Even More Democracy and Education; 11-28-2019

 [I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order. The date in the title is the date it was written.Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. I hope this is not confusing. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. sch 4/24/2025] 

I have now finished John Dewey's Democracy and Education (1916; The Free Press/MacMillan Company, 1966), and I will soon run out of things to say about the book.

For a book 114 years old, there is much that remains applicable. Scarily applicable. The writing is not technical, and neither is it written in an informal style. You've read enough quoters to get an idea of John Dewey's style. A democratic style. And now for your consideration:

...Whatever initiative and imaginative vision he possesses will be called into play and control his impulses and habits. His own purposes will direct his actions. Otherwise, his seeming attention, his docility, his memorizings and reproductions, will partake of intellectual servility. Such a condition of intellectual subjection is needed for fitting the masses into a society where the many are not expected to have aims or ideas of their own, but to take orders from the few set in authority. It is not adapted to a society which intends to be democratic.

Chapter Twenty-two: The Individual and the Wrold; pp. 304 - 05

***

...Above all, it would train power of readaptation to changing conditions so that future workers would not become blindly subject to a fate imposed upon them. This ideal has to contend not only with the inertia of existing educational traditions, but also with the opposition of those who are entrenched in command of the industrial machinery, and who realize that such an educational system if made general would threaten their ability to use others for their own ends. But this very fact is the presage of a more equitable and enlightened social order, for it gives evidence of the dependence of social reorganization upon educational reconstruction. It is accordingly an encouragement to those believing in a better order to undertake the promotion of a vocational education which does not subject youth to the demands and standards of the present system, but which utilizes its scientific and social factors to develop a courageous intelligence, and to make intelligence practical and executive.

Chapter Twenty-three: Vocational Aspects of Education; pp. 318 - 19

***

A narrow and moralistic view of morals is responsible for the failure to recognize that all the aims and values which are desirable in education are themselves moral. Discipline, natural development, culture, social efficiency, are moral traits—marks of a person who is a worthy member of that society which it is the business of education to further. There is an old saying to the effect that it is not enough for a man to be good; he must be good for something. The something for which a man must be good is capacity to live as a social member so that what he gets from living with others balances with what he contributes. What he gets and gives as a human being, a being with desires, emotions, and ideas, is not external possessions, but a widening and deepening of conscious life—a more intense, disciplined, and expanding realization of meanings. What he materially receives and gives is at most opportunities and means for the evolution of conscious life. Otherwise, it is neither giving nor taking, but a shifting about of the position of things in space, like the stirring of water and sand with a stick. Discipline, culture, social efficiency, personal refinement, improvement of character are but phases of the growth of capacity nobly to share in such a balanced experience. And education is not a mere means to such a life. Education is such a life. To maintain capacity for such education is the essence of morals. For conscious life is a continual beginning afresh.

Chapter Twenty-six: Theories of Morals; pp. 359 - 60.

 Is this what you got out of your education? I used my education to get a profession that I threw away in the end. 

Should this be education's purpose? I think so. Why not? 

By the way, none of this education happens in prison. Anyone reading these notes should know the impetus came from no government official, or government program. (Yes, Tim T, I am self-started) Whatever the government calls this place, its purpose is not correction. It wholly fails in providing what John Dewey defines as an education.

And if Fort Dix FCI provides no proper education other than imprisonment, is this really the best use of your tax dollars?

sch

[4/25/2025: This morning's news from Indiana seems relevant here: Partisan school board bill narrowly avoids tie vote, goes to governor (News From The States)

“My gosh, the wokeness they have in these school boards, even in Republican areas,” remarked Sen. Mike Young, R-Indianapolis. “If you don’t believe this harms our kids, look at our scores.”

This encourages a more democratic education in Indiana?

sch]