ABSTRACT. Divisive concept legislation, banned books, and other classroom restrictions leave Deweyans wondering, “What would John Dewey do?”  To showcase Dewey’s relevance for helping us address problematic school practices and legislation today, this presentation calls for Deweyan classroom inquiry into the very concepts dividing us. Deweyan inquiry goes beyond merely learning about or discussing divisive concepts. It helps us figure how to respond to them so that we better understand what divides us, why we are divided, and how we might respond to such division.

ABSTRACT. Have we forgotten how to seriously play with ideas in STEM education? As new design technologies find their way into homes and schools, we reconsider the affordances of play and makerspaces in K-16 STEM education from a Deweyan perspective on experiences, art, and identities. Using concrete design cases, we illustrate how play-orientated activities provide hands-on and mindful experiences for students, produce artifacts for reflection and communication, and sustain transformative inquiries into everyday objects and processes. In a makerspace, design-based play allows students and their teachers to (re)live through the unfolding nature of STEM ideas, including the frustration and pleasure of wresting with ideas and making discoveries. From cube spinning to creating mobile science labs on mountain bikes, we reflect on our experiences in integrating design literacies into students’ STEM learning at multiple levels of the Deweyan continuum of educative experiences.

ABSTRACT. Baburao Bagul was born in Nasik on 17 July 1930, the period during which Babasaheb Ambedkar’s anti-caste movement was gaining momentum; it was the same year in which Ambedkar led a Kalaram Temple Satyagraha. 1950's changing political landscape of Bombay, where he spent his important formative years of life had a deep impact on his writings. Baburao Bagul as a human, writer, and poet was a radical visionary. Not only did he realize the need to annihilate caste, structurally but also mooted for a cultivation of casteless attitude i.e via education, which his short story Jenvha mi jaat chorli also portrays. All his writings put forth his pragmatic and visionary goal of discovering the lost humanity in Human beings, the broken people who had been lost and mutilated by the dogmatic caste society based on religion. He wrote short stories, novella, novels and poetry in Marathi language. Bagul has been a pioneer in extending the idea of Dalit in Dalit Literature beyond birth to the realm of consciousness. The idea of consciousness isn't just a psychological stage of a being, but is a product of multivariate subjectivities i.e dominant religious dogmas, the tardian process of socialization, projected and taught history, politics and economics. Bagul, taking inspiration from Ambedkar and Ambedkarite movement consciously uses the agency of Dalit Literature as Education i.e social force, to generate new consciousness for a new society, new structure and new nation. His approach to the idea of Manuski (used extensively by Ambedkar) as the ultimate yet tangible aim of Dalit Literature, which is an agency of Education, was based on a pragmatic approach. This pragmatism was based on constructive critical approach, its dissection of societal constructs and rejection of dogmas. Thus, Ambedkarite principles which intersect, which diverge from core Dewyian ideas and core Dewyian etymology is inherent in Baguls writings in his both Marathi short story collections i.e Jevha mi jaat chorli (When I hid my Caste) and Maran swast hoat ahe (Death is becoming cheaper). But, there is a caveat, Baburao Bagul's geographical location also plays an important role. As a resident of Matunga Labour camp in Bombay, he is also impacted by Marxist writings as well as left movements in Bombay. It seems Bagul opts for 'pragmatic Marxism' (Hook 1933). Thus, a critical reading of Bagul shows an intersection of Marx, Dewey and Ambedkar as the agents to Educate the society via Dalit literature, which shall be an agency of 'radical social alteration' and lead to the reclaiming of inherent Manuski, which is natural essence of the existence of a human irrespective of her/his/their gender, caste, class, ethnicity, race, religion and nation. My paper tries to delineate and study these intersections of 'Dewey-Ambedkar' and Marxist tenets in Baburao Bagul's work, Jenvha mi jaat chorli. I will try to put forth a new theoretical framework of Dalit literature not just a reflection of power or society but as an agency for Education, based on Dewey-Ambedkar theory and praxis, Marxist nudges but with the novel goal of creating a new society on the principles of Manuski.

ABSTRACT. John Dewey wrote “genuine ignorance is more profitable because it is likely to be accompanied by humility, curiosity, and open-mindedness.” Teaching and learning, (re)defined in terms of pragmatic ignorance, establishes not knowing as something that is practical, necessary, and something that can be actively produced. We are currently living in a post-truth era in which subversive actors strategically produce ignorance by compelling others to hold beliefs without warrant or evidence. Developing a robust understanding of ignorance, beyond the pejorative meaning, can provide critical tools for identifying misinformation. I plan to examine how habits of pragmatic ignorance could be an instrument of resistance to our post-truth society.

ABSTRACT. This piece examines the conditions of existing within a political community and asks “how do we live together?” Since a question of politics inherently implies interaction, the self cannot be the sole focus. In other words, individual existence is inextricable from the collective. Our current metaphysical assumptions–informed by the persistent habit of Cartesian Dualism in the modern mind–does not properly account for this. This metaphysics’ anxious insistence of individuation and distrust of extended substance does not account for a situation of togetherness, nor a democratic and contingent world. Deweyan notions of Primary experience are neglected, thus intelligent and creative habit cannot be built. If we wish to build a radically democratic society, the preeminence of education is clear. A democratic classroom, in which play, creativity and interaction are paramount, as opposed to repetition and rigid hierarchy, would result in a society in which its members may operate democratically and together.

ABSTRACT. This essay considers what the work of John Dewey might mean for a serious reconsideration of homeschooling in this country. Several articles have talked about the degree to which the drastic increase in homeschooling since 2003 would be problematic from Dewey’s perspective, particularly if the methodology used was exclusively framed from a particular religious perspective. For Dewey, “it is the business of education in a democratic social group to struggle against this isolation in order that the various interests may reinforce and play into one another,” (MW 9, 258). Homeschooling, when done from the perspective of a particular religious ideology, can create a virtual vacuum that undermines social cohesion. This problem is not however exclusive to religious homeschooling, as much work often goes into vetting public and private school’s classroom curriculum that is not always when education is solely at home.

These concerns about biased homeschooling remain, but the Covid pandemic drastically changed the situation. For a brief period of time nearly every child in the country became a homeschooled child. Many schools and companies rapidly responded to the situation by creating new interface programs to bring school to the home, and in doing so generating new and improved tools which remain for us to use in the post-Covid world. These tools can and have improved the homeschooling experience. Regardless, the number or students homeschooled exclusively outside the public or private school systems rose by 63% in the 2020-21 academic year. While that number did fall in 2021-22 by almost 20%, a recent study by Stanford Professor Thomas Dee found that an estimated 230,000 students across twenty-one states just stopped coming to school without official signing up for home-school or private school. This trend only serves to further exacerbate the problem of children being raised without the core democratic ideas and ideals that are central to creating a society able to function and prosper.

This paper argues that while Covid-19 did show us new and sometimes effective tools for conducting K-12 education in this country in line with pragmatic instrumentalism, those gains may in the long run by counteracted by further sparking a backlash against the public school system, leaving more and more young children to be raised in the echo chamber that is there household.

ABSTRACT. Video games are largely used for entertainment purposes, however, there has been a growing movement to incorporate video games into the classroom, due to their captivating potential that can make learning fun (Gee, 2003). It is the aim of this proposal to highlight the potential of Sid Meier’s Civilization VI, a turn-based strategy game in which the player builds a society to stand the test of time, from the lens of educational philosopher, John Dewey. Specifically, how Civilization VI can be leveraged to embody the principles Dewey emphasized of democracy, social interaction, experience, inquiry, and reflection (Dewey, 1910, 1916, 1938). Civilization VI allows students to collaboratively problem solve, and it can spark a line of inquiry in which students construct their own knowledge; however, instructors can enhance this form of learning through the development of an accompanying interactive curriculum to emphasize the ideal classroom that Dewey envisioned.

