each individual each unit who is the carrier of the life experience of his group in time passes away yet the life of the group goes on in this episode of philosophers explained by me Stephen Hicks returned to John Dewey and his 1916 book democracy in education hugely influential Dewey is an American an America in 1916 has not yet joined World War one though it's a rising world power and Dewey is a pragmatist and we can see the influence in his application of pragmatism to issues of Education let's go to the text with the title democracy in education Dewey is already signaling something important about the place of perhaps politics in education although as we will see Dewey is a pragmatist and democracy is not only a political concept for pragmatism it's something more philosophical including one's view of human nature and a cognition Theory or or an epistemology also chapter one in this episode we're going to look at excerpts from chapter one and chapter 7 of this big book uh we also have the view that education is not a Superfluous thing or a nice add-on but rather it is a necessity and a necessity of life so let's plunge into the text the most notable distinction between living and inanimate things is that the former maintain themselves by renewal now what's interesting about this is that Dewey is putting this whole discussion of Education First in a biological context he's not appealing to social traditions he's not appealing to religious worldviews or theology instead he is starting more naturalistically with a biological concept and a distinction between the living and the non-living dwell on this just for a moment John Dewey was born in 1859 that's the same year Charles Darwin published Origin of Species introducing a concept of natural selection and evolutionary theory and darwinian form with later modifications of course is sweeping the intellectual world and Dewey is of the first generation to reflect seriously not only about what biology g means for philosophy in general but and more evolutionarily based philosophy as well so there's a lot packed in here uh now what is it to be a living thing and he makes a contrast to example of a rock or an inanimate thing that can't resist it just is pushed around by by other forces but a living thing by contrast as long as it endures this is the second paragraph it struggles to use surrounding energies on its own behalf it uses light air moisture and the material of soil and then we get a definition of Life at the end of the second paragraph what exactly do we mean by life life is a self-renewing process through action upon the environment that's a very pregnant phrase so we have the environment but we have action on the environment so life is an action process but it's also a process success of action it's not just disconnected actions it's actions that are connected together in overall processes and it's in a self-renewing process as well and all of that of course could be unpacked philosophically in in Greater detail what else is characteristic of life well the it comes to an end at some point we die next paragraph in all the higher forms this process cannot be kept up in definitely we succumb we die so it can't be an indefinite self-renewal but and then this is an important but as he marks a transition continuity of life process or of the life process is not dependent upon the prolongation of the existence of any one individual so we can think of Life individually but do we want to extend this contraceptive life beyond the individual it's going to be this extension beyond the individual that is more important to his pragmatism and then its application to education so then we have then an imaginative sex reproduction of other forms of life goes on and continue its sequence and then another transition Point here though as the geological record shows not merely individuals but also species die out the life process continues in increasingly complex form so continuity of life means continual re-adaptation of the environment to the needs of living organisms and that's a very evolutionarily sounding phrase where we're focusing on individuals as parts of species engaging in various processes interacting in their environments but environments change and so the adaptations change the life forms change and and so forth we've been speaking of life in its lowest terms as a physical being but we use the word life and we put it in quotation marks and we now capitalize it and that's significance to denote the whole range of experience individual and racial in precisely similar fashion jumping to the end of this paragraph then when we talk about about life or when we're using the concept of life we're not talking merely about individuals precisely similar fashion we speak of the life of a Savage tribe of the Athenian people of The American Nation life covers Customs institutions beliefs victories and defeats Recreations and occupations now where does education then come into fact well it's a life it's a self-renewing process it's an adaptation process the individual dies so hopefully after reproducing itself the species goes on but species also come and go nonetheless there are elected experiences in place in a given species group at a given time education then fits into this context now education in its broadest sense is the means of this social continuity of life I'm going to pause there for a moment this is an important thing for do we because what Dewey is saying is education is not primarily directed to the individual or it's only to the individual as a means of a social grouping as a as part of the social continuity of life so it's a social Focus for Education not an individual focus in Dewey's pragmatic uh system here every one of the constituent elements of a social group in a modern city as in