Pierre Bourdieu. (1984). Richard Nice (Tr.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
5. The Sense of Distinction (pp. 260-317)
Bourdieu examines patterns of consumption shown in life-styles which are largely composed of distribution of economic/cultural/educational capital. He contrasts intellectuals who enjoy 'cultural profit' from work itself for minimum economic cost with dominant class's conspicuous consumption as seen in a 'night-out' for instance. He compares teachers' and professionals' aesthetic choices, which reflects their cultural capital, which is reinforced by economic capital. Their social perspectives stemming from the disparity between cultural and econmic capitals are explained as following: "The disparity between economic capital and cultural capital, or, more precisely, the educational capital which is its certified form, is undoubtedly one of the foundations of their propensity to contest a social order which does not fully recognize their merits because it recognized other principles of classification than those of the educational system which has classified them...In contrast, for those who, like the professionals, live on the sale of cultural services to a clientele, the accumulation of economic capital merges with the accumulation of symbolic capital, that is, with the acquisition of a reputation for competence and an image of respectability and honourablility that are easily converted into political positions as local or national notable." According to Bourdieu, intellectuals and artists have a particular interest in disinterestedness and universal and highest values, and thus make a virtue of necessity of their activities in order to discredit the activities of the dominant class.[What does this mean?]
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Twenties Century Political Theory: A Reader
Stephen Eric Bronner (Ed.). (2006). NY: Routledge
[Conservative Disposition]
What Is Liberal Education? (1959, 103-108)
(Leo Strauss: an exile from Nazi who left great influence on American political theory)
Democracy, which originally meant a universal aristocracy, is degraded to mass culture, which is lack of intellectual and moral efforts, in modern society, Strauss postulates. Thus, he stresses that this debased situation calls for liberal education so that it can establish an aristocracy within democratic mass society by connecting great minds transcended through great books. In short, "liberal education is liberation from vulgarity," he states. [Michael Oaskeshott defines conservatism as emotional resistance to change and the propensity to the familiar rather than the unknown in his essay, On Being Conservative (77-89). Strauss, in this light, shows a strong anxiety of the mass culture and nostalgic pride as the noble. From his perspective, mass culture is vulgarity and something that should be avoided.]
The Adversary Culture and the New Class (1987, 109-116)
(Norman Podhoretz: editor of Commentary, a leading conservative magazine)
In the sixties, a massive number of intellectuals formed the adversary culture and a "New Class" whose capital is education and technical expertise to the extent that they were regarded as the agents of revolution, in particular, from the perspective of neo-Marxists. Their demand of fair share of political power combined with the Black power constituted New Politics in the early 70s. As counterpart of this movement, neo-conservatism or neo-liberalism, which may be a proper label, surfaced up to advocate middle-class values and capitalism. These adversaries of the adversary culture, which ripened in the mid 70s, culminated with the election of Ragan in 1980. [This seemingly objective historical narrative is based on a strong conservative perspective in that adversary intellectual movements were still regarded as a contingent dissident event and social justice is completely ignored in the progress of the society. He wecomes back the middle-class values and counter-revolutionary movements.]
[Communitarianism and Culture]
The Search for the Great Community
(The Collected Worlds of John Dewey: Later Works, Volume 2:1925-27; Southern Illinois University Press, 1984)
Identifying democracy with the idea of the community life itself, Dewey urges people to purposefully participate in communal life with anticipation of its consequence. He embroiders some components of the community life as follows: "Interactions, transactions, occur de facto and the results of interdependence follow. But participation in activities and sharing in results are additive concerns. They demand communication as a prerequisite."
The Public and the Private Realm
(Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, University of Chicago Press, 1958)
Arendt argues that pluralism, where multiple realms have distinctive functions and purposes and every human activity has its proper location in the world, has been dissolved in the modern age to the extent that the private and public realms are submerged in the sphere of the social and wealth became a public concern beyond manageable private ownership. From this perspective, she writes, "the greatest threat here, however, is not the abolition of private ownership of wealth but the abolition of private property in the sende of a tangible, worldly place of one's own." For her, the only thing that individuals own privately is his possession of a body, which Marx called "labor-power." [From the labor class perspective, the deprivation is true, but it is hardly arguable that gigantic wealth has reached beyond private ownership because wealth is accumulated in certain group of people and possessed privately, not as a public commodity.] Arendt also stresses that the destruction of private realm, where labor, bodily functions, were hidden from the public realm, caused the laborers to be segregated from the community like criminals under constant surveillance in the modern age, which is characterized as "socialization of man" by Marx. [There are certain notions parallel with Marxism in her political philosophy, but there is no single word of class in her text, and in addition, her stress on private ownership seems very vague in that what she emphasizes that should be owned privately.]