ABSTRACT. The aim of this essay is to offer a Deweyan viewpoint on knowledge and provide a critical response to virtue epistemologists who seek to tackle the challenges posed by the Gettier problem, that significantly disrupted the conventional understanding of knowledge as justified true belief. In this Deweyan essay on epistemology, both virtue reliabilists, including Alvin Goldman, Ernest Sosa, and Duncan Pritchard, and virtue responsibilists, such as Linda Zagzebski and Heather Battaly, are addressed and examined. The essay finds out that they have made a great contribution to developing the epistemological methodology, but are not much successful in giving a good explanation of the nature of knowledge. It is largely due to the fact that they are still in the same old bin where they recycle the traditional view of knowledge. Arguing that the Gettier problem is not a real problem, this essay advocates for a paradigm shift in the understanding of truth, moving away from the realist notion that truth is a correspondence between beliefs and external reality, and instead embracing the pragmatist perspective that truth emerges from the practical consequences of our beliefs and actions. It proposes that modern epistemologists should adopt John Dewey's theory of truth, which incorporates the concept of warranted assertability, as a foundational framework. This recommendation is based on the theory's capacity to effectively address the nature of knowledge.

ABSTRACT. Democracy and education represent two sides of the coin that will be presented in this paper. Both education and democracy are processes described by Dewey that hinge on individual and group problem solving within a physical and social environment.

This paper will show Dewey’s expectations for both democracy and education, how they are related, and the legacy of each primarily in the schools. The successes in education begin with Dewey’s understanding of how individuals develop within an environment, and extend through scientific research and understanding of the brain and learning (see neuroscience bibliography of sources), to today’s best practices in education. It will be shown through some of that research why Dewey was correct in his basic understanding as he explicated the process of thinking, in Democracy and education and elsewhere.

Dewey’s democratic ideal, however, has faltered at best, probably beginning with his work in Chicago. Two aspects of his experience there may have been a harbinger of difficulty. First, a major realization on Dewey’s part cautioned him in his criticism of society—he realized that some outspoken positions could cost funding for the university and could even cost him his position (see Westbrook 1991, pp. 90-ff), as it had an economics professor in 1894. Perhaps a minor aspect that tripped up the democratic ideal was that the Dewey school sought to eliminate from their occupational components “capitalist production” problems for the students (Westbrook, p. 110). While difficult to draw a correlation between the Chicago school and today’s democratic legacy, the topic will be broached, because it is reminiscent of the current social problems today that are not addressed in schools. A recent protest T-shirt read “Regulate guns not women” two topics typically avoided unless the school has had an active shooter costing student and teacher lives. Further, the legislatures of several states have forbidden by law the mention, let alone teaching of anything related to 1619 Project, or topics of gay and lesbian rights. In Democracy and Education, Dewey wrote: A curriculum which acknowledges the social responsibilities of education must present situations where problems are relevant to the problems of living together, and where observations and information are calculated to develop social insight and interest. (Democracy and Education, 200, using the complete works edition, edited by Boydston) Current life problems were to be the fodder for student learning in a democratic society.

A much stronger correlation can be drawn from Dewey’s problem based learning and how students think (see Democracy and Education, pp. 157-158 and other works). So, this paper will show successes in education through a brief review correlating research on thinking and learning to Dewey’s process of problem solving. Plus, it will show Dewey’s acknowledged impact on student learning and teacher preparation (see Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards and How people learn both 2000). The paper will end by showing personal involvement with significant application of problem based learning through materials and trainings of a leading, successful textbook company (see Savvas K-12).

ABSTRACT. In The School and Society, John Dewey writes about how “a revolution in history” that is causing changes to “population”, “habits of living”, and “moral and religious ideas” surely must be accompanied by changes in education as well. While Dewey is writing about the Industrial Revolution, it is worth asking about the ways in which his lines of reasoning would apply to the Digital Revolution that we are currently in the midst of, and whose effects have become even further magnified during the global coronavirus pandemic, when the vast majority of school, social, work, and commercial life took place online.

This paper examines the ways in which one of Dewey’s arguments (that we must align the tasks of school with the tasks of life outside of school) translates to new ideas for curriculum design today, and how we might consider creating school-facilitated online social networks to model and provide practice for the ways that digital life can be lived effectively through actual experience and moderated engagements. Such practice in living a digital life feels especially necessary given recent incidents of online bullying that have led to high levels of adolescent depression and even deaths by suicide.

Dewey also makes a strong claim for the importance of “community life”, and argues that if we continue to teach “methods of life” such as “weaving, sewing, and cooking”, we will contribute to “the development of a spirit of social cooperation and community life”, as these were once the activities that were conducted with a family unit. And yet, our clothes and the goods of our daily lives are made farther away than ever. So when we consider “community” in that context, this paper argues that it makes sense to investigate questions like “where our clothes come from” and to consider a broader notion of “community”, as digitally-facilitated offerings like the Amazon e-commerce platform’s Two-Day Shipping have only increased American consumption of goods made cheaply elsewhere. In addition to tracing through supply chains, we might also consider how school-facilitated online social networks might help us connect to other schools in countries that are making these products, in an effort to better understand the global supply chains that now alienate labor from products (to borrow from Marx) more than ever, and to start to see the very people laboring towards those products as part of our community. Learnings like these feel especially given the rise of polarization and xenophobia in the United States and in other countries around the world.

This paper argues that if we can take in the above adapted lessons from Dewey - providing scaffolded practice in using the digital technology we know is ubiquitous, as well as teaching about global supply chains and understanding the lives of “community members” around the world who are producing the goods we use everyday - then we might well expect progress towards some of the benefits laid out by Dewey as well, namely “a larger society which is worthy, lovely, and harmonious”.

ABSTRACT. Asynchronous discussion boards are key interactive spaces that promote the Deweyan view of learners as active contributors and agents of learning in online courses. The discussion boards can be well utilized for instructors to facilitate appropriate experience to encourage learners for critical thinking, increased social interaction, and meaningful learning. Through sustained communication, learners can venture into sensitive content that ultimately cultivates in them the virtue of persuasion and appreciation of different points of view as they prepare to be a productive citizen in a democratic world. This presentation, therefore, looks at ways in which discussion boards can be designed for experiential learning. Successful discussions are those in which participants advance their learning through experience to integration/synthesis and resolution/evaluation.

ABSTRACT. Education in modern-day American society has culminated in “aims determined by an external dictation”, as evidenced by the permeated usage of the numerical letter grade system. As such the dissociation of an individual’s targetted learning objective and the rudimentary system on which students are expected to ascertain certain levels of ‘knowledge’ in particular year-long (or semester-long) shifts, actually deviate and shift the potential effects one’s course study could have on the individual. To better encompass learning as a consummatory experience, and stray away from the monotony and mechanical nature of education as it currently stands; education must be reformed from the vantage point of the student in order to integrate the ‘end’ and ‘means’ of education.

ABSTRACT. The interrelation between learning and praxis is one of John Dewey’s most significant contributions to pedagogical thought and democratic education. In this paper I attempt to analyze the notion of praxis in Dewey’s philosophical and pedagogical thought and its implications in democratic education. I claim that Dewey has developed two different but complementary notions of praxis. He understands praxis both as work and as communication. However, in Dewey’s pedagogical experimentation in Chicago only the implications of the interrelation between learning and working are apparent. So, we should use our pedagogical imagination in Dewey’s spirit to integrate communication in our schools.

In particular, Dewey understands work as a problem-solving process through the existential transformation of a problematic situation and he puts it at the center of the Laboratory School. Dewey’s notion of work is crucial for the formation of a curriculum based on occupations, the interaction between educators and students, the classroom’s equipment and the school building’s architecture. So, democratic school means a social unity of work and thought.

In Democracy and Education (1916) Dewey takes a communicative turn. He develops a second notion of praxis as communication. Communication is not understood just as the transmission of information from one person to another, but as the participation in a common, cooperative activity by which two persons share their experience till it become common. Thus, communication as participation is a necessary condition for the formulation of a common understanding. For Dewey, communication is essential both for democratic community and for truly educational environment.

Certainly, Dewey has emphasized on the importance of participation and cooperation in learning process. However, the termination of the pedagogical experimentation in Chicago and Dewey’s removal from pedagogical praxis didn’t allow him to explore further the implication of this communicative turn in democratic education. So, I claim that following Dewey’s spirit we should reflect on how we can integrate his notion of communication in our schools. I support that we should open up a public sphere in our schools where students can share their experience, deal with their problems and contribute to the formation of everyday school life. The public sphere could go beyond learning processes and offer us an opportunity to build a democratic ethos in our schools based on free communication, equal participation and social cooperation.

