the meaning of social practices and cherished values.

John Dewey was America’s foremost philosopher during his lifetime and one of the twentieth century’s most important thinkers (Morse, 1998). This was due in large measure to his personal qualities, prolific output, and his concern for the practical ramifications of political, ethical and educational thought (Boisvert, 1985; Martin, 2002).

Of him, a fellow colleague remarked that Dewey was unpretentious and easygoing, a prodigious thinker “like Socrates” (Martin, 2002, p. 236). At age 90, he had published about a thousand essays and books (Martin, 2002). He embarked on a reconstruction of philosophy because he believed that philosophical practice had little relevance due to 3

fixed ethical concepts and absolutist metaphysical categories (Boisvert, 1985), he termed

“the philosophic fallacy”1 (Teehan, 2002, pp. 228). He proposed that in inquiry, attention be paid to the uniqueness of problematic situations, his aim being to bring about desirable consequences and meaning2 through appropriate conduct (Teehan, 1995).

It is accordingly, relevant, to the theme of needed reconstruction to say that the

adverse criticisms of philosophies of the past are not directed at these systems

with respect to their connection with intellectual and moral issues of their own

time and place, but with respect to their relevancy in a much changed human

situation. (Dewey, 1948, p. viii)

In remapping the flawed landscape of American philosophy, Dewey was influenced by Darwin’s Origin of Species and neo-Hegelianism (Boisvert, 1985). Instead

1 The “philosophic fallacy” (Dewey, 1925, p. 35) pertains to a fixed and antecedent reality (e.g. dualistic thinking) as a priori to inquiry. “It consists in the supposition that whatever is found true under certain conditions may forthwith be asserted universally or without limits and conditions” (Dewey, 1922, p. 175).

2“The meaning of something is (a) its relations, actual and potential, to other qualities, things, events, and experience(s)…past, present, and future” (Johnson, 2007, pp. 265 &

273); (b) the practical consequences of ideas (Connell, 1994; Garrison, 2004; Lipman,

1991; 2003); (c) the outcome of shared inquiry (Connell, 1996); (d) “find[ing] out the difference [something] makes to you and me “(Alexander, 1990, p. 327). 4

of dualism and separation, Dewey saw continuities, for example organism-environment and body-mind, which he attributed to Hegel. (The body-mind concept and its relevance to pedagogy and curriculum are elaborated further in Chapter Two.) He wrote in From

Absolutism to Experimentalism: “Hegel’s synthesis of subject and object, matter and spirit, the divine and the human, was however, no mere intellectual formula; it operated as an immense release, a liberation” (Backe, 1999; Boisvert, 1985; Dewey, 1930, as cited in: Alexander, 1987, p. 16; Bernstein, 1967, p. 167; Menand, 2001, p. 267; Garrison,

2006, p. 13). In Darwin’s principle of natural selection,3 Dewey saw a transactional relationship between living beings and the environment, a mutually constitutive relationship, of which imagination and emotion are some of its contemporaneously inherent traits. To this interchange, he gave the name experience, a term, which “might conceivably apply to the case of, say, delight in certain tones, colors or tastes” (Dewey,

1887, p. 168; 1895/2003, pp. 32-30). Rather than a class of objects, Dewey regards art as experience that is refined and intensified (Teehan, 1995; Perricone, 2006). Further to their intrinsic value, Dewey saw the arts as tools to highlight, explain, and judge lived experience (Perricone, 2006). I will return to this subject in more detail in forthcoming chapters.

3 The principle of natural selection states, “all organic adaptations are due simply to constant variation and the elimination of those variations which are harmful in the struggle for existence” (Dewey, 1910b/1997b, p.11). 5

Dewey’s project brought to philosophy a uniquely American perspective comprising: the view that logic and philosophic inquiry are instrumental and flow from thought processes to action; a strong concern for social ills manifested in “a special empathy for the second-best, the second-class citizen, the loser in society;” (Martin,

2002, p. 236) and a principled pluralism sensitive to conflict from unexamined emotion

(Stengel, 2007). Dewey was a philosopher who had immense influence as a public figure and whose embrace of society was inclusionary, rather than exclusionary. The point of the discussion that follows is to explain the process of learning how to locate the aesthetic within the experiential continuum.

Ethics as Experience, Inquiry, and Knowledge

A persistent motif in Dewey’s pragmatism4 is that of improving ordinary experience,5 be it social, political, or moral. For this kind of improvement, Dewey offers

4 Pragmatism is a philosophical movement that gives importance to action whose meaning is a reconstruction of the actual, in light of the possible (Alexander, 1990).

