Democracy and Education: Reversing the Democratic Recession?

Transcription

1 John Dewey s Democracy and Education 100 years Anniversary Democracy and Education: Reversing the Democratic Recession? Wednesday 26 th October 2016 Dewey s Democracy and Education represented a turning point in the educational discourse, initiating a radically new regime for educational theory which has deeply influenced the 20 th century s educational discourse. But what may be the current relevance of John Dewey s political philosophy of education? To mark the centennial anniversary of the publication of John Dewey s Democracy and Education (New York: Macmillan, 1916), the Humanities research group invites to an open seminar on Dewey s political philosophy of education. This seminar also celebrates the 70th anniversary of John Dewey s honorary doctorate at the University of Oslo. The 7th June 1946 Dewey was awarded a doctor honoris causa from the University of Oslo on the grounds that he was one of our time s most influential philosophers, playing a vital role in the work to hinder fascism and Nazism (Vaage 2000, p. 24). The seminar focuses on two corresponding themes: The dissemination and reception of the book The first thematic area concerns the global diffusion and reception of the book. The global reception of Dewey s political philosophy of education - from Japan to Turkey, Soviet Union and the Nordic countries - were of different kinds: (a) responses coming from institutions and ideologies, such as the Catholic Church and Soviet-oriented Communism; and (b) responses from European educational practitioners and policy-makers. Some representatives of this latter group of reformers were often openly in agreement with Dewey, and their ideas contributed to a re-contextualization and culture-specific elaboration of Dewey s thoughts. Others, however, were completely contrary to the spirit of Democracy and Education. In this view, the ways in which Democracy and Education have been traveling over the last century may help to situate and conceptualize educational policies, theories and experiences throughout the world. In this seminar, we will particularly throw lights on the Nordic reception of the book. The relevance of Dewey s political philosophy today The second thematic area to be explored is the relevance of Democracy and Education today. Taking the current cosmopolitan condition, democratic recession and a Europe in transition, it is pertinent to ask to what degree Dewey s political philosophy of education may help to promote global citizenship education and mutual understanding. What categories and notions of Dewey s pedagogy seem timely and relevant for transnational educational policies and debates on 21st Century learning? May Dewey s political philosophy offer tools for the criticism of those trends in European policies that seem more to be modeled according to the demands of the global marketization than from ideas on democratization and citizenship education? May Dewey offer fruitful educational tools and perspectives in our efforts to integrate refugees?

2 10.00 Coffee Program , Aud. 2 Opening session. Welcome and Key note I Welcome prof. Torill Strand, Head of Humanities Studies in Education prof. Berit Karseth, Dean of the Faculty of Educational Sciences prof. Tone Kvernbekk, Deputy Head of Department of Education Prof Hansjörg Hohr: Introduction of the key note speaker prof. David Hansen, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York Key note I: Rethinking the Ethical and Political Purposes of the School in the 21 st Century Prof David Hansen, Teachers College, Columbia University Comments and questions Luncheon Parallel sessions Session 1 (Room 233): Dewey on ethical-political education Chair: Assistant professor Elin Rødahl Lie, University of Oslo Associate professor Merete Wiberg, Aarhus University: Moral Education and the Idea of Bildung in the Philosophy of Dewey Prof emeritus Lars Løvlie, University of Oslo: Session 2 (Room 234): Beyond Dewey s political thinking Chair: Associate professor Harald Jarning, University of Oslo Prof Klas Roth, Stockholm University: Is Dewey s Ethics so Different from Kant s Practical Philosophy, as he claims? Prof Jørgen Huggler, Aarhus University: Session 3 (Room U31): Reversing the democratic recession? Chair: Research fellow Kjetil Horn Hogstad, University of Oslo Prof Torill Strand, University of Oslo: The Paradoxical Attributions of Democratic Will Formation Prof Katariina Holma, University of Eastern Finland:

