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Reviewed by:
  • Inquiry and Education: John Dewey and the Quest for Democracy
  • Philip R. Olson
Inquiry and Education: John Dewey and the Quest for Democracy. James Scott Johnston. SUNY Series, the Philosophy of Education, ed. Philip L. Smith. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006. Pp. viii + 244. $74.50 h.c. 0-7914-6723-6. $24.95 pbk. 0-7914-6724-4.

Readers who are familiar with many of John Dewey’s most celebrated writings, and with the philosophical climate within which he wrote, will find in James Johnston’s first book an erudite survey of some important secondary literature on Dewey (issuing from both Dewey’s contemporaries and more recent interpreters), as well as an ambitious effort to recover Dewey’s philosophy from what the author sees as distorting interpretations. In particular, Johnston aims to restore Dewey’s philosophy of education to its rightful place as a vital aspect of Dewey’s work as a whole by illuminating deep connections among Dewey’s thoughts about education, inquiry, growth, community, and democracy. Johnston is to be praised for courageously charting a course through this difficult and rewarding terrain.

Johnston also deserves credit for producing a compelling study of Dewey’s very difficult conception of growth. Like Sidney Hook before him, in “John Dewey—Philosopher of Growth,” Johnston connects growth to education, community, and democracy. Johnston’s treatment of growth is more extensively developed than is Hook’s (except in one sense, to which I will return at the end of this review), and Johnston gives much more attention to the relationship between inquiry and growth than does Hook.

In his introductory first chapter, Johnston urges readers of Dewey to think of inquiry as “context bound” and “self-correcting.” In other words, Dewey’s theory of inquiry aims to provide neither a single model for all inquiries nor a complete and final account of the techniques, methods, and habits of inquiry. Instead, the form of inquiry will vary according to the kinds of subject matter into [End Page 227] which we inquire, and it must be adjusted to meet new challenges and to satisfy new needs. But despite its pluralistic and flexible nature, all inquiries aim to foster growth, community, and democracy with a view toward solving “the problems of men” (8). Johnston points out that Dewey viewed schools as “the most important institution” for cultivating good habits of inquiry (12). Thus, inquiry and education share the same general aim.

In chapters 2 and 3, Johnston develops his claim that inquiry is context bound and self-correcting by challenging scientistic or positivistic interpretations of Dewey’s theory of inquiry (chapter 2), as well as experiential or “aesthetic” interpretations of the same (chapter 3). According to Johnston, neither interpretation fully captures Dewey’s views on inquiry. Scientific inquiry “exists as a variant or (even better) variants of inquiry” (46); but science does not provide the model for inquiry. Furthermore, inquiry does not ultimately terminate in satisfying experiences. The results of our inquiries render our experiences more meaningful and satisfying, but these experiences give rise to further inquiry, which render experience still more meaningful. Thus, experience and inquiry “are both means and ends to each other. And this,” says Johnston, “is what I claim constitutes growth” (86). Johnston recognizes that, for Dewey, education is an indispensable condition for growth: “It is inquiry that is educated, and to educate inquiry is to construct new meanings”—that is, to grow (111).

In chapters 4 and 5, Johnston turns his attention toward the relationship among education, inquiry, community, and democracy. Johnston challenges the view that a Deweyan approach to education would propagate a disagreeable status quo (e.g., capitalism, industrialism, and elitism). Johnston counters (in chapter 4) that, for Dewey, authority appropriately derives only from “organized,” “public” intelligence, which is directed toward the shared interests and concerns, not of the privileged and powerful, but of a diverse community of inquirers (126–27). Dewey’s Laboratory School aimed to provide the conditions for establishing such a community. Inquiry can help democratic peoples to question and to resist the status quo and to grow as participants in self-correcting communities. According to Johnston, schools can best...

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