Though he worked briefly as a schoolteacher, Ralph Waldo Emerson rarely gave concrete teaching advice. As he believed in lifelong learning, formal or informal, Emerson rarely spoke about the logistics of schooling, sticking to more general principles. His philosophy of education, like all his other philosophies, can only be gleaned from reading through his essays and lectures and synthesizing relevant remarks.

That’s exactly what his son did, following Emerson’s death in 1882. Edward Emerson compiled excerpts of his father’s remarks on childhood education, mostly given as commencement addresses. One of the first excerpts, focused on the unique history of education is New England, is especially interesting. Emerson referred to New England as “the country in the world where is the freest expenditure for education,” indicating how useless it was to generalize about 

 education before the late 19th-century. Since colonial times, possibly for the first time ever, New England had decided “that the poor man, whom the law does not allow to take an ear of corn when starving, nor a pair of shoes for his freezing feet, is allowed to put his hand into the pocket of the rich, and say, ‘You shall educate me, not as you will, but as I will.’” He noted that this was such an important decision that it “might have been resisted as the most radical of revolutions.”[1]

Emerson’s individualistic philosophy was shaped by the same cultural attitudes that made this radicalism acceptable. Educating the masses had generally been considered dangerous because it might inspire them to challenge the ruling class—teaching slaves to read was later banned in the American south due to similar fears. But the Puritan ruling class believed that in the New World, the stability of their small, experimental community was served by having a populace that could investigate the nature of right and wrong for itself, mainly by referring to the Bible directly. They believed relying on individual conscience was the best way to secure their values and religious authority.


Like Dewey, Emerson emphasized the individual need and ability to see “things in their causes, all facts in their connection.” Unlike Dewey, he conceived of this happing not through social interaction, but by observing the patterns of Nature, which all minds had the ability to discern and subsequently communicate about. (“By the permanence of Nature, minds are trained alike, and made intelligible to each other.”) As his Puritan ancestors used Biblical morality as an organizing principle, Emerson used Nature, and man’s God-given ability to understand Creation. This faith in every person’s judgment made him open to trusting democracy, just as the Puritans’ faith in human conscience made them open to trusting universal education. 

This is one of many passages that contains some concepts that might be called ‘Deweyan’ or ‘progressive’, but Emerson’s overall ethos is different, in line with the themes of Self-Reliance, to which his faith in democracy was secondary.

This is the same general idea behind Dewey’s Laboratory Schools. At other points, Emerson sounds more like an early childhood theorist, but with a greater emphasis on individual power than was common among progressive educators. 

What’s clear is that he believed in developing the unique potential of every individual, no matter what that might be.

But Emerson showed little interest in formal educational systems, indicating exasperation with reformers even in the mid-nineteenth century by saying that “A treatise on education, a convention for education, a lecture, a system, affects us with slight paralysis and a certain yawning of the jaws.” One of the most highly educated men of his time, both formally and informally, he had no opposition to schooling or book-learning, but believed it had to be done with the right attitude. 

Emerson criticized the current form of education in New England in ways that overlapped with the later Progressive Era critiques.

Emerson also emphasized the value of play and personalization. However, he departed from the normal Progressive Era view by 

 having a primarily social, efficient, or collectivist view of education:

Dewey noted more than once, “we lie, as Emerson said, in the lap of an immense intelligence,” and this is the view he was referring to (although Dewey’s interpretation of the source of that intelligence seemed to differ).

 hostile to traditional forms of learning than most progressives, and counseled against overcomplication and bureaucratic systems. As was his general tendency as a philosopher, he seems to effortlessly transcend the usual dichotomies:

In the end, Emerson’s advice was simple: “Have the self-command you wish to inspire…See what they need, and that the right thing is done.” He confessed himself “utterly at a loss in suggesting particular reforms in our ways of teaching,” warning that “no discretion that can be lodged with a school-committee, with the overseers or visitors of an academy, of a college, can at all avail to reach these difficulties and perplexities.” However, this was not cause for despair, because “they solve themselves when we leave institutions and address individuals.” It was “simple” for any person of character to find a way to “keep the grammar, reading, writing and arithmetic in order”—to make sure the basics are conveyed—Emerson insisted. Beyond that, here was his advice to teachers:

1. All quotes in this piece are taken from 

https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/emerson/essays/education.html

. “This essay was put together after Emerson's death from a number of commencement and similar addresses he had made. It appears in The Complete Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, edited by Edward Emerson.”