a Savage tribe is born immature helpless without language beliefs ideas or social standards and here another pregnant quotation each individual each unit who is the carrier of the life experience of his group in time passes away get the life of the group goes on that's the important thing the life of the group goes on and while Julie is not anti-individualistic he's nonetheless subordinating the importance of the individual to the life of the group so we have this experience you know you as an individual here are not described as a unique being with your own life and dreams and aspirations and so forth all of that will have a place for Dewey but the important thing here is you are a unit you are the carrier of the life experience of your group that's the important thing jumping to the next paragraph what uh what's important about education as a necessity for life that was in the in the chapter heading there is the necessity that these immature members be not merely preserved in adequate numbers but that they be initiated into the interests purposes information skill and practices of the mature members of the wise the group will cease its characteristic life that's the important thing that's the necessity the group goes on the group goes on in its characteristic way individuals as they come along need to be fitted into uh the practices of of the group all right education and communication all right another important concept here uh what do we mean by education and why do we set up specialized uh institutions of of Education because the kind of training in the ways of the group requires Specialists and so forth now uh there's lots of Education in lots of formats schools are going to be just one institution one way of doing so for for Dewey schools are indeed one important method of the transmission which forms the dispositions of the immature but is only one means and compared with other agencies a relatively superficial means and here what Dewey is saying is that education is the broader concept and warning against the tendency that many people have will to think of schooling and education as synonymous that uh whatever one does outside of school that's not really education rather do we want to say education is hopefully going on constantly and schooling is but one specialized institution within an overall educational process now coming back then to this theme of what we mean by a group if we want to say there's a group or a species or a community and that's the uh the life that needs to carry on and individuals or to fit into it in some way what do we mean by a social grouping and radui has a fairly robust understanding of what that means persons do not become a society by living in physical proximity any more than a man ceases to be socially influenced by being so many feet or miles removed from others a book or a letter May Institute a more intimate association between human beings separated by thousands of miles from each other than exists between dwellers under the same roof so it's not just physical proximity that is the issue individuals also do not even compose a social group because they all work for a common end and it gives an analogy the parts of a machine work with a maximum of cooperativeness for a common result but they do not form a community so it's not just enough that you're all working toward the the the same end we need more to be community in Dewey's sense if however they were all cognizant that is to say aware of they're knowledgeable of the common end so everybody has to know what the common end is and all interested in it so that they regulated their specific activity of you in view of it then they would form a community so I'm going to again pause here because this is important Community the social group is the is the work the concept rather doing the heavy work here and what do we want to say is you're not an individual going off and doing your own thing and you might form groupings with other individuals for limited purposes and so on what he wants is this all of the individuals in the group know what the common end is all of those individuals are interested in that common end and they all act or they regulate their action with respect to that common end that's what it is to be a community and that is what then education is going to Foster but of course education requires communication each would have to know what the other was about and would have to have some way of keeping the other informed as to his own purpose and progress concern census demands communication so that's what we're requiring for a society or a community is a consensus grouping and that's what communication enables us to do education is part of this communicative process in schools in particular are one form of doing so now and then we're going to turn to formal education in this next subsection now formal education the argument is going to be becomes more important to the more complex a society becomes in undeveloped social groups we find very little formal teaching and training Savage groups mainly rely for instilling needed dispositions into the Young upon the same sort of Association which keeps adults loyal to their group they have no special devices and so forth children will learn from the adults in their family by imitation and so forth but as civilization advances the gap between the capacities of The Young and the concerns of adults widens learning by direct sharing in the Pursuits of grown-ups becomes increasingly difficult the ability to share effectively in adult activities thus depends upon a prior training given with this view in an intentional agencies schools and explicit material studies are then devised so formal education including the development of schools is one of the marks then of social groupings evolving into more