Studies in Educational Policy and Educational Philosophy

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The Reception of John Dewey in the Context of

Contemporary Educational Reform — A German-
1
American Comparison

Johannes Bellmann

To cite this article: Johannes Bellmann (2006) The Reception of John Dewey in the
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Context of Contemporary Educational Reform — A German-American Comparison ,
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 1

_____________________________________________________________

Studies in Educational Policy and Educational Philosophy

E-tidskrift 2006:1
_____________________________________________________________

Johannes Bellmann
Pädagogische Hochschule Freiburg
Germany

The Reception of John Dewey in the Context of

Contemporary Educational Reform
– A German-American Comparison1

To say that there are immense controversies about how to interpret John
Dewey’s philosophy of education is no news. Even the Dewey experts these
days have a hard time keeping up with the vast literature that has emerged
and is still emerging in this field of scholarship. These controversies on
interpretation manifest themselves not only within national research
traditions but also within one and the same school of education. For
instance, I have been told that two distinguished philosophers of education
at Stanford University, Denis Phillips and Elliot Eisner, once decided to co-
teach a class on John Dewey. Right from the beginning, their opposing
views on Dewey became apparent. Denis Phillips focussed mainly on
Dewey’s falsificationism which, for him, was basically in line with Popper’s
philosophy of science and scientific method (Phillips 1992). Elliot Eisner on
the other hand focussed on Dewey’s later aesthetics, claiming that the arts
provide the kind of ideal that American education needs now more than ever
(Eisner 2002). Obviously, their interpretations of Dewey could not easily be
reconciled. In fact, their dispute escalated and the two Dewey experts ended
up yelling at each other in front of the class.

In this paper however I will not spend a great deal of time dealing in general
with different interpretations of John Dewey’s philosophy of education.
What I would like to show is how Dewey and Deweyan pragmatism are
used in the present-day debate on contemporary educational reform. The
German-American comparison in the following will show that Dewey is
appropriated in different – even opposing – ways to both legitimise and
delegitimise recent reform policies.

The revival of pragmatism and its motives

Pragmatism is once again in demand, beginning first of all in philosophy.
After a “Revival of Pragmatism” (Dickstein 1998) in Anglo-Saxon philo-
sophy that emerged in the 1980s, a “Renaissance of Pragmatism”
1
Based on a paper presented at the Stanford-Humboldt Junior Faculty Symposium on April
28, 2005, Humboldt University, Berlin.
 2

(Sandbothe 2000) has also been the topic of discussion in German-speaking

philosophy since at least the 90s. These revivals in reception have different
contexts and, accordingly, different motives. On both sides of the Atlantic,
however, these revivals also appear to be a matter of a rediscovery of each
side’s own forgotten traditions.

In the United States, the “Revival of Pragmatism” means above all the
rediscovery of a “public philosophy” (cf. Joas 1998: 192), that is, a
philosophy oriented towards public opinion and democracy that had been
pushed into the background by orthodox analytical philosophy. In the
German-speaking discourse, the “Renaissance of Pragmatism” means,
among other things, the rediscovery of a pragmatic or, at least, proto-
pragmatic intellectual tradition of one’s own. The prominent neo-pragmatist
Robert Brandom (2000) built a very welcome bridge for German-speaking
protagonists of the philosophical reception of pragmatism. Classical
American pragmatism, says Brandom, was only the special case of a more
comprehensive older intellectual movement. The precedence of action over
consciousness is seen as the common characteristic of this comprehensive
pragmatism, or, formulated differently, the precedence of “knowing how”
over “knowing that”. Understood in this way, the line of tradition in this
comprehensive pragmatism can also include, for example, Hegel (cf.
Gimmler 2000) and Heidegger (cf. Gethmann 1987). In spite of the
prevailing polemical dismissal of American pragmatism in German
philosophy during the early 20th century, one can nonetheless, in retrospect,
discover more concurrence in the shift from the problems of consciousness
to the problems of action than the contemporary debates suggest. Thus, the
recent occupation with classical American pragmatism has led to an altered
view of European intellectual traditions in Germany, too.

This is also true for one of the most important protagonists of the more
recent reception of pragmatism in Germany, the sociologist Hans Joas from
Free University Berlin. To Joas, pragmatism is more than the indirect path
to the re-appropriation of European intellectual traditions. It is, above all, a
kind of critical corrective of these traditions. Joas outlines the mixed
intellectual situation in the Federal Republic of Germany around 1980, a
period when, he writes, “I suddenly fell in love with American pragmatism”
(1998: 198). The situation was marked by hermeneutics and philosophy of
life, Marxism and critical theory, as well as by the empirical shift in the
social sciences. “I felt attracted by all three of them”, Joas declares, “and
simultaneously repelled” (191). Through the help of pragmatism Joas could
separate what was valuable in his own tradition from what was worthless or
even dangerous. “Pragmatism immediately enabled me,” he writes, “to
accept what was reasonable in the three traditions I have mentioned without
accepting their dangerous implications” (191). In the pragmatic reformu-
lation, basic understandings of hermeneutics and a philosophy of life can be
retained without falling into irrational or chauvinistic tendencies.
Analogously, social-philosophical understandings in Marxism and critical
theory can be retained without having to yield to antidemocratic or elitist
tendencies. Finally, according to Joas, even the empirical shift in the social
sciences can be carried out, as long as one does not consider science in a
scientistic manner, but rather pragmatically, as a public instrument for
solving problems. “Pragmatism in all three respects thus could appear as the
 3

solution to otherwise unsolvable problems, as a salvation from the aporiae

(!, J. B.) of German thought” (192).