Emerson on Education

Early in his career, John Dewey declared that Americans were increasingly realizing that society could no longer neglect “its constituent parts” without becoming “defective and distorted.” Speaking to fellow educators in 1902, Dewey said he did not expect the debate over “material socialism”—whether the inequalities of the industrial age necessitated redistributive policies—to be settled any time soon.[1]

It's easy to turn this into a culture war-talking point, but to present the above as a confession of Dewey’s intent to use education to cultivate support for collectivism or statism misses the point. Dewey was a conscious combatant in his own era’s culture wars; its intellectual and political struggles. In the quote above, he was 

effectively hijacking the Progressive Era debates over socialism and social engineering to promote his own concerns and theories 

(and to evade explicit participation in those debates).[3] These concerns and theories centered on how to maintain what Dewey understood to be the best and defining contributions of American life thus far (democracy and debate), and the way they promoted creativity, tolerance, collaboration, intellectual development, and other drivers of human progress and fulfillment.

“Socialism of the intelligence and of the spirit”

 was a description of the same concept underlying puzzling Deweyisms like “A democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience.”

Before 1903 or 1904, Dewey seems to have communicated his ideas according to the terms of the education policy discourse. Subsequently, after his fallout with the University of Chicago and his departure from his Laboratory School, he framed them in terms of philosophical discourses. Now working in the Columbia philosophy department, Dewey’s main themes were democracy, childhood education and progressive schooling, collectivist political ideologies, the American identity, the nature of expertise and authority, social change and progress, navigating diversity, and the promises of scientific habits of mind.

Amid his diverse and opaque writings, however, Dewey’s central concern never wavered: ensuring that every individual could share in “the intellectual and spiritual resources of the community,” while also doing his or her part to extend “the range and the fullness” of the resources in that community. Therefore, to Dewey, a community of any kind that allows for unvetted participation (de jure or de facto) is democratic. Living democratically is learning how to assert a claim to a seat at the table and have that claim recognized by the community.[4]

Emersonian philosophy is characterized by an emphasis on “interconnected thinking, self-definition, and creativity,” concepts associated with decentered processes and distributed agencies, such as interconnectivity and reciprocity. It is part of an American “epistemological tradition” based on “relational, transitional, and adaptive processes,” which was most evident in the late 19th and early 20th century, when Emersonian philosophies were modernized by people now classified under the Pragmatist tradition. Dewey is grouped with the Pragmatists because he used Emersonian logic, which can be recognized by his tendency to treat Nature, intelligence/genius, collaborative creativity, experimentation, education, democracy, and individualism as interchangeable concepts.[5]

The central point is that a society will ossify and become brittle if it doesn’t leave room for individual “genius” to pop up and re-design things to accommodate change. Dewey’s theory “presupposes...that people develop the habit of continually creating and readjusting their diverse perspectives and interests through the exchange with external groups,” as “only in this way can they respond to new challenges” in our interrelated modern world.[7] In other words, survival demands being unwilling to waste a single drop of the community’s “talent” by encouraging maximal participation, a belief that is evident in Dewey’s 1902 address.

He tells his fellow educators that the Hull House is “the working model upon which I am pretty continuously drawing,” noting that classes in music, art, and metal-working are given there. He then argues that “there is no reason why something in the way of scientific laboratories should not be provided for those who are particularly interested in problems of mechanics or electricity,” indicating that he thinks the community should invest in cultivating the various talents of its members—

, even if they are not professionals or able to self-fund their hobbies.[8]

“There is a vast amount of unutilized talent dormant all about us,” 

Dewey warns in a notably Emersonian register. 

“Many an individual has capacity within himself of which he is only dimly conscious, 

because he has never had an opportunity for expressing it.” 

This is not only a tragedy for such individuals, but for society, which “suffers from this 

” In fact, Dewey goes as far to say that “the evils of the unearned increment are as nothing beside those of the undiscovered resource.” He then expressed confidence that the community would eventually recognize that the obligation to educate children should be extended further. It was, said Dewey, "quite as natural and necessary...to provide such opportunities 

to discover and carry to some point of fulfilment the particular capacities that distinguish them.”

Even though he was administering the Chicago Laboratory School at this time, 

Dewey did not present himself as an implementer of pedagogical methods for children.