ABSTRACT. This presentation will take first steps toward developing a sociological ethics inspired by John Dewey, Erich Fromm, and recent sociological research. My argument will include the following steps: Beginning by adopting Baert's (2005) perspective on the philosophy of the social sciences, which draws on neopragmatism, particularly Rorty, I will first argue that certain kinds of sociological research can be seen as inherently democratic projects. This view is underpinned by Morgan (2014; 2016). For example, there is ethnographic work that can be seen as educational in Dewey's sense in that it articulates genuine points of view and thus initiates or stimulates free and full communication (e.g., MW 9; LW 2, "The Public and Its Problems"; Serrano-Zamora 2022) and facilitates various kinds of discussion and deliberation. This line of argument can be reinforced with Dewey and Fromm. Defending a ‘scientific ethics’ (Fromm 1971; MW 3: 3–39; Morita 2022) in a humanistic spirit, Dewey and Fromm are predestined sources for elaborating this kind of social melioristic research, which I will call ‘sociological ethics.’ Dewey’s conception of philosophy provides the framework that couples the idea of experimentation with the view that empirical data are needed as a basis for ethical deliberation that reflects an awareness of the social ontological ‘rootedness’—including the forms of, say, community life, communication, education, the shared habits that constitute social groups—of pragmatic amelioration. Having outlined the general idea, the talk will focus on the refinement of the Deweyan framework. The envisioned sociological ethics will be fleshed out using Fromm’s work as follows: Fromm & Maccoby (1996) and International Erich Fromm Society (1995) developed a mixed-methods approach to empirically investigate social character, shared habits in Dewey’s terminology. Fromm can be used to substantiate the fusion of democratic ethics, social theory, and social science proposed by Dewey. In particular, the ‘productive character orientation’ elaborated by Fromm can be seen as a generalized ideal of character development that is fallibilistically constructed and based on an analysis of the social conditions in which one lives. Fromm’s characterology expands Dewey’s rather vague idea of the good character (or self) as dynamic (MW 14; LW 7), particularly in that the notion of social character (Fromm 1965: 304–27) can be used to methodologically advance Dewey’s account of habits in terms of its use in melioristic social science. The comparison will yield the contours of a pragmatist-inspired, sociologically informed ethics that is in service of democracy understood as a way of life.

ABSTRACT. John Dewey (1920) famously wrote that the end of growth is the “active process of transforming the existent situation”. For Arvi Särkelä and Justo Zamora (2017), there is every reason to suppose that such an expression from Dewey cherishes the genre of social criticism typified by critical social theories, namely normative criteria for assessing the legitimacy or justification of social institutions to aid social struggles for overcoming the pathological, alienated, or ideological social order of the present (cf. Kadlec 2006).

According to Roberto Frega (2017), however, there is a strict distinction between ‘criticism’ and ‘critique’, insofar as practices of criticism are inherently positive, whereas practices of critique are inherently negative. This, in turn, means that even though Frega is persuaded that inscribing pragmatism within the broad camp of critical theory is a much more promising move than conceiving of it as a mere variant of Anglo-American liberalism, he argues that there is nonetheless significant dissonance between Dewey and critical social theory.

In this paper, we argue that Frega’s central premise is highly dubitable, and that consequently, Frega’s argument fails: Dewey has significant consonance with critical social theory, to the extent that that his own theory of education as playful democratic experimentalism can and should be seen as constructively aligned with both Paolo Freire’s (1970/2000) and bell hooks’s (1994) respective critical pedagogic approaches: there is little compelling reason to suppose that practices of critique are inherently negative. The vocabulary of reconstruction, transformation, direction, control, reform, education, experimentation, learning, intelligence, and democracy, which Frega attributes to Dewey’s social theory, does not merely also find a home in critical social theory tout court, but is part of its emancipatory grammar.

Focusing on the legacy of Dewey’s articulation of play and its logical connection with democracy as a way of organising and sustaining life, we contend that play performs a 'sine qua non' role in the development of epistemic as well as social potential, so that one’s learning habits are best oriented around the emancipatory praxis of challenging, disrupting, and overcoming traditional approaches to teaching and learning and status quo institutional environments (cf. Malaby 2007 and Suits 2014). We, therefore, principally make sense of Dewey’s legacy in education as fostering not only Freire’s powerful rejection of the ‘banking model’, but to also think of education 'qua' playing as even strategically allied with the decolonial concept of epistemic disobedience. Knowledge, for Dewey, is an emergent phenomenon that necessarily involves a radical restructuring of power relations between student and teacher, such that the relationship is not merely intersubjective, but one constituted by the idea that 1) student and teacher trust one another as partners in inquiry and that 2) the world itself is to be viewed as conducive and open to this kind of process-centred collaborative epistemic partnership. By growing through play, we are also able to accomplish what hooks thinks is vital to liberatory educative practice, namely speaking “directly to the pain that is within folks, and offer them healing words, healing strategies, healing theory”.

ABSTRACT. This paper explores Dewey’s philosophy of education to show how it forms the basis of a broad, interconnected philosophical view of life. I suggest that a focus on wholeness and immanence are central to Dewey’s educational thought and his philosophy.

The paper begins with Dewey’s seminal book Democracy and Education (1916) (DE). This lengthy, difficult work implicitly draws a distinction between two meanings of ‘education’ which are captured in German by the words ‘Erziehung’ and ‘Bildung”. ‘Erziehung’ refers to pedagogy – education in the school. Dewey has much to say about Erziehung in DE. ‘Bildung’ is more difficult to define but refers to learning through life experiences in the interaction and relationships between an individual and other persons and society. Every chapter of DE involves Dewey’s view of the relationship between Erziehung and Bildung. I will explore this relationship through Christoph Benner’s essay in the Centennial Handbook on DE cited in the bibliography.

The paper will then show how Dewey’s understanding of education is closely tied to his understanding of morality. The concluding three chapters of DE in particular offer an expansive philosophical reflection on education. In the final chapter, Dewey considers Theories of Morals and concludes:

"All education which develops power to share effectively in social life is moral. It forms a character which not only does the particular deed socially necessary but one which is interested in that continuous readjustment which is essential to growth. Interest in learning from all the contacts of life is the essential moral interest."

In Human Nature and Conduct (1922) (HNC) Dewey offers an account of moral development which parallels the account of education in DE. Dewey wrote: “In the largest sense of the word, morals is education. It is learning the meaning of what we are about and exploring that meaning in action” (MW 14:194). I will develop Dewey’s expansive concept of morals as education with the help of the Centennial Handbook, particularly chapter 27 by Thomas Alexander.

Finally, I will discuss how Dewey’s understanding of education ultimately folds into his understanding of philosophy and of his reconstructed philosophical enterprise. This discussion will focus on Dewey’s book Experience and Education (1938) (EE). In EE, Dewey tried to correct the polarization or “Either-Or” attitude towards pedagogy in the conflict between progressives and traditionalists that followed the publication of DE. This conflict was largely within what we have called Erzeihung. Dewey refers as well to the broader educational experience of Bildung but he goes further. To address the basic nature of education, Dewey works, as summarized in the book’s final chapter, to find “just what education is and what conditions have to be satisfied that education may be a reality and not a name or a slogan.” Accordingly, in Chapter III, Dewey develops “a sound philosophy of experience” based upon the two-fold considerations of continuity and interaction. Education, or Erzeihung, thus ultimately extends further than Bildung or morals to rest on philosophical reflection and understanding.

The paper concludes that education, for Dewey is part of a reconstructed, integrated system which ultimately expands through Bildung and morals into a reflective philosophical understanding of experience.