[Critical Theory]
The State of Contemporary Social Philosophy and the Tasks of an Institute for Social Research
(Max Horkheimer. in Between Philosophy and Social Science: Selected Early Writings. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993)
While delineating problem of contemporary social philosophy, Horkheimer reviews that whereas Kant sees individuals, spontaneous egos, as agents to derive culture, Hegel asserts that objective spirit [Geist] realizes culture and is developed by dominant spirit in each epoch. Individuals, according to Hegel, partake only in the totality, which mostly is determined by state, therefore, they can attain consciousness of their freedom only through speculative thinking, in other words, social philosophy. Horkheimer stresses that through such philosophy human beings experience "transfiguration" that makes individual existence more meaningful--"supra-personal sphere" in his term. In this regard, Horkheimer denunciates Heidegger's emphasis on the interior of indivudual beings and human existence that discard social philosophy. Horkheimer's stree on social philosophy is summarized as interdisciplinary philosophical research cooperation toward the whole on the basis of empirical materials. He writes, "the universal and the particular, the theoretical conceptualization and individual existence, permeate each other."
State Capitalism: Its Possibilities and Limitations
(Frederick Pollock, in Critical Theory and Society: A Reader, Bronner. S, & Kellner, D (Eds.). NY: Routledge, 1989)
The Culture Industry Reconsidered
(Theodor W. Adorno, Translated by Anson F. Rabinbach, in New German Critique 6 (Fall 1975: pp. 12-19)
By industry Adorno means the standardization of things and the rationalization of distribution techniques. The culture industry that intentionally concentrates high and low arts, he states, makes consumers "an appendage of the machinery" through suppressing consciousness and forcing conformity. Once produced as commodoties, cultural entities are no longer commodities in his definition, because the interests the culture industry pursued are so ideologized to be free from the compulsion to sell. He further writes that the culture industry turns into public relations that manufactures "good will" and "a blissful life". To Adorno, the most destructive power of the culture industry is that it does not allow the masses to reflect its legitimation, thus stupefies the masses through "fleeting gratification" and oblige blind consensus to authority.
Liberation From the Affluent Society
(Herbert Marcuse, originally published as "Conclusion" in Counter-Revolution and Revolt. Boston: Beacon Press, 1972)
His particular interest lays in liberation from the affluent, advanced industrial society, which is characterized for development and satisfaction of material and cultural needs. Regarding the educational system as "political," he urges to generate the "instinctual need for a life without fear, without brutality and without stupidity," as exemplified in Hippies in the U.S., who refuse efficient and insane reasonableness. To him, education is also "therapy" in the sense of liberating man from a society that forces them to be transformed into a brute.
[Black Heritage]
Letter from Birmingham Jail (329-340)
(Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963, assassinated in 1968.)
"Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."
"One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws."
"South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality."
"Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability."
The Ballot or the Bullet
(Malcolm X, Malcom X Speaks, George Breitman (Ed.). Pathfinder Press, 1989; 1925-1965, a founder of Black Nationalism)
He urges Black to expand the civil rights struggle to the level of human rights and take it to the UN.
Nihilism in Black America (349-355)
(Conel West, Race Matters, Boston: Beacon Press, 2001)
He asserts that the fundamental threat in Black America is nihilism, which signifies "the lived experience of coping with a life of horrifying meaninglessness, hopelessness and (most important) lovelessness. In other words, the Black community is sunken in psychological and existential depression with battered identity. This confronting historical reality has become much stronger and more rampant largely because of corporate market institutions, which targets bodily pleasure and endless consumption. He writes: "The eclipse of hope and collapse of meaning in much of black America is linked to the structural dynamics of corporate market institutions that affect all Americans. Under these circumstances black existential angst (anguish) derives from the lived exxperience of ontologial wounds and emotional scars inflicted by white supremacist beliefs and images oermeating U.S. society and culture." He stresses on a love ethic, initiated locally, at the center of a politics of conversion.
[Postmodern Perspectives]
The Postmodern Condition (399-400)
(Jean-François Lyotard. 1984. In The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis)
In describing the condition of knowledge in modern society as postmodern, Lyotard defines postmodernism as "incredulity toward metanarratives" in the extreme simplification. Born as a product of progress in sciences, the incredulity threatens metanarrative (grand narrative) philosophical foundation that legitimize knowledge, he argues. He sees that the society will be governed by a pragmatics of language particles, which are denotative, prescriptive and descriptive, while grandiosity of hero, dangers, voyages and goals are being lost. While looking for legitamacy of modern society, he casts doubt on Habermas' notion of consensus obtained through discussion and writes, "Such consensus does violence to the heterogeneity of language games. And inventions is always born of dissension. Postmodern knowledge is not simply a tool of the authorities; it refines our sensitivity to differences and reinforces our ability to tolerate the incommensurable. Its principle is not the expert's homology, but the inventor's paralogy."
