The John Dewey Society 2016 D&E Centennial

The John Dewey Society will be celebrating the Centennial of the publication of John Dewey’s magisterial Democracy and Education in Washington DC on April 7 and 8, 2016. Please plan to participate in this historic celebration. Take out your calendars and mark these dates: April 7 and 8, 2016.

The Centennial Conference will take place the historic Thurgood Marshall Center - where Thurgood Marshall and his NAACP colleagues developed the legal strategies for victory over school segregation in Brown v. Board. The center is located at: 1816 12th St NW, Washington, DC 20009

We want everyone interested in democratic education to participate. The meeting will be free and open to the public, and will take place immediately prior to the annual meeting of the John Dewey Society and the American Educational Research Association. 

But space is limited: reserve your spot today! (See below for how to reserve your spot!)

Why Celebrate the Centennial of Democracy and Education?

Democracy and Education is the most important book on education in the twentieth century, and is the bible of democratic education worldwide. Democracy and Education is cited more frequently each year that all other classics of American educational studies - those by G. Stanley Hall, Alfred Binet, Edward Thorndike and others - combined!

Democracy and Education has been translated into every major world language and has inspired innovations and experiments in democratic education - in public schools and private experimental schools - in the United States and throughout the world - for one hundred years. Democracy and Education is more relevant today than ever. We need to come together to celebrate its centennial, and to renew our commitment to democratic education. Please join us!

Democracy and Education Today

Despite the efforts of thousands of dedicated educators and parents, schools in the United States today are still suffering under the domination of top-down standardized education: compulsory curriculum standards, pre-determined learning objectives, and high stakes standardized tests. This standardization regime is sold as ‘preparing all learners for the global economy’. In fact, it merely traps young people in a rat race for high test scores and endless competition for slots in competitive colleges. Children from elite families win; the rest struggle to survive.

The standardization regime compels teachers to abandon their hard-won practical knowledge, ignore the strengths of individual learners, and teach for the tests; It compels learners to give up their own passions and goals to conform to a system where their own interests and aims count for nothing. Instead of ‘no child left behind,’ this regime should be called ‘no child left alive,’ as it has a deadening effect hostile to individual passions and group aspirations. Instead of moving ahead - growing - young people are all too often trapped in isolation, boredom, frustration, and rigged competition. 

The message of Democracy and Education - its challenge to the standardization regime - needs to be re-stated, critically digested, re-interpreted for today’s educational situation, and disseminated for today’s teachers, parents and young people. 

It’s core message is clear: 

• that education of young people is not preparation for adult life but life itself,
• that the only aims worth pursuing in education are the aims of the learners themselves, as individuals and as members of groups,
• that teaching consists primarily in structuring learning environments that engage learners in pursuing their aims - alone or in cooperative groups, 
• that school lessons, however necessary to convey abstract and general relations, are a peripheral, and often dangerously overused component of schooling,
• that democracy is built through cooperation and communication across racial, ethnic, gender, class, religious, political and philosophical differences as learners work together to achieve practical aims. 

Why Participate in the Centennial Event?

Through presentations and workshops, the Democracy and Education Centennial in Washington on April 7-8 2016 will offer you a chance to renew your appreciation of this great work, to exchange ideas with other educators, to think through its message for today, and to renew your commitment to democratic education. 

How to Participate?

The conference will feature invited presentations by leading scholars and democratic educators. The program committee will soon be finalizing its selection of invited speakers and workshop presenters, and you will hear exciting information about them in the months ahead. Meanwhile, all of your suggestions are welcome. 

Please mark your calendar and join us in Washington on April 7-8, 2016.

To reserve a spot, simply send an email to Kyle Greenwalt, JDS Secretary-Treasurer, at greenwlt@msu.edu and put the term ‘reserve’ (without the quotes) in the subject line. 

You can reserve for yourself and a colleague in one email by providing the name and email address of yourself and your colleague. But if you want to assure more reservations, please promote the meeting to others and make sure that they send emails to reserve their spaces. Requesting a space indicates that you have placed the centennial event on your calendar and plan to attend. We want to assure a lively and enthusiastic participation, but space is limited.

"I'm not villainous or morally deformed; therefore, I cannot be a racist."

