There Are No Schools in Utopia: John Dewey’s Democratic Education

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realization of Utopias.

(Oscar Wilde 2001, 141)

“The most utopian thing in Utopia is that there are no schools,” writes John Dewey (1933/1989, 136). With these words, Dewey opened his talk to kindergarten teachers on April 21, 1933 at Teachers College, Columbia University. Published a couple days later in the New York Times under the title, “Dewey Outlines Utopian Schools,” we find Dewey in this little-discussed talk fancifully imagining himself among the Utopians—somehow transported from the economically depressed United States of the 1930s to Utopia, where the economy of acquisition is nothing but a memory.¹ Finding himself in Utopia, Dewey, of course, asks about the schools, quizzing the Utopians on everything from their pedagogy to their educational goals. What he discovers is a radical critique of education as it was (and still is) often practiced. The emphasis on standards and the competitive and punitive systems of examinations that enforce them appear deeply misguided to the Utopians. They contend that it is our economic system and its emphasis on “personal acquisition and private possession” that has reduced education to the mere acquisition of facts, necessary for the further acquisition of things. According to the Utopians, once their acquisitive economy had passed away, education itself was transformed, liberated in a way that enabled teachers to concentrate their attention on identifying and developing the unique capacities of each student. Instead of a single-minded focus on delivering the facts of the curriculum, the Utopians were able to see the child as the gravitational center of the educational enterprise.

The contemporary conversation about education in America, and in many other western educational contexts, could not be further from this vision. American society is more driven by acquisition than ever, and its children are exposed to an unprecedented onslaught of advertising aimed at training them in the practice of consumption.² In school, the same children are scrutinized by high-stakes, standardized examinations that stand as the goal and measure of learning. Education itself—in the context of a consumption-oriented society—becomes a commodity among commodities. This situation, I argue, gives us good reason to consider Dewey’s Utopians and his own democratic prescription for educational and societal transformation.

After offering an overview of the Utopian’s educational vision, along with their understanding of the obstacles keeping schools from realizing this vision, I will examine the objection that the Utopians (and Dewey) naïvely reject the reality of economic motivation in learning. A consideration of Dewey’s own understanding of curriculum, vocation, and democracy—which underwrites the Utopian’s vision and critique—shows this objection to be largely misplaced. Far from overlooking the influence that economic motivation plays in education, Dewey sees that this motivation itself can be a threat to the attitudes necessary for truly democratic ways of living.

Dewey’s Outline for Utopian Schools: The Vision

As Dewey’s first line suggests, there are no schools of the traditional sort in Utopia. With orchards, gardens, greenhouses, wilderness, workshops, kitchens, and chemistry labs, children are given ample space to encounter the realities of the world and to discover and pursue their particular interests. The classrooms themselves are open, flexible spaces that facilitate face-to-face interaction. Combined with a limit on size—less than two hundred pupils—these schools support the “close, intimate personal acquaintance” necessary for genuine engagement (Dewey 1933/1989, 135). Education itself is a sort of apprenticeship in which children work with adults and older peers, gradually taking on responsibilities commensurate with their developing capacities. Engaged in real occupations, working alongside masters—who “combine special knowledge of the children” with expertise in a certain area (Dewey 1933/1989, 137)—they encounter the content of what we call the curriculum in a context that...