[Others]
Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism
(Martha Nussbaum, For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism, Joshua Cohen(Ed.). Boston: Beacon, 1996)
Refuting Richard Rorty's call for patriotism and national identity (NYTimes 13 Feb 1994), Nussbaum admonishes its closeness to jingoism--bellicose chauvinism--and advocates cosmopolitan education based on the Stoics' concept of world citizen (kosmou politês), which stresses the vivid illustration of the difference in education. Nussbaum, thus, proposes education should emphasize world citizenship, rather than democratic or national citizenship, even if the realization is not so certain in every level. She is not blind to the idealistic face of this education by expressing: "Becoming a citizen of the world is often a lonely business...[because] cosmopolitanism offers only reason and the love of humanity, which may seem at times less colorful than other sources of belongs." She urges one to get out of the cocoon of familiarity and comfort.
Democracy and Dictatorship (1910's, 177-181)
(Rosa Luxemburg)
"Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who things differently."
Against Lenin-Trotsky's dogmatic and systematic socialism movement, Luxemburg advocates adaptation in the course of realizing socialism in the mists of future. In this process, democracy becomes an important political structure. Contesting their limited democracy--dictatorship of a few, Luxemburg proposes dictatorship of the class or the mass, where the mass can participate in the most active and unlimited way, forming public opinion and public life, and criticizes the constrainted democracy of soviets by writing: "with the repression of political life in the land as a whole, life inthe soviets must also become more and more crippled."
Introduction to The Second Sex (1952, 359-368)
(Simone de Beauvoir, in The Second Sex, trans. H.M. Parshley.)
She states that the division of the sexes is a biological, not historical, fact. Throughout the history, men have been subject while women remained as Others. With regard to the inequality, Simone de Beauvoir has written: "The drama of woman lies in this conflict between the fundamental aspiration of every subject (ego)--who always regards the self as the essential--and the compulsions of a situation in which she is the inessential. The ultimate goal she wants to achieve is individual liberty--not happiness--which constitutes the base of her arguments.
[Conservative Disposition]
What Is Liberal Education? (1959, 103-108)
(Leo Strauss: an exile from Nazi who left great influence on American political theory)
Democracy, which originally meant a universal aristocracy, is degraded to mass culture, which is lack of intellectual and moral efforts, in modern society, Strauss postulates. Thus, he stresses that this debased situation calls for liberal education so that it can establish an aristocracy within democratic mass society by connecting great minds transcended through great books. In short, "liberal education is liberation from vulgarity," he states. [Michael Oaskeshott defines conservatism as emotional resistance to change and the propensity to the familiar rather than the unknown in his essay, On Being Conservative (77-89). Strauss, in this light, shows a strong anxiety of the mass culture and nostalgic pride as the noble. From his perspective, mass culture is vulgarity and something that should be avoided.]
The Adversary Culture and the New Class (1987, 109-116)
(Norman Podhoretz: editor of Commentary, a leading conservative magazine)
In the sixties, a massive number of intellectuals formed the adversary culture and a "New Class" whose capital is education and technical expertise to the extent that they were regarded as the agents of revolution, in particular, from the perspective of neo-Marxists. Their demand of fair share of political power combined with the Black power constituted New Politics in the early 70s. As counterpart of this movement, neo-conservatism or neo-liberalism, which may be a proper label, surfaced up to advocate middle-class values and capitalism. These adversaries of the adversary culture, which ripened in the mid 70s, culminated with the election of Ragan in 1980. [This seemingly objective historical narrative is based on a strong conservative perspective in that adversary intellectual movements were still regarded as a contingent dissident event and social justice is completely ignored in the progress of the society. He wecomes back the middle-class values and counter-revolutionary movements.]
[Communitarianism and Culture]
The Search for the Great Community
(The Collected Worlds of John Dewey: Later Works, Volume 2:1925-27; Southern Illinois University Press, 1984)
Identifying democracy with the idea of the community life itself, Dewey urges people to purposefully participate in communal life with anticipation of its consequence. He embroiders some components of the community life as follows: "Interactions, transactions, occur de facto and the results of interdependence follow. But participation in activities and sharing in results are additive concerns. They demand communication as a prerequisite."