3 Dewey for our Time? Associate Professor David Östlund, Södertörn University: Dewey and the Social Settlement Ethos: Making Democracy Real A Critical Examination of John Dewey s Use of Other Philosophers of Education in Democracy and Education. (1916) Research fellow Claudia Schumann, Stockholm University: Saying we : Navigating Differences, Cultivating Solidarity John Dewey s Theory of Growth and Citizenship in Tanzania and Uganda Prof Hansjörg Hohr University of Oslo: John Dewey s Concept of Democracy and Consequences for the School Refreshments , Auditorium 2 Closing session: Key note II and panel discussion Prof Torill Strand: Introduction of the key note speaker prof. Marianna Papastephanou, Department of Education, University of Cyprus Key note II: Dewey, the Colonial Traveller Prof Marianna Papastephanou, Department of Education, University of Cyprus Panel: Marianna Papastephanou, David Hansen, Lars Løvlie, Katariina Holma, David Östlund Reception

4 Abstracts The Key notes Key note I: Rethinking the Ethical and Political Purposes of the School in the 21st Century David T. Hansen, Teachers College, Columbia University ABSTRACT: John Dewey s Democracy and Education remains a provocative source of ideas for rethinking the ethical and political purposes of the school in our current century. In this presentation, I will review his vision of the school as he pictured it in I will comment on how he conceived the concepts democracy and education, since Dewey believed the two should merge in the everyday life of the school. Finally, I will address Dewey s own critique of his vision, showing that the questions he raised about its viability remain with us in There are no panaceas for resolving our confused and conflicted times, riven as they are by misinformation, misunderstanding, dogmatism, fear, and intolerance. But Dewey points the way to a constructive ethical and political response to these conditions through ideas for what schools could be (and in many case are) doing in the world today Key note II: Dewey, the Colonial Traveller Marianna Papastephanou, Department of Education, University of Cyprus ABSTRACT: Setting out from Dewey s utopian writings this article explores colonial and developmentalist elements in his pragmatism. It reveals how multiple utopianizations of childhood, piecemeal change and traveling libraries operate in one of Dewey s educational policy writings and in his related travel narratives. Based on an ethical-political reading of the relevant sources, the article weaves various questions into a theoretical standpoint of learning by undoing to obtain a heightened view on the stakes and challenges of old and current progressive pedagogies. Session 1: Dewey on ethical-political education Moral education and the idea of Bildung in the philosophy of Dewey Merete Wiberg, School of Education, Aarhus University ABSTRACT: According to Dewey becoming a moral person encompasses the capacity to see the perspective of the other and being able to understand how the acts of the individual influence the welfare of others and the social group as a whole. In this sense, Dewey s view on moral education is political in its essence because he understood the work of morality in school as integrated training for citizenship with the purpose of contributing to the refinement of the social order. Educating moral principles must according to Dewey have democracy and freedom, including the abilities to moral reflection, social imagination, and intelligence, as guiding and moving ideas. Moral education is according to Dewey neither a separate activity or a means for transmitting absolute values which conform to a certain

5 mission such as the task of a culture or a government. Therefore, Dewey argues for the social and political role of the school while he at the same time argues for the autonomy of the school. Dewey s view on (moral) education has many similarities with the classical German idea of Bildung which has freedom, self-determination, democracy and humanity amongst its core values. Furthermore, Dewey and the concept of Bildung share the understanding that the process of mediating between individual and society functions as a cornerstone in the formation of character. These similarities with the concept of Bildung may be the reasons why John Dewey's overall view on education became popular in the Scandinavian countries. The paper investigates how moral teaching in the philosophy of Dewey plays a political role and how Dewey s view on moral education has similarities with the idea of Bildung. Dewey for our time? Lars Løvlie, Department of Education, University of Oslo ABSTRACT: A recent discussion in the philosophy of education has invoked two powerful metaphors, the first harking back to Hegel and the second inspired by Michael Oakeshott. (See JOPE Issue 1 February 2016, and Bakhurst and Fairfield s book Education and Conversation 2016). The first metaphor describes formation or Bildung as the transformation of a child's "first nature" into a "second nature" and introduces two ontologically distinct orders: that of man s instinctual animal nature, and that of civilized human nature or Bildung. Education is to bring the child to reason or Bildung by eliminating the first and instill the second. The second is of education as initiation, as expressed by Richard Peters and portraying children as barbarians outside the gates to be brought inside the citadel of civilization. To my sense both metaphors get education wrong not only in their portrayal of children but also in underwriting a paternalist point of view. The most striking feature is that children are in fact shut out of the philosophical discourse. Apart from the odd and illuminating anecdote from the opposition, there are no children in the equation. This part only as an introduction and foil to the Deweyian alternatives I propose. I have, as you may gather, misgivings about both metaphors and want to turn to John Dewey s philosophy in Democracy and Education (DE) for the presentation of views that were formulated by him as early as around 1900, views that go counter to both metaphors. As for the first I would hold experience as the continuous reconstruction of life and civilization as against the idea of fixed stages and the idea of transformation as elimination of children s basic human capacities. As for the second I would suggest Dewey s mind as the range of activities that takes place in a world that contains brains and bodies and their extensions, that is, tools like smart phones and the world-wide-web. He preferred the term intelligence for the term reason, and was therefore open to defer reason to neonates as well as to adults. We may with Dewey think in terms of two (or maybe three) dimensions: time, described in terms of the continuous experience, growth and reconstruction of the organism in its world; and space, as the range of possible experiences that are not conceptually and institutionally restricted; and place, as the particular interactive situations that are the a priori condition for education in the first place. Philosophy of education can and should be discussed within the broad scope of education, as presented in DE. My main concern is, however, childhood and the child and our ways of description within and without the confines of current school management and practices, which, incidentally, tends to spurn the child perspective that for 200 years did inspire educational reform. Dewey s great contribution in the wake of Hegel s dialectic was to see the child and the school as interactive, that is, not as separate intellectual and practical objects, but as