ABSTRACT. In his 1929 The Sources of a Science of Education, Dewey writes: “We may fairly enough call educational practice a kind of social engineering” (LW 5: 20). Seven years earlier, Dewey had published an article titled “Education as Engineering” (MW 13: 323-329) in which he reflected “on the question of how educational procedure is to become a form of constructive engineering” (324). But “educational engineering” (MW 13: 325) as both “constructive engineering” and “social engineering” still seems to be too broad a definition of educational practice in general. Thus, we need a somewhat narrower and more precise understanding as to what Dewey could have meant by education as constructive/social engineering. What is this middle ground that could unite education and engineering? Methodologically, what seems to unite the two is experimentation (see MW 13: 323-329). But is there also a common subject-matter? In his Principles of Psychology (1890/1950), William James claimed that we as living creatures are “bundles of habits” (104). In Human Nature and Conduct (1922), Dewey seems to have boldly followed James when he wrote “When we are honest with ourselves, we acknowledge that a habit has this power because it is so intimately a part of ourselves. It has a hold upon us because we are the habit” (22), and “Man is a creature of habit, not of reason nor yet of instinct” (88). In fact, “[…] education depends upon habits which arose before there was scientific method […]” (MW 13: 323). Moreover, “The simple fact is that there is no isolated faculty of observation, or memory, or reasoning any more than there is an original faculty of black-smithing, carpentering, or steam engineering. Faculties mean simply that particular impulses and habits have been coordinated or framed with reference to accomplishing certain definite kinds of work” (MW 4: 272). Thus it seems that, for Dewey, the common subject-matter that would unite both education and engineering is habit. Moreover education as such, including Dewey’s philosophy of education, can be reinterpreted as habit-engineering. If this is the case, then habit-engineering of what kind? How are habits engineered precisely? In (Leonov 2022), I argue that habit engineering can generally be of two kinds: deliberate or forceful. Deliberate habit engineering deals with the experimental educational practice and is a “two-way street” essentially, and as such is democratic. What Dewey called the “denotative method” in Experience and Nature (LW 1), and the “pattern of inquiry” in Logic: Theory of Inquiry (LW 12) can be seen as its essential structure. But when it comes to forceful habit engineering, there is no experimental practice involved, because it is a “one-way street” essentially, and such a practice cannot be called democratic. Forceful habit engineering is akin to what is ordinarily called “brainwashing” and is usually practiced by the authoritarian/totalitarian political regimes. Since Dewey viewed both education and engineering as essentially experimental activities, then this must help us see that Dewey’s approach to education-as-habit-engineering would be that of a deliberate kind and not that of a forceful one. But does Dewey's social psychology actually support this claim?

ABSTRACT. With a few exceptions (Clift, 1960), multicultural educators of the sixties and seventies did not include Dewey’s progressive pedagogy as a useful paradigm to encourage racial and cultural diversity inside and outside schools (Fallace, 2020). Nor is Dewey’s work but a peripheral allusion in Paris and Alim (2014) culturally sustaining pedagogy. This presentation, however, organizes a historical dialogue between these two frameworks in the belief that there is ground for reciprocal enrichment. Accordingly, first I explain Dewey’s philosophy of education in terms of an educational spiral (Dewey, 1929, pp. 76-77), one which resulted from the need to build on students’ original experiences but, at the same time, expand them through art and science. “The most successful modern form[s] of encounter and control” (Ryan, 1995, p. 240), art and science were the essential conduits leading to powerful forms of interaction with the environment that characterized Dewey’s democratic project.

Next, I suggest that Dewey’s (2008 [1938]) focus on experience became reformulated in terms of culture during the decades following his death. While his philosophy already contained the seeds of this transition, it was one that could only be completed thanks to the insights coming from anthropology, social psychology, psycho- and sociolinguistics, and literacy studies, which contributed to teasing out the many planes involved in culture. Culturally relevant (Ladson-Billings, 1994) and, later, culturally sustaining pedagogies drew on all of these understandings to design meaningful transitions in the classroom that were respondent to each of these cultural planes. As a result, classrooms started welcoming familial funds of knowledge (Moll, 2019), individual funds of identity (Esteban-Guitart, 2021), family languages (Beiler, 2020), and students’ multimodal and informal literacies (Binder & Kotsopoulos, 2011; Kennedy, Oviatt, & De Costa, 2019; Ntelioglou et al., 2014) to develop curricula anchored in their students’ cultures.

While the cultural lenses clearly enriched Dewey’s original proposal, it was also the case that many of the proposals that ensued and still ensue from the application of these concepts to classroom curricula often lack the sophistication and quality (Ríos-Aguilar et al., 2011) that characterized Dewey’s pedagogical framework around occupations. At the root of this impoverishment is, I believe, the abandonment of art and science as the key conduits for educational inquiry. Indeed, educators may arrest the growth of students whose cultures they wish to sustain, but not necessarily enrich. A rapprochement between Dewey’s progressive and Paris and Alim’s culturally sustaining pedagogy seems advisable at this point, to finally fulfill the ideal of the educational spiral, understood as an educational process that is capable, at once, of tapping into the students’ cultures through the educational potential of multi-modality and multi-literacy, but also of channeling their voices through art and science, as key conduits for growth. Alongside the theoretical argument summarized above, my presentation will include illustrations coming from my own work in multicultural schools in Spain, which has been inspired by Dewey’s and Paris and Alim’s cultural sustaining pedagogy.

ABSTRACT. My paper describes what it is like to work in a school that John Dewey helped found 111 years ago. I will reflect on the almost apparitional influence Dewey plays to this day on the faculty’s discourse and work with students even though most have either never read him or digested bits of his texts long ago in their graduate courses. I view this contemporary hovering of Dewey as a kind of haunting not in the sense of a disembodied ghost floating about but in the sense of the struggle on the part of the teachers to embody a spirit which is ineffable, just beyond their grasp. I will argue that the spectral presence of Dewey in the school today invokes an epistemological understanding of the teaching act that transcends traditional binaries. I will conclude by nominating an understanding of “conjuring” as a notion core to teaching and learning. Talk of the occult seems antithetical to Dewey’s pragmatism. But as I witness Dewey’s influence, I’ll argue it is indeed in keeping with Dewey’s epistemic project. I think he would be delighted to know that his ideas actively haunt the teachers of the Park School of Buffalo.

I am the President of the Park School of Buffalo. In 1911, a group of Buffalo parents, disenchanted with Buffalo’s educational options, read some of Dewey’s works and wrote to him asking for help in creating a new kind of school. Dewey invited them to Columbia and introduced them to a young educator, Mary Hammett Lewis, who was experimenting with novel forms of student engagement on the rooftop of the Horace Mann School, then located on Columbia’s campus. Excited by what they observed, the parents invited Lewis to move to Buffalo to found the Park School. Dewey served as an advisor to the first board of trustees.

I will describe the various ways the current faculty reflect on the meaning and practice of “progressive education” and share some of their rubrics and lesson plans. In the absence of textual engagement, I view Dewey’s mode of influence on their practice as a kind of “conjuring.” I argue that Dewey’s continued hold on Park’s faculty implies a unique understanding of the teaching act and illustrate this through a reading of the magic root episode in The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. Though Douglass’s text testifies to the liberating power of literacy and education, it is actually his acquisition of a magic root on the recommendation of a fellow enslaved person that opens his emancipatory path. As Douglass interpenetrates positivistic and occult ways of knowing, heralding the power of community and oral traditions, so too does the legacy of John Dewey at the Park School illustrate the epistemology of grappling within community as a condition for deep understanding. I’ll conclude with an allusion to Heidegger’s connecting thinking and thanking and finding and founding.

ABSTRACT. Soon after the liberation of Italy from Mussolini’s fascist rule, Italian educator and pedagogue Loris Malaguzzi encountered the ideas of John Dewey, as a student of Deweyan scholar Bruno Ciari at the University of Bologna.(1) These encounters influenced Malaguzzi’s philosophy of education, a philosophy which became actualized in a network of municipally-funded infant/toddler centers and preschools in his hometown of Reggio Emilia, Italy in the 1960s. As Malaguzzi described it, “American pedagogy and American philosophy – at least the best of America – identified with Dewey’s thinking for many years…after 1950, in around 1956 and 1957, Italian journals were all discussing Dewey in some way.” (2)

With this pedagogical connection in mind, this paper considers how the Dewey School and the schools of Reggio Emilia offer insight into the role of place in progressive education. In the theories articulated by both Dewey and Malaguzzi, place is considered an essential aspect of pedagogy. Place can imply many things: location and geography, local culture, essential mores, guiding values, shared traditions. In the Dewey School and the Reggio schools, educative experiences relied on the ongoing exploration of place, the development of strategies to create and articulate meaning from these explorations, and the enactment of educative experiences based on children’s emerging interests. Place matters and it is essential to the kind of schools Dewey and Malaguzzi formulated.

Malaguzzi spoke of the importance of considering place in schools in an interview with educator Lella Gandini. “It has also been important to us that our living system of schooling expands toward the world of the families, with their right to know and participate. It then expands toward the city, with its own life, its own patterns of development, its own institutions.” (3) Dewey wrote of a similar vision for education; “The object is to show what the school must become to get out of its isolation and secure the organic connection with social life.” (4) This paper reconsiders the Dewey School and the Reggio schools to explore how schools might emerge from a tradition of isolation and toward organic connections with life beyond the walls of the school. Our comparative approach considers cultural differences and historical anomalies as we argue that Dewey’s enacted ideas in Reggio schools are evidence of the practical possibilities and relevance of Dewey’s place-based, interest-centered philosophy of education.