The Public and the Private Realm
(Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, University of Chicago Press, 1958)
Arendt argues that pluralism, where multiple realms have distinctive functions and purposes and every human activity has its proper location in the world, has been dissolved in the modern age to the extent that the private and public realms are submerged in the sphere of the social and wealth became a public concern beyond manageable private ownership. From this perspective, she writes, "the greatest threat here, however, is not the abolition of private ownership of wealth but the abolition of private property in the sende of a tangible, worldly place of one's own." For her, the only thing that individuals own privately is his possession of a body, which Marx called "labor-power." [From the labor class perspective, the deprivation is true, but it is hardly arguable that gigantic wealth has reached beyond private ownership because wealth is accumulated in certain group of people and possessed privately, not as a public commodity.] Arendt also stresses that the destruction of private realm, where labor, bodily functions, were hidden from the public realm, caused the laborers to be segregated from the community like criminals under constant surveillance in the modern age, which is characterized as "socialization of man" by Marx. [There are certain notions parallel with Marxism in her political philosophy, but there is no single word of class in her text, and in addition, her stress on private ownership seems very vague in that what she emphasizes that should be owned privately.]
[Critical Theory]
The State of Contemporary Social Philosophy and the Tasks of an Institute for Social Research
(Max Horkheimer. in Between Philosophy and Social Science: Selected Early Writings. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993)
While delineating problem of contemporary social philosophy, Horkheimer reviews that whereas Kant sees individuals, spontaneous egos, as agents to derive culture, Hegel asserts that objective spirit [Geist] realizes culture and is developed by dominant spirit in each epoch. Individuals, according to Hegel, partake only in the totality, which mostly is determined by state, therefore, they can attain consciousness of their freedom only through speculative thinking, in other words, social philosophy. Horkheimer stresses that through such philosophy human beings experience "transfiguration" that makes individual existence more meaningful--"supra-personal sphere" in his term. In this regard, Horkheimer denunciates Heidegger's emphasis on the interior of indivudual beings and human existence that discard social philosophy. Horkheimer's stree on social philosophy is summarized as interdisciplinary philosophical research cooperation toward the whole on the basis of empirical materials. He writes, "the universal and the particular, the theoretical conceptualization and individual existence, permeate each other."
State Capitalism: Its Possibilities and Limitations
(Frederick Pollock, in Critical Theory and Society: A Reader, Bronner. S, & Kellner, D (Eds.). NY: Routledge, 1989)
The Culture Industry Reconsidered
(Theodor W. Adorno, Translated by Anson F. Rabinbach, in New German Critique 6 (Fall 1975: pp. 12-19)
By industry Adorno means the standardization of things and the rationalization of distribution techniques. The culture industry that intentionally concentrates high and low arts, he states, makes consumers "an appendage of the machinery" through suppressing consciousness and forcing conformity. Once produced as commodoties, cultural entities are no longer commodities in his definition, because the interests the culture industry pursued are so ideologized to be free from the compulsion to sell. He further writes that the culture industry turns into public relations that manufactures "good will" and "a blissful life". To Adorno, the most destructive power of the culture industry is that it does not allow the masses to reflect its legitimation, thus stupefies the masses through "fleeting gratification" and oblige blind consensus to authority.
Liberation From the Affluent Society
(Herbert Marcuse, originally published as "Conclusion" in Counter-Revolution and Revolt. Boston: Beacon Press, 1972)
His particular interest lays in liberation from the affluent, advanced industrial society, which is characterized for development and satisfaction of material and cultural needs. Regarding the educational system as "political," he urges to generate the "instinctual need for a life without fear, without brutality and without stupidity," as exemplified in Hippies in the U.S., who refuse efficient and insane reasonableness. To him, education is also "therapy" in the sense of liberating man from a society that forces them to be transformed into a brute.
[Black Heritage]
Letter from Birmingham Jail (329-340)
(Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963, assassinated in 1968.)
"Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."
"One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws."
"South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality."
"Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability."
The Ballot or the Bullet
(Malcolm X, Malcom X Speaks, George Breitman (Ed.). Pathfinder Press, 1989; 1925-1965, a founder of Black Nationalism)
He urges Black to expand the civil rights struggle to the level of human rights and take it to the UN.
Nihilism in Black America (349-355)
(Conel West, Race Matters, Boston: Beacon Press, 2001)
He asserts that the fundamental threat in Black America is nihilism, which signifies "the lived experience of coping with a life of horrifying meaninglessness, hopelessness and (most important) lovelessness. In other words, the Black community is sunken in psychological and existential depression with battered identity. This confronting historical reality has become much stronger and more rampant largely because of corporate market institutions, which targets bodily pleasure and endless consumption. He writes: "The eclipse of hope and collapse of meaning in much of black America is linked to the structural dynamics of corporate market institutions that affect all Americans. Under these circumstances black existential angst (anguish) derives from the lived exxperience of ontologial wounds and emotional scars inflicted by white supremacist beliefs and images oermeating U.S. society and culture." He stresses on a love ethic, initiated locally, at the center of a politics of conversion.