complex social groupings but there's a danger and there are some risks as we become more civilized more complicated more formal more institutional and that's what the next paragraph turns us to there are conspicuous dangerous attendant upon the transition from indirect to formal education one of the great dangers is that we become too intellectualized to abstracted to bookish formal instruction on the contrary easily becomes remote and dead abstract and bookish to use the ordinary words of depreciation and Dewey is agreeing with those words of depreciation about how much a formal instruction becomes a dead remote abstract bookish and so forth in an advanced comforter culture much of which has been learned is stored in symbols and that's a great value that's very important but such material the danger is exists in a world by itself unassimilated to ordinary customs of thought and expression so if we just have a bunch of books abstract ideas might be knowledgeable but if it's taught in a way that is disconnected from what's going on in the child's life it becomes abstract it becomes dead it's not really connected it can't just be book learning for the sake of memorizing a bunch of ABS symbols and formulations and wrote learning and so forth it needs to still be connected to the actual living of the social grouping and so that's part of the problem is as we impart what Dewey is going to be reacting against thus we reach the ordinary notion of Education the notion which ignores its social necessity and this is the problem right this ordinary notion of schooling it's The Stereotype that many of us will have ignores its social necessity and its identity with human all human Association that affects conscious life and which identifies it with imparting information about remote matters and the conveying of learning through verbal signs the acquisition of literacy so if you think the education and schooling is just a matter about the acquisition of literacy you've read these books and you've you've acquired these knowledge and you've got all this abstract knowledge kicking around in your head and we know what that schooling is like you know the teacher having the students read this dry Dusty textbook that they don't care about or giving them some sort of a lecture a whole bunch of stuff that they are instantly going to forget the moment they need the class and uh if that's what your education is all about that's dead education and that is not education at all instead education is part of life it is a necessity to keep the the mode of living of the social grouping going it is a practical pragmatic function and that needs to be emphasized in contrast to many of them that talk preceding schools of Education that say knowledge is an end in itself or what we need to do is get away from this grubby materialistic practical world and ascended to a higher Dimension none of that is for Dewey's pragmatism all right jumping now to chapter seven where the other time important Concept in the title is democracy in education what do we mean by democracy itself and it's not again just going to be a political notion of democracy and in chapter seven uh Dewey uh contrast the Democratic concept of Education with three possibly four depending how do you categorize things other traditional models of Education which he wants to reject and say you know while they had some elements and they're understandable and we see the philosophical reasons or the political reasons that gave rise to them nonetheless they are all uh models that have shortcomings that are not appropriate for contemporary modern life or in fact life in general and so we need to have this Democratic concept of education so returning to this theme that had been developed earlier to say that education is a social function emphasizing that again not primarily in individual function securing Direction and development in the immature through their participation in the life of the group to which they belong so that's a another element there it's not that we put students in schools separated from the rest of life and we keep them insulated and so forth we want to get them participating in the life of the group as soon as possible that's where real education is going to occur uh is to say in effect that education will vary with the quality of life which prevails in a group so here's suggesting that education also might not be this universalistic one-size-fits-all model of Education there are different groups out there and groups have their different ways of living different modes of living and so we should expect some variation there then that was a something that is then drawn out more explicitly in this next section Society is one word but many things what do we mean by societies well we'll use it in all kinds of contexts there are political parties and that's a kind of society with different aims social sets cliques gangs corporations Partnerships groups bound closely together by ties of blood and so on in Endless variety and so each of these social groupings is uh is different and diverse and so we shouldn't just be misled by the fact that we are using one word to describe all of them in many modern States and in some ancient there is a great diversity of populations of varying languages religions moral codes and traditions so the idea that by a society we mean some heterogeneous group or they all speak the same language have the same religion the same Politics the same idea of family life etc etc all of that may have held you know 10 20 30 000 years ago in early human history and prehistory but it's not certainly the case in modern society and certainly not in a nation of uh like the United States where a diversity is prized there's constantly an influxes of of immigrations with immigrants rather with new ways