Bill Janus
History
Western Montana College-UM
As a collection of sixteen essays that champion and apply the pedagogical and pragmatic theories of John Dewey to the university, Education and Democracy has problems. Although the goal of the essays was not trivial--to outline methods and strategies that universities could employ to improve the quality and effectiveness of traditional Liberal Arts education--very poor writing by some contributors simply crippled this endeavor.
We may trace this problem to the fact that all the revised essays were originally presented at a Rollins College colloquy on college curriculum in 1997. Perhaps this editorial challenge caused some texts to be awkward and therefore to lack an integrated comprehensiveness. In other words, the authors wrote their essays for a live audience, and they did not intend them for inclusion within a book. Or perhaps the decision to collect this many essays into a single text required each to have brevity that ultimately hurt the entire book.
The authors are leading figures in higher education: five college presidents or high ranking college administrators, six professors of higher education, and seven professors from the humanities, or social or physical sciences. They all argued that the adoption of Dewey's pragmatic theories would benefit Liberal Arts training in many ways. These philosophies would put controversies over the legitimacy of core curriculums to rest because Dewey offered a compromise that all interested parties could accept. Dewey's pedagogical insights could expose students to a diverse and multicultural centered education and help pupils master traditional foundational knowledge underpinning Western Civilization. Furthermore and most important, the authors believed Dewey's theories would drastically improve the effectiveness of higher education because it would acquire a pragmatic element that would supplement its already existing scholarly rigor.
A Liberal Arts education traditionally makes a person "well rounded." A Liberal Arts education is demanding, eclectic, and esoteric, teaching individuals how to think critically, giving them broad skills and knowledge that will make them principled and model citizens, intellectually independent and curious. This definition, however, does not necessarily include a practical element--getting vocational training, experience, and expertise that endow a person with specific "hands-on" and "real-life" skills that will have tangible and direct results and realities. In fact we may argue that a Liberal Arts education excludes such training outright.
These mutually exclusive notions are the demarcation line dividing academics in numerous ways. Some want academe to remain scholastically rigorous, and they see any practical training as lessening this stringency. Specialization risks graduating parochial, non-critical thinkers, and it robs students of a chance to appreciate a variety of academic disciplines. Such critics also believe practical experience, which can only be gained beyond the university's auspices, would infringe upon academic freedom, and ultimately it could make the university an anachronism. Others, however, view the absence of practical hands-on training in academe as the reason students seem poorly educated when they graduate. It is a pedagogical failure because learning by doing is one of the most effective teaching method universities can employ. Such theorists also believe that a practical university component increases the chance of students to gain social and economic security once they graduate, and this is a responsibility that universities have to their students.
Dewey's pragmatic theories allegedly can resolve these differences between what we may call the "traditionalist" and the "pragmatist." Because knowledge is derived from experience, the diversity of experience thus yields a diversity of beliefs and a tolerance for alternate perceptions (73). Such an affirmation of common sense guarantees administrators, faculty, and students will recognize the value and need to master traditional curricular canons (Western Civilization surveys, courses on Shakespeare, etc.), and it also affirms that they will see the urgency to supplement such an education with multicultural studies and practical experience. The entire university community will become more pragmatic, less dogmatic and political, and all parties will only want to do the right thing--improve education.
Can Dewey's pragmatic philosophy lead to a Liberal Arts panacea where students are well rounded, critical free thinkers, and successful moneymakers with practical skills? This lionizing of Dewey smacked of a surprising naïveté. No author seriously considered the lack of critical free thinking one finds in an internship program. The argument that experiences in "civilian life" maximized critical free thinking because students were exposed to a multitude of opinions, problems and philosophies seems patently false (164, 165). Mathematically, internship training does expose students to a wider range of mentors than in a university (one can only have so many professors), but does this statistical advantage guarantee a better Liberal Arts education? Are we to believe that an internship at GM will expose a student to a variety of opinions and that the student will have the opportunity to be open minded? Furthermore, are internship mentors at GM evaluated, certified, and examined periodically for their pedagogical competency? I would answer with a resounding no to both counts.
Dewey's model of a pragmatic Liberal Arts education was even touted as a means of strengthening U.S. democracy because it would produce legions of educated, critical, civically minded, tolerant, and moral graduates (201-203). Is this not asking too much of universities? Are universities now to save the union on top of providing remedial training, maintaining scholarly rigor, guaranteeing economic and social security for graduates, and countering deeply ingrained cultural anti-intellectualism? In fact, is not America's cultural anti-intellectualism really at the heart of the university crisis? Too many persons hold "pointy-headed intellectuals" in contempt in the United States, and it helps explain why public support of universities, student aid, and scholarly grants continue to decline. Internship programs will only exacerbate such disdain for an eclectic and esoteric Liberal Arts education. James Kloppenberg anticipated such a criticism when he stated that it was unfair to caricature "pragmatism as a philosophy of commercialism and crass utilitarianism" because Dewey never intended that "shrewd student consumers...drive admission offices and student affairs bureaucracies to lobby for pouring money into ever grander athletic facilities that rival the most elegant health clubs" (95). I am sure he did not, but theory rarely corresponds to reality, and Kloppenberg should have recognized that.
In the end, this text suffered because not one author seriously considered the strong probability that Dewey's pragmatic Liberal Arts education model can be corrupted. I do believe that a practical component to a traditional Liberal Arts program can improve the effectiveness of higher education. Nevertheless, pragmatism can never be apolitical, and so the professoriate should be very wary when surrendering any of its missions to outside bodies dressed in sheep's clothing. Such relinquishing of responsibility can lead universities down a "slippery-slope." Politicians, the public, and most importantly students, may increasingly see the professoriate as anachronistic fossils from the past; fossils that efficient, practical, focused, and profitable technocrats must replace.