(1) Gai Lindsay, “Reflections in the Mirror of Reggio Emilia’s Soul: John Dewey’s Foundational Influence on Pedagogy in the Italian Educational Project,” Early Childhood Education Journal 43 (2015): 447-457.

(2) Loris Malaguzzi, “Years of Growth,” in Loris Malaguzzi and the Schools of Reggio Emilia: A Selection of His Writings and Speeches, 1945-1993, eds. Carlina Rinaldi, Peter Moss, Claudia Giudici, Vea Vecchi, Paola Cagliari, and Marina Castagnetti. (New York, NY: Routledge, 2016), 263.

(3) Lella Gandini. “History, Ideas, and Basic Principles: An Interview with Loris Malaguzzi,” in The Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia Experience in Transformation, eds. Carolyn Edwards, Lella Gandini, and George Forman (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2012), 41.

(4) John Dewey, The School and Society & The Child and the Curriculum. (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2001), 49.

ABSTRACT. During the past year, I’ve had the opportunity to serve as a tutor in a higher education program in a prison. My many years of thinking about education through a Deweyan lens shaped my approach to this experience, and the students (men aged 20-55) in turn deepened my commitment to Deweyan ideals of democratic education. As Dewey declared in Democracy and Education, in his chapter on “The Democratic Conception in Education,” we “must see to it that intellectual opportunities are accessible to all on equable and easy terms.” (p. 88). The “proper end to education,” he wrote, is “the promotion of the best possible realization of humanity as humanity.” (p. 95) Education in a democracy must be available to all—and thus includes those who are incarcerated—and it should be transformative, and not just serve to produce economic benefits to individuals or society at large. If we apply a Deweyan lens to higher education in prisons, we need to work towards more access, as currently just 35% of state prisons offer college-level programs. (“Higher Education Behind Bars”) But in addition to access, we need to think about providing the kinds of educational opportunities in prisons that enable individuals to reflect on their lives and inquire about their place in the world, as is the case with the program I’ve been involved with as a tutor. For Dewey, education must reflect the “ethical principle upon which [democracy] rests--the responsibility and freedom of mind in discovery and proof.” (“Democracy in Education,” p. 194).

In addition to current prison education programs, a school from the past can also offer a view of carceral education (conceived broadly) through a Deweyan lens. The Wiltwyck School for Boys (1937-1981) in New York’s Hudson Valley served as a residential school for boys considered to be delinquent or neglected. It did not have a direct connection with John Dewey—at least not that I have been thus far able to establish, but the school’s director from 1949-1958, Ernst Papanek, cited Dewey as an influence, and individuals involved in Wiltwyck, including Eleanor Roosevelt and Justine Wise Polier, were involved in reform activities that overlapped with those of Dewey. Claude Brown, author of Manchild in the Promised Land, dedicated his 1965 book to Wiltwyck: “To the late Eleanor Roosevelt, who founded the Wiltwyck School for Boys, and to the Wiltwyck School, which is still finding Claude Browns.” According to Brown, Papanek “saw children as people, little young people with individuality, not as some separate group of beings called children, dominated by the so-called adult world.” (p. 109)

Thus the questions I’m pursuing here include: What was it about the Wiltwyck School that set it apart from other juvenile detention centers of its time and that led Claude Brown to dedicate his book to the school and to Roosevelt? How can an investigation of current and past prison education programs add to our understanding of Deweyan ideals of education in a democracy? And how might we apply Dewey’s ideas about democratic education to current efforts to provide transformative education in correctional facilities for youth and adults?

ABSTRACT. To address the concerns about the future of higher education, independent academics and concerned individuals have called for innovative approaches to accessible, community-oriented learning. In an effort to answer this call, the founding members of the Chicago Institute for Public Philosophy (CIPP), are proposing a non-traditional, praxis-oriented panel presentation that invites the audience to join us in a process of inquiry to discover methods for philosophy education that may be useful beyond the traditional academic context. This discussion is experimental and non-traditional insofar as it attempts to dissolve the distinction between the panelists and the audience, and to mirror the student-centered and problem-centered approach that Dewey proposed for education. The mission of the CIPP takes public philosophy as problem-centered insofar as it inquires into what is at the root of our troubles and what might be done about it, and “student” or publicly centered insofar as the public must have a role in the discovery and realization of the good. During the time allotted, the panelists will offer and model a framework for engaging in philosophical discussion that can be viable beyond the traditional classroom. We will do this by beginning with the problematic situation as it presents itself in concrete, lived experience. As Dewey writes in Democracy and Education, understanding one another means that objects have the same value for individuals in shared activity. Following a brief introduction, we request that an object be presented by the moderator who has selected it for this purpose–the object may be anything at all, the only requirement for the object is that it is the moderator’s own selection. The object operates as a focal point for the emergence of dialogue and serves as a stand-in for any item of shared concern that might draw members of a community into a critical reflection. The panelists will model open inquiry by offering associations, questions, and reflections, and then quickly open the discussion to contributions from the floor. As members of the “audience” raise their hands, they will be invited to take the place of a panelist who cedes their chair. As the conversation develops, individuals will cycle between “audience” and “panelist,” discovering a rhythm between “active doing” and “passive undergoing.” As we explore the potential of this controlled educational setting, we intend for the ensuing dialogue to be the lived means, and the ends, of the panel. Our goal is to experiment with Deweyan thinkers to identify flexible habits that support democratic inquiry. This demonstration will follow the ends-in-view that are laid out by the mission statement for the Chicago Institute for Public Philosophy, an emerging project that connects academic philosophers and community members through the recognition that philosophy is a fundamental human need. Indebted to the historical legacy of Jane Addams’ Hull House, and to the recent efforts of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and the Institute for Philosophy in Public Life (IPPL), we aim to develop a learning cooperative rooted in the belief that democracy is the continuous renewal of the community through education. Bethany Henning’s research interests include Dewey’s theory of aesthetic experience and psychoanalysis, and approaches philosophy as the explicit attempt by a community to understand and critique their own intellectual habits in connection with direct and immediate experience. She will briefly communicate “free association” for speakers and “free floating attention” for listeners. Jp Cohan’s philosophical approach is predominantly informed by eastern philosophy, specifically the school of Confuciansm, which, above all else, emphasizes education and the community as vehicles for self-transformation. Jp relies on Dewey’s theory of inquiry and educational philosophy to facilitate the self-directing capacities of dialogue partners, fostering ren and li through sharing, listening, and critical reflection. Jp’s work with US Law Group involves advocating for the renewal of visas for scholars by translating complex research into democratically accessible language. Aaron Darrisaw’s research centers on the phenomenology of Levinas, specifically his idea of mutuality, in which associated members of a community support one another’s capacity “to be at home in the world.” Being at home in the world is the elemental condition of freedom, a social freedom that is sustained through community members’ mutual attendance to one another’s needs. Informed by Dewey’s reflections on logic and inquiry, Aaron is attentive to the way in which our method takes the object-context relation as central, working in a reflective and progressive rhythm to tease out the rich potential for pluralistic inquiry. As a collective, we believe philosophy need to be recovered by renewing the search for the public.

ABSTRACT. Teaching mathematics as “a tool of democratization” remains a challenge (cf. Skovsmose, 1990, 2020; Gutstein, 2006; Stemhagen and Henney, 2021). For example, research finds “Attempts to foster democratic education in the United States’ public schools rarely include mathematics class in meaningful ways” (Stemhagen and Smith, 2008, p.25). The overarching epistemological problem can be seen to be created by the formalistic presentation of mathematics which keeps submerged how mathematics is actually done, and in so doing keeps most students at a distance from being able to engage and draw upon mathematics productively. From a pedagogical perspective, democratic engagement in the mathematics classroom experience would promote: a social environment where communication was informed by collaborative mathematical inquiry; where sense-making supported students’ psychological development; and means for productive mathematical thinking were common expression. Toward that educative experience, mathematical investigations would draw upon the interest and effort of all students; definitions, procedures and proofs would be made transparent; and heuristics would inform the classroom conversation as it provides means and methods for effective problem solving . In this way, the democratic ideal of constructive collaboration would be all the more possible with resilient thoughtful participants shaping their mathematics experience.