of lives and so on and we're in an increasingly Global and Cosmopolitan society as well so what is all of this then going to apply for Education uh in the modern world uh where it's constantly evolving and changing uh and nonetheless we like this concept of democracy so nonetheless we also need to reject this idea that in some sense we are just going to be head in the clouds idealistic philosophers who imagine our fantasy Society or our fantasy school and then try to fit everybody into that rather we're going to start the other way around we're going to start with life reality including social life as it really is and then build education around that so hence this next important sentence here we cannot set up out of our heads something we regard as an ideal Society we need to be realistic focused on the Practical reality the societies within which we all actually need to function now from these traits we devise derive rather our standard how are we going to say you know what counts as Democratic what counts as good what counts as bad important unimportant it's important to make explicit what that means and here's part of what we mean by a Democratic Society how numerous and varied are the interests which are consciously shared so we expect in democracy in democracies for there to be a certain amount of variety and diversity so uh more democratic societies will have more variety and more diversity in them second how full and free is the interplay with the other forms of Association so there's a connection between democracy in our modern way of thinking and freedom that uh uh people in different groups with different values different ideas different Notions nonetheless to get to interact with each other learn from each other change and adapt and interpenetrate in various ways that individuals have some freedom of flowing going from this group to that group and so forth so how much diversity do we have or how much variation do we have in our society and among all of that variety how much freedom of interplay is allowed to go on non-democratic societies will not have either of those in varying degrees and so we make then a contrast here to a in the next section A despotically governed State what's really wrong with dictatorship and then Dewey wants to go on to argue well particularly for those of us who are more democratically inclined in this generic sense as we are to finding it there despotism seems a bad to us it seems alien to us instead of allowing for the free play and of of Interest there's a society as he puts it here uh dominated by fear right so the despot has power and knows that that power can be used against you and gets you to do what the desperate wants uh through largely fear in evoking dread and hope of specific tangible rewards say comfort and ease of course despots will also use carrots as well as sticks to use those metaphors many other capacities are left untouched and so if we're going to get things done only by those two devices the power of the despot dangling of specific reward in front of you or threatening you with a particular punishment then we are already limiting human aspiration and human motivations in terms of those two possibilities or rather they are effective but in such a way as to pervert them instead of operating on their own account they're reduced to Mere Servants of attaining pleasure and avoiding pain so everybody is just looking through the desperate what should I do what should I do and so we're losing all of the talent and aspirations of of all of the individuals in the society and substituting it only for four four one also what we then find is there's not very much diversity there instead everyone is looking for the despot the despot is imposing usually his agenda on everyone so we don't have a number of other interests and agendas and other possibilities those tend to get stifled they don't even get developed as aspirations in in the first place and so what we then find is human intercourse between the despot and the people under the despot or the master or the servant the master and the slave uh becomes dehumanizing it's not important it's important rather for Julius not only for the servants and the and the and the slaves that they become dehumanized he also wants to say uh it's also true of those who seem to have the upper hand they become dehumanized as well they are are less as human beings than they otherwise could be the experience of each party loses in in in means their culture tends to be sterile to be turned back to feed on itself their art becomes a showy display and artificial their wealth becomes luxurious and show-offy their knowledge is over specialized Their Manners are fastidious rather than Hugh Maine so uh that's despotism we're all familiar with that and we know what life is like under that but nonetheless into the modern world we have transformed the the the the the the world and despotism seems to be a relic of the past or at least in Dewey and language is hopefully increasingly a relic of the past travel economic and Commercial Tendencies have gone present gone far to break down exterior barriers to bring peoples and classes into closer and more perceptible connection with each either so increasingly we're not these isolated tribes with a chief or isolated Empires with a despot at the top rather we have a whole variety of of societies diversity and variety and a lot of freedom of interplay with respect to them education then needs to be situated in that understanding of the modern world so what we want then and this is the democratic ideal we're not just describing now we're putting this as an ideal to those two elements right our point in our Criterium both Point toward democracy the first diversity variety and so on means that what we should be striving for then