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In education, Dewey's view of the
primacy of society was translated into
the desire to socialize children above
all. He wrote: "I believe that the
social life of the child is the basis of
concentration, or correlation, in all
his training or growth. The social life
gives the unconscious unity and the
background of all his efforts and of all
his attainments." In practice, this
meant an increased emphasis on group
activities and children spending time
around their peers and conforming to
those peers' often inane and destructive
expectations, rather than learning
objective facts.
Indeed, Dewey greatly
discouraged the study of objective facts.
He wrote, "I believe that we violate the
child's nature and render difficult the
best ethical results, by introducing the
child too abruptly to a number of
special studies, of reading, writing,
geography, etc., out of relation to this
social life." So when we encounter
illiterate teenagers, or kids who cannot
identify China or France on a map, or
high school graduates who cannot string
a grammatically correct sentence
together, or college students who must
take remedial algebra because they
cannot solve a simple linear equation,
we are actually seeing what Dewey wanted
to happen. Learning reading, writing,
mathematics, or geography early sets
children apart from their "society" of
peers and inhibits the kind of
subjection and conformity that Dewey
tried to bring about from an early age.
Dewey most detested
talented young students who strove to
learn as much real knowledge as they
could, irrespective of the obstacles
placed in their way. He admitted this
explicitly when he wrote in The
School and Society (1889), "The mere
absorption of facts and truths is so
exclusively an individual affair that it
tends very naturally to pass into
selfishness. There is no obvious social
motive for the acquirement of mere
learning, there is no clear social gain
in success thereat." Because learning
objective knowledge empowers the
individual and enables him to obtain
greater heights of accomplishment and
virtue, Dewey saw this as a threat to
the social engineering he wanted to
attain. Anything that did not directly
fit into his agenda of top-down control
was to be discouraged—and, of course,
one cannot centrally plan human
curiosity, ingenuity, ambition, and
desire for self-improvement. These
qualities resist Dewey's impulse to
create the individual; thus, the natural
implication of Dewey's system was to
stifle and suppress such attributes.
We no longer need to be
puzzled as to why public school teachers
so often sit by idly while the majority
of their students taunt, harass,
threaten, and even physically assault
their most accomplished classmates.
Indeed, we need not even be surprised
that some public school teachers
encourage such bullying by rudely
suppressing genuine questions from
exceptional students and accusing them
of "monopolizing" classroom time. These
educators are simply implementing
Dewey's ideas.
Within public schools,
the "society" that Dewey glorifies
consists of the ever-changing trends,
prejudices, fashions, and behaviors of
the majority of school-aged children; "socializing"
children means getting them in line with
how most of their peers behave—even if
this includes cursing, promiscuity,
risky "experimentation," and ganging up
on the children who are "different."
What is important under the Dewey system
is not adherence to some universal and
absolute standard of the true and the
good, but rather conformity to whatever
social standard has been established
within a given age group—which is
virtually always the dismal lowest
common denominator.
If Dewey were alive today
to see America's public schools, he
would not consider them failures. They
are the faithful embodiments of
everything he wished to attain. If
anything, Dewey would want the public
schools to teach even fewer objective
facts and allow even less outstanding
individual accomplishment by students.
But those of us who desire a future in
which people are free, prosperous, and
competent will beg to differ.
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Instead, Dewey asserted, society is what makes the
individual who he is, and social institutions "are not means
for obtaining something for individuals, not even happiness.
They are means of creating individuals." So much for the
Founding Fathers' conviction that the inalienable individual
rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are
primary and that "to secure these rights, governments are
instituted among men." For Dewey, society and government
come first; they shape individuals and make them what they
are, and it is ultimately "society," through government,
that must decide how each individual is to best serve "it."
