Chapter 7: The democratic conception of education

While it may be true that education is concerned with how the young (the immature) come to participate in the life of the group to which they belong..."The conception of a social process and function has no definite meaning until we define the kind of society we have in mind" (p. 81). Dewey describes a democratic society as one which benefits from individuals' full and free intercourse with others both intra-socially with members throughout their own society and inter-socially with those in other societies.

He also describes other societies in which this was not the case. Of particular interest is his description of Germany following the Napoleonic conquests, in which "To form the citizen, not the "man," became the aim of education" (pp. 78-79). What Dewey describes is a clever "reconciliation" in which the fulfillment of the individual is found in identification with the aims of the state. It seemed to me eerily evocative of our own times in which a rather narrow focus on education as preparation for an occupation can be the outcome of a national concern over developing soldiers for 21st century international economic warfare. It raises Dewey's question...

Is it possible for an educational system to be conducted by a national state and yet the full ends of the educative process not be restricted, constrained, and corrupted?