is not only more numerous and more varied points of shared common interest but greater Reliance upon the recognition of mutual interests in as a factor rather in social control the more diverse the way are but the more we are interacting with each other the more democratic we are going to be coming together learning from each other of course sometimes having arguments and disagreements but then out of that uh influencing each other and developing social control methods out of that the second one means that we are going to be evolving and changing Democrat societies are going to be learning from each other dropping old ways of doing things acquiring new ways of doing things engaging in experiments sometimes experiments inspired from learning from what other social groups and so on so we should expect them to be evolving and changing change in Social habit it's continuous Readjustment through meeting the new situations produced by varied intercourse now all of that can sound very biological evolutionary what do is then is transposing that to social evolutionary and then it's not a simple transposition he wants to see that as continuous even what we mean by social life is one type of biological living all right upon the educational side we note first that the realization of a form of social life in which interests are mutually interpenetrating and where progress or Readjustment has an important consideration makes a democratic Community more interested than other communities have caused Etc in this Democratic sorry deliberate and systematic education all right so then we go on to this very important Point that he's stressing here we're using this word democracy but we need to get it past this idea of merely we're going to have arguments once in a while about who should be in political power or whatever the law should be and then we're going to vote and it's going to be majority that's an application of democracy but democracy is a much broader concept so a democracy is more than a form of government I'm going to repeat that a democracy is more than a form of government it is primarily a mode of associated living of conjoint communicated experience so democracy and politics democracy in family life in corporate life in religious life in all of the other areas democracy is what we're striving for democracy politically is just one particular application right it's a mode of conjoint communicated experience the extension in space of the number of individuals who participate in an interest so that each has to refer his own action to that of others and to consider the action of the others to give point and direction to his own and then this is going to who is going to argue a break down a lot of the traditional artificial hierarchical barriers that have come out of despotic societies you know kind of tribes that are ruled by an iron-handed Chieftain or or a king or a czar or a pharaoh it's equivalent to breaking down those barriers of class race and national territory which keep men from perceiving the full import of their activity so we're extending democracy Beyond you know particular social groups to be a matter of all social groups independent trading with each other a kind of universal democracy and a society which is mobile this is our contemporary society which is full of channels for the distribution of change occurring anywhere must see to it that its members are educated to personal initiative and adaptability and there are the important constants action initiative in response to whatever circumstances one finds but at the same time being able to adapt to changing circumstances not static not top-down not merely passively following Direction now platonic educational philosopher of course collage Plato a great philosopher one of the most influential philosophers of all time on on education and now Dewey wants to contrast his Democratic approach to the platonic approach we do have an episode on Plato's allegory of the cave one of the most important allegories with respect to education ever so you can check that one out in our philosophers explained series what is the essence of Plato here no one could better Express than did he the fact that a society is stably organized when each individual is doing that for which he has an aptitude by nature in such a way as to be useful to others so being useful to others in a society seeing what the individual's aptitudes are but notice that the concept here is being stably organized and that's going to be in contrast to any sort of evolutionary progress model of education so we want to fit a a individuals by their aptitudes to what society's needs are in order to create a stable Society but if we're going to be able to do this and to do this well that requires as Plato argues the organization of society depends ultimately upon knowledge of the ends of existence and this is where so what is life is all about what is the point of the rift in effect be philosophers uh what are the True Values and the highest values and then he says Plato's concept for this is Justice uh uh uh in the in having the right understanding hierarchy and relationship of all values to each other that's the concept of justice but this is very difficult and one of the difficulties we realize is in dealing with this question we come upon the seemingly insuperable obstacle obstacle that such knowledge is not possible save in a just and harmonious social order everywhere else the mind is distracted and misled by a false valuations and false perspectives a disorganized and factional Society steps up sets up a number of different models and standards so if we have just a bunch of groups in society not all of them have a proper understanding of Justice some of them are going to have very wrong values but they're going to be in conflict