Truth and Value in Democratic Education

• In Event: Difference, Social Engagement, and Responsibility: Perspectives From the Dewey-Soka Heritage

Abstract

This presentation considers John Dewey’s and Tsunesaburo Makiguchi’s theories of knowledge. Both thinkers conceive knowledge as social and engaged. We come to know the world, they argue, neither by passively receiving information through our senses—what Dewey calls the spectator theory of knowledge—nor through contemplative introspection or by means of some special faculty of reason. Rather, knowledge involves experimental inquiry. We intervene in the world; we do something. Then we see what happens; we undergo the consequences of what we do. And crucially for science and democracy, we communicate with others about what we discover.
Both Makiguchi and Dewey understood learning in schools as opportunities for students to engage with problematic situations directly, construct knowledge, make meaning from such engagements, and create value together with peers. The authors argue that the conceptions of knowledge proposed by Makiguchi and Dewey fit well with democratic values. The pursuit of knowledge becomes an activity of shared inquiry, involving collaboration, argument, engagement with evidence, and exercise of judgment. By contrast, the conceptions of knowledge implicit in the standardization and accountability movement prize authority and emphasize certainty to the extent that students come to assume that, at least in the context of formal education, every question has a right answer, and figures of authority know what the right answers are. The pernicious consequences of such certainty-and-authority-centered theories of knowledge are well known, and compelling alternatives badly needed. This chapter argues for Makiguchean and Deweyan conceptions of knowledge as significant for a democratic response to the current state of affairs in education.

Authors

• Gonzalo Obelleiro, DePaul University

• Michio Okamura, DePaul University