Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education

In this chapter, Dewey continues to examine pedagogical theories such as retrospective (focused on the past) and prospective (focused on the future) education. In this context, Dewey examines the work of the German thinker Johann Friedrich Herbart who was the originator of pedagogy as a field of inquiry. Ultimately, Dewey proposes a concept of education as the “continuous reconstruction of experience, an idea which is marked off from education as preparation for a remote future, as unfolding, as external formation, and as recapitulation of the past” (61). This chapter comprises three sections.

1. Education as Formation

The theory of education as formation “denies the existence of faculties and emphasizes the unique role of subject matter in the development of mental and moral disposition” (53). In this way, it stands in contrast to the previously discussed variant of education as training centered around the faculties. This theory suggests that education is the “formation of the mind” which establishes links between content. Herbart was a historical representative of this approach because he did not believe that innate faculties existed. Instead, he thought that the mind could generate different qualities as reactions to the external world.