progressivism, individualism, and the public ... - Telmarc Group

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PROGRESSIVISM, INDIVIDUALISM, AND THE PUBLIC
INTELLECTUAL
second…that classical Greece had achieved more in philosophy that its social
practice…the so called Dark Ages were really dark ages in Dewey's eyes…" 76
Dewey is frankly and uneducated person when it comes to the Dark Ages, a name applied
by the Renaissance intellectuals to set themselves above those who preceded them.
Dewey saw the Dark Ages lasting until Descartes. The Dark Ages, which for Dewey
must last till the mid 1600s, would encompass 1200 or more years! During that time he
contends nothing happened. To anyone competent to the slightest in the field would see
that a great deal happened. He rejects all the science, medicine, art, philosophy, that were
necessary steps to get to Descartes. He uses this merely as one of his anti Catholic
diatribes.
Is this anti-Catholic position, yes one may call it hatred, explainable? It does not seem so
from the literature. Where Catholics demanded individual responsibility, the concept of
sin and the person, Dewey saw the collective and society. Sin for Dewey was not
participating in his "society" and that was never acceptable. In a strange way he was
trying to create a parallel universe to the Catholic Church. His validating platform was
the collection of anti-Catholics at Columbia who in many ways reinforced this attitude.
4.3.4 Progressive Education
Dewey spent a great deal of his time considering the educational process, even though he
never spent any time actually doing this. Strange to have a man tell other people how to
do their jobs especially when at best he dabbled in doing it in Chicago with his
experimental school. In contrast while at Columbia he was isolated from the Teacher's
College despite the fact that later many thought the Teacher's College was tainted by
Dewey.
As Pestritto and Atto state:
"Dewey's philosophy of education made explicit what was essentially an article of faith
among progressives: state control and regulation of numerous aspects of public life would
be required to bring about the improvements the progressives sought…Dewey's view of
the purpose of education was purely democratic - education served to integrate the pupil
into the larger community that was itself characterized by the universality of its
experience." 77
They then continue to detail some of Dewey's ideas of education in his well know work,
"Pedagogic Creed", which states:
76 Ryan p. 339.
77 See Pestritto and Atto, p. 13.
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