Jemal Countess/WireImage.com

"I am trying to imagine a white president forced to show his papers at a national news conference, and coming up blank. I am trying to a imagine a prominent white Harvard professor arrested for breaking into his own home, and coming up with nothing. I am trying to see Sean Penn or Nicolas Cage being frisked at an upscale deli, and I find myself laughing in the dark. It is worth considering the messaging here. It says to black kids: “Don’t leave home. They don’t want you around.” It is messaging propagated by moral people."







Ta-Nehisi Coates, in his opinion-editorial "The Good, Racist People," examines the present-day reality and pervasiveness of racism in U.S. democratic society. Many of our socially and economically privileged, primarily white students often perceive racism as something that is only performed by evil-doers and, as such, they could not be racist. To be associated with an ideology that modern America, according to Coates, has labeled as that of "trolls, gorgons and orcs" often conflates to our privileged students' complete denial of association. To be implicated in a system, which according to U.S. law, ended with slavery and has only progressively got better with the proceeding desegregation of schools and election of President Barack Obama is "insane."

Reading Coates' editorial may be uncomfortable for many of us, especially those of us who are socially, economically, and historically privileged. The reality of what Coates discusses is not something we want to believe and/or fully except as true. I think, though, this is what makes Coates' article an excellent addition for any classroom that wants to incorporate social justice issues that are occurring within U.S. society. It offers an opportunity for us as teachers to start a conversation with our students about racism in the U.S.--historically, presently, and systematically. The piece also opens the door for group conversations, journal reflections, or both, for privileged, white students about how seemingly "good" intentions potentially prevent one from analyzing their own internal biases. And finally, utilizing publicly-relevant, current news offers an opportunity for us as teachers to engage our students with the everyday and, in turn, open up doors for them to develop their own new and creative ways for working against socially-unjust and systemically-rooted everyday practices.
 

Making the Grade: Self-Worth, Status, and Mini-Vans

What comes to mind when you think of grades or GPA? As someone who only finished the GPA stage of her education journey a couple of years ago, I find myself immensely relieved that I no longer have to spend numerous hours worrying about whether or not I make the grade. I would also be remiss if I did not, at least on some level, acknowledge that I do miss the bursts of motivation, all-nighter writing sessions and so on, that accompanied my desire to make the grade. My ambition, though, for wanting to make the grade may be different than my friends, neighbors, or fellow colleagues. The question follows then, what do grades symbolize? Why do certain students find their entire self-worth/intelligence defined by the letters or numerical averages on a piece of paper? Who cares more about grades/test scores? Is merit distributed equitably for all students with high GPAs?

USA Today's Mary Beth Marklein draws attention to the fact that many U.S. universities and colleges are no longer looking at GPAs for admission. Parents, however, find the GPA to be an important marker of their child's intelligence. GPA/honor-student status is also a designator of elevated social class--bumper stickers for parents' mini-vans/sedans and flair for moms' purses or rear-view mirrors.

Prior to learning the statuses associated with high GPA, I would argue particularly those of class and whiteness, would grades have any meaning to students? The importance of GPA is learned and, for this reason, we should always be cautious of how a constructed concept may influence people/students of different social, economic, and historical locations.  

Is merit distributed equitably for all students with high GPAs? Differences in a school's geographical location (i.e., inner-city, rural, or suburb), social location (i.e., public or private), and historical location (i.e., the school's federal report card or accreditation). Schools' variations influence students' merit when they get to the college's admissions board, but what about prior to that? When students from lower-socioeconomic positions achieve higher GPAs, are they granted the same level of merit as students from higher-socioeconomic positions? Even if they are, I would argue that a student from a lower-socioeconomic position might correlate self-worth/intelligence more strongly with GPA than a student from the opposite end of the socioeconomic spectrum. Why? Because in addition to the countless images of college success stories in the media, their parents most probably equated academic achievement with elevated social and economic status--that is, a way to make money, to help the family, to do better than "we" did. At least that was how it was for me--a first-generation college student.

What are universities and colleges doing to address how merit is distributed during admissions? According to USA today, one method used is recalculating students' GPAs according to the challenging nature of the courses students have taken. Well, I'd be curious to know how each schools' geographical, social, historical location and possibly the number of mini-vans influence that scale.