[Postmodern Perspectives]
The Postmodern Condition (399-400)
(Jean-François Lyotard. 1984. In The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis)
In describing the condition of knowledge in modern society as postmodern, Lyotard defines postmodernism as "incredulity toward metanarratives" in the extreme simplification. Born as a product of progress in sciences, the incredulity threatens metanarrative (grand narrative) philosophical foundation that legitimize knowledge, he argues. He sees that the society will be governed by a pragmatics of language particles, which are denotative, prescriptive and descriptive, while grandiosity of hero, dangers, voyages and goals are being lost. While looking for legitamacy of modern society, he casts doubt on Habermas' notion of consensus obtained through discussion and writes, "Such consensus does violence to the heterogeneity of language games. And inventions is always born of dissension. Postmodern knowledge is not simply a tool of the authorities; it refines our sensitivity to differences and reinforces our ability to tolerate the incommensurable. Its principle is not the expert's homology, but the inventor's paralogy."
[Others]
Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism
(Martha Nussbaum, For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism, Joshua Cohen(Ed.). Boston: Beacon, 1996)
Refuting Richard Rorty's call for patriotism and national identity (NYTimes 13 Feb 1994), Nussbaum admonishes its closeness to jingoism--bellicose chauvinism--and advocates cosmopolitan education based on the Stoics' concept of world citizen (kosmou politês), which stresses the vivid illustration of the difference in education. Nussbaum, thus, proposes education should emphasize world citizenship, rather than democratic or national citizenship, even if the realization is not so certain in every level. She is not blind to the idealistic face of this education by expressing: "Becoming a citizen of the world is often a lonely business...[because] cosmopolitanism offers only reason and the love of humanity, which may seem at times less colorful than other sources of belongs." She urges one to get out of the cocoon of familiarity and comfort.
Democracy and Dictatorship (1910's, 177-181)
(Rosa Luxemburg)
"Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who things differently."
Against Lenin-Trotsky's dogmatic and systematic socialism movement, Luxemburg advocates adaptation in the course of realizing socialism in the mists of future. In this process, democracy becomes an important political structure. Contesting their limited democracy--dictatorship of a few, Luxemburg proposes dictatorship of the class or the mass, where the mass can participate in the most active and unlimited way, forming public opinion and public life, and criticizes the constrainted democracy of soviets by writing: "with the repression of political life in the land as a whole, life inthe soviets must also become more and more crippled."
Introduction to The Second Sex (1952, 359-368)
(Simone de Beauvoir, in The Second Sex, trans. H.M. Parshley.)
She states that the division of the sexes is a biological, not historical, fact. Throughout the history, men have been subject while women remained as Others. With regard to the inequality, Simone de Beauvoir has written: "The drama of woman lies in this conflict between the fundamental aspiration of every subject (ego)--who always regards the self as the essential--and the compulsions of a situation in which she is the inessential. The ultimate goal she wants to achieve is individual liberty--not happiness--which constitutes the base of her arguments.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Democracy and Education
John Dewey. (1916; 1966). Toronto: Collier-Macmillan Canada.
The Democratic Conception in Education (81-99)
In his view of intelligence, Dewey expresses that intelligence lack of social/human factors is narrowed down only to factors concerning technical production and marketing goods to the extent that emotional life is distorted. He emphasizes enlarged physical environment and social contacts for tolerant mental life, and asserts that frequent travels and commercial tendencies contributed to the broaden contacts, thus alleviating tensions among people. [But this last view is very naive because those travels and economic flows do not necessarily bring people closer in reality. Most of all, he does not identify what he means by the closeness. He is lack of economic and political connotations in the smaller world.]
By democracy he means a "mode of associative living and of conjoint communicated experience," and writes as its characteristics increasing shared concerns and the liberation of personal capacities. As the purpose of education he writes,"a freeing of individual capacity in a progressive growth directed to social aims." [As he indicates, a common pitfall throughout the history is that social aims and its direction are hardly defined and so does his case.]
He reviews educational philosophy in three different epochs: (1) Plato believed the great truth and the society reflecting it should be stable, which is achieved by arranging individuals' roles based on what they are good for. Thus, discovering the personal aptitude and training it is the purpose of education. Dewey's criticism of Plato includes that Plato categorized individuals into three classes and did not recognize individual uniqueness. [Dewey's perspective of education is very individualistic without paying much attention to what each bring into educational environment, thus, very idealistic.] (2) With the significant studies in Nature, the eighteenth century Enlightment influenced education philosophy, namely by Rousseau. Its emphasis was given to development of individualism. Dewey, however, sees that its chief interest was in social progress toward a freer society with two distinctive aspects--cosmopolitanism and humanity. Thus in this view, individual emancipation was the agent of a progressive society, Dewey denotes. Dewey's criticism comes from the way of conducting education, which followed the natural environment--in other words, education means filling individual mind with something good and true just like seen in Nature.[This perspective is clearly shown in Emile by Rousseau.] (3) Under the German influence in the 19th century state-run public school system and nationalism spread out and the purpose of education in this paradigm was to form the citizen who can serve for the state interests and social efficiency, thus the idea of individual development receded and disciplinary training became far the most important aim of education. Even it was said that the attainment of true personality is obtained through institutions organized by the state.