with the other groups there's no way in us for us then to uh to uh to have a harmonious stable just Society it seems given the way human beings are and have this so how do we solve this problem then Plato says well Plato suggests a way out a few men philosophers or lovers of wisdom or truth may by study learn at least in outline the proper patterns of true existence so it's possible for a few very smart very committed individuals to figure out what the truth is what real Justice is what the highest ends of existence is if they can become the rulers of the state and have enough power to do so and impose the proper conception of Justice on society then we can reshape Society in the proper direction so what we then have is a kind of dictatorship of philosopher Kings imposing the proper standards everybody having to follow along with that agenda everybody being educated in accordance with that agenda then according to Plato we can have an ideal society and then in the next paragraph Dewey goes on to say yet the society in which the theory was propounded was so undemocratic and of course Plato says yeah exactly it's not Democratic so for Dewey though as a Democrat that's going to be uh uh unacceptable it's a it's a it's a it's a criticism further Plato wanted to argue on his theory of human nature that human beings have different capacities and they tend to fall into just one of three groups according to uh two capacities and that each uh each group is suited for to performing certain roles in society so people are going to according to their aptitudes basically put into a class and that class is going to be you know more or less forced to perform its function for the good of society uh and so what we then are losing is much of the great variety and diversity that is possible by human beings by what do we sees in Plato as having a rather truncated uh understanding of the diversity of what's possible for for human for human beings so uh we're going to then reject this platonic form of of Education uh this section here although his educational philosophy was revolutionary it was nonetheless in bondage to static ideals we are not static we are evolutionary and we are not going to be authoritarian in any top-down fashion we want to be Democratic and so we're going to reject this platonic form of Education now for more details of course this is a very short section you can check out Plato's a great book The Republic 10 books long of it uh uh for for all of the details but another important ideal one that had come to prominence in the decade sorry rather the century and a half prior to prior to Dewey in modern times a much more individualistic freedom-loving diversity form of Education nonetheless Dewey is also going to reject this form and what's interesting here is uh the way he subtitles is the individualist stick ideal of the 18th century it's interesting he's going to reject this individualistic ideal but it's uh he also puts the word individualistic in scare quotes and that's often a way of indicating some skepticism about this concept or or distancing oneself from it so it's interesting that in the other forms of educational models of Education that he criticizes in this chapter he does not put platonic in in quotation marks he does not put nationalistic as we'll see a little bit in quotation marks or despotic in in quotation marks but he does put individualistic in quotation mark so it's worth pondering why that might be so 18th century philosophy feudalism is breaking down we're getting away from top down authoritarianism we're more individualistic we're more freedom loving and so forth and so education changes to reflect this new idea but the voice of nature now speaks for the diversity of individual talent and for the need of free development of individuality in all its variety that's the siren Call of the 17th century going on into the 18th century and certainly even into the 19th and 20th centuries Freedom individuality and it is interesting that do we hear names Rousseau as the Exemplar of this new modern Trinity does not hear mention John Locke for example side note we do have an episode in philosophers explained on Rousseau and his views on education and also locks liberal individualistic approach to education as well so feel welcome to to check those out but what is the problem with this so-called individualistic approach to education from Dewey's perspective wealth it as he starts to explain here well social Arrangements were thought of as mere external expedience by which these non-social individuals might secure a greater amount of private happiness for themselves so they're concerned with their happiness they're concerned with their private happiness they are individuals they are non-social they we might then say they are egoistic to use another label here and for Dewey all of this then is to say that they are making the individual primary and the social in some sense secondary or even as He suggests here non-social and you'll see just a couple of lines later let me highlight it here he goes on to say that they are anti-social which is of course a a very strong claim and so precisely for Dewey the order should be reserves reversed first and foremost you want to argue social and only secondarily individual an individual in relationship to the social so that's his his key uh his key criticism here nonetheless he does also recognize that these were Progressive they did believe in progress It's not a static model it's not an idea that there's you know a one-size-fits all for for everyone so that part is fine and so on nonetheless the problem is this seeming anti-social philosophy was a somewhat transparent mask for an impetus toward a wider and Freer Society toward cosmopolitanism and cosmopolitanism is the idea that you can be