Authority vs. Progressivism
This article compares two opposing views on democratic education from two of the leading philosophers of the 20th Century, Hannah Arendt and John Dewey. It presents what the similarities and oppositions of the two authors are in the context of the connection between democracy and education, or how they believe education can contribute to creating a more democratic society. In order to do so I will use two famous texts written by these two authors, namely Arendt’s essay “The Crisis in Education” which was a 5th chapter in her book “Between past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought” and Dewey’s book “Democracy and Education” firstly published in 1916.
These two texts present two opposing views on the purpose of education, one more conservative (Arendt) and one more progressive or pragmatic (Dewey). Although Arendt is not conservative in her political and philosophical thought, she, in a way stands on the conservative side when it comes to education in the sense that children (students) should not have agency in their education and that authority should completely be held by the adults in the society (teachers, parents…) as they are responsible for socializing children in the already established society.
Dewey, on the other hand, opposes authority of the adults and regards schools as a microcosm of the society where emphasis should be on teaching set of skills, such as problem-solving skills, critical thinking, although previous achievements of the society should also be thought to children. In the context of educational practice Dewey sets emphasis on “learning by doing” where students should be able to connect experience to the curriculum. Otherwise, as Dewey believes, no real learning would occur.
Hannah Arendt: Crisis in Education
Essay „Crisis in Education “was published in Hannah Arendts book „Between Past and Future “in 1961 as the fifth chapter of this book. In this essay Arendt claims that education is in crisis and discusses her views on why it is so. All though, while she gives her arguments on her statement that education is in crisis, she compares American education to European, this essay is mostly about the crisis in American education.
In the beginning of the essay Arendt claims that „to be sure, no great imagination is required to detect the dangers of a constantly progressing decline of elementary standards throughout the entire school system, and the seriousness of the trouble has been properly underlined by the countless unavailing efforts of the educational authorities to stem the tide “(p 171).
Arendt claims that education is highly involved in politics in United States, more than in other countries, such as in Europe and that it is mirroring a “general crisis and instability in a modern society” (p. 180). She argues that education in the United States has two main purposes in regards to the politics:
- Teaching immigrants English language
- Teaching the students about what it means to be an American (Americanization of students)
She claims that this can only be achieved through education. “Technically, of course, the explanation lies in the fact that America has always been a land of immigrants; it is obvious that the enormously difficult melting together of the most diverse ethnic groups–never fully successful but continuously succeeding beyond expectation–can only be accomplished through the schooling, education, and Americanization of the immigrants’ children “(p. 172). She views children as human beings in „process of becoming but not yet complete “(p. 181), so in a way we can interpret above mentioned citation that in the process of becoming adults children should adopt a certain set of values and believes which they should receive through education. Children are new comers into this world (strangers) that need to be “educated” into the world.
Arendt does not view United States as a colonial country which has the need for immigrants in order to populate the country, but is a representation of a “new world” which was meant to “abolish oppression and poverty” (p.173). Educating children and generally new comers into the “new world” means leaving the “old world” behind. In this context Arendt says: “The political role that education actually plays in a land of immigrants, the fact that the schools not only serve to Americanize the children but affect their parents as well, that here in fact one helps to shed an old world and to enter into a new one, encourages the illusion that a new world is being built through the education of the children “(p. 174).
Arendt views the crisis in education through the prism of the crisis of authority which is the topic of the third chapter of the above-mentioned book. “The problem of education in the modern world lies in the fact that by its very nature it cannot forgo either authority or tradition, and yet must proceed in a world that is neither structured by authority nor held together by tradition” (p. 191).
According to Arendt this is a consequence of the political nature of United States which through education is trying to abolish differences between young people and adults, between gifted and not gifted students, especially between students and teachers which, as she claims, is only possible at the costs of the teacher’s authority.
According to Arendt there have been three main measures undertaken that have contributed to the crisis of American education and the loss of authority:
- The first is that there exist a child’s world and a society formed among children that are autonomous and must insofar as possible be left to them to govern (p. 177).
By explaining this assumption Arendt explains the role of the adults in a child’s world. In this case adults have no authority over the child and can only let the child do what it likes and try to prevent the worst from happening. As a consequence of this Arendt states that the authority of an individual adult would be replaced by the authority of child’s group which could be more tyrannical than any adult.
- The second basic assumption which has come into question in the present crisis has to do with teaching (p. 178).
Arendt claims that under the influence of modern psychology and pedagogy a teacher is free of mastery of any particular subject. “So, a teacher is a person who can teach anything, because his training is in teaching only” (p. 178). As a consequence of this she claims that teachers are sometimes only “one hour” ahead of their class and that if this is the case students “are left to their own resources “(p. 178).
