In this essay, Leonard Waks examines John Dewey's account of listening, drawing on Dewey's writings to establish a direct connection in his work between listening and democracy. Waks devotes the first part of the essay to explaining Dewey's distinction between one-way or straight-line listening and transactional listening-in-conversation, and to demonstrating the close connection between transactional listening and what Dewey called “cooperative friendship.” In the second part of the essay, Waks establishes the further link between Dewey's notions of cooperative friendship and (...) democratic society with particular reference to machine-age technologies of mass communication. He maintains that while these technologies provide the means for extending communications throughout modern industrial nations, they simultaneously undermine the conditions fostering face-to-face listening-in-conversation. It remains an open question, Waks concludes, whether new educational arrangements incorporating interactive digital communication technologies will embody and promote transactional listening-in-conversation and revitalized democratic community. (shrink)

In this essay, Leonard Waks reviews three recent books on cosmopolitan education: Kwame Anthony Appiah's Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers; Neil Burtonwood's Cultural Diversity, Liberal Pluralism, and Schools: Isaiah Berlin and Education; and Thomas Popkewitz's Cosmopolitanism and the Age of School Reform: Science, Education and Making Society by Making the Child. Each of the three books challenges cosmopolitan universalism. Appiah argues that universal principles do not help us understand how members of distinct cultural groups can flourish in close (...) proximity. Burtonwood adds that the expression of these principles in conflict situations can offend and humiliate illiberal groups and render them culturally reactive, inventing restrictive ideals of cultural “purity” that block cosmopolitan harmony. Popkewitz argues that the cosmopolitan premise of enlightenment for all imposes civilizing disciplines on those the dominant groups perceive as “others,” disciplines that render them abject. Taken together, the three books provide important planks in a comprehensive critique of cosmopolitan universalism as a philosophy of education. (shrink)

In this essay, Leonard Waks contributes to a reconceptualization of “fundamental educational change.” By distinguishing sharply between educational change at the organizational and the institutional levels, Waks shows that the mechanisms of change at these two levels are entirely different. He then establishes, by means of a conceptual argument, that fundamental educational change takes place not at the organizational, but rather at the institutional level. Along the way Waks takes Larry Cuban’s influential conceptual framework regarding educational change as both a (...) starting point and target of appraisal. (shrink)

Rorty's neopragmatism is an attempt to retrofit Dewey's experimentalism for the post-modern situation. Specifically, he substitutes "language" for "experience" and "culture" for "science", to arrive at a philosophy "no closer to science than to art". I argue that the first move results from misunderstanding of the role experience plays in the context of verification in Dewey's experimental logic. The second move leaves Rorty without any alternative method even for approaching the very problems which Dewey proposed to solve with his experimentalism.

Over the past two decades the educational policies of neo-liberal nation states have exhibited contradictory tendencies, promoting both bureaucratic standardization of curriculum and standardized evaluation on the one hand, and postmodern diversification on the other. Despite recent increases in bureaucratic standardization, I argue that the economic, social and cultural effects of globalization will pressure these states towards postmodern diversification of educational arrangements to strengthen their perceived legitimacy.

: This article provides a close reading of Democracy and Education, situated in the context of Dewey's work prior to and during World War I, to illuminate the close tie between Dewey's overriding concerns during this period and today's educational concerns. The analysis suggests two projects for contemporary democratic educators.

Writers on education have frequently contrasted knowledge and understanding as educational aims. I shall be prepared to defend the view that this contrast can mislead us in our thinking about education, and can direct our attention away from facts which are important to take into account in the evaluation of educational procedures.

Rorty's neopragmatism is an attempt to retrofit Dewey's experimentalism for the post-modern situation. Specifically, he substitutes "language" for "experience" and "culture" for "science", to arrive at a philosophy "no closer to science than to art". I argue that the first move results from misunderstanding of the role experience plays in the context of verification in Dewey's experimental logic. The second move leaves Rorty without any alternative method even for approaching the very problems which Dewey proposed to solve with his experimentalism.