 A 1933 report on progressive education aptly referred to him as a “philosopher and sociologist.”[10]

“I suppose none of us would be willing to believe that the movement away from dogmatism and fixed authority is anything but a movement in the right direction,” Dewey said to the conference attendees. “But no one can view the loosening of the power of the older religious and social authorities without deep concern.” While there was confidence that, eventually, “independent judgment, with the individual freedom and responsibility that go with it, will more than make good the temporary losses,” they still had those losses to deal with in the meantime.[11] Dewey described these losses as follows:

“Parental authority has much less influence in controlling the conduct of children...The domestic ties between husband and wife themselves, as well as to their children, lose something of their permanence and sanctity. The church, with its supernatural sanctions, its means of shaping the daily life of its adherents, finds its grasp slowly slipping away. We might as well frankly recognize that many of the old agencies for moralizing mankind, that kept men living decent, respectable, and orderly lives, are losing in efficiency...”[12]

He argued that it was society’s obligation to “

search for other agencies with which it may repair the loss, and which may produce the results the former methods are failing to secure,”

 again emphasizing the need to go beyond children and educate adults in a more useful and holistic way. He also ventured his opinion that the perceived deterioration in the quality of teachers was due to a remembrance of a time “when to know enough to be a teacher was something which of itself set off the individual in a special class by himself.” True or not, Dewey suggested that it only seemed this way because everyone else had now caught up with them. More knowledge was now “in common circulation,” and this, along with other changes, had “made it possible 

for every man to be a teacher in some respect unto his neighbor.

more like Emerson than any Progressive-era socialist or technocrat. Particularly given the fact that he is speaking to a group of intellectuals and reformers who came of age in late 19th-century America, you practically expect him to start quoting “

”[14]. These early writings were not directed at people who wanted to overthrow the power-structure in order to secure fair wages, or those who want to optimize the transformation of poor children into obedient factory workers. As Cornel West has put it, ”Dewey writes from the vantage point 

 managerial class that is in sympathy with

Back in 1897, while running his famous Chicago Laboratory School, Dewey published his “pedagogic creed” in a journal for professional educators.[16]He uses his work with children as a jumping-off point to convey his usual concerns, remarking that as American schoolchildren are members of “a democratic and progressive society,” 

they must be “educated for leadership as well as for obedience.”

 “power of self-direction and power of directing others,”

 as well as the ability to assume positions of responsibility. This meant training them to have “

command of the fundamental methods of inquiry and the fundamental tools of intercourse and communication,” 

as well as “a trained and sound body, skillful eye and hand; habits of industry, perseverance, and

, above all, habits of serviceableness.”

"Educating for leadership” had to be done on “the industrial side” as well as the political one, Dewey insisted, as “the affairs of life are coming more and more under the control 

of insight and skill in perceiving and effecting combinations.

” I am not sure what precisely he meant by that, but certainly the era of Big Business was dawning. Dewey went onto emphasize the continual social change, rapid industrial and commercial development, and proliferation of new inventions that characterized modern American life. As a result, Dewey insisted, “

it is an absolute impossibility to educate the child for any fixed station in life,” 

and if this were to be “unconsciously or consciously done,” the future citizen so educated would end up nothing more but a drone, a hanger-on, or a drag on social 

Dewey also warned against age-graded schools and other types of education that 

compare himself against a general standard of achievement rather than work at his own pace

. “Almost the only measure for success is a competitive one, in the bad sense of that term,” Dewey remarked a few years later, referring to using graded exams “to see which child has succeeded in getting ahead of others in storing up, in accumulating the maximum of information.”[19]

In his early works, Dewey referred to this use of universal standards in the classroom as an 

method, apparently intending to provoke dissonance and deeper thought.

20] What he meant was that it puts individual students in direct competition with each other, and while this had benefits, it also “prematurely” introduces children to the demoralizing dynamics of “emulation and rivalry.”[21] His general argument against the ossification caused by “individualistic” methods of education is taken from the Emersonian ode to the integrity of the individual, “

“There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide...

The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.”

” also captures an idea that influences many strains of child-centered education, though not one central to Dewey’s philosophy: the purity of insight resulting from the unbiased perceptions of children:

However, the rest of the essay, as well as “

,” portray this general spirit as the essence of creative, influential, and self-reliant adulthood—it’s intended as an analogy, 

 a description of a capability unique to youth or psychological immaturity. Past scholars have been thrown off by the grouping of Dewey with “student-centered” educators,[22] but Dewey fits an Emersonian interpretation of “student-centered”—the student is ideally learning from the teacher how to be a responsible adult, 

capable of exercising judgment sufficient to face the impossible-to-predict challenges of the future.

Modern scholars have increasingly caught on to this, but present it as inherently paradoxical, assuming their audience conflates authority with narrow expertise or dogma and see formal education as passive absorption of the latter.[24]

Therefore, Dewey is said to have an “anti-foundationalist epistemology,” because he “did not view the teacher's authority as based in a transcendent, foundational domain.” Rather, the teacher’s authority was based in understanding the current state of knowledge, and in the ability to guide students in reconstructing it. The teacher's demonstration that knowledge is socially produced and evolving makes the students aware of its “socially and politically situated nature.”[25] Such an approach is seen as “teacher-centric,” rather than “child-centric.”