- Third assumption is according to Arendt based in Pragmatism. „You can know and understand only what you have done yourself, and its application to education is as primitive as it is obvious: to substitute, insofar as possible, doing for learning“ (p. 178)
Arendt argues that “intention was not to teach knowledge but to inculcate a skill, and the result was a kind of transformation of institutes for learning into vocational institutions which have been as successful in teaching how to drive a car or how to use a typewriter or, even more important for the “art” of living, how to get along with other people and to be popular, as they have been unable to make the children acquire the normal prerequisites of a standard curriculum “(p. 178).
Speaking of authority in the context of education Arendt believes that “cannot throw off educational authority, as though they were in a position of oppression by an adult majority– though even this absurdity of treating children as an oppressed minority in need of liberation has actually been tried out in modern educational practice “(p- 184) and argues that adultsrejected authority because they do not wish to take responsibility for the world that they have brought children into.
Generally, throughout her essay Arendt argues that schools and education have lost their mediative role between children’s world and world od adults. She believes that schools should establish themselves as a place of development world of adults which they need to understand in order to either preserve it or transform it in the future. Arendt believes that adults (parents, teachers…) are responsible for the world and brining the children into the world and that children are not born prepared for the political world.
John Dewey: Democracy and Education
John Dewey, philosopher, psychologist and educational thinker, published one of his most influential books Democracy and Education in 1916. Dewey believed that “Education, in its broadest sense, is the means of this social continuity of life. Every one of the constituent elements of a social group, in a modern city as in a savage tribe, is born immature, helpless, without language, beliefs, ideas, or social standards. Each individual, each unit who is the carrier of the life-experience of his group, in time passes away. Yet the life of the group goes on (p. 6). He also believes „that a community or social group sustains itself through continuous self-renewal, and that this renewal takes place by means of the educational growth of the immature members of the group “(p. 14).
Dewey regards newcomers to the society (children) as immature without language, ideas or social standards or in other words tabula rasa which is a condition that empiricists have attributed to the human mind before ideas have been imprinted on it by the reaction of the senses to the external world of objects. In this sense the function of education and adults would be to imprint language, ideas or social standards into the children.
He argues for an education where students are not passively receiving information, but where children channel their energy into useful action. Children should, according to Dewey, be informed about recourses and previous achievements of the society, but education should also transfer habits of doing, thinking and feeling on to the children. Dewey regarded a school as a small community and as a microcosm of a larger society where students and teacher should learn from each other through interaction on equal terms. All this would cultivate thoughtful, critically reflective and socially engaged individuals. Dewey does not describe in Democracy and Education how this type of teaching would be implemented, but we can conclude that students would be thought problem solving skills and testing different hypothesis skills in order to find proper solution.
Speaking of the link between democracy and education Dewey states:
„The superficial explanation is that a government resting upon popular suffrage cannot be successful unless those who elect and who obey their governors are educated. Since a democratic society repudiates the principle of external authority, it must find a substitute in voluntary disposition and interest; these can be created only by education. But there is a deeper explanation. A democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience“ (p. 91).
In the context of democracy and education Dewey further states: “A society which makes provision for participation in its good of all its members on equal terms and which secures flexible readjustment of its institutions through interaction of the different forms of associated life is in so far democratic. Such a society must have a type of education which gives individuals a personal interest in social relationships and control, and the habits of mind which secure social changes without introducing disorder“ (p. 104).
In previous two citation we see that Dewey regards democracy not only as a form of governing the people, but a way of involving people into producing social change and involving the people in different social processes, but also as a way of communicating of the people among each other. He also argues that in order the society to function at its best individuals should do what they are best suited for. In this sense education should equip people to do so.
Dewey explains this referring to Plato: „No one could better express than did he (Plato) the fact that a society is stably organized when each individual is doing that for which he has aptitude by nature in such a way as to be useful to others (or to contribute to the whole to which he belongs); and that it is the business of education to discover these aptitudes and progressively to train them for social use “(p.92).
Central idea of the Democracy and Education book could be that education is separated from the social need of the society. As already mentioned above Dewey believes that education should prepare student for active role in social process in the society.
Dewey explains this as follows:
“There is the standing danger that the material of formal instruction will be merely the subject matter of the schools, isolated from the subject matter of life- experience. The permanent social interests are likely to be lost from view. Those which have not been carried over into the structure of social life, but which remain largely matters of technical information expressed in symbols, are made conspicuous in schools. Thus we reach the ordinary notion of education: the notion which ignores its social necessity and its identity with all human association that affects conscious life, and which identifies it with imparting information about remote matters and the conveying of learning through verbal signs: the acquisition of literacy“ (p. 13).