ABSTRACT. Nowadays, there is a growing interest in the implementation of learning environments in the classroom that foster creativity. Nonetheless, how can we introduce this kind of environments? In the 1950s some scholars, as Joy Paul Guilford, began to address this issue and became widespread in the 1960s. In the field of philosophy John Dewey was one of the forerunners of this approach, laying the foundations of the pedagogy of creativity. The prolific thinker introduced this kind of methodology to promote interactions in which learners could develop their creative capacity. According to Dewey, throughout our lives we constantly find problematic situations that invite us to develop new relationships and meanings. Such moments, therefore, should not be seen as unimportant events, but as opportunities to create new forms of interaction that involve personal growth. This presentation aims to analyze the contribution that this pedagogy offers to our present. Firstly, it focuses on Dewey's understanding of experience and learning environments. Experience is the interaction between human being and environment. And in this kind of relationship, people modify their environment and the environment transforms people. Therefore, these interactions, along with the learning environments, play a key role in the educational process because they provide the basis to promote creativity and critical thinking. Secondly, it addresses how the creative faculty can be enhanced, highlighting the ability of human to continually re-adapt to new situations that arise in the life process. According to John Dewey, people interact with their environment through acquired habits of action. However, when we encounter moments of disruption, human beings are forced to reinterpret them, creating new forms of interaction, new meanings. That is, throughout our lives, situations merge and require our awareness to respond to the troubles. Through his pedagogy of creativity, John Dewey wants to introduce problematic situations in the classroom to promote the development of creativity and prepare students for the moments of imbalance that will merge in their lives. This approach can contribute to our current present, a complex moment that not only requires educated people, but also people capable of proposing new ways of interacting with our surroundings.

ABSTRACT. Selective permeability is inspired by pragmatists like Dewey (e.g.., 1896, 1920, 1934) and their intellectual progeny, especially Gibson (1966, 1979), who is famous for developing affordance theory, which holds that we see settings in terms of what we can do in them. Selective permeability picks up on this thread and attends to how agents are differentially invited into a space because their distinct capacities mean they face objectively varying obstacles. Though selective permeability has mainly been applied to urban geography (e.g. Crippen 2021, 2022, 2023), this paper proposes it as an approach for understanding diversity in education. This has multiple advantages. First, it avoids dismissing lower achievements as primarily coming from “within” students, instead locating challenges in the environment. Second, just as people with missing arms have learned to drive with their feet, the proposed approach rejects narrow norms about proper education since affordances can be negotiated in numerous ways. Third, it illuminates how cultural factors ranging from gait styles to language and hence group coordination modulate the affordances available. Fourth, an affordance-based framework explains how fit with environment allows for participation, but also how non-fit can constitute growth situations via adaptive learning—notions that Dewey (1925, 1926, 1934) advances in both his aesthetic and educational writings, and which align with his contemporary, Maria Montessori (e.g., 1912). This paper adopts an additional insight from Dewey. This is his dissolution of disputes between constructivists and realists. On Dewey's (1925) embodied view, it is not that agents bestow upon things traits that do not belong to them; it is instead that activity confers characteristics that did not belong to things, and when bestowed, these properties are really there in the world. Throughout, this paper argues social constructs are literally built or enacted barriers or openings that have reality in environments the way that affordances do. A Deweyan orientation accordingly departs from Gibson by focusing on social gestalts, scaffolding atmospheres, emotional situations and other things beyond energy and chemical arrays. Yet Dewey and Gibson share a non-subjective thrust, and this account retains it by insisting that experiential variation largely follows from how people’s bodies are environmentally enmeshed.

ABSTRACT. Different kinds of populist movements pose challenges to democratic societies, some may be seen even threatening them or attacking their core ideas. Yet the whole idea of populism depends on a certain level of democracy, as populist movements can only thrive in societies that provide the necessary political liberties for their citizens. It could be thus alleged that populism is an inherent feature of democratic societies. Whether it is a threat or a possibility for the society depends on the consequences of the actions of the particular populist movement, not populism itself. Taking Deweyan pragmatism as a starting point, I claim that many of the problems connected with populism are can be traced back to epistemic questions, or what I call shallow fallibilism. The scientific worldview, as well as philosophical discourses during the past century, have replaced old authorities of knowledge and challenged the whole process of knowledge formation and absolute truths. However, without a deeply revised understanding of knowing, we might only end up replacing old certainties with new ones that are convenient, yet possibly even further from what might collectively be considered to be true. The potential of a populist movement, I argue, depends on how much it stimulates inquiry into matters that it takes to be essential, not simply on the far-reaching aims of the movement. The potential of a public is not in any truth it possesses, but in the knowledge formation process that it is able to facilitate. I argue that the questions raised by populist movements deserve our attention, as well as the (possible) consequences of their suggested actions. Populism isn’t necessarily a negative or positive force in a society, it can be either (or both). In education, this can be examined by using real-life examples from our surrounding societies, and observing their take on knowledge, inquiry, and truth, as truth still seems to be an inherent value even for those inventing their own truths. I present an example of examining political action and populism in education using three simple metaphors: Swarm intelligence, angry mobs, and herds of sheep. Looking at different possible political acts through these metaphors, we may examine the relativity of different political stances without subsiding into relativism. Observing the inquiries and knowledge formation that these stances foster or hinder provides a chance to practice the epistemic virtue of fallibilism, a task that has proven very difficult to be done profoundly.

ABSTRACT. Arguing for the creation of a philosophy of education in 1934, Dewey noted the cruel and exploitative dynamics of global colonization and resource extraction shaping human experience across the globe (p. 203). That pattern of industrialization and extraction has led, directly and indirectly, to current and ever-expanding global environmental degradation and climate change that is already devastating vulnerable populations across the world. In this paper, I consider the response of U.S. public education via environmental studies curricula, which range from nonexistent to potentially robust. Frameworks embraced by states include focus upon “deep relationship between humans and the natural world” for California, “economy and environment through inquiry oriented, data-based lessons in Science and Social Studies” in Michigan, and a technicist approach to resolving environmental devastation driven by “Science and Engineering Process Standards” for Indiana. The state of Washington, honoring its commitment to the integration of Indigenous knowledge and perspectives in its curricula, has embraced “Environmental & Sustainability Literacy,” incorporating Native American stories that convey Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK).

I begin my consideration of varied approaches to environmental studies through the lens of Dewey’s naturalism--specifically through his references to gardens and gardening. Dewey, in common with early childhood educators including Froebel, saw gardening as an essential part of children’s development—harnessing ordinary human activity as point of entry to learning about the larger world. As Ralston (2011) has noted, most published discussions of Dewey’s thought about gardening fail to capture the scope of his vision. The exception, per Ralston comes in Hickman’s (2000) attention to the importance of gardening as a springboard to larger and more theoretical topics including not only botany, but also history and economics—an approach vital to equipping students for effective social participation.

I also draw from Indigenous traditions, and from the works of scholars including Bateson, O’Sullivan, and Uhl, to integrate the concepts of reciprocity and ecological consciousness. As O’Sullivan and Taylor wrote, “The mechanistic images of Newtonian science and technology...have emphasized a focus on tools and tasks….[through which] we acquired a predominantly “instrumental consciousness.”” In response, they argue for a mode of thought in which “there is no sense of the person without the sense of community….[and] our personal world is not simply connected to the human community. We are creatures of the wider earth community and the very universe itself. (p.8)” While this construction is not one Dewey entertained in those terms, I argue connections may be made to Dewey’s naturalism in Experience and Nature, among other writings. Following Dewey and incorporating the notion of ecological consciousness, I argue that a robust approach to environmental studies in schools is vital to addressing climate change and environmental devastation. In this, I embrace Dewey’s (1934) advocacy for creating “an offset to the spirit of inhumanity bred by economic competition and exploitation” to “prepare the coming generation for an inevitable new and more just and humane society” free of “all the evils of social changes by violence” (p.203).

