Universidad Católica de Santa Fe - Facultad de Filosofía

Profesorado / Ciclo de Licenciatura

Examen Final de Idioma Moderno I

Alumno: …………………………………………….
Compare and contrast Plato’s and Dewey’s standpoints as regards education.

Philosophy of Education
Plato's educational scheme was guided, presumably, by the understanding he thought he had achieved of the transcendental
realm of fixed “forms”. Dewey, ever a strong critic of positions that were not naturalistic or that incorporated a priori premises,
commented as follows:
Plato's starting point is that the organization of society depends ultimately upon knowledge of the end of existence. If we do not
know its end, we shall be at the mercy of accident and caprice…. And only those who have rightly trained minds will be able to
recognize the end, and ordering principle of things. (Dewey 1916, 102–3)

Furthermore, as Dewey again put it, Plato “had no perception of the uniqueness of individuals…. they fall by nature into classes”,
which masks the “infinite diversity of active tendencies” which individuals harbor (104). In addition, Plato tended to talk of learning
using the passive language of seeing, which has shaped our discourse down to the present.
In contrast, for Dewey each individual was an organism situated in a biological and social environment in which problems were
constantly emerging, forcing the individual to reflect, act, and learn. Dewey, following William James, held that knowledge arises
from reflection upon our actions and that the worth of a putative item of knowledge is directly correlated with the problem-solving
success of the actions performed under its guidance. Thus Dewey, sharply disagreeing with Plato, regarded knowing as an active
rather than a passive affair—a strong theme in his writings is his opposition to what is sometimes called “the spectator theory of
knowledge”. All this is made clear enough in a passage containing only a thinly-veiled allusion to Plato's famous allegory of the
prisoners in the cave whose eyes are turned to the light by education:
In schools, those under instruction are too customarily looked upon as acquiring knowledge as theoretical spectators, minds which
appropriate knowledge by direct energy of intellect. The very word pupil has almost come to mean one who is engaged not in
having fruitful experiences but in absorbing knowledge directly. Something which is called mind or consciousness is severed from
the physical organs of activity. (164)

It is easy to see here the tight link between Dewey's epistemology and his views on education—his anti-spectator epistemology
morphs directly into advocacy for anti-spectator learning by students in school—students learn by being active inquirers. Over the
past few decades this view of learning has inspired a major tradition of research by educational psychologists, and related theory-
development (the “situated cognition” framework); and these bodies of work have in turn led to innovative efforts in curriculum
development. (Phillips 2003.)
The final important difference with Plato is that, for Dewey, each student is an individual who blazes his or her unique trail of
growth; the teacher has the task of guiding and facilitating this growth, without imposing a fixed end upon the process. Dewey
sometimes uses the term “curriculum” to mean “the funded wisdom of the human race”, the point being that over the course of
human history an enormous stock of knowledge and skills has accumulated and the teacher has the task of helping the student to
make contact with this repertoire—but helping by facilitating rather than by imposing. (All this, of course, has been the subject of
intense discussion among philosophers of education: Does growth imply a direction? Is growth always good—can't a plant end up
misshapen, and can't a child develop to become bad? Is Dewey some type of perfectionist? Is his philosophy too vague to offer
worthwhile educational guidance? Isn't it possible for a “Deweyan” student to end up without enough relevant knowledge and skills
to be able to make a living in the modern world?)
Dewey's work was of central importance for the American progressive education movement in its formative years, although there
was a fair degree of misunderstanding of his ideas as progressives interpreted his often extremely dense prose to be saying what
they personally happened to believe. Nevertheless, for better or worse, Dewey became the “poster child” of progressive education.