The Role of the Teacher: Every Man is a Teacher Unto His Neighbor

This arguably false dichotomy, which I will not try to adjudicate here, is the same one that underlies the alleged “crisis of expertise,” which is essentially what Dewey (and all of Emerson’s Progressive-era emulators) struggled with, though they would have described it a crisis of authority, because expert authority was not dominant or treated as unique by most people at this time. (See Dewey's 1897 remarks, above).

I suspect that a passage in a recent book by Gil Eyal, 

gets at the kind of dynamic that Dewey had in mind, one that does not require a clear distinction between student and teacher. Eyal, who mentions Dewey several times in the book, does not pretend to solve the crisis described in its title, admitting that he has no solution. But in going on to assume that 

 has one, and that operating based on this assumption is the best bet, he offers what is itself a kind of “transcendent, foundational domain”:

Here, there is no fundamental distinction between expert and layman, teacher and student, or adult and child—the basic learning process can occur as easily among peers of any age and kind. For this reason, Dewey lamented that the competitive atmosphere in schools had turned it into a “crime” for one student to help another with his task introducing the dynamics of “partisan” interests that Eyal refers to.[27]

Nothing makes Dewey’s view of the teacher’s role clearer than these lines from his most famous work, 1916’s 

“How one person’s abilities compare in quantity with those of another is none of the teacher’s business.

“The American Scholar”: Democratic Faith and the Academy

This statement seems to encapsulate the approach Dewey took at his Chicago Laboratory School in the late 1890s and early 1900s: the teacher gave each student the opportunity to participate in “meaningful activities.”[30]

This reflects Dewey’s Emersonian idea of decentralized, collaborative, ongoing knowledge construction,[32] with which he publicly aligned himself and associated with democracy in 1903 in a lecture before his University of Chicago colleagues on the centennial of Emerson’s birth.[33] He had it published later that year in an international philosophical journal, shortly before a falling out with the University led to Dewey to depart his Laboratory School for Columbia University’s philosophy department.[34]

The lecture, published as “Emerson—The Philosopher of Democracy,” seems to be as much about Dewey’s vision for his own career as it was about Emerson’s.[35] He opens by talking about how Emerson stands for democratized 

Plato’s own generation would have struggled to classify him, said Dewey.[37] “Was he an inept visionary or a subtle dialectician?...

Was he a theorist upon education, or the inventor of a method of knowledge?”

 But, after “centuries of exposition and interpretation,” people had no difficulty in “placing Plato as a philosopher and in attributing to him a system of thought,” even if they disputed the nature and content of his system and “technique.”[38] Dewey hoped the same would happen to Emerson in the twentieth century:

As Dewey’s remarks indicate, Emerson’s approach to harmonizing contradictory elements does not translate into a universally recognized educational system or plan of practical action—it is designed to be adapted by any individual to meet whatever circumstances he or she may face. The precise balancing of the part and the whole, democratization and individual genius or calling, or the theory and the practice, differs with each individual and is elaborated on over time. Dewey’s attraction to the scientific method had to do with his belief that “

any given state of knowledge was a product of consensus among a community of inquirers,”

that scientific or social/political consensus was the product of an ongoing interaction between different views, not standardization and agreement.[40]

To make sense of Dewey’s approach at the theoretical level, what matters more than anything is understanding that he “conceived of a dialectical relationship in which individuals 

and in turn gained the skills and abilities to interactively transform aspects of their culture

,” and that this was “the central criterion by which he measured the worth of any educational innovation.”[42] As Dewey asked rhetorically about Plato, ”Is he a theorist upon education, or the inventor of a method of knowledge?” Dewey probably identified most with the role he ascribed to Emerson in 1903: “Philosopher of Democracy.”[43]

In the 1910s, Dewey’s philosophy was not necessarily interpreted as intentionally anti-foundationalist,[44] though it was understood to have an unusually flexible and vague “foundation.”[45] Recent scholars have also disputed Dewey’s anti-foundationalism, at least in his later years, when, “confronted with the crisis of war and exception,” Dewey 

articulated a basic foundation for his educational philosophy. According to this argument, which I discussed in 

, that foundation was “democratic faith,”[46] which Dewey repeatedly attempted to translate into rhetoric that would resonate with his contemporaries, especially in the 1930s and 1940s. I quoted part of this attempt above: "The foundation of democracy is faith in the capacities of human nature; faith in human intelligence and in the power of pooled and cooperative experience.”[47]

