Premium
Experience is Not The Whole Story: The Integral Role of the Situation in Dewey's Democracy and Education
Author(s) -
HILDEBRAND DAVID L.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of philosophy of education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.501
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1467-9752
pISSN - 0309-8249
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9752.12286
Subject(s) - democracy , philosophy of education , epistemology , progressive education , sociology , values education , character (mathematics) , moral character , education theory , democratic education , pedagogy , psychology , philosophy , higher education , law , politics , political science , geometry , mathematics
The central objective of Dewey's Democracy and Education is to explain ‘what is needed to live a meaningful life and how can education contribute?’ While most acquainted with Dewey's educational philosophy know that ‘experience’ plays a central role, the role of ‘situations’ may be less familiar or understood. This essay explains why ‘situation’ is inseparable from ‘experience’ and deeply important to Democracy and Education’s educational methods and rationales. First, a prefatory section explores how experience is invoked and involved in pedagogical practice, especially experience insofar as it is (a) experimental, (b) direct, and (c) social‐moral in character. The second and main section on situations follows. After a brief introduction to Dewey's special philosophical use of ‘situation’, I examine how situations are implicated in (a) student interest and motivation; (b) ‘aims’ and ‘criteria’ in problem‐solving; and (c) moral education (habits, values, and judgements). What should become abundantly clear from these examinations is that there could be no such thing as meaningful education, as Dewey understood it, without educators’ conscious, intentional, and imaginative deployment of experience and situations.