Philosophy Of EducationEssay Preview: Philosophy Of EducationReport this essayFaith and optimism are the heart and soul of John Deweys philosophy. For Dewey, possibilities opened up by experience within an essentially open universe empower human beings to think freely, plan effectively, and act decisively. According to Dewey, the world we get and the world we give is shaped in part by thoughtful criticism and reform. It is not all in our hands; nothing ever is. But conditions can be changed; human beings can grow; meanings can expand. The horizon of possible meanings we call culture or “mind” is undetermined, even infinite. Human capacity to imagine and weigh new possibilities in the light of old actualities is the engine of this hope and faith.
[…]
John Deweys was the only person to have any prior interest in the field of education. He made considerable efforts to teach about this subject, starting in a private school in his hometown of New Jersey. He began studying at West Point in 1942, in what is now the State University of New York. Within three years he was accepted as the chair of the Columbia Center for Social Studies where he lectured in a variety of topics — on “How The World Can Be Decentralized;” on social movements, political life, the role of religious institutions in education, the history of psychology in the United States, and more. His most important work, in 1964, was “The New Civil Rights Movement” which he released that year in response to the riots in Baltimore. In 1965 the first issue of the National Review published a column entitled, “How To Think Like A Conservative, and How To Stand Up For Yourself, And What You Can Do For Others.” It also was the inspiration for the book, How to Think Like a Conservative.
Wisdom is a virtue or, more specifically, is a wisdom or truth which one has. If you have wisdom, you have to be good (or good enough). A certain kind of wisdom derives not from a natural tendency toward goodness, but from the quality of what one has learned. However, wisdom is the capacity to recognize the validity of our actions or the quality of others’ actions by studying how they affect other people, others, and oneself, and then by developing those capacities to reflect on our actions and learn about others.
[…]
John Deweys was the only person to have any prior interest in the field of education. He made considerable efforts to teach about this subject, starting in a private school in his hometown of New Jersey. He began studying at West Point in 1942, in what is now the State University of New York. Within three years he was accepted as the chair of the Columbia Center for Social Studies where he lectured in a variety of topics — on “How The World Can Be Decentralized;” on social movements, political life, the role of religious institutions in education, the history of psychology in the United States, and more. His most important work, in 1964, was “The New Civil Rights Movement” which he released that year in response to the riots in Baltimore. In 1965 the first issue of the National Review published a column entitled, “How To Think Like A Conservative, and How To Stand Up For Yourself, And What You Can Do For Others.” It also was the inspiration for the book, How to Think Like a Conservative.
Wisdom is a virtue or, more specifically, is a wisdom or truth which one has. If you have wisdom, you have to be good (or good enough). A certain kind of wisdom derives not from a natural tendency toward goodness, but from the quality of what one has learned. However, wisdom is the capacity to recognize the validity of our actions or the quality of others’ actions by studying how they affect other people, others, and oneself, and then by developing those capacities to reflect on our actions and learn about others.
For Dewey, faith in experience is inseparable from faith in democracy. Whereas all types of authoritarianism, intellectual or social or political, imply a vertical, “top-down,” or hierarchical scheme in which a few command and the rest obey, democracy is a horizontal arrangement in which freely reflecting individuals can work together as equals to propose and realize individual and social aims. Departing from classical hierarchical views that grade “levels of being” in the universe and society, Dewey regards even laws of nature as “democratic” results of mutual compact and contract among material elements and forces. Thus, Dewey views the physical universe as a democracy, subject to no supernatural authority and in which each unique being down to the smallest particle must be taken for what it is and evaluated fairly and freshly with scientific openness.
Dewey regards democracy in human affairs as an ideal arrangement which has been only partially realized. The requirement that human beings work together to solve vexing problems implies that as individuals they have acquired capacities for thinking freely and imaginatively and critically, for framing and evaluating purposes, and for acting decisively and cooperatively. In a word, Democracy requires education. What is learned besides content in both formal schooling and informal learning are habits of openness, reflection, and dialogue. Education means education in the classical sense of nurture and growth of persons as individuals and as citizens. This requires stimulation of intellectual and social capacities through the give and take of communication of ideas. The educational community, like the broader political or social community, calls for deepening and widening of meaning-horizons through shared communication of ideas. As even the partial victory of
Dewey demands, the democratic order of human life is a democratic process. The greater truth of Democracy is through the democratic means. We have become, and can become, more open and informed. All must recognize the need for a broader sense of meaning for human life. This in turn enables democracy to take shape in the wider community, as well as in the individual. I believe that all human beings have become sufficiently aware of their own need for meaning and of their sense of their own responsibility for themselves, since our experience has seen that this need has grown in increasing proportions over the history of mankind, by many centuries.
The fundamental importance of the democratic order of human life lies in the ability of government to develop democracy as an effective and effective means to overcome the inherent limitations that are imposed on it, at the institutional and legislative level, by the political, economic, social and cultural level. Democracy is the essential political, societally and politically correct ideal system, if it has been in effect ever since, that is, through social and cultural channels, in a free society; it is the central principle of the political economic community. The democratic community is not a state, because we are not. The democratic order of human life is not a state to which democratic actors should enter into or which political or cultural forces should exert their influence. Rather, it is a political reality:
…the system of government which is fundamental to our political and political needs, so indispensable to the growth both of humanity and the world……is the first democratic principle of human life, the first principle of a democratic world. Democracy is the means by which a free society can grow to maturity. That means through its social, political and financial institutions, which operate through the state to enable the development of democratic institutions. Democracy has been used to establish a political government and the democratic community as members of the political community, through which political and economic institutions which are the most important organs of public life have been developed…
Insofar as democracy can be successfully achieved because it is the principle of democracy that is indispensable in democratic societies, democracy enables the development of an economic community as a social and political community that can be the source and source of a democratic society, where the social and political structure and the political and economic structure are united. Because democracy can be successfully achieved because democratic agencies and processes can be developed in a democratic society, they have been in some ways integrated into the public process, through process. The democratic process is not a special or exclusive mechanism for creating a democratic economic life in a democratic society. Democracy, on the other hand, promotes the development of a democratic economic community and is an essential prerequisite for the development of a democratic political economy. However, the political economy developed for the development of democracy cannot be generalized or extended across political and economic fields. The main source for this is the social and cultural processes in which such processes could be maintained. While that is true, we must still understand that there is a very important difference between democratic democracy and political democracy that is not the subject of discussion as such. Democracy is a system that serves citizens, not representatives thereof; it is, for example, a form of public administration to the public, and it enables a social economy to become active and active, as well as to improve it by providing benefits to a multitude of citizens. Democracy can function as constitutions: it may be used by a state to enact policies and services for the public. It can be adopted as a part of the political order if it can be applied to a mass of people as a social and political function. Democracy allows a society to create an economic society at its very core. Insofar as democratic societies and organizations can be used to increase or decrease participation rates in the management of social affairs, their use is a measure of how to achieve the public purpose of the system. Democracy will promote a wider sense of meaning through the use of democracy in the governance