ABSTRACT. Psychological studies being recorded in recent years show time and time again that the early years of our development account for a large portion of who we become as adults.  Other factors such as genetics certainly cannot be discounted, however, it is more obvious than ever how much attention must be devoted to understanding how to approach children.  Children spend much of their lives attending school, which implies that school can play a large part in how their brains develop as they grow.  The more we discover about children’s brains, the more researchers understand that education, as exemplified through tedious hours in a classroom. is not a successful means for a child to retain material. Looking at what is next for education, those in the field need to discover what methods of education work best for creating a learned and engaged generation of children who will grow to cultivate the future of our world. John Dewey’s understanding of metaphysics lays down a framework for how we retain experience, and what experiences impact our being, altering it so that that experience can be found in our motivations from that moment on. He calls these experiences aesthetic experiences.  I propose that the most productive way to educate the youth is through putting aesthetic experiences at the focus of curriculum.  Aesthetic experiences cannot be forced or taught; they only happen naturally.  This is why I also propose that when we center aesthetic experience in education. The best way to encourage aesthetic experience is for the students to be learning in the natural world.  The best way for education to beretained and applied in a person’s life learning must be an aesthetic experience, encouraged by an outdoor classroom

ABSTRACT. What is the world truly like? Questions like this—questions that ask students to revisit their most fundamental beliefs about the world and their place within it—inevitably elicit a colourful spectrum of answers, from joyful reflections on the bounty of nature to grim prognostications of impending climate doom. Strategically, this pedagogical exercise is an excellent segue into a conversation about philosophy being as pluralistic as its practitioners: philosophy as a kind of “fashion” not in the superficial sense of mere intellectual adornment, but in the rich and inclusive sense employed by John Stuhr—a sense that embraces the diversity to be found within the contingency of experience, a celebration of genuine difference. Additionally, however, such an exercise also provides an in-road into thinking through the importance of empiricism, of attentiveness and intelligence, in coming to and developing philosophical positions. Inherited wisdom about the nature of worldly experience, rife with selective emphasis and never free of socio-political influences, rarely stands up to the careful scrutiny of lived experience and our experimental investigations within it. The history of philosophy often asks us to pick a team on one side of a rigid dualism: the side of transcendent idealist reality (“true Being”), which offers the comforts of the “sure and fixed,” or the side of purportedly pluralistic reality, in which change and flux are to be revered (“cosmic pyrotechnics”). The problem with picking such a team is not only that rigid ontologies like these lack nuance (although, as Dewey amply demonstrates, they do!): it is also that philosophy (as “criticism of criticism”) cannot be reduced to a victimless game. The way in which one views their world has genuine consequences. Life actually goes on in the world as a messy admixture of the obdurate and evanescent that, furthermore, insists upon our capacity to intelligently understand and exercise control over events. We need not be anthropocentric in order to believe that accountability for anthropogenic environmental degradation requires us to cultivate dispositions and methodologies that allow us to productively intervene.

Drawing primarily on Experience and Nature, but putting Dewey’s metaphysical and methodological commitments into conversation with pedagogical experience, this project asks: how might a Deweyan understanding of nature and inquiry—experience—support environmental progress? How might we respect pluralistic understandings of philosophy while simultaneously cultivating an understanding of experience that clarifies the embodied nature of our meaning-making within it and the contextual urgencies of today? How might observing the “generic traits of existence” and their particular and qualitative manifestations foster an appreciation for how the natural world acts as wellspring of human values? For Dewey as well as James, experience is “double-barrelled,” designating both the “planted field” and “the one who plants and reaps”: functional distinctions serve a purpose, but experience emerges at, and astride the tensional energies that characterize, the permeable boundaries of self and world. Taking Dewey’s insights to heart illuminates how issues like biodiversity and ecosystem preservation are deeply existential concerns that are ripe for a Deweyan pedagogical intervention.

ABSTRACT. The cult of efficiency, the system of schooling relentlessly aimed at achieving maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort and/or expense, has failed schools. Things only get worse for schools to the degree and regularity with which the standardization valued by efficiency devolves into the convenience and impropriety of expediency. Winslow ingeniously summarizes the case against efficiency in education saying in effect: Efficiency often means deficiency in school proficiency. While some think incompatibilities between efficiency and education to be so great as to make education and efficiency irreconcilable with one another, others call for creation of a wider and fairer form of efficiency. The task of this paper is to begin the work of reimagining efficiency as a less harsh master of schooling by tempering efficiency with elegance.

Schools operating in accord with the cult of efficiency suffer from the ideology of authoritarian high modernism (AHM) that structures their activities. AHM 1) seeks administrative ordering of society 2) in terms of rational design of the social order commensurate with scientific understanding of natural laws. (‘Natural laws’ expresses the modernist aspect of AHM.) AHM finds strongest support when 3) imposed by state authority 4) upon civil society lacking capacity to resist state orders or revise them to accommodate local circumstances of implementation.

Converting cults of efficiency into ecologies of elegance repairs AHM-inflicted damage by supplanting AHM with a modernist approach to schooling neither authoritarian nor top-down. Ecologies of elegance describe schooling in modernist terms by assessing effectiveness of instruction in terms of a natural law, namely, the universal law of educational energy which states Dewey’s view on pedagogy in the form of a natural law. However, the logic of the law demands consideration of local circumstances to support successful schooling. The variables composing the law can only be effectively interpreted in terms of local conditions of schooling, interpreted, that is, in terms of the life worlds of students participating in instructional activities.

Thus, considering schools as ecologies of elegance provides scientific understanding of the teaching-learning process that permits administrative ordering of schooling but obviates the need to impose policy on incapacitated teachers. Instead, the universal law of educational energy renders teachers powerful professionals who make decisions with their students how best to achieve desired educational outcomes as they use ideas involved in the universal law of educational energy to tailor instruction to local circumstances. Elegance incorporates the goals of efficiency; but adds, as an aesthetic condition, ingenuity and simplicity to their pursuit and achievement.

Rendering schooling as a process guided by scientific thinking that avoids the logic of a totalizing metanarrative wins a victory for progressive education against neoliberal approaches to schooling on the neoliberals’ home court. Many critique neoliberalism from the outside; but an approach to schooling emphasizing schools as ecologies of elegance explodes the cult of efficiency from the inside out. Elegance advantages us in argument and action against the cult of efficiency because elegance is demonstrably more effective than efficiency; and, while efficiency can get ugly, elegance never can.

ABSTRACT. John Dewey's seminal work "The Quest for Certainty," written in the 1920s, presents a profound critique of the notion of establishing theories that claim to offer indubitable truths. As a pragmatic philosopher, Dewey posits that truths are emergent, multifaceted, and valuable within the process of inquiry. He argues that the purpose of education should be to cultivate engaged and democratic citizens who possess critical thinking skills and the ability to engage in meaningful discourse on a diverse range of topics, rather than simply memorizing facts or accepting truths at face value. In contrast, the State of Florida, under the leadership of Governor Ron DeSantis since 2018, has sought to capitalize on the anxiety generated by school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some parents who had the opportunity to observe online teaching became distressed about the curriculum being taught in schools, and DeSantis and other politicians have exploited these reactions for political gain. They claim that so-called "woke" educators are discussing controversial topics that are deemed "age inappropriate" with K-12 students, and are conflating these concerns with other issues in higher education and state policies. Remarkably, despite the gravity of DeSantis's agenda, no philosopher of education has thus far undertaken an analysis of it from the lens of Dewey's "The Quest for Certainty." Such an analysis could illuminate the metaphysical assumptions underlying DeSantis's policies, disentangle emotional issues of parental rights from broader educational concerns, and elucidate how DeSantis's efforts may undermine the democratic ideals that public schools are designed to foster. Moreover, it would underscore the continued relevance of Dewey's philosophical critique in the contemporary context of education. By employing Dewey's critical approach to examine DeSantis's agenda, this analysis could yield several significant outcomes. Firstly, it could lay bare the philosophical underpinnings that inform DeSantis's policies, bringing to light the ontological and epistemological assumptions that shape his educational agenda. Secondly, it could clarify the distinction between parental rights and broader educational issues, helping to disentangle emotional concerns from the larger landscape of public schooling. Lastly, it could highlight the potential negative impact of DeSantis's efforts on democratic values within public schools, shedding light on how his policies may undermine the principles of inclusivity, critical thinking, and democratic participation that are vital to a robust public education system. Ultimately, this analysis would underscore the enduring value of Dewey's philosophical critique in the contemporary educational landscape. Dewey's ideas, as elucidated in "The Quest for Certainty," continue to offer insights into the nature of truth, the purpose of education, and the importance of democratic values within the educational context. By applying Dewey's philosophical lens to DeSantis's educational agenda, this analysis would contribute to a scholarly discourse on the challenges facing public education in the modern era and reaffirm the ongoing relevance of Dewey's educational philosophy.

