Teaching in the Now: John Dewey on the Educational Present (review)

Many contemporary students feel as though they are always waiting for the future—for their next test, their next grade, and their next class. Many contemporary teachers feel as though they are always preparing students for the future—for their next stage of schooling, their careers, and the rest of their lives. With all their anxiety about what lies ahead, both students and teachers might be perplexed by the suggestion that the best preparation for the future is living in the fullness of the present.

JeffFrank reminds readers that this idea permeates Dewey's educational thought. In particular, he argues that the significance of the present is a key theme in two of Dewey's most important works on education, Democracy and Education and Experience and Education. He suggests that if we are to understand these specific texts, and Dewey's thinking on education in general, then we must understand Dewey's thinking about the present. He also makes the case that Dewey's ideal regarding the present—that we can only create the future we hope for by creating the fullest possible present—is an ideal worth pursuing. Not only does it call us, as teachers, to reflect on the growth of our students and on our own growth as educators, it also encourages us to stop waiting for the best possible classroom conditions and instead begin the work of actualizing the future in the now.

Frank's brief and thoroughly readable book is comprised of four main chapters. The first of these explores the apparent complexities of Dewey's ideal. On the one hand, it has an instrumentalist dimension: in order to bring about the future we envision, we must live life fully in the present. The emphasis here is on the future we want to bring about; we live fully in the present as a means to realizing that end. On the other hand, Dewey's ideal has what Frank calls a "quietist" dimension: we can only prepare for the future by living in the fullness of the present, because the future is simply our next present, and the present is all there ever is. The emphasis here is on the now; we live fully in the present not a means to an end, but as an end in itself. Yet these two emphases seem at odds. How can goal-oriented thinking about the future be compatible with thinking solely about the present?

According to Frank, Dewey thinks that these two points of view are not mutually exclusive. He is not merely a laissez-faire quietist, because he believes that shaping the future requires vision and effort. But neither is he merely an instrumentalist, because he thinks that sacrificing the quality of the present will lead to an impoverished future. This is why Dewey is both an instrumentalist and a quietist, convinced that we can only prepare for the future we want by enacting that future fully in the present. Frank offers some examples of this in practice: "We create democracy by living democratically in the present; we create meaningful learning experiences by giving students meaningful work in the present; we prepare a student for the intellectual work demanded in college by having students do intellectually demanding work in the present" (12). Frank acknowledges that such goals will be difficult, requiring a teacher's intelligence, imagination, and effort, yet he fully agrees with Dewey that preparing for the future and creating that future in the present are one and the same. Given that the future we are preparing for is in the process of being created in the present, we cannot prepare for what lies ahead simply by relying on our experience of the past.

Dewey thinks we need to cultivate an attitude of openness to the inevitability of change. Only if we develop an open mind in the present can we effectively deal with change and create the future we hope for. This line of thinking might lead us to believe that Dewey endorses change for the sake...