comfortable and at home anywhere in in the world you are a citizen of the planet you're a city citizen everywhere rather than being someone who is first and foremost a member of a particular city or a particular tribe or a particular Nation or ethnic group you are a unique individual not bound to those social groupings but notice again there's some slightly pejorative language that Dewey is putting here about this this Vision that it's a it's a mask so that's as I say there must be some kind of agenda behind the mask and it's a somewhat transparent mask and so what we want to do is see what's uh what's what's behind it and a little bit sardonic and formulation here in membership as humanity is distinct from a state man's capacities would be liberating while in political existing political organizations his powers were hampered and distorted to meet the requirements and selfish interests of the rulers of the state so they want to liberate the individual from oppressive political structures and toward this cosmopolitan-free ideal but from Dewey's perspective it's uh it's a mask for a kind of anti-social uh private individualism and we've got but on this view here an unrestrained faith in nature as both a model and working power so it's really just a faith Viewpoint it's not well scientifically grounded he's going to argue uh it doesn't really have the empirical evidence from us not an accurate description of human nature it's a faith in a certain model of where we're going to go so we're going to reject this I do want to uh before we leave this one though from from Dewey's perspective notice once again where he uses the concept or the uh puts a concept rather in quotation mark this is a kind of a suggestion of Dewey's pragmatism or where it's very uh pragmatic in the sense of being concerned with practical outcomes with being experimental not just you know ideal fantasy clouds excuse me in the science being science friendly and so forth in much of pragmatism there is a distancing from the idea of try truth that there is such a thing as truth there's a little bit of skepticism and sometimes a lot of skepticism with respect to whether we can through our experiences ever understand reality as it really is and so he wants to argue that in part the liberal individualists oversold the notion of Truth in some sense they have the one universal correct theory of human nature and politics and that we should all be striving toward that and since the natural world of objects is a scene of harmonious truth this education that is to say the individualistic education would infallibly produce Minds filled with the truth but for do we we're not infallibleists we are fallibleists uh we're engaged in ongoing experimenting what works and the nature of reality is constantly evolving and changing so we have to be a little skeptical focused on being willing to change what we take to be the truth uh as as time goes goes on all right so we are rejecting the platonic model of Education the despotic model of Education this individualistic model of Education there's another recent model of Education that has come to the fore that Dewey wants to reject is going to be the Germanic or the Prussian model of Education that came to prominence in the 1800s education as National and as social and uh what he wants to argue is that especially in the German states there was a reaction against the liberal individualism of of England of much of France and certainly uh uh in in in the new country of the Americas uh most especially the United States of America that are individualistic and pursuit of happiness and and so forth uh as there became a recognition that we can't leave education to private hands or just to the family that if we're going to be modern and functional in the new modern world the state and the government needs to take an active role in educating its citizens in a certain direction and so he uses pestilosi here as an example who is quite individualistic but he's Dewey says even Pastor Lucy saw that any effective pursuit of new educational ideal required the support of the state so we're going to increasingly politicize in a neutral sense education education must become a function of society as a whole and the state as the embodiment or at least the representative of society as a whole and Dewey then wants to argue this was something that first happened especially in a gung-ho strong fashion in German thought and in the German states partly in reaction to being conquered by Napoleon Napoleon had put a powerful strong centralized state in place and had kind of taken over all of Europe and and and even further afield uh and the Germans then realized that they can't just be too scattered and separate in all the different German states doing their own individualistic thing however they want we're going to need a strong central Authority that is German and it's going to mold citizens into a nation with a certain direction that's going to require a strong political function for for education so in a way this then becomes the opposite of that individualistic form of Education the individualistic Theory receded into the background the stage furnished not only the instrumentalities of public education but also its goal so they say to someone this is what we are striving to create as good citizens and we're going to also provide the schools that are going to shape you into write those kinds of citizens as well and it's uh rather than this idea that somehow as individuals we can have peace and prosperity and trade with all of the other citizens of the world there's a darker view that's at work in the 19th century in in Germany that there are all of these other different National States and they're all in conflict with each other and so the way it is put here since the maintenance