Democratic education, social involvment and freedom of learners in Dewey’thought. A retrospective analysis
Fausto Finazzi
This paper intends to bring to light some aspects related to the connection between education and a democratically organized society in Dewey’s thought. More specifically it intends to throw light on the conditions that, in the author’s view, are at the basis of an authentically democratic society, on the importance of widening democratic methods from political institutions to all associative forms of human aggregation, the concept of intelligence in the community, the damages caused by the lack of democracy in the school system. The process of democratization must also involve users of school education, the students, in the first instance by means of an intervention in educational methods which allows them to achieve mind release by getting over the traditional model based on passive transmission of knowledge, and secondly by giving them the intellectual tools considered useful to improve the current social organization. The course towards learner’s release must nevertheless go through a new concept of experience and the acknowledgement of the role carried out by action as a function of learning.
Keywords
John Dewey, Democratic education, School democracy, Experiential education, Progressive education.