Dewey poses the question of how to conduct education that preserves humanity and he answers that it should be done by the efforts of enlightened men in their private capacity. [While he criticizes Plato for his aristocratic perspective that a smart ruler will know the orderly rules and law, his idealistic individualism does not go beyond. He thinks we should rely on those few. Isn't there any systematic way of approaching the problem?]
Experience and Thinking (139-151)
Emphasizing experience, Dewey argues that even a humble experience has possibility to generate any amount of theory, but theory without an experience cannot be established. Thinking and reflection are the agent that connects experience to theory as we do not really know unless bringing certain things in relation to something else.
Thinking in Education (152-163)
For Dewey, "thinking is the method of intelligent learning" and it requires an experience. The problem in school setting is that this out-of-school ordinary experience is not reflected in pupils' learning, thus mind and activities are divorced and learning is isolated from the rest of social engagement. This separation hinders the process of thinking and creativity, which lies in putting familiar materials in an unusual context. "Only silly folk identify creative originality with the extraordinary and fanciful, " said Dewey. Therefore, his emphasis on interconnection between real life experience and school lessons becomes an core idea of curriculum development to the extent that real life materials such as 'shops' and 'gardens' integrated into class will provide opportunities for acquiring information and knowledge while carrying on progressive experience. [Although his emphasis on real life experience is agreeable in general, bringing in a model of society poses a problem because of his neglect of diversity of individual pupils' lived experience based on their cultural/social/economic/political background. Remodeling a society is not transparent as he insinuates because individuals live in different contexts. In addition, it is my ever-lasting rejection to Dewey is why we don't allow pupils to bring their own experience to class and/or dream a new society, which is totally different from the current one, for a moment.]
Intellectual and Practical Studies (262-276)
The Individual and the World (291-305)
Individualism is a modern concept. While in both Greek and medieval periods, individuals were regarded only as a channel through which a universal or divine intelligence or "reason" operated, a latent individualism smeared as a religious individualism--the salvation of individual soul-- in the medieval period, thus knowledge itself is something built up within the individual through his acts and mental states. This aspect gave birth to the 'practical individualism' that knowledge is obtained through personal experience. It, however, originates from the notion that mind is isolated from the world, which is left to be discovered, and spurred philosophic subjectivism. Dewey argues that men strive for freedom in nature and society and initiate changes in the world instead of isolating themselves from the nature. Thus self, mind and knowledge constitute a unity achieved through interactions: "The self achieves mind in the degree in which knowledge of things is incarnate in the life about him; the self is not a separate mind building up knowledge anew on its own account."
Dewey maintains that every new idea different from the custom must originate from an individual, however, sprouting it is suppressed in society because of its tendency of continuity and stability. In this light, the notion of intellectual individualism guides us further as a moral and social individualism. While intellectual activities of the individual are agencies of social progress, conformity is that of social conservation. Then, the question arises: how egoistic consciousness is related to the public world? Dewey introduces three philosophic branches with regard to this question: (1) French rationalism, which emphasizes general and impersonal forms, argues that activities will be externally consistent and thus always reach a uniformity through argument and persuasion. (2) English thought is centered on individual own pleasure and pains. The main idea of this thought is that in order to maximize the pleasure, each should be considerate of others' circumstances as well and thus a harmony is achieved. (3) German philosophy lies in between in that individuals become rational only if they absorbs the rationality of the universe and social institution. Often called absolute or objective idealism, it is termed as institutional idealism by Dewey. He evaluates that while this idealism overcame isolated individualism fallen in France and England and served to arouse state-wide public education, it tended to reinstate the principle of authority and thus left political democracy foreign.
In stating educational implication of these philosophies, Dewey emphasizes learner's perspective: originality springs from unforced response of student's own individuality, which leads to their own discovery and allows them to obtain new points of view and intellectual companionship. Intellectual servility and subjection will only serve the purpose of authority, Dewey argues. His perspective of education and democracy is unfolded as following: "A progressive society counts individual variations as precious since it finds in them the means of its own growth. Hence a democratic society must, in consistency with its ideal, allow for intellectual freedom and the play of diverse gifts and interests in its educational measures."
