Reflections on Whitman, Dewey, and Educational Reform: Recovering Spiritual Democracy for Our Materialistic Times

Reflections on Whitman, Dewey, and Educational Reform Recovering Spiritual Democracy for Our Materialistic Times Jim Garrison and Elaine J. O'Quinn The still unfolding epic of these United States has taken a strange turn at the start of the twenty-first century. The nation acts in many ways as though it has all the democracy it wants. The push now is to concentrate all effort on greater eco­ nomic growth, even though we are by far the richest nation on the planet. Ever since the Spanish-American War, the allure of material goods has led this nation away from a republic and toward global empire. Today, it is possible that we are in the last years of the republic. This paper is a response to a sense that America is entering the age of empire. Naturally, public schools follow the course of the society they serve. In­ creasingly, American schools fit the needs of business, industry, and government, not the needs of individual citizens and democratic community. Instead of aim­ ing to instill a desire for personal growth and responsible democratic participa­ tion, public schools now are devoted to refining human resources for the na­ tion's production function and for the military forces that occupy the empire. Consequently, it is not easy for some of us to support the nation's public schools, because we find it impossible to support the passing of the republic. Equally dif­ ficult is the realization that American democracy may soon be a fleeting histori­ cal possibility that never realized its full potential. We believe the greatest American epic is not Mobr Dick, how the west was won, how capitalism defeated communism, or how the nation will win the com­ petition for control of global markets. The greatest American epic is the story of what it means to attain spiritual democracy. The enduring story of spirituality seeks relations that are more intimate with the world around it, especially other people, and values a commonwealth wherein individual, creative acts matter in the course of cosmos. The continuing story of democracy is one of unique indi­ viduals questing in community with other such individuals for more intimate re­ lations. Spiritual democracy seeks spiritual fulfillment in democratic commu68 • E&C/Education and Culture 20(2) (2004): 68-77 Reflections on Whitman, Dewey, and Educational Reform • 69 nity. In this essay, we seek to recover a vision of spiritual democracy as outlined by Walt Whitman and John Dewey that may serve as an antidote for the exces­ sive materialism that is currently carrying our nation from democracy into plu­ tocracy. As educators, we are concerned with what the current lack of spiritual democracy means for public schools, which are now assailed by federally en­ forced standards that emphasize academics while marginalizing relational quali­ ties, resulting in not only individual students but also teachers, schools, and en­ tire communities learning to disregard essential, pluralistic attitudes of mutual respect and care that bind citizens of a nation together. .Whitman and Dewey share a similar concept of spiritual democracy that we wish to recover. Their notion of this ideal radiates from the fiery core of American's most original and creative achievements. Harold Bloom (1994) as­ serts "Whitman as Center of the American Canon" (pp. 264 ff.), and James E. Miller Jr. (1992) believes Whitman's Leaves of Grass is "America's Lyric-Epic of Self and Democracy." Similarly, many consider Dewey the epic philosopher of pragmatism, democracy, and democratic education. Dewey (1927/1984) in turn says this about Whitman: When the machine age has thus perfected its machinery it will be a means of life and not its despotic master. Democracy will come into its own, for democracy is a name for a life of free and enriching commun­ ion. It had its seer in Walt Whitman. It will have its consummation when free social inquiry is indissolubly wedded to the art of full and moving communication. (p. 350) Communion and communication lie at the core of Whitman and Dewey's dream of democracy. In today's post-industrial and perhaps post-liberal world, the machine age has perfected itself in some despotic ways. The Turing machine (the computer) and the Internet...