6 participants in processes of learning not hampered by classifications and diagnoses. Most important is that the child figures in DE and his earlier texts as this particular child: The concrete for the teacher is the mind of the child, not mind in general, but a particular mind, a particular spirit in the individual child, he writes in This brings me to the theme of Dewey and science. He endorsed the empirical sciences as the motor of intelligent social action. We are in fact invited to extend upon and enrich Dewey s view of children with the findings of child psychologists over the very last generation, knowledge culled both from cognitive and psychodynamic theory, and from neuroscience. My hunch is that there is continuity between Dewey s psychological views 100 years ago and what we now find in the research conducted by people like Daniel Stern, Alison Gopnik and Shaun Gallagher, just to mention a few relevant sources Dewey and the social settlement ethos: making democracy real David Östlund, Södertörn University ABSTRACT: This presentation stresses Dewey s involvement in the social settlement movement as a contextual key to understanding his educational thought. In particular his active role at Hull House in Chicago, and his close intellectual exchange with Jane Addams, its leader, had a formative role in his way of turning the problem of education into an experimental field for his philosophical and political ideas. The settlement movement is identified with a certain thought style (in Ludwik Fleck s sense), viz. the ideal of mutuality. This mode of perceiving social realities challenged social elites paternalistic claims to having access to some superior or absolute point of view. It stressed the importance of interchange between perspectives shaped by different experiences ( cultures Addams and Dewey would say). Such dialogues on equal terms were identified with true democracy. By establishing concrete arenas of everyday interaction and exchange of knowledge, social settlements attempted to bridge cultural rifts, in particular between social classes. In the American case this also counted for borders between ethnicities and races, while the dominant role of women linked the antipaternalist stance to feminism. The close parallels between the settlement movement and progressive educational reform have been observed since the 1960s within a discussion in American historiography concerning the Progressive Era and the ambiguities of the progressive movement. Such ambiguities should neither be exaggerated nor neglected with regard to Dewey, and a test case is his attitudes to African Americans position and educational prospects during the era of federally sanctioned racist segregation Session 2: Beyond Dewey s political thinking Is Dewey s Ethics so different from Kant s Practical Philosophy, as he claims? Klas Roth, Department of Education, Stockholm University ABSTRACT: The American philosopher John Dewey developed his pragmatism, and in particular his instrumentalism or experimentalism with regard to a critique of German philosophy in general and Immanuel Kant s in particular. He does this in, inter alia, his German Philosophy and Politics and his Ethics, in which he repeats a critique of Kant s

