Growth and Growing in Education: Dewey's Relevance to Current Malaise

The article examines what Dewey means by ‘growth’, why it is significant and why it should concern us as educators. A metric use of ‘growth’ is current, as in economic discourse as Gross National Product (GNP), or audited reporting on examination results to produce international achievement data. Dewey's principle of growth focuses on the situation of a child ‘living’ in a classroom, reminding us that children do not go to school as some kind of interruption in their living and developing. The first section of the article discusses the Deweyan concept of ‘growth’ as elaborated in Democracy and Education , and situates it within his philosophy more widely, particularly in relation to ‘democracy as a form of associated living’. The second section presents a detailed transcript of a scene from the film Etre et Avoir as an illustration of Dewey's concept of growth. The transcript is presented as narrative exemplification, to illuminate the relevance and significance of this account to educational processes and practices. The scene is typical of the whole film and it follows an experience that is common to children and teachers. The article concludes by contrasting the Deweyan conception of growth to the audit conception, and makes some suggestions for ways forward on what might be done in restrictive circumstances to combat a narrowly defined view of growth in education.