dewey's concept of democracy and education

(2002): Foucault, Dewey, and the History of the Present. New Haven (Yale University Press).Īuxier, Randall E. (1980): Social Justice in the Liberal State. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.Īckerman, B. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. (5) My conclusion will be that Dewey’s basic democratic criteria are still a powerful conceptual tool that can be productively reconstructed for our times in light of newer theoretical developments. (4) Finally, Richard Rorty’s account of postmodernity points to new contexts of democratic living together and new ambiguities of constructing democratic consensus. Compared with Dewey, he gives us a somewhat different perspective on social complexity and its consequences on democratic diversity. (3) Pierre Bourdieu has characterized political and social systems as constructions of subtle distinctions and ambiguous capitalizations. This insight has consequences on our understanding of democratic communities. His criticism emphasizes that discourses are never free of domination. 3 (2) Michel Foucault’s analysis of power has shed new light on conditions of democracy.

I will confine myself to analyzing core perspectives of these theories and examining some fundamental connections to pragmatism. This juxtaposition can help to critically examine the farsightedness of Dewey’s conception and to enhance the criteria if necessary. I will compare his approach with several newer theories and discuss the applicability of his basic criteria of democratic development, as presented in his 1916 Democracy and Education. (1) After a short description of Dewey’s approach, I will go on to examine how far we can still endorse Dewey nowadays. 2 His theory of democracy builds on conditions of difference within and between communities in a society. John Dewey introduced a theory of democracy based on direct participation of all society members 1 without questioning the principles of representative democracy.

Dewey's concept of democracy and education