Vocational Aspect of Education (pp. 306-320)
By vocation Dewey means a direction of life activities in relation to others and social accomplishment that individuals play in various roles. Criticizing Plato's idea of the purpose of education, which is to discover what each person is good for and train them to master that area for social harmony, Dewey argues that he not only limits the scope of vocation but also ignores infinite capabilities that individual may possess. As seen in his note that "the vocation acts as both magnet to attract and as glue to hold," he regards vocation from a very macroscopic view to the extent to realize well-rounded personality in society. From this stand, he also writes, "the dominant vocation of all human beings at all times is living--intellectual and moral growth," thus denotes that restricting education for future occupation not only injures present development but also hinders exploring proper future right employment. In relation to the current industrial society, he asserts that increasing 'conspicuous' industrial process has brought social importance and brought to light questions of school learning to industrial life and demanded trade education. This tendency is twofold: it maintains higher education as a threshold for social status and prestige to a certain class while for the rest it turns occupation to only means for surviving, thus making education become an instrument to perpetuate the existing industrial social order--in his word, "to accomplish the feudal dogma of social predestination." Nevertheless, his pragmatic/progressive perspective is preserved in his purpose of vocational education and the way to achieve the goals: as education lies in the process of constructing a gradual transition from school materials to real life, vocational education, under the conspicuous industrial society, should integrate scientific factors that the society offers into curriculum to develop intelligence and make it more practical. [He admits that this process is not easy and emphasize the preparation to vocation should be indirect, but does not explicitly explain how to use the industrial context in such a peculiar way. Materials borrowed in class brings not only itself but also the context it is created. Without carefully conceived criticality in the adaptation, it is not an easy task.]
The Democratic Conception in Education (81-99)
In his view of intelligence, Dewey expresses that intelligence lack of social/human factors is narrowed down only to factors concerning technical production and marketing goods to the extent that emotional life is distorted. He emphasizes enlarged physical environment and social contacts for tolerant mental life, and asserts that frequent travels and commercial tendencies contributed to the broaden contacts, thus alleviating tensions among people. [But this last view is very naive because those travels and economic flows do not necessarily bring people closer in reality. Most of all, he does not identify what he means by the closeness. He is lack of economic and political connotations in the smaller world.]
By democracy he means a "mode of associative living and of conjoint communicated experience," and writes as its characteristics increasing shared concerns and the liberation of personal capacities. As the purpose of education he writes,"a freeing of individual capacity in a progressive growth directed to social aims." [As he indicates, a common pitfall throughout the history is that social aims and its direction are hardly defined and so does his case.]
He reviews educational philosophy in three different epochs: (1) Plato believed the great truth and the society reflecting it should be stable, which is achieved by arranging individuals' roles based on what they are good for. Thus, discovering the personal aptitude and training it is the purpose of education. Dewey's criticism of Plato includes that Plato categorized individuals into three classes and did not recognize individual uniqueness. [Dewey's perspective of education is very individualistic without paying much attention to what each bring into educational environment, thus, very idealistic.] (2) With the significant studies in Nature, the eighteenth century Enlightment influenced education philosophy, namely by Rousseau. Its emphasis was given to development of individualism. Dewey, however, sees that its chief interest was in social progress toward a freer society with two distinctive aspects--cosmopolitanism and humanity. Thus in this view, individual emancipation was the agent of a progressive society, Dewey denotes. Dewey's criticism comes from the way of conducting education, which followed the natural environment--in other words, education means filling individual mind with something good and true just like seen in Nature.[This perspective is clearly shown in Emile by Rousseau.] (3) Under the German influence in the 19th century state-run public school system and nationalism spread out and the purpose of education in this paradigm was to form the citizen who can serve for the state interests and social efficiency, thus the idea of individual development receded and disciplinary training became far the most important aim of education. Even it was said that the attainment of true personality is obtained through institutions organized by the state.
Dewey poses the question of how to conduct education that preserves humanity and he answers that it should be done by the efforts of enlightened men in their private capacity. [While he criticizes Plato for his aristocratic perspective that a smart ruler will know the orderly rules and law, his idealistic individualism does not go beyond. He thinks we should rely on those few. Isn't there any systematic way of approaching the problem?]
Experience and Thinking (139-151)
Emphasizing experience, Dewey argues that even a humble experience has possibility to generate any amount of theory, but theory without an experience cannot be established. Thinking and reflection are the agent that connects experience to theory as we do not really know unless bringing certain things in relation to something else.
