Stories of the Eight-Year Study: Reexamining Secondary Education in America

Vignette: Boyd H. Bode (1873-1953): Philosophy Brought Down to Earth

183 Vignette Boyd H. Bode (1873–1953): Philosophy Brought Down to Earth Prior to 1930 John Dewey and Boyd Bode were almost alone in considering democracy an important factor in determining educational objectives; afterwards the word democracy began to appear in education treatises with growing frequency . (E. E. Bayles and B. L. Hood, 1966)1 In October 1938, Time magazine published an article on the progress of progressive education written to commemorate the PEA’s twentieth birthday. Boyd Bode was prominently featured. No doubt he was simultaneously pleased and probably more than a bit embarrassed by the attention he received. As one who did not join groups, Bode thought of himself as a friendly critic of progressive education who stood some distance from its center. Certainly he blushed when reading these words: “Recently Progressive Education’s No. 1 present-day philosopher, Ohio State’s gaunt Professor Boyd Henry Bode, in a book called Progressive Education at the Crossroads, declared that nothing but chaos could result from exclusive attention to children’s individual needs, interests and learning. Progressive schools, he insisted, must lead their pupils to oppose dictatorship and make democracy “a way of life,” and he defined democracy as “continuous extension of common interests.”2 No one who knew Bode as a young man could have imagined that these words were being said of the modest, studious, and dutiful son of Boyd H. Bode, photograph, 1926, Ohio State University Photo Archives 184 Stories of the Eight-Year Study the Reverend Hendrik Bode. Steeped in Calvinist traditions by his immigrant minister father, most of his contemporaries likely thought Bode would one day join the ministry. But instead of studying theology, Bode studied philosophy—then not so far removed—graduating from Cornell University in 1900 with his faith mostly intact, as he assured his worrying parents in frequent letters home written in colloquial Dutch. A decade of prolonged personal struggle followed that culminated in 1913, when he proclaimed himself to his friend and former student Max Otto, a “confirmed pragmatist.”3 By rejecting absolutes, by having thought his way out of idealism, as Otto maintained, Bode took his first steps toward becoming a champion of democratic principles—of an open universe where truth arises only from human experience. With his embrace of pragmatism—to which he would make significant contributions—Bode turned toward education as a place where philosophy had important “work to do.”4 Reflecting on his years teaching philosophy, Bode concluded that formal logic was nothing more than “horse sense made asinine.” What he wanted was a philosophy that made a difference in human affairs—“philosophy brought down to earth.”5 And so, like Dewey before him, Bode found himself increasingly interested in and involved with education-related issues. While teaching at the University of Illinois, Bode began to wrestle seriously with education. The then-idealist Bode obtained this academic post from extraordinarily strong recommendations by William James, James Hayden Tufts, and Dewey.6 Encouraged by his colleague, friend, and fellow Cornell graduate, William Chandler Bagley, he became a regular participant in the annual high school conference sponsored by the university. No doubt his participation provided an occasion to reconsider his brief experience in 1892 as a nineteen-year-old teaching in a one-room, rural school. Later Bode began offering a course in educational theory and soon was publishing on a variety of educational issues. He had come to believe, as Dewey argued, that the “most penetrating definition of philosophy which can be given is . . . that it is the theory of education in its most general phase.”7 I In Fundamentals of Education, Bode’s first book in education, philosophy and democracy are given central place. The two are inextricably linked, but he felt compelled to argue for the importance of each to education separately. Respecting democracy, he wrote: To be truly democratic, education must treat the individual himself as the end and set itself the task of preparing him for that 185 Vignette: Boyd H. Bode (1873–1953) intellectual and emotional sharing in the life and affairs of men which embodies the spirit of the Golden Rule. In proportion as common interests are permitted to outweigh special interests, the individual is becoming humanized and the successive adjustments of life will be made in the direction of democracy and in accordance with the needs of an expanding life.8 Not surprisingly, while...