One recent scholar has attempted to translate this into something “jaded” post-moderns could understand, describing it as a commitment to “respect for one’s interlocutors and opponents based in shared recognition of humanity and the capacity for intelligence,” thus enabling the democratic deliberation necessary to the community’s survival. It's a good translation, though I would argue that Dewey’s vision would be better served if thought of as a conversation with ”fellow citizens,” not ”interlocutors and opponents.”[48] And perhaps a capacity for understanding or constructive action would convey the point better than a capacity for intelligence. Also, the scholar has emulated Dewey in choosing to define his theory of democratic faith primarily in the words of Thomas Jefferson, which is highly likely to interfere with its reception by today’s young people.[49]

The Art of Translation: Each Generation Must Write Its Own Books

The debate over whether Dewey is a “foundationalist” is best answered by what Dewey said about science in Part I: even if scientific inquiry could not itself establish a clear ethical framework ("science can't decide policy,” as we’ve put it recently), and even if perfect objectivity is impossible, we can surely still be expected to try and act wisely, rather than throw up our hands and plunge into a life of raw power struggles. It is hard to disagree with Dewey’s assertion that we only have three options for getting things done in life: using our intelligence, “drift and casual improvision,” and “the use of coercive force stimulated by unintelligent emotion and fanatical dogmatism.” And I think most of us would agree that seeing how far “our intelligence” can take us is the way to go.

Could progressive education respond to the deconstructionist tendencies of the last few decades like Emerson did, as “reformers' increasing negativity led him to establish new humanistic and artistic receptacles for the reform impulse”?[52] On the same day Dewey gave his 1903 speech on Emerson as the Philosopher of Democracy, Harvard’s longtime president Charles W. Eliot gave his own memorial speech in Boston, focusing on "the prophetic teachings of Emerson in regard to education,” and how they could be used to constructively synthesize seemingly disparate Progressive-era reform efforts.

Could American progressive education become the ongoing, collaborative interpretive project envisioned by Dewey, and the source of creativity, individual purpose, and intellectual meaning envisioned by Eliot? 

In Part III, I will talk about how recent scholars have proposed a new understanding of the vision advanced by Dewey and other American progressive educators in this tradition, one that was lost in translation amid the changing political and intellectual paradigms of the 20th century.

John Dewey, “The School as a Social Center,” Address to the National Council of Education, Minneapolis, Minnesota, July 1902, at https://progressingamerica.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-school-as-social-centre-by-john.html.

Regina Schober, “America as Network: Notions of Interconnectedness in American Transcendentalism and Pragmatism,” 

1. John Dewey, “The School as a Social Center,” Address to the National Council of Education, Minneapolis, Minnesota, July 1902, at 

https://progressingamerica.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-school-as-social-centre-by-john.html

3. I have come to see Dewey’s vague and unclear writing as an intentional effort to cause cognitive dissonance or curiosity, thereby provoking new perceptions and independent research. Rather than modeling synthesis or intelligibility, Dewey is trying to provoke synthesis and demands for intelligibility in the minds of his readers. He attempts to transcend false dichotomies by using eccentric definitions of words and inverting popular symbols and arguments. It is a variation on Emerson’s strategy, “I unsettle all things,” adapted to the perceived needs of Dewey’s readers. See Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Circles,” 

https://emersoncentral.com/texts/essays-first-series/circles/

There is not a piece of science, but its flank may be turned to-morrow

; there is not any literary reputation…that may not be revised and condemned…

Valor consists in the power of self-recovery, so that a man cannot have his flank turned, cannot be out-generalled, but put him where you will, he stands. This can only be by his preferring truth to his past apprehension of truth; and his alert acceptance of it, from whatever quarter

; the intrepid conviction that his laws, his relations to society…his world, 

may at any time be superseded and decease.”) 

4. See Matthew Festenstein, “Dewey’s Political Philosophy,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Winter 2019 Edition, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2019/entries/dewey-political/. (“...in Dewey’s view: that ’men are not isolated non-social atoms, but are men only when in intrinsic relations‘ to one another, and the state in turn 

so far as they have become organically related to one another, or are possessed of unity of purpose and interest.‘ Democracy is a form of moral and spiritual association that recognizes the contribution that each member can make in his or her particular way to this ethical community...Democracy is not ’simply and solely a form of government‘ but a social and personal ideal; in other words, it is not only a property of political institutions but of a wide range of social relationships.

”) (Internal citations omitted; emphases added).

5. As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy puts it: 

“Although much of Dewey’s political writing is prompted by specific issues, his overall orientation is deeply shaped by his pragmatism or (as he preferred) ‘experimentalism’. 

are the beliefs that science and democracy are mutually supportive and interdependent enterprises, that they are egalitarian, progressive and rest on habits of open social communication,

 and that powerful interpretations of liberal individualism and democracy 

” Ibid. (Emphases added.) See also Ralph Waldo Emerson, ”Intellect,” in Essays: First Series, 1841, at 

https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/emerson/essays/intellect.html

, and Neal Dolan, “Introduction,” in 

(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009).

