What I read in October...

This month I read John Dewey’s Democracy and Education. Over the course of a career in education, I’ve read many extracts from this book but this was my first attempt at reading cover-to-cover. It’s not easy. Dewey spends a lot of time setting up arguments before later opposing them, so it’s not always clear what he actually thinks.

I appreciated the emphasis Dewey places on education as an inter-generational process of initiation into the aims and habits of a community. He argues, “Society exists as a process of transmission quite as much as biological life.” He goes further, and recognises that education isn’t just the learning children experience by living alongside adults but it is a deliberate social project that marks the difference between subsisting and living in a civilised society. The distinction Dewey draws between education and training, with the latter being more concerned with behaviour than mental and emotional dispositions, is important. He also points to the distinct role that schools, as social institutions, play in cultivating character and attitudes.

Dewey recognises that “as a society becomes more enlightened, it realises that it is responsible not to transmit and conserve the whole of its existing achievements, but only such as make for a better future society.” The need for selection is vital, of course, but it is the basis on which such choices are made - and a curriculum is constructed - where I begin to disagree. Dewey’s name has become synonymous with ‘child-centred’ pedagogy. Arguments against this teaching method are well-rehearsed yet it is an idea that gets reinvented every decade.

I think Dewey’s arguments are more nuanced than child-centred cheer-leaders often suggest. He describes education as “the formation of mind by setting up certain associations or connections of content by means of a subject matter presented from without.” But the problem here is this soon becomes instrumental. Teachers begin from the “better future society” they wish to see and the “formation of mind” they wish to engender and seek material designed to bring such states to fruition. Knowledge is useful, not inherently valuable. It is a means to an end, rather than an end in itself.

Indeed, Dewey goes further. He applauds teaching that “enables us to emancipate the young from the need of dwelling in an outgrown past.” Literature is to be availed upon as a present resource, rather than taken as “standards and patterns in the their retrospective character.” He argues: “The study of past products will not help us understand the present, because the present is not due to the products, but to the life of which they were the products.” Democracy and Education was published in 1916 but Dewey provides an intellectual justification for much of the estrangement from the past and alienation from culture that characterises education a century later.

This month I also read two new books that touch on the role of the family, Little Platoons by Matt Feeney and Covenant by Danny Kruger.

Kruger’s book is, in some ways, the antidote to Dewey. Kruger is a fan of tradition and wants to reassert “the covenants of family, place and nation.” His central argument is that:

“in political terms we have a mistaken normative, and we need to change it. The political normative we have is the belief that people are independent, infallible, moral creators, and that therefore the job of government is to facilitate their independence. The normative we need is the belief that people are dependent, fallible creatures, subject to a moral order, and yet capable of great goodness and achievement; therefore action is required to strengthen the institutions that mitigate our weakness and help us realise our potential.”

It’s a deeply moralistic book, often drawing upon explicitly religious language and lessons. Kruger correctly identifies a problem with the atomisation and isolation many people experience today. But I am not convinced this emerges out of a strong ‘neoliberal’ assumption that people are independent and infallible. Instead, it seems to me that atomisation stems from the opposite, a perception of ourselves as vulnerable that leads us to mistrust others.

Kruger’s emphasis on our weaknesses and the need for institutions to correct for our individual failings chimes with the sentiment of the times more than I think he realises. Strong families, communities and nations are not built upon fragility but strong individuals having an awareness of their collective interests. The danger with Kruger’s moralism is that it runs counter to personal freedom and, ultimately, democracy.

I enjoyed Little Platoons a lot more. Feeney argues that society sets families in competition with one another: in order to counteract material and psychological insecurities, parents compete to gain advantages for their children. In turn, institutions such as schools and sports clubs exploit parental desires to secure the best opportunities for their children by enrolling whole families into time consuming activities. The result is that parenting becomes an increasingly public exercise, subject to constant external scrutiny and this - in turn - reinforces the insecurities that fuel competition. Feeney (an American) argues this project is driven largely by college admission processes. The desire to see their child at a top university leads parents to fight for the best kindergarten places, to engage with worthless homework tasks, and to spend hours on extra-curricular activities. All of this, Feeney argues, is detrimental to family life.

Feeney’s conclusion is that we need to drop the competition. Then, families can focus on their own desires and interests, and parenting can become a largely private activity one more. I agree. However, Feeney thinks this can best be achieved by getting colleges to change their admission procedures - perhaps using a lottery for qualified applicants rather than personal statements testifying to an over-accomplished childhood. I am not convinved it is that straightforward.

Finally this month I read The Running Grave by Robert Galbraith. I picked this up because I had a long flight to get through and because I remain loyal to J K Rowling. I didn’t really have high hopes of the story. I was wrong! I would say this is the best Strike novel yet. I really enjoyed it.