John Dewey and Our Educational Prospect: A Critical Engagement with Dewey's Democracy and Education

5. Growth and Perfectionism? Dewey after Emerson and Cavell

5 Growth and Perfectionism? Dewey after Emerson and Cavell NAOKO SAITO Introduction: Growth in the Age of Globalization In contemporary education, the notion of growth, an idea so central to Dewey, has become increasingly unsteady. On the one hand, in the global market economy, growth is associated with free choice, competitive power, and success, often with the image of a differentiated self—an identity developed and extended through acquisition. On the other, there is a counteractive force geared toward standardization, unification, and, worse, assimilation, through which the self is flattened and shrunk. Expansive growth on a global scale ironically narrows the horizon of global awareness , awareness of the foreign, on the part of students. Education in these apparently contradictory directions of growth conspires to deprive students of the independent power of judgment—where to stand in their own judgment and how to trust their own taste. The language of moral and citizenship education paralyzes students’ confidence in finding their own language, in connection not only with global affairs, but also with what is going on around themselves, within their familiar, native circumstances. Growth today seems to face a pressing need to be redefined from an alternative perspective—one that helps us to connect our personal ways of life with those of others, with our own culture and the foreign, and to find ways to bridge personal and social moralities. The challenge lies in 81 82 John Dewey and Our Educational Prospect maintaining the flexibility and mobility of growth in the face of value diversity and concomitant uncertainties, while at the same time not losing a certain sense of direction and hope for attaining some commonality. Is it, however, possible to find a route and language for such growth? Or should we abrogate the very idea of growth? As one possible standpoint from which to reconsider growth in the contemporary world, John Dewey’s idea of growth is examined in this chapter and reconstructed in the light of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s moral perfectionism, an idea elaborated by Stanley Cavell. Dewey is well known as a philosopher of growth. His Democracy and Education especially represents well the theme of growth. His peculiar view of growth— growth without fixed ends, one that is based on his naturalism and pragmatism —has consistently been attacked for its lack of a definite sense of direction and hence its vulnerability to relativism. This is a challenge directed at the process-oriented view of growth in Dewey’s pragmatism. In response, I shall argue that Deweyan growth if reconsidered and reinforced in a certain dimension—its Emersonian perfectionist dimension —can provide us with an alternative vision of education and democracy in place of those predominant in the age of globalization. In the following section, I first identify various traits of Dewey’s idea of growth as it appears in Democracy and Education, and I discuss some of their implications for contemporary education as reflected in David Hansen’s interpretation of Dewey. I then examine Nel Noddings’s criticism of Dewey. She is a sympathetic supporter of Dewey’s philosophy and yet maintains some doubts about it. I argue that the kinds of responses that Dewey might offer are not sufficient as they are, but also that Noddings’s own alternative position misses the basic line of his pragmatism. In the section entitled “From Growth to Perfectionism,” I introduce an alternative critical standpoint from which to reconstruct Deweyan growth: the standpoint of Emersonian moral perfectionism as advanced by Stanley Cavell. Sharing with Dewey a common stance toward democracy and education, and an antifoundationalist, processoriented view of perfection, Emerson and Cavell reinforce a certain dimension of Deweyan growth. I conclude with a discussion of the educational implications of Deweyan growth reconstructed in the light of Emersonian moral perfectionism, including the role of the teacher in enhancing students’ growth and in citizenship education. Growth without Fixed Ends: From Dewey to Hansen and Noddings “Since growth is the characteristic of life, education is all one with growing; it has no end beyond itself” (MW.9.58). Thus Dewey affirms: 83 Growth and Perfectionism? growth in the present tense of growing, growth without fixed ends. Growth in itself is “being an end” (MW.9.55) and is relative only to “more growth” (MW.9.56). This is derived from Dewey’s Darwinian naturalistic view of growth based on “the principle of continuity” (MW.9.5)—the process of continual...