After Dewey’s death on June 1st, 1952, his reputation went into a rapid eclipse. His views on philosophy was seen as wooly and outmoded by the emergent orthodoxy of analytic philosophy. At the same time, his educational writings became the butt of criticism from those inclined to blame him for all the difficulties encountered by post-war ‘progressive’ education. More generally, his social and political thought came under fire from all directions. It was viewed by ‘realists’ such as Reinhold Niebuhr as blindly optimistic in the hopes that it vested in democratic participation, and by critics from both right and left as offering nothing more than an empty and perhaps ominous espousal of ‘scientific method.’ The basic contribution of these scholars who mounted various kinds of attacks against Dewey that is of interest to this dissertation are the demerits to his educational theory which they underscored. This section will briefly highlight some of these demerits. In the previous chapters, this work observed that Dewey in an attempt to point out his views on education split the concept into
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formal and informal education. By informal education, he meant the type of education that goes on intentionally in a society and through which a society propagates itself.
For him, it is an informal process of transmitting societal conventions more to the younger generation. Formal education on the other hand is a formal and systematic way of transmitting knowledge, skills and values to individuals for the sole purpose of solving societal problems.
From the foregoing, it is clear that Dewey in writing about education does not consider the universal characteristic that should define education insofar as it is education, irrespective of place and time. This is the first loophole in his philosophy of education. His concept of formal and informal education makes the concept of education relative and subjective. The implication of this is, since education is problem oriented and problem varies from society to society, one who is considered educated for instance may not be considered educated on the Germany since these are two different environments facing two different categories of problems. If this is allowed it will make and mess and destroy the foundation of what we know today as science. This is so because science operates with universal laws that are not restricted to any particular environment.
The second shortcoming of Dewey’s pragmatic education is that he was not able to account for the place of the uneducated thereby making everyone educated. This particular demerit is informed by Dewey’s obsessive association of education with problem solving. Now, if education is about problem solving and every human being as Dewey elaborates has an inherent creative ability to solve problem, it then implies that every human being is educated since every human being can solve at least one problem. While this is good on a pragmatic and superficial level, it becomes
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problematic when probed with a penetrative assessment. For instance, it makes it difficult to distinguish between one who is educated and another who is not educated.
In other words, this is a demerit to Dewey’s theory because it blurs even if it is a thin line that separates the educated and the uneducated and which to some extent has been the force driving interest in education. To ignore the distinction between the educated and the uneducated in an environment like society would amount to deglamorizing education among a youthful population that is already looking for reasons to leave school in pursuit of money. The third shortcoming of Dewey’s educational theory is his overemphasis on the importance of experience in learning without a corresponding emphasis memorization of the ideas. What Dewey ignores here is that this attracts the risks of rendering pupils to mere machines.
The objection here is that those who know only how to act without being able to explain orally why or what they are doing and how they act, are only operating like a machine which when programmed can perform these duties more perfectly than a human being. In other words, an integral education should not overemphasize one aspect of the human faculties at the expense of the other but should harmonize the two for maximum result. Dewey’s kind of education that only focuses on problem solving rather than on theories limits abstractive channels of knowing from epistemological ground and this is very dangerous as it risks the degradation of human beings.. The fourth shortcoming of Dewey’s pragmatic education concerns his doctrine on punishment. The goal of education, according to Dewey is centered on utilitarian value by which an individual is made happy8. This happiness is extended to the whole society in which one lives and finds strength. He is called at the same time to contribute generously to the well-being of his society by promoting its social and
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cultural values. For Dewey, the process of education finds its origin and purpose in the child. The child is immature to be nurtured based on his natural interest. The teacher uses the child’s natural desires to teach. This encourages the child to become very active in class. From this background, he refutes the idea of physical punishment to correct, or stimulate the child.
This is because corporal punishment will frustrate the child and finally demoralize his/her interest. Furthermore, with the promotion of the universal human right the rejection of corporal punishment suggested by Dewey has been embraced by many governments. Infect, it has been abolished in many schools since it is against the children right of not being tortured. This also restricts teachers who abuse it by punishing the children with undue course like anger, resentment and revenge.
However, if we look at it as a corrective measure to the doers for their good, then, it is always medicinal for better future of the child.
In the same line, there are other corrective measures to replace physical punishment.
The danger is likely to arise by the fact that refusal of the physical punishment brings total freedom, which can be abused if not restricted. It has been said that Dewey’s philosophy of education renders the child active rather than passive9. In concluding this section, it is important to note that any educationist who wants to maximize the advantages of Dewey’s educational theory must take note of these shortcomings so as to develop or build up countermeasures to overcome them. This is exactly what this dissertation has done. In the next section, the dissertation will discuss the conclusion of Dewey’s theory of education which in a way includes how the discussed above can be recommended.
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