Thinking in Education (152-163)
For Dewey, "thinking is the method of intelligent learning" and it requires an experience. The problem in school setting is that this out-of-school ordinary experience is not reflected in pupils' learning, thus mind and activities are divorced and learning is isolated from the rest of social engagement. This separation hinders the process of thinking and creativity, which lies in putting familiar materials in an unusual context. "Only silly folk identify creative originality with the extraordinary and fanciful, " said Dewey. Therefore, his emphasis on interconnection between real life experience and school lessons becomes an core idea of curriculum development to the extent that real life materials such as 'shops' and 'gardens' integrated into class will provide opportunities for acquiring information and knowledge while carrying on progressive experience. [Although his emphasis on real life experience is agreeable in general, bringing in a model of society poses a problem because of his neglect of diversity of individual pupils' lived experience based on their cultural/social/economic/political background. Remodeling a society is not transparent as he insinuates because individuals live in different contexts. In addition, it is my ever-lasting rejection to Dewey is why we don't allow pupils to bring their own experience to class and/or dream a new society, which is totally different from the current one, for a moment.]
Intellectual and Practical Studies (262-276)
The Individual and the World (291-305)
Individualism is a modern concept. While in both Greek and medieval periods, individuals were regarded only as a channel through which a universal or divine intelligence or "reason" operated, a latent individualism smeared as a religious individualism--the salvation of individual soul-- in the medieval period, thus knowledge itself is something built up within the individual through his acts and mental states. This aspect gave birth to the 'practical individualism' that knowledge is obtained through personal experience. It, however, originates from the notion that mind is isolated from the world, which is left to be discovered, and spurred philosophic subjectivism. Dewey argues that men strive for freedom in nature and society and initiate changes in the world instead of isolating themselves from the nature. Thus self, mind and knowledge constitute a unity achieved through interactions: "The self achieves mind in the degree in which knowledge of things is incarnate in the life about him; the self is not a separate mind building up knowledge anew on its own account."
Dewey maintains that every new idea different from the custom must originate from an individual, however, sprouting it is suppressed in society because of its tendency of continuity and stability. In this light, the notion of intellectual individualism guides us further as a moral and social individualism. While intellectual activities of the individual are agencies of social progress, conformity is that of social conservation. Then, the question arises: how egoistic consciousness is related to the public world? Dewey introduces three philosophic branches with regard to this question: (1) French rationalism, which emphasizes general and impersonal forms, argues that activities will be externally consistent and thus always reach a uniformity through argument and persuasion. (2) English thought is centered on individual own pleasure and pains. The main idea of this thought is that in order to maximize the pleasure, each should be considerate of others' circumstances as well and thus a harmony is achieved. (3) German philosophy lies in between in that individuals become rational only if they absorbs the rationality of the universe and social institution. Often called absolute or objective idealism, it is termed as institutional idealism by Dewey. He evaluates that while this idealism overcame isolated individualism fallen in France and England and served to arouse state-wide public education, it tended to reinstate the principle of authority and thus left political democracy foreign.
In stating educational implication of these philosophies, Dewey emphasizes learner's perspective: originality springs from unforced response of student's own individuality, which leads to their own discovery and allows them to obtain new points of view and intellectual companionship. Intellectual servility and subjection will only serve the purpose of authority, Dewey argues. His perspective of education and democracy is unfolded as following: "A progressive society counts individual variations as precious since it finds in them the means of its own growth. Hence a democratic society must, in consistency with its ideal, allow for intellectual freedom and the play of diverse gifts and interests in its educational measures."
Vocational Aspect of Education (pp. 306-320)
By vocation Dewey means a direction of life activities in relation to others and social accomplishment that individuals play in various roles. Criticizing Plato's idea of the purpose of education, which is to discover what each person is good for and train them to master that area for social harmony, Dewey argues that he not only limits the scope of vocation but also ignores infinite capabilities that individual may possess. As seen in his note that "the vocation acts as both magnet to attract and as glue to hold," he regards vocation from a very macroscopic view to the extent to realize well-rounded personality in society. From this stand, he also writes, "the dominant vocation of all human beings at all times is living--intellectual and moral growth," thus denotes that restricting education for future occupation not only injures present development but also hinders exploring proper future right employment. In relation to the current industrial society, he asserts that increasing 'conspicuous' industrial process has brought social importance and brought to light questions of school learning to industrial life and demanded trade education. This tendency is twofold: it maintains higher education as a threshold for social status and prestige to a certain class while for the rest it turns occupation to only means for surviving, thus making education become an instrument to perpetuate the existing industrial social order--in his word, "to accomplish the feudal dogma of social predestination." Nevertheless, his pragmatic/progressive perspective is preserved in his purpose of vocational education and the way to achieve the goals: as education lies in the process of constructing a gradual transition from school materials to real life, vocational education, under the conspicuous industrial society, should integrate scientific factors that the society offers into curriculum to develop intelligence and make it more practical. [He admits that this process is not easy and emphasize the preparation to vocation should be indirect, but does not explicitly explain how to use the industrial context in such a peculiar way. Materials borrowed in class brings not only itself but also the context it is created. Without carefully conceived criticality in the adaptation, it is not an easy task.]
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