Dewey On American Education

Dewey views that the American education system truly isn’t a democratic education and if we are to say that we have a democratic education we must provide the students with the correct one. According to Straume “Democracy is more than a conjoint experience, more than a mode of associated living; it is also a form of government (Straume 2016, 34).” With this statement, we can see that democracy plays a major rule in our society as well as our everyday lives. However, “These traits of democracy are not surface or superficial meanings. They embody Dewey’s reasons for preferring a democratic society to other forms of society. For him, a democracy and the education that promotes democracy are all about people co-creating a society in which everyone’s
Thus “Dewey may mean by his first trait that in order to co-create a democracy, people need to communicate with one another about their goals to identify those they have in common and to increase the number and variety of their common goals (Meadows 2013,445).” Therefore, as teacher with the concepts that Dewey has given about democratic education, one can see that it is completely different that the education students are receiving. Dewey states “educators can help people realize that the well-being and progress of others who differ from themselves matter to them by helping people to learn to communicate across differences in ways that increase mutual understanding. Interpretive discussion is one way to accomplish this (Meadows 2013,450).” Thus, as educators we should provide our student with the best education and therefore the one that they are currently receiving isn’t helping them at
However due to how society is set up many students will not be able to acquire that goal due to the education system. For there to be a fair education system that allows all students the opportunity to achieve the American Dream the whole society must change and thus loss barriers that have been around for a while. Dewey states, “growth is the most important aim of life and that, therefore, education should cultivate growth (Meadows 2013,443).” Education in many classrooms isn’t creating growth in students and the education system is just making the gap between majority and minority students even larger. Therefore, to achieve a true democratic education “members of a democracy need to work to adjust the ways in which they live and think in response to communicating with people whom they did not know before these interactions (Meadows 2013,446).” Thus, the democratic education that students are currently receiving is setting them up for failure because a democratic education is supposed to be fair and equal to everyone but it is not