More Of John Dewey From Democracy and Education; 11-27-2019

[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] 

More nuggets, finishing up on John Dewey's Democracy and Education (1916; The Free Press/MacMillan Company, 1966).

...Poetry has historically been allied with religion and morals; it has served the purpose of penetrating the mysterious depths of things. It has had an enormous patriotic value. Homer to the Greeks was a Bible, a textbook of morals, a history, and a national inspiration. In any case, it may be said that an education which does not succeed in making poetry a resource in the business of life as well as in its leisure, has something the matter with it—or else the poetry is artificial poetry.

Chapter 18: Educational Values; p. 241

A story I like to tell about Anderson, Indiana, has to do with Jim H asking a question in our 11th Grade English class of our teacher, Stephanie R.: "Why do we need to take a literature class when we were all going to work in the factory?" (General Motors was the big employer in 1976/1977, when this question was asked).  I do not recall Stephanie's's exact answer - other than it did not convince her students. I think John Dewey would have done a better job. By the way, Jim never got a job at General Motors - none of my classmates did, except as engineers. General Motors collapsed shortly after our graduation. Jim did get on at Container Corp - until they also closed down - and now I realize Jim went unseen the twenty years I lived in Anderson.

...In just the degree in which connections are established between what happens to a person and what he does in response, and between what he does to his environment and what it does in response to him, his acts and the things about him acquire meaning. He learns to understand both himself and the world of men and things. Purposive education or schooling should present such an environment that this interaction will effect acquisition of those meanings which are so important that they become, in turn, instruments of further learnings....

Chapter 20: Intellectual and Practical Studies; p. 274

Dewey thinks we ought not separate thinking and doing. But have we further separated thought from action, with the computer nerds now having their revenge with Facebook and Twitter and Reddit? 

This gives me food to think about Orthodox Christian theology, which rejects Roman Catholic Scholasticism:

...Scholasticism frequently has been used since the time of the revival of learning as a term of reproach. But all that it means is the method of The Schools, or of the School Men. In its essence, it is nothing but a highly effective systematization of the methods of teaching and learning which are appropriate to transmit an authoritative body of truths. Where literature rather than contemporary nature and society furnishes material of study, methods must be adapted to defining, expounding, and interpreting the received material, rather than to inquiry, discovery, and invention. And at bottom what is called Scholasticism is the whole-hearted and consistent formulation and application of the methods which are suited to instruction when the material of instruction is taken ready-made, rather than as something which students are to find out for themselves....

Chapter Twenty-one: Physical and Social Studies: Naturalism and Humanism; p. 280

Orthodox theology - as I understand it - puts an emphasis on experience rather than intellectual formulations.

Scholasticism frequently has been used since the time of the revival of learning as a term of reproach. But all that it means is the method of The Schools, or of the School Men. In its essence, it is nothing but a highly effective systematization of the methods of teaching and learning which are appropriate to transmit an authoritative body of truths. Where literature rather than contemporary nature and society furnishes material of study, methods must be adapted to defining, expounding, and interpreting the received material, rather than to inquiry, discovery, and invention. And at bottom what is called Scholasticism is the whole-hearted and consistent formulation and application of the methods which are suited to instruction when the material of instruction is taken ready-made, rather than as something which students are to find out for themselves....

Chapter Twenty-one; p. 288

Why not a humanistic education? I always took the old Moral Majority's attack on secular humanism as an attack on humanity. A suppression of humanity. 

(I really like Sturgill Simpson's music. Also liking Grace Potter.)

...In short, when we consider the close connection between science and industrial development on the one hand, and between literary and aesthetic cultivation and an aristocratic social organization on the other, we get light on the opposition between technical scientific studies and refining literary studies. We have before us the need of overcoming this separation in education if society is to be truly democratic.

Chapter Twenty-one; p. 289

Have we overcome this separation since 1946, or only increased the split? I do not see charter schools or school vouchers as making society more democratic.

I have 70 more pages to read, but I am closing off this note at this point. No, you are not done with John Dewey.

sch  

 [4/24/2025. It appears the technocrats no longer want separation from the humanities, but their destruction: Trump and DOGE cuts to NEH grants: What pulling funding will do to small-town culture. (Slate) sch; 4/26/2025: Cultural Revolution? (Sheila Kennedy) documents attacks on our democratic culture. sch]