Democracy and Educational Administration,

7. K. Reich, ”Diverse Communities —Dewey’s Theory of Democracy as a Challenge for Foucault, Bourdieu, and Rorty,“ in J.M. Green, S. Neubert, and K. Reich (eds)

8. Dewey, “The School as a Social Center.”

10. Andrew Anderson, “What is a progressive school?,” Thesis submitted for degree of Master of Science, Massachusetts State College, Amherst, Massachusetts, 1933, 

https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2420&context=these

s. Anderson writes that, as a philosopher and sociologist, Dewey “

,” recognizing “the principles of individual differences…only in the sense that [such differences allow] each member to contribute to the growth of the group.” He quotes Dewey as saying, “A society based on custom will utilize individual variations only up to limit of conformity with usage…A progressive society counts individual variations as precious since it finds in them the means of its new growth. Hence a democratic society must allow for intellectual freedom and the play of diverse gifts and interests in its educational measures." This is a restatement of Emerson’s main ideas, now defined as the principles of a “progressive society.” (Emphasis added).

13. Ibid. (Emphases added.) Dewey then declared that intellectual life and knowledge was more connected with the rest of worldly affairs than ever before, and therefore a purely intellectual education no longer cut it—not when “the daily occupations and ordinary surroundings of life are much more in need of interpretation than ever they have been before.” The proper application of knowledge must take precedence over studying physics or German just to appear “cultured.”Telling, Dewey remarked that such aristocratic, esoteric notions of education were just the sort of idea “which the term ‘culture’ still conveys to many minds.”

14. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar,” in 

1841, at https://emersoncentral.com/texts/nature-addresses-lectures/addresses/the-american-scholar/ (“As no air-pump can by any means make a perfect vacuum, so neither can any artist entirely exclude the conventional, the local, the perishable from his book, or write a book of pure thought, that shall be as efficient, in all respects, to a remote posterity, as to cotemporaries, or rather to the second age. Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding. The books of an older period will not fit this.”)

The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism (

Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 70. Bolded is my emphasis, italics in the original.

16. See John Dewey, “My Pedagogic Creed,” 

17. See ibid. (Emphases added). Dewey also said they had to learn to be leaders with the ability “to assume positions of responsibility” in a changing world, in which we could not afford to educate anyone for a “fixed station in life.” Instead, we must educate so as to “give [each man] such possession of himself that he may take charge of himself; may not only adapt himself to the changes which are going on, but have power to shape and direct those changes.”

19. John Dewey, “The School and Social Progress,” 

(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1900), at 

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/53910/53910-h/53910-h.htm

. In this early piece, Dewey expressed his central idea as follows: ”

A society is a number of people held together because they are working along common lines,

 demand a growing interchange of thought and growing unity of sympathetic feeling.

20. See Dewey, “My Pedagogic Creed,” and note iii, above.

22. See Mara Holt, “Dewey and the ‘Cult of Efficiency’: Competing Ideologies in Collaborative Pedagogies of the 1920s,” 

23. See, for example, Emerson, ”Intellect.” Dewey seems to allude to this essay in John Dewey, “Emerson-The Philosopher of Democracy,” 

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2376270.pdf

24. These false paradoxes and dichotomies also occur as a result of retroactively imposed ideological categories. For a brief discussion of this, see Holt, “Dewey and the ‘Cult of Efficiency.’” (“…we need to be aware of how our own cultural and institutional environments may lead us, perhaps unwittingly, into inconsistencies in our practices that may diminish the richness of social participation.”) A non-paywalled version can be found here. Holt describes a variety of tensions in some approaches used by early American progressives who identified themselves with Emersonian logic, mainly John Dewey and Helen Parkhurst. These approaches appear less contradictory in theory, if not more successful in practice, when the Emersonian influence on their philosophy is understood.

(United Kingdom: Polity Press, 2019), 142.

27. Dewey, “The School and Social Progress,”

1916. What Dewey objected to was the idea that children were born with the ability to ”develop naturally” into functional adults, and that ”raising” or guiding them was harmful interference with this process. He also feared the effects of individuals or factions within a community developing without a shared focus or point of reference to bind them together and ensure that their expectations did not diverge until they became sources of conflict. Dewey wrote that “the intermingling in the school” of American children from different backgrounds “creates for all a new and broader environment.” His key point: 

“Common subject matter accustoms all to a unity of outlook upon a broader horizon than is visible to the members of any group while it is isolated.”

