John Dewey, the “father” of contemporary American education, advanced the notion that schools should be a center where students are brought up in the methods & practices of society. Further, schools should be the epicenter for any and all revisions and modification that “we” think need to be made of society. The schools are effectively, in Dewey’s world, the center for all societal change. In comptemporary schooling, now not in Dewey’s era, the school is becoming even more the center of change including the progressive usurping of the home. All around the US, this notion that the school should become more like the home, including assuming responsibilities of the home, is being advanced in teacher training programs, universities, seminars, and conferences alike.
Dewey’s most foundational idea was the democracy should be taught. Unfortunately, his notion of democracy and liberty was quite askew to the foundations on which the American experiment was grounded. What Carson concluded in his analysis of all of Dewey’s writings was that if people accepted Dewey’s democractic solution was ” they would act to realize a total concept-democracy. No doubt, they would act through the government as well as through other agencies (until these agencies were absorbed into the government) in wielding their power. These are the elements necessary to totalitarianism.” (1)
As American schooling moved into the fullness of the 20th century, the schools became the “mecca” of Dewey’s concept of democracy. Little did educators know that what they were selling and advancing had nor more resemblence to democracy than any totalitarianistic philosophy did. In fact, what this interpretation of “democracy” has led to is a very undemocratic concepts being advanced in the schools. For instance, due to this democracy being the primary undergirding philosophy, the school has become a haven for very undemocratic ideals to flourish. Philosophic viewpoints like marxism, socialism, collectivism, and communism, grounded in the ideas of Hegel, Marx, Lenin, and others, have become the calling card of the American educational establishment’s notion of “democracy.”
1. Clarence B. Carson (1960). The Concept of Democracy and John Dewey. Modern Age, Spring, p 180-7.
- Educational Foundations: Meaning in the Process
- Educational Foundations: The Learning Process
- Educational Foundations: Societal Introductions
- Educational Foundations: Societal Engineering
- Educational Foundations: Freedom
- Educational Foundations: Public Schooling
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