ABSTRACT. One debate in philosophy of education which has recently been rekindled is an opposition over the “aims of education” between proponents of character education, and proponents of critical thinking skills and aptitudes. This debate has been engaged intermittently, but sharply, and has gained some recent momentum, in part due to the growing interest in virtue theory and its application to many specific fields, including philosophy of education. This paper offers a Deweyan critique of the current  state of debate, and suggestions for how best to mediate it. Dewey’s denial that there is any single, overarching aim or end of education suggests a 'neither/nor' response to a deabte which is too often presented as an 'either/or' choice over an ultimate aim of education. Dewey's insistence on the reciprocity of means and ends indicates that what the social aims are toward which education should be directed is a matter that cannot be settled for all times and places.

A Deweyan response to the CT/IV debate, however, is not rightly characterized as a primarily negative thesis. I therefore also pursue a 'both/and' response to education for specific logical reasoning skills, and for deeper intellectual habits, habits of inquiry, which promote social aims. This requires, however, acknowledging that one crux of the debate actually goes largely unacknowledged in the recent literature on education for intellectual virtues. There are several objections to IV that have been discussed in the literature, and that the paper reviews. Thick evaluative and characterological concepts are useful, even necessary, tools for reflective judgment, and on the surface intellectual virtue and vice attributions may seem to be an unobtrusive complement to educating for critical thinking skills and aptitudes, even if progress in their habituation is substantially harder to measure. But this overlooks the special concerns with both CT and IV as presented by at least some of their noted noted proponents, concerns which attention to the treatment of doxastic partiality, together with the sometimes differing missions of public schools and religiously-affiliated schools, helps bring to the fore. But the proverbial 'elephant in the room' in the current debate involves how the IV proposal will treat, not everyday matters, but worldview beliefs, and with them, our natural doxastic partiality.

Dewey stood somewhat on both sides of the character education debate in his own day, often sharply critical of its practice, but certainly not of the value of thick concepts for reflective thinkers engaged in inquiry. I try to show that Dewey anticipates crux issues in the current round of debate, and that his philosophers of education who draw from his work can help bring needed balance and perspective, effectively mediating this debate over educational axiology.

ABSTRACT. Heteronormativity is embedded in everyday activities that socially inscribe norms, values, and beliefs that center on sexuality and gender and are enforced through vehicles such as hidden curricula. Radiating from heterosexual identities, technologies of social inscription intersect with other dynamics within hidden curricula that privilege and sanction beliefs and practices concerning race, culture, national origin, language, accent, social class, body type, and other categories of identity and activity. Within educational environments, heteronormativity is communicated and socially inscribed through multiple guises that unsettle, alienate, and exclude. In his work on education, Dewey advocates building norms, values, and beliefs into curricula that are known to the educators but are not presented or experienced as directions by students. Children are to be guided without feeling directed. Dewey does not advocate establishing heteronormative curricula intentionally, but his writing about play indicates that norms are necessarily enforced—and expected to be adopted—through educational environments. This poses a danger if heteronormativity is adopted as a social norm, regardless of intention. Heteronormative practices exert pressure or coercion upon children to urge their play in one direction while discouraging or disallowing play in other directions. These practices prevent students from being self-determined, autonomous beings while imposing normative demands upon them to grow up.

Children are allegedly protected from sexuality while being inscribed with norms, values, and beliefs concerning expectations about their gender and sexuality. Growing up is a restricted conception of growth. Growing sideways—described by Katheryn Bond Stockton as growth in multiple directions without clearly discernible endpoints—is a more expansive and inclusive idea that aligns closely with Dewey’s concept of growth.

In the following, I queer Dewey's concepts of play and growth to undermine heteronormativity within education. His philosophy of growth provides tools for analyzing heteronormativity as an obstacle to inquiry and source of alienation. Dewey’s philosophy of play also serves as a foundation for liberating growth from the strictures of heteronormative social inscription. I draw together work being done in queer literacy and Dewey’s philosophy of education, especially his stages of development and phases of inquiry. Queer literacy aims at disrupting, interrupting, and interrogating heteronormativity within educational contexts to liberate individuals from systemic oppression and reconstruct pedagogy as praxis that provides conditions for self-determination and flourishing for all persons. Dewey’s ideas of inquiry and intelligence as progressive reconstruction of experience support queer literacy pedagogy because at its heart is the idea that education is growth, which is a vehicle for continual flourishing. Related to Dewey’s stages of development, queer literacy begins with play, extending to activity controlled by its outcome and to the use of symbols. The problems of heteronormativity merit continual inquiry across every aspect of education and beyond. I propose a continual queering of Dewey's philosophy of education that utilizes his concepts of play and inquiry and encourages an expansive, counterhegemonic, and fluid conception of growth. This proposal remedies potential problems with Dewey's concept of play as heteronormative and considers important pedagogical tools that contribute to constructing queer curricula.

ABSTRACT. Dewey’s intellectual career spanned from the pre-Golden Age to the Golden Age of higher education, ages that saw the late-19th century rise of the American research university and the post-WWII expansion of public education. We are now in the post-Golden Age, what Bill Readings calls the “ruins” of the university. The universities, once guided by the regulatory ideal of culture, are now guided by an empty notion of “excellence.” No longer is education--specifically liberal arts education--associated with individual reform and a transformation of character, as was common in the pre-Golden Age.

In the post-Golden Age, moreover, funding for higher education has shifted from a model driven primarily by grants and federal direct investment to a model driven primarily by student loans and therefore student debt. Higher ed, in short, has changed in rather significant ways since Dewey’s life.

There are elements of this new higher ed that Dewey may have praised: for example, universities no longer enact what Leonard Waks calls, the “ ‘aloofness’ or institutional separation which marks a break in the continuity of living.” Students increasingly pursue degrees purely for vocational reasons, and even the liberal arts are increasingly pitched to students in terms of how skills like “critical thinking” can help them navigate the world outside of academia. The so-called “ivory tower” of the humanities seems to have collapsed. Many students work (full or part-time) in the community itself. They are not “mentally secluded,” as Dewey might say, from broader community life or social concerns. Some might say that we are achieving what Waks describes as “productive and practical arts bound up with advanced scientific knowledge.” Additionally, education is, in many ways, more “progressive” than ever; students are aware of and taught in terms of community and social problems, pedagogy is more inclusive and in that inclusivity, is critical of social problems.

Such “advancements,” however, are advancements due to the rise of the neoliberal university. As university funding has declined and tuition has increased, more and more students are working, often as “flex”--or casual--laborers; their labor is “low-cost, underregulated,” “just in time, on demand.” Furthermore, the vocationalization of the liberal arts is actually driven by the neoliberal theory of “human capital,” which encourages students to view education primarily in terms of its impact on their earning potential. Even the focus on pedagogy as a way of cultivating democratic citizenship reflects a refusal to confront the systemic issues undermining what Dewey calls a democratic way of life.

Analyzing the modern university in light of Dewey’s vision of education, we can see that the university might be moving farther away from his vision than we think. Universities are, by and large, regressive, not progressive, if we take a systemic view. Grounded in neoliberal ideology, universities stunt the growth of the individual and thus halt living democratically. Using Dewey’s conceptions of the university, growth, and the individual in her environment, we will provide a Deweyan critique of the neoliberal university, revealing the systemic flaws beyond the veil of “progress.”

ABSTRACT. The story of pragmatism in India has only recently gained prominence in the study of American philosophy. John Dewey assumes a central role in this story, given the wide international reach of his philosophy and the prominence of his one-time student, Bhimrao Ambedkar. Ambedkar directly and indirectly spread parts of Dewey’s philosophy into Indian contexts of philosophy and education through his own writing, speaking, and activism. Ambedkar was a student of Dewey’s at Columbia University, and played a major role in Indian politics and in activism on behalf of India’s “untouchables.” Ambedkar was also a scholar and a founder of educational institutions in India, making his engagement with Dewey’s thought all the more important to unpack. This panel explores the multifaceted engagement between Indian thinkers like Ambedkar and John Dewey. 

• Scott R. Stroud (University of Texas at Austin), “John Dewey and the Continuing Evolution of Pragmatism in India: What Comes Next?”
• P. Kesava Kumar (University of Delhi), “Democratization of Indian Philosophy: B. R. Ambedkar's Critical Engagement with John Dewey”
• Seema Sarohe (University of Delhi), “B. R. Ambedkar, John Dewey, and Education as Social Justice”
• Ritu Bala (University of Delhi), “John Dewey and Education: Curriculum and Pedagogical Practices in India”