 He indicated that American education should “cultivate” an appreciation for the fact that “the American nation is itself complex and compound,” and that it was dangerous to try and achieve any American identity that would deny this truth. Superficial coherence or homogeneity were not the true sources of unity or solidarity, but being rather cultivating awareness and appreciation of American diversity, and a sense of responsibility for learning how to navigate and stabilize relations in this contradictory and sometimes volatile environment, and encourage its potential for creative collaboration.

30. As I wrote in ”Emerson on Education,” ”[Emerson’s] faith in every person’s judgment made him open to trusting democracy, just as the Puritans’ faith in human conscience made them open to trusting universal education.” This is the connection between ”The American Scholar” and his later work.

31. Holt, “Dewey and the ‘Cult of Efficiency.’” See also the discussion of “agonism,” as described in Allen Mendenhall, “Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Is the Use of Calling Emerson a Pragmatist: A Brief and Belated Response to Stanley Cavell,” Faulkner Law Review, Volume 6, 2014, 197-230, 

32. See, for example, Emerson, ”The American Scholar” and ”Intellect.”

33. See ibid., Dewey, “Emerson-The Philosopher of Democracy,” and Douglas R. Anderson, “American Loss in Cavell’s Emerson," in 

Philosophy Americana: Making Philosophy at Home in American Culture 

(Fordham University Press, 2006), 206–20, 

34. Dewey, “Emerson-The Philosopher of Democracy.”

35. See ibid., and Anderson, “American Loss in Cavell’s Emerson.”

36. Dewey, “Emerson-The Philosopher of Democracy.”

Many of Dewey's educational concerns and theories centered on how to maintain what he understood to be the best and defining contributions of American life thus far: (democracy and debate), and the way they promoted creativity, tolerance, collaboration, intellectual development, and other drivers of human progress and fulfillment.

What Does Progressive Education Look Like? Part II: A Deweyan Approach

Telisha Thomas and Sam Sharp of Higher Ground Education join Matt Bateman to discuss the exciting work they're doing to bring Montessori education to military families in the United States. 

Telisha is Higher Ground's Department of Defense Liason. She is a senior military spouse who has spent 25 years advising and advocating on behalf of military spouses and military-connected students. Sam is a trained Montessori guide who has worked in the Montessori world for over 25 years as a guide, trainer, mentor, parent, HOS, Regional Director, and most recently as the Director of School Launch for Higher Ground Education. She is currently doing lots of exciting work launching new projects to expand the reach of Montessori.

E22: Montessori Education for Military Families: A conversation with Telisha Thomas and Sam Sharp

Get an insider's look into an internal Higher Ground Education pedagogy meeting about surfacing major issues and questions in high school math, recorded for your listening! Our speakers are Dr. Matt Bateman, Violeta Kristof, Rivkah Schack, Laura Mazer, Joseph Perlman, and Steven Gaudino.

E02: Philosophy of High School Math: A conversation with Violeta Kristof, Rivkah Schack, Laura Mazer, Joseph Perlman, and Steven Gaudino

What is the relationship between parenting and education?

What are the proper goals of parenting? What are the proper goals of education? How do the two relate?

Is education an expression and extension of parenting, or an entirely different kind of function? If the latter, what type of function is it?

How, when, and to what extent do the custodial rights and responsibilities of parents impact the nature of the education offered to the child? How, when, and to what extent is it a proper function of the state to guide and/or intervene?

Is childcare a part of education? If so, in what ways do the responsibilities of childcare relate to the responsibilities of supporting development? If not, in what ways are the responsibilities of childcare distinct from the responsibilities of supporting development?

Is moral development a proper goal of education? If so, in what ways do schools provide for moral education separate and distinct from the guidance provided by parents? And what happens when there are clashes between the desires of parents and of educational institutions?

Education as a State Function vs. Education as Delegated Parenting

Since ancient times, the education of the young has generally been seen as the purview of the state. At least in the west, this is true whether we look at Plato and Aristotle, or whether we fast forward to modernity. Even the founding thinkers of America, otherwise so emphatic about limiting state involvement in personal matters, saw education as a proper function of government. (See, for example, Thomas Jefferson’s arguments for the establishment of the University of Virginia.) While there has been violent disagreement about the proper approach to and content of education, the idea that it is for state, society, or community to decide has largely been uncontested through human history.

What does this suggest regarding the role of the parent? Speaking historically, with respect to content at least, it simply reflects the fact that the question simply didn’t arise in any major way prior to the mid-twentieth century. Aside from the issue of religious propriety—i.e. whether and which religion is taught, and how content is presented consistently with such religion—there has over the centuries been little widespread awareness that parents may have some concern with the specific content and methods of education. There have not, for example, been contentious sweeping mainstream movements and debates in earlier centuries about how parents are best positioned to decide how their children should be taught math or grammar.