The STS education movement is identified and related to the critique of technology of the 1960s–1970s. The critics of technology included the system of education in their critiques. There is a practical tension or contradiction in attempting to develop their insights within the curriculum routines of the schools and colleges. This tension is explored under six categories: reductive knowledge, socialization of technical modes of thinking, technicalized processes of learning, the loss of meaning, radical monopoly over learning, and the socialization of (...) secular values. (shrink)

In this essay, Leonard Waks reconsiders the issue of the public character of charter schools, that is, schools funded through public taxation but operated by non‐state organizations such as nonprofit and for‐profit educational corporations and nongovernmental public interest organizations. Using John Dewey's conception of a democratic public as a framework, Waks examines the following questions: Are schools chartered and funded by government, but operated by nonprofit nongovernmental organizations, ever appropriate instruments of a democratic public? If so, what criteria might distinguish (...) those that are appropriate from those that are not? How might public education be re‐institutionalized so as to include the charter schools that are appropriate? Waks concludes that Dewey's theory of democratic publics can play a useful role in thinking about how to balance the democratic benefits of charter schools for the various subcommunities of our society with the democratic requirement of broad public discourse and intergroup education. (shrink)

I propose a model for the development of citizen rights based on the advance of political and social rights and apply it to contemporary claims regarding environmental rights. In terms of this “claims and attenuations” model, I sketch the roles of environmental philosophers and activists, the media and public opinion, and political insiders in the development of positive rights. I then predict a weakeningof environmental claims and a marginalization of environmental philosophies as environmental claims are secured as positive rights.

I propose a model for the development of citizen rights based on the advance of political and social rights and apply it to contemporary claims regarding environmental rights. In terms of this “claims and attenuations” model, I sketch the roles of environmental philosophers and activists, the media and public opinion, and political insiders in the development of positive rights. I then predict a weakeningof environmental claims and a marginalization of environmental philosophies as environmental claims are secured as positive rights.

Prior to 1980, researchers rarely studied intuition in education. Those in the behaviorist tradition discounted studies of teacher thinking, and regarded all talk of intuition as mysterious nonsense. Since then, however, the cognitive revolution has triumphed. Studies of thinking are commonplace, and have contributed to our understanding of how novices and expert teachers perceive, understand, and act. The current consensus is that novices require explicit rules when carrying out the tasks of teaching, while experts, through years of experience and learning, (...) store an abundance of cases in long term memory, which they draw upon to perceive salient features of situations. This enables them to act intuitively in... (shrink)

The four papers in this symposium were selected from thirty submissions for the Past President’s Panel at the 2014 annual meeting of the John Dewey Society in Philadelphia. Taken collectively, they demonstrate the continuing power of Dewey’s philosophy to inspire, clarify, and critique contemporary educational ideas and practices. I will have a few words to say about these papers below, but first I want to put them in context. The John Dewey Society, in its current form, has three operational missions: (...) to encourage, and contribute to, critical inquiry into pressing contemporary issues in culture, society, and education in the spirit of John Dewey; to foster and provide venues for new educational.. (shrink)

John Dewey's Democracy and Education is the touchstone for a great deal of modern educational theory. It covers a wide range of themes and issues relating to education, including teaching, learning, educational environments, subject matter, values, and the nature of work and play. This Handbook is designed to help experts and non-experts to navigate Dewey's text. The authors are specialists in the fields of philosophy and education; their chapters offer readers expert insight into areas of Dewey work that they know (...) well and have returned to time and time again throughout their careers. The Handbook is divided into two parts. Part I features short companion chapters corresponding to each of Dewey's chapters in Democracy and Education. These serve to guide readers through the complex arguments developed in the book. Part II features general articles placing the book into historical, philosophical and practical contexts and highlighting its relevance today. (shrink)