5 Experience is a polysemic term used by Dewey and is confusing (Shusterman, 2010).

For our purposes, it may help to clarify its use first, as a term for anchoring thinking to practical activity; second, as a description of the interactive nature of human existence; and third, as an integrating principle among disciplines. In many instances, confusion occurs regarding Dewey’s terminology because it has not been operationalized. James, however, simplified it: “My experience is what I agree to attend to” (James, 1890/1950, p. 402; as cited in Garrison, 2005, p. 112). 6

a three-part model of aesthetic experience. The first component of Dewey’s model is to learn to recognize what experiences qualify as aesthetic ones. In addition to encounters within art museums and concert halls, aesthetic qualities are also located in ordinary and quotidian experiences, including our daily freedoms, imaginative projects, and commonplace interests and pleasures. Dewey explained that, in fact, all experience has an aesthetic dimension described as an integrative quality that makes an experience, here referred to as “situation,” coherent and meaningful:

[A] situation is a whole in virtue of its immediately pervasive quality. When we

describe it from the psychological side, we have to say that the situation as a

qualitative whole is sensed or felt. Such an expression is, however, valuable only

as it is taken negatively to indicate that it is not, as such, an object of discourse.

(Dewey 1938/1991, pp. 73-74)

Dewey’s (1934) aesthetics6 as elucidated in Art as Experience locate the embodied human being “recovering the continuity of esthetic experience with normal processes of living” (p. 10).7 Beauty, dissonance, harmony, balance, and other aesthetic qualities come

6 Aesthetics is from the Greek aesthesis meaning feeling. Every generation has its styles of feeling expressed in art objects objectifying experiences of feeling (Langer, 1962).

Thus, aesthetics can be viewed as the study of art as felt experience (Auxier, 2004).

7 The entire statement reads: “Even to readers who are adversely inclined to what has been said, the implications of the statements that have been made may be useful in 7

about from – and are part of the meaning of – the vital interaction between living organism and surroundings whereby energy, action, and material are reorganized. Dewey

(1934) writes: “[T]he esthetic is no intruder in experience from without[,] . . . it . . . belong(s) to every normally complete experience” (p. 46). Art is merely a focus on, and refinement of aesthetic qualities that animate ordinary experience. Its aim “is to serve the whole creature in his unified vitality,” – an end in itself. “To esthetic experience then, the philosopher must go to understand what experience is” (p. 278).

The second component of Dewey’s model is his argument that the aesthetic aspect of an experience is distinguished by a non-discursive value or meaning that is felt, as well as, inferred. Each aesthetic experience possesses a consummatory, integral, or unified quality that uniquely inheres in it, indicating that it is markedly emotional in character

(Dewey, 1934).

I have spoken of the esthetic quality that rounds out an experience into

completeness and unity as emotional. . . . In fact, emotions are qualities, when

they are significant, of a complex experience that moves and changes. . . . All

emotions are qualifications of a drama and they change as the drama develops. . . .

The intimate nature of emotion is manifested in the experience of one watching a

play on the stage or reading a novel. It attends the development of a plot; and a

plot requires a stage, a space, wherein to develop and time in which to unfold.

defining the nature of the problem: that of recovering the continuity of esthetic experience with normal processes of living" (Dewey, 1934, p. 10). 8

Experience is emotional but there are no separate things called emotions in it.

(Dewey, 1934, pp. 41-42)

Emotion belongs of a certainty to the self that is concerned in the

movement of events toward an issue that is desired or disliked. . . . In order to

become emotional, [automatic reflexes like fright] must become parts of an

inclusive and enduring situation that involves concern for objects and their issues.

(Dewey, 1934, p. 42)

Emotion is the moving and cementing force. It selects what is congruous

and dyes what is selected with its color, thereby giving qualitative unity to

materials externally disparate and dissimilar. It thus provides unity in and through

the varied parts of an experience [and] an esthetic character even though it is not,

dominantly, an esthetic experience. (Dewey, 1934, p. 42)

The third component of Dewey’s model provides that, if we are aware of the aesthetic qualities of an experience, we have opportunities to engage in improving that experience: elevating its beauty, meaning and value; creating order, harmony, and balance; and avoiding dullness and ugliness. The aesthetic includes our capacities to bring experiences to satisfactory fulfillment by engaging in inquiry into the meaning of the aesthetic qualities that we sense. This inquiry depends on our discernment of the cognitive aspects of our aesthetic emotions, such as “the thrill of verification” and “the feeling of surprise” (Sheffler, 1991, pp. 10 &12, as cited in Pouivet, 2001, p. 52). In a theory of emotions where emotions are cognitive, feelings and emotions have a reflective significance that becomes evident, as a result of embodied experience. For instance, the 9

emotions may be painful or pleasurable to the extent that our selves are promoted and our projects supported (Solomon, 2008). Concepts are formed in the process of attending to the continuous flow of experience and extracting its distinctive qualities or patterns

(Johnson, 2007). Imagination brings about new ways of making sense of experience, thereby expanding concepts and transforming meaning (Johnson, 2007). According to

Dewey, making art can serve as an example of intelligent inquiry toward consummatory experience in other domains because the creative process engages humans in higher orders of thought, including the intelligent discernment of valuable qualities: “The production of a work of genuine art probably demands more intelligence than does most of the so-called thinking that goes on among those who pride themselves on being

‘intellectuals’” (p. 46).

There are many events in time that comprise the entirety of experience, yet those that are thrown into relief by their fullness and ineffable quality signify completion and fulfillment. According to Lipman (1967), one finds complete satisfaction in a consummatory expe