The first major cultural awareness that the interest of the parent may be different than the prevailing social interest came in the second half of the twentieth century. The rise of homeschooling in America, for example, was co-extensive with concerns about differences and dangers of world ideologies that clashed with particular beliefs of parents, as well as an increasing distrust of large federal systems as such.

Parental concern with the content and methods of education increased over the latter decades of the 20th century, in parallel with a general increased understanding of and elevation of the role of the parent in development as such. It wasn’t until the 1970s that “to parent” fully appeared in common language as a verb; until then, “parent” describes a state of being rather than something one proactively does.

Human beings have always been concerned with educators “corrupting the youth”. What is historically new is the circumstance of such concerns arising not as a social or communal or state critique of a particular school or method of schooling, but as parental concern about the practices of society or state

With the advent of homeschooling, of parental choice programs such as vouchers, and more generally of the increasingly proactive role of the parent, a fundamental latent question has emerged: is education at root delegated parenting—the customary but in principle 

 assignment of a specific aspect of raising children to professionals, the same way one would delegate one’s legal defense to an attorney and with the same kinds of professional expectations—or is education at root the means by which society ensures a citizenry that meets a certain national or social standard 

concern? Is education a species of parenting, or is it the means by which the state delimits the scope and impact of parental discretion?

Whatever the answer, one thing is certain: the question is increasingly arising, and modern times demand a robust cultural account.

What is the role of childcare in education? This is a very important practical question arising directly from a view of the relationship between parenting and education. And it is particularly important in light of COVID, which brought the issue of childcare of school-aged children to the foreground.

At the early childhood ages (infancy through preschool), there has been longstanding tension between the developmentalist approach to early education, and the daycare/babysitting function. With exceptions, daycare operators tend to focus on the needs of working parents first and the educational needs of children second, whereas educators and pedagogues—developmentally focused practitioners such as Montessori or Reggio or RIE—focus on the needs of the developing child primarily, and address child-care needs secondarily if at all. The former try as they can to adopt the veneer of being developmentalists, and the latter try as they can to explicitly reject any accommodation of the childcare function.

At the elementary level, the tension manifests differently. Primarily it arises as a stated denial or an avoidance of the fact that school provides a childcare function, paired with a quiet reliance on exactly that function. Few parents actively and explicitly express the childcare need as a criterion for their children’s schooling, and yet as COVID has shown us, 

parents do in fact need childcare and count on schools to provide it. 

Indeed, the overwhelming reaction to online schooling in large part reflects an unstated recognition that such programs do not solve the pressing childcare need.

Because there is a deep resistance to the idea that a critical function of schools is to provide childcare, there is a lack of open exploration of the relationship between education and childcare. There is little acknowledgment and respect of the centrality of the childcare need for families of elementary-aged children. Amongst other things, this prevents an otherwise natural unbundling (and potential rebundling) of the two functions in ways that could conceivably massively improve both.

Further, it could be argued that the pervasive and problematic divide between early childhood and K-12 education is itself a reflection of a particular view of the relationship between education and parenting. Starting school at 4-5 years old is an expression of the view that formal education begins where maturity allows a child to transcend a certain type of reliance on parenting. A whole host of practices flow from this basic distinction, including how many public resources are provided to support certain programs, massive differences in educator pay for those working in early years programs, differences in regulatory bodies governance and oversight, etc. If instead we thought of practical childcare needs as extending from birth to adolescent independence, and the same with intellectual development, it is unlikely we’d have the broad and sweeping global distinction between early education and elementary education.

As it is increasingly becoming apparent, there seems to be an irreconcilable clash between the right to free expression and the institution of public education. However one slices it, there does not seem to be any credible rationale to say that a person has freedom of thought and expression, and then to compel that individual to have his children study, practice, and demonstrably internalize ideas contrary to his or her views.

In the American context, the separation of church and state has been distinctly noted and defended, but little analysis has been done regarding whether the same inherently ought to be true of education and state. In fact, it seems that any argument against mandating saying prayer at public school ought to apply equally to all intellectual content. If a parent has some discretion over what religious practices his child is exposed to at school, then on what basis does he not have the same discretion regarding the carb-centric food pyramid.

In the west, there are generally limitations on the state’s role in legislating truth. Certain things, e.g. religion, are seen as private and not the function of policy. Other things are seen as properly a matter of vote. Where does educational content and programming fit?

What is the relationship between parenting and education? What are the proper goals of parenting? What are the proper goals of education? How do the two relate? Is education an expression and extension of parenting, or an entirely different kind of function? If the latter, what type of function is it?

Higher Ground Education CEO Ray Girn explores these questions and more, in this capstone essay for the Montessorium Initiative, The Parent in Education.





Lea Degen

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