Value-Creating Education and the Dewey-Soka Heritage in the Context of the Trump Phenomenon: Remembering and Re-Envisioning Democratic Becoming

• In Event: Moving Toward Educational Policy that We Would Like to See

Abstract

This paper considers the relevance and direction of value-creating education and the Dewey-Soka heritage in the context of the Trump phenomenon. Contextualized in Donald Trump’s influence on increased instances of racist and xenophobic harassment and intimidation across the country and in Richard Rorty’s perspective of the two types of the Left (“agents” and “spectators”), this paper remembers Walt Whitman’s and John Dewey’s approach to democratic engagement, re-envisioning it in light of Daisaku Ikeda’s educational philosophy. Taken together, these thinkers’ philosophies co-specify each other and illuminate the possibilities of truly human education through value creation and value-creating education. Together, the philosophies of Whitman, Dewey, and Ikeda provide an East-West means to enact education of personal improvement, democratic engagement, deep dialogue across difference, and the type of human becoming the current moment demands.

Author

• Jason Goulah, DePaul University