of a particular National sovereignty required the subordination of individuals to the superior interests of the state both in military defense and in struggles for international Supremacy in Commerce social efficiency was understood to imply a like subordination so once again and this is in some sense similar to the platonic model we are going to have wise government leaders to a more dictatorial fashion molding citizens to perform certain state-directed functions in a society no individualism no liberalism no pursuit of private interests and and so on and again Dewey is now going to say and this is a wrong model of education and the criticism is going to be the opposite in this case this is too anti-individualistic it's stifling the individual in the name of some sort of nationalism and some sort of very strong political collectivism and so what we want to try to do is some sort of a Reconciliation of the two ideas he says obviously Germany was not all one thing there was some recognition of individualism some strains are coming out of coming with the enlightenment liberalism and so forth uh and so there are attempts to uh to perform reconciliations but do he wants to argue consistently uh that uh the the reconciliations are too one-sided on the side of nationalism State Control top down and and subordinating the the individual now he mentions Hegel he mentions Kant you know say here in philosophers explained we have an episode devoted to hegelian philosophy we have an episode devoted to kantian philosophy so feel welcome to check those out as well all right so two brief results then we're approaching the conclusion now should stand out from this brief historical survey we've gone through despotism we've gone through platonism we've gone through individualism we've gone through this state nationalism right all this reinforces the statement which opens this chapter the conception of education is a social process and function has no definite meaning until we can Define what kind of society we have in mind that is going to say if we are going to do education first and foremost we have to be philosophers we're going to say yeah we're educating people for society but what do we mean by Society what are our goals what are our ends and it is the philosophers who Define those big ends and so Educators need to be if not philosophers at least philosophical and so we have to reflect on the fact that in part all of the great educators are the most influential EDU Educators in history have been the philosophers who have done that work so at least implicitly we're always going to have some philosophy at work and so we need to do this as educator and certainly do we as a philosopher is doing that him himself we need to do the hard philosophical work and then our second conclusion one of the fundamental problems of Education in and for Democratic societies is set by the conflict of a nationalistic and a wider social Aim so this is a Dewey in part reflecting on the fact that in 1916 when this book is published much of Europe and parts of the rest of the world are now at War it's a World War and that much of that world war is driven by nationalistic conflicts that are going on and any sort of international or Cosmopolitan piece seems to be a pipe dream at that particular particular time in in hell at the same time where we have all of this nationalism where we have to take that into account we do have huge portions of uh of of modern society that are in fact International and cosmopolitan at the same time jumping down a little bit here the idea of national sovereignty has never been as accentuated in politics as it is at the present time each Nation lives in a state of suppressed hostility and incipient war with its neighbors well actually in Europe not incipient chances perhaps are good that Dewey was doing most of the writing of this book prior to the outbreak of of world war one but at the same time we have all of this International nationalism we do have a lot of genuine globalism and cosmopolitanism at the beginning of this paragraph on the one hand science Commerce and art transcend National boundaries right so science is an international project Commerce is increasingly Global Arch is not you know just localized in various areas with each Place having its own art we're all aware of uh you know who who are then the the major world artists impressionism Picasso and and and so forth so we have huge amounts of international realism or cosmopolitanism and huge amounts of nationalism those are in Conflict those are in contradiction right now and this is what Dewey says this is where the hard work for educators uh needs to be done at least the Educators who are going to be philosophical he puts his two or three cents worth in on this we do want to say human beings are Wards of the nation again that's his small s Socialism or communalism coming through you're not first and foremost an individual we are all Wards of the nation nonetheless that should not fall into an easy nationalism the emphasis must be put on whatever binds people together in Cooperative human Pursuits and results apart from Geographic limitations the secondary and provisional character of national sovereignty and respect to the Fuller Freer and more fruitful Association and intercourse of all human beings within our with one another rather must be instilled as a working disposition of the mind so that then is to say the broader concept is and should be Democratic human beings are quite varied but we are all human beings nonetheless and democracy should become then worldwide and the same general habits of mind should be instilled in education that should be the first and foremost aspiration secondarily these things can be limited and tailored to the nation but of course that is secondary