Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education

Dewey continues to trace the development of dualism between the humanities and the scientific (naturalistic) disciplines in education. He argues that this dualism is rooted in the “philosophic dualism between man and nature” (222). In the educational setting, humanities are accompanied with a reduction to “the literary records of the past” (222). However, this type of dualism is not characteristic of ancient Greece. Dewey suggests that it is linked to “the political or ecclesiastic conditions” of Rome and post-Roman Europe stressing the authority of literary documents and their borrowing of Greek culture in this way (222). Modern science after the 17th century was meant to restore the links between humans and the physical world but did not sufficiently impact education in this way. This chapter comprises three sections.

1. The Historic Background of Humanistic Study

Dewey highlights additional aspects of ancient Greek thought relevant to dualist concepts in the Western intellectual tradition. For example, Socrates believed that the “science of nature was not attainable and not very important” (212). He focused on identifying the nature of humanity instead. Plato, in contrast, linked the knowledge of nature with understanding human society.