7 practical philosophy, namely that the, according to him, pedantic duty that Kant expresses is nothing else but empty and formal, and that it therefore does not pay enough or any attention to particular situations, nor the consequences of action and hence cannot inform people about what they ought to do, which Dewey argues an intelligent ethics should be able to do. I will argue that Dewey criticizes a caricature of Kant s practical philosophy, and that his position is not radically different from Kant s. A critical examination of John Dewey's use of other philosophers of education in Democracy and Education (1916) Jørgen Huggler, DPU, Aarhus University ABSTRACT: In Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education, Dewey developed his own theory through discussions of classical educational philosophy from Plato to behaviorism. In the paper, I am going to present and discuss Dewey's use of these thinkers, in particular his replies to Rousseau and Herbart Saying we : Navigating Differences, Cultivating Solidarity Claudia Schumann, Stockholm University ABSTRACT: In a progressively cosmopolitanizing world, one of the paradoxes of individualization is that the growing demand for global mobility and flexibility poses serious challenges for the fostering of solidarity while our personal freedoms increase. In Deweyan spirit, critical theorist Axel Honneth argues that practices of solidarity play a vital role for the future of democratic life insofar as they help actualize a more fully-fledged social freedom beyond liberal theory s thin notion of negative freedom. This conception of solidarity and social freedom will be explored in light of Wittgensteinian ideas in order to make sense of the intricate interplay of exemplarity, intersecting differences, power and embodiment. Saying we is not simply an assertion of commonalities certain members of a community share in contrast to others which we exclude by delineating this we. Rather, saying we can also function as an acknowledgment of claims others make upon us. How can we cultivate relations of solidarity within educational institutions under these conditions? Session 3: Reversing the democratic recession? The Paradoxical Attributions of Democratic Will Formation Torill Strand, University of Oslo ABSTRACT: Dewey s Democracy and Education represented a turning point in the educational discourse, initiating a radically new regime for educational theory which has deeply influenced the 20th century s educational discourse. But to what degree may a Deweyan outlook help to strengthen democratic will formation of today s youths? In exploring this question I read Dewey s political philosophy of education. Focus is his radical theory of

8 democracy in relation to the paradoxes, promises and pitfalls of a Deweyan citizenship education. John Dewey s Theory of Growth and Citizenship in Tanzania and Uganda Katariina Holma, University of Eastern Finland ABSTRACT: John Dewey s Democracy and Education (1916) posits a vision of education embedded in lived experience in which overcoming resistance and conflict leads to growth, creating the conditions for further growth. On the basis of Dewey s seminal contribution, it is possible to claim that growth can be pursued in virtually every instance of human living. Growth is also at the heart of one of the most crucial dimensions of Dewey s philosophy: the connection between democracy and education, and the Deweyan commitment to the process of experience entails a belief in the intelligence of everyday citizens to determine and pursue ends-in-view within their shared situations. In my presentation, I will explore the potential of the notion of growth in conceptualizing the experiences of citizenship in the context of the work of development NGOs in Tanzania and Uganda. My discussion is related to a wider research project Growth into Citizenship in Civil Society Encounters funded by the Academy of Finland ( ) where we aim to gain a understanding of the processes of growth into citizenship in these contexts both philosophically and empirically, drawing on development studies, sociology, anthropology, political science, and philosophical pragmatism. My presentation focuses particularly on the Deweyan theory of growth and its potentials and limitations in these pluralist contexts Notes on Dewey's concept of democracy and consequences for the school Hansjörg Hohr, University of Oslo ABSTRACT:Some distinctions could ease the access to and discussion of Dewey's concept of democracy. I will distinguish between reason, cause and manifestation. The reasons for democracy explain why democracy is desirable. The concept of experience, here, is decisive as democracy is the way of life that affords the best conditions for experience. Dewey's deliberations on causes offer societal conditions for the existence of democracy. Central in this respect will be democracy as a moral idea. It is about trust in the power of reason and of free deliberation. As to manifestation it specifies what democracy is. In this respect the thought of democracy as a personal way of life will be in focus while social structures are seen as projections of the individual attitudes. All three aspects seem to offer only modest support to a democratic education in school. As to the opportunity to various and numerous activities the logic of school points in the opposite direction. As to free deliberation there is a certain space for it in school, but the main thrust is to become an informed citizen. And as to the tenet of social structures being projections of individual attitude, that would make democratic education all but impossible. However, there is a decisive criterion of democratic education already in "The Child and the Curriculum" and that is that the curriculum has to be related to the child's experience in such a way that the experience is challenged and nudged toward a more systematic organization of knowledge.