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Education is the foundation of society; it allows one generation to impart their knowledge and wisdom to the next. Without a proper education, our children will struggle and find it impossible to achieve satisfaction in life. It is no wonder that education policy brings up such high levels of anxiety.

Although anxiety is understandable, it often leads to damaging behavior. Recently, concerned parents have been spreading a quote they are attributing to John Dewey, a famous psychologist and proponent of public education: “The children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society.”

The quote suggests that all fears regarding possible indoctrination of youth by public schools is part of the very origins of public education. However, the quote is false, and Dewey was a major proponent of the exact opposite: he believed that schools must allow all children to develop the ability to think for themselves.

Around the turn of the century, Dewey wrote “The Schools of To-Morrow” to explain why schools should focus on educating children to become future citizens, which requires all children to be given the information necessary to play an active role in society.

To Dewey, indoctrination only benefited dictators: “The conventional type of education which trains children to docility and obedience, to the careful performance of imposed tasks because they are imposed, regardless of where they lead, is suited to an autocratic society. These are the traits needed in a state where there is one head to plan and care for the lives and institutions of the people.”

Democracy requires something more, a citizen who is independent and competent: “But in a democracy they interfere with the successful conduct of society and government. Our famous, brief definition of a democracy, as ‘government of the people, for the people and by the people,’ gives perhaps the best clue to what is involved in a democratic society.”

The “convention type of education” to which Dewey responds is one based on rote memorization and authoritative claims. He believed that we must abandon our focus on memorization and instead encourage critical thinking skills. Teaching someone that two plus two equals four because “it just is” does not actually teach a child math. Instead, a teacher must explain how addition is the combinations of different numbers and allow the students to apply the patterns they learn.

Without these critical thinking skills, citizens cannot properly judge societal and political situations, which is their primary duty: “Responsibility for the conduct of society and government rests on every member of society. Therefore, every one must receive a training that will enable him to meet this responsibility, giving him just ideas of the condition and needs of the people collectively, and developing those qualities which will insure his doing a fair share of the work of government.”

He continued, “If we train our children to take orders, to do things simply because they are told to, and fail to give them confidence to act and think for themselves, we are putting an almost insurmountable obstacle in the way of overcoming the present defects of our system and of establishing the truth of democratic ideals.”

In a democratic system, all people must be given a proper understanding of history, society, and life in general because all people participate. During Dewey’s time, education was divided into the classical, philosophical model and the vocational model. He believed that a citizen must have knowledge of both sides to understand each aspect of society.

While a classical, philosophical education might help some, it leaves them without a complete understanding: “There is no doubt that the text-book method of education is well suited to that small group of children who by environment are placed above the necessity of engaging in practical life and who are at the same time interested in abstract ideas. But even for this type of person the system leaves great gaps in his grasp of knowledge; it gives no place to the part that action plays in the development of intelligence, and it trains along the lines of the natural inclinations of the student and does not develop the practical qualities which are usually weak in the abstract person.”

At the same time, rote memorization might help the working class children gain the skills to perform physical labor, but it does little to prepare them for life as a whole: “For the great majority whose interests are not abstract, and who have to pass their lives in some practical occupation, usually in actually working with their hands, a method of education is necessary which bridges the gap between the purely intellectual and theoretical sides of life and their own occupations.”

Instead including positive aspects from both sides, education was transformed into memorizing facts and STEM training, with the simple ability to repeat things without understanding replacing knowledge. As technology rapidly increased, schools were no longer able to fully teach kids how to memorize everything: “The [change in the very fundamentals of society] possibly most significant from the point of view of education is the incredible increase in the number of facts that must be part of the mental furniture of any one who meets even the ordinary situations of life successfully. They are so many that any attempt to teach them all from text-books in school hours would be simply ridiculous.”

He continued, “But the schools, instead of facing this frankly and then changing their curriculum so that they could teach pupils how to learn from the world itself, have gone on bravely teaching as many facts as possible. The changes made have been in the way of inventing schemes that would increase the consumption of facts.”

To the contrary, Dewey believed that schools must focus primarily on developing citizens who are able to act independently: “If schools are to recognize the needs of all classes of pupils, and give pupils a training that will insure their becoming successful and valuable citizens, they must give work that will not only make the pupils strong physically and morally and give them the right attitude towards the state and their neighbors, but that will as well give them enough control over their material environment to enable them to be economically independent.”

By not teaching children how to be independent, you create two classes of students who both lack a complete understanding of society: “The academic education turns out future citizens with no sympathy for work done with the hands, and with absolutely no training for understanding the most serious of present-day social and political difficulties. The trade training will turn out future workers who may have greater immediate skill… but who have no enlargement of mind, no insight into the scientific and social significance of the work they do”.

Teachers, in Dewey’s philosophy, are not authority figures but guides. They are to help students in their natural development, not control it to push a uniform ideology. Additionally, teachers must focus on real life applications and natural uses of knowledge, which would allow students to properly contextualize the concepts they are taught.

Although classical education pushed for this higher independence, it left the students with no understanding of practical matters, and it was unsuitable for those who were seeking a job. The other extreme, education only for practical matters, had worse ramifications.

As educational expenditures and teacher pay rapidly increased, demands for accountability and schools to produce a result also rose. Parents believed that education should help their children attain a return on their investment, and teachers believed in expanding their pay and job security. More pay led to demands for more accountability, and more accountability led to more demands for more pay. Schools became a business, teachers workers, and education a utilitarian mechanism for producing laborers. Unions treating educators like hard laborers reveals this misunderstanding of what education actually is, and too many teachers lack the ability to guide the development of a citizen.

Although Dewey was a pragmatist, he was not a utilitarian, and he believed that all citizens had a higher obligation than just serving society. They are to be informed masters, not ignorant servants, of society. Standards that ensure critical thinking skills are good, and those who are taught actual skills do not have to be “taught to the test.” But teachers spend more time on promoting memorization and their own desire to influence the ideology of the students than vital ideas.

Teachers and parents alike must adopt Dewey’s goal for education. Instead, both sides treat children as mere numbers that are part of a grand job system. There is far too much money involved and far too little actual education.

This essay was originally published as Molding the Independent Citizen on September 8, 2016.