Teachers, Leaders, and Schools: Essays by John Dewey

Philosophy of Education (1913)

Philosophy of Education (1913) RELATION OF PHILOSOPHY AND EDUCATION.—A clear conception of the nature of the philosophy of education in distinction from the science and principles of education is not possible without some antecedent conception of the nature of philosophy itself and its relation to life. Is philosophy capable of being generated and developed without any reference to education? Then a philosophy of education will be simply the application to educational ideas of an outside ready-made standard of judgment, with all its dangers of forcing the facts of education so that they conform to and support the philosophy already formed. In this case, we shall have as many philosophies of education as are required to illustrate diverging philosophic systems. The case will stand quite otherwise if there is an intimate and vital relation between the need for philosophy and the necessity for education. In this case the philosophy of education will simply make explicit the reference to the guiding of life needs and purposes which is operative in philosophy itself. It will not be an external application of philosophy, but its development to the point of adequate manifestation of its own inner purpose and motive. While different philosophies of education will still exist, they will not be so many corollaries of divergent pure philosophies, but will make explicit the different conceptions of the value and aims of actual life held by different persons. It will be seen that different philosophies exist because men have in mind different ideals of life and different educational methods for making these ideals prevail. The chief point of this article is to develop the conception of the internal and vital relation of education and philosophy. Every seriously minded person may be said to have a philosophy. For he has some sort of a working theory of life. He possesses, in however half-conscious fashion, a standpoint from which weight and importance are attached to the 52 First published in A Cyclopedia of Education, ed. Paul Monroe (New York: Macmillan, 1913), 4:697–703. Philosophy of Education 53 endless flow of detailed happenings and doings. His philosophy is his general scheme and measure of values, his way of estimating the significance that attaches to the various incidents of experience. If pressed to state and justify his working principle, he might reply that while it would not satisfy others, it served its owner and maker. No individual, however, is so eccentric that he invents and builds up his scheme except on the general pattern that is socially transmitted to him. The exigencies and the perplexities of life are recurrent. The same generic problems have faced men over and over; by long-continued cooperative effort men have worked out general ideas regarding the meaning of life, including the connections of men with one another and with the world in which they live. These conceptions are embodied not only in the codes of moral principles which men profess and the religions in which they find support and consolation , but in the basic ideas which have become commonplace through their very generality: such ideas as that things hang together to make a world; that events have causes; that things may be brought into classes; the distinctions of animate and inanimate, personal and physical, and so on throughout the warp and woof of our intellectual fabric. Philosophy aims to set forth a conception of the world, or of reality, and of life which will assign to each of these interests its proper and proportionate place. It aims to set forth the distinctive role of each in a way that will harmonize its demand with that of other ends. Need of a Philosophy of Education.—Three classes of motives, unconsciously blended with one another, usually operate in making the need for systematic and rational ideas felt, and in deciding the point of view from which the need is dealt with. These motives are the conflict of conservative and progressive tendencies; the conflict of scientific conceptions of the world with beliefs hallowed by tradition and giving sanction to morals and religion; and the conflict of institutional demands with that for a freer and fuller expression of individuality. (1) Some philosophies are marked by a reforming, almost revolutionary, spirit. They criticize the world and life as they exist, and set in opposition to them an ideal world into conformity with which the existent scheme of things ought to be brought. Other philosophies tend rather to justify things as they are, pointing out...