At this point it is important to mention that Dewey oposed any kind of class society and that all people should receive equal education no matter of their class or any other kind of backgound and that children should be educated according to their own preferences and intiative. Dewey says:
„Obviously a society to which stratification into separate classes would be fatal, must see to it that intellectual opportunities are accessible to all on equable and easy terms. A society marked off into classes need he specially attentive only to the education of its ruling elements. A society which is mobile, which is full of channels for the distribution of a change occurring anywhere, must see to it that its members are educated to personal initiative and adaptability“ (p. 92).
Speaking of the aims of education Dewey has set up three main criteria of good aims in democratic education (p. 109-110):
- The aim set up must be an outgrowth of existing conditions. It must be based upon a consideration of what is already going on; upon the resources and difficulties of the situation.
Dewey states that often educational and moral theories often assume that ends lying outside of our activities and our issued by some outside source and are in a way predetermined. In order to achieve this end result we focus on this externally already supplied ends (solutions). Dewey argues that: “such aims limit intelligence; they are not the expression of mind in foresight, observation, and choice of the better among alternative possibilities “.
- The aim as it first emerges is a mere tentative sketch. The act of striving to realize it tests its worth.
Dewey argues that the striving to realize the aim tests its worth, which could be interpreted that the process of achieving the aim is what is important. The aim itself can be changed or revised according to the circumstances. Dewey explains: “An aim must, then, be flexible; it must be capable of alteration to meet circumstances. An end established externally to the process of action is always rigid“.
- The aim must always represent a freeing of activities. The term end in view is suggestive, for it puts before the mind the termination or conclusion of some process.
Here Dewey explains that the only way we can “define an activity is by putting before ourselves the objects in which it terminates—as one’s aim in shooting is the target “. What is meant here is that we determine our activity by knowing how it ends. He gives an example of a hunter hunting a rabbit. He explains that hunting the rabbit is not an end it is what he does with a rabbit constitutes an end.
Comparation of John Dewey and Hanna Arendt views on democratic education
Both Hannah Arendt and John Dewey have realized the importance of education in building a democratic society and creating active and thinking citizens. They both believed that only through education one can produce a democratic society.
Dewey in his ideas of education believed that children should participate, or in other words be agents in their own education. This means that students should work on their problem-solving skills during their education and not simply answer questions with predetermined answers. Working with children this way increases their critical thinking skills which Dewey considered crucial for preparing students or children for the democratic world and society.
Contrary to Dewey, Arendt gave emphasis on adult (teachers, parents…) authority in education. She considered students (children) adults in the making and believed that adults are responsible for creating new citizens and children should take no agency in their education. As a matter of fact, she believed that education, or even society in general is in crisis, because adults have given up on authority. Even the teacher in schools. She believed that reason for doing so is the adults not wanting to take responsibility.
It seems that Dewey is more in favor of giving children more freedom to influence educational processes in the sense that children would follow their interests as much as possible. As he believed, society would be a better place if people would do what they are made to do. This way people would fulfill their potential and it would create a happier society. What Dewey did not write much about in his book Democracy and Education is how this would look like in practice. In other words, how educational practice would look like in such schools? This we would have to find somewhere else.
Arendt strongly opposes taking the authority away from the adults. She believes, as mentioned above, that this puts individual children under the authority of the group (children) and the authority of a group can be worse than the authority of any individual.
In the sense of curriculum Dewey imagined schools as place where students would be able to connect experience with the curriculum. That would be the only way real learning would occur. Abstractedness would not occur and students could relate to subject matter. In other words, teaching practice would establish a connection between formal and informal, as both are crucial for the learning process.
It seems, that Arendt did not consider the connection between doing and learning, which was crucial for Dewey. According to Arendt the aim of this was not to teach or transfer knowledge, but to install set of skills into children, but Dewey, although he did give emphasis on learning by doing, never reject teaching the knowledge. He actually mentioned that teaching children previous achievements was important. Difference here was merely methodological.
Problem with Arendt stand is, I believe, if we give emphasis on adult authority how do we teach problem solving skills or critical thinking, which was always important, but nowadays, more then ever in creating democratic society and thinking citizens?
Bibliography
Arendt H. (1961) Between past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought, Penguin Classics
Dewey, J. (2011). Democracy and education. Simon & Brown.
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