Thinking About Love, Justice, and Education Through John Dewey and Others on Similar Pathways: Toward Social and Educational Improvement Through Eros, Love, and Reverence

• In Event: Separation of School and (Corporate) State? Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Love, Justice, and Education

Abstract

While Schubert (2009) expanded on Dewey’s perception of loving relationships as an antidote to acquisitive society and considered it as a necessary and neglected basis for education that is just, the paths that Dewey travelled in such diverse places as China, Japan, Russia, Turkey, Mexico, and throughout Europe were walked by others who transacted with Dewey. Who captured the attention of Dewey on his travels and enriched his perspective? Moreover, what pathways have forked and proliferated after Dewey passed away? Since Dewey’s death, who have continued to develop the spirit of his educational work? Some would say that Paulo Freire, Maria Montesorri, Myles Horton, Daisaku Ikeda, Parker Palmer, and others have carried the torch of curricular experience seeded in eros (Garrison, 1997), love (Liston & Garrison, 2007), and reverence (Rud & Garrison, 2012). An array of possibilities will be explored to extend the spirit of Dewey. Jim Garrison will amplify his own work derived in part from Dewey in the concept of eros, love vis-à-vis myriad transactions of teaching, and diverse images of reverence as together they expand and extend possibilities for education that embraces love to reach toward justice in efforts to overcome acquisitive dimensions of society. The gatherings of Utopians that Dewey (1933) imagined can be expanded in multiple ways (Schubert, 2009a), and were arguably informal associations that evolved without funding by and allegiance to the corporate state. Thus, we can and should ask if places and moments of eros as wisdom and desire (Garrison, 1997), loving and caring (Liston & Rudd, 2007), and reverence (Rudd & Garrison, 2012) best occur under the auspices of the corporate state or apart from it.

Author

• Jim Garrison, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University