“Pragmatism as salvation” is also a mode of perception that plays a role in

the recent reception of Dewey in the German literature on the philosophy of
education. One example of this influential model of reception is Jürgen
Oelkers, who teaches philosophy of education and history of ideas at the
University of Zurich. Ever since the 90s he has attempted to recommend
pragmatism as an alternative to the German educational discourse. In
Oelkers’ view, the previous German reception of Dewey rested above all
upon misunderstandings (cf. Oelkers 1993). Dewey, he claims, was
understood merely as offering a further version of progressive education.
The breadth of pragmatism as a discursive context was not taken into
consideration. In addition, the earlier German reception tended to reduce
Deweyan pedagogy to issues of schooling and instruction while his
relevance for an altered understanding of every aspect of educational
science was not realised.

In the epilogue to the new edition of Erich Hylla’s translation of Democracy

and Education, Oelkers attempts, in a certain sense, to pave the way for a
new reception of Dewey in Germany. Under the title Dewey in Germany: A
misunderstanding, the deficits in the reception to date are listed. Dewey
remained, Oelkers claims, a “marginal man” in Germany (1993: 491); he
was “read very little, hardly translated, and not discussed at the end of the
twentieth century” (492). Where Dewey was read, “the resistance
dominated”. This rested, however, on misunderstandings in an altogether
“failed reception” (497).

Oelkers also makes reference to the few cases of a more benevolent and
more thorough reception. Names that are mentioned include Erich Hylla,
Werner Correll and Fritz Bohnsack, all of whom, he claims, rendered a great
service to the reception of Dewey in Germany. It is interesting to note in this
connection the reference to why these receptions have not produced a
lasting response in the German-speaking educational discourse. According
to Oelkers, the appropriate environment was not available to these authors
and their advocates were too weak (cf. ibid.: 491, note 4; ibid.: 492). This
reference, not elaborated upon further, reveals a consciousness that recap-
tions are dependent upon a sounding board in the relevant discursive context
of the reception. The systematic quality of a reception alone does not yet
decide its success in the scientific community.

I would like to take up Oelkers’ remark and apply it to the present upswing
in Dewey’s popularity in Germany. While the former German Dewey
scholars may have lacked the environment for a lasting resonance, the
circumstances of the Dewey reception appear in the meantime to have
changed fundamentally. Oelkers himself does not discuss these new circum-
stances, which are presently appearing to create a more favourable environ-
ment for his reception of Dewey.

Following a basic assumption of contextual analysis in the history of ideas,

texts must always also be understood as statements made in a discursive
context. They are never merely propositions about something, but are rather
 4

at the same time commitments in an argumentative confrontation (cf.

Skinner 1988). I would like to apply this productive question about the
strategic connection of text and context – in a sort of reflexive change of
view – to historical research itself. In particular, I would like to ask: What
are the possible reasons for the present popularity of Dewey? What
discursive strategies do authors link with this reception in their own
discursive field? And, finally, in what way are they successful with these
strategies?

To pursue these questions further, I would like to go back to the above-

mentioned motive of salvation from one’s own tradition. Even in Oelkers’
epilogue to the translation of “Democracy and Education”, Dewey is
presented as an author who has carried out a radical “break with tradition”
(1993: 414). Dewey, it is said, is “the first educational author who presented
an ateleological theory of education that resolutely breaks with all
‘substantial’ claims for reason and makes pragmatic experience the basis of
education” (ibid.: 495).

This thesis of the “break with tradition” now becomes a kind of guiding
perspective for the reception of Dewey. In more recent works, too, Dewey’s
break with traditional educational theory is at the centre of focus: “Dewey
grappled with these theories not merely to attack their application, but rather
to break up the whole block of tradition. Without distance to Herbart,
Pestalozzi, and Fröbel, a modern educational theory, one that accords with
modern society, could not be established at all. So, all three theories had to
be refuted, and this without the least compromise” (Oelkers 2000: 290).

In speaking of the “break with tradition”, Oelkers adopts a reading of

tradition that Dewey himself suggested at times. In the first chapters of
“Democracy and Education”, Dewey conveys the impression that the whole
pedagogical tradition is caught in dualistic patterns of thought. Education is
either development from within or determination from without. Accor-
dingly, the rhetoric of Dewey’s criticism of tradition sometimes takes on
prophetic characteristics: “You have heard that it was said … But I tell
you...”

Oelkers adopts not only this rhetoric, but also the discursive strategies with
which Dewey and his contemporaries attempted to dissociate themselves
from tradition. This is illustrated by an example from a lecture delivered by
Oelkers in 2004 (cf. Oelkers 2004). The comparison of traditional and
pragmatic educational theory discussed and carried out in the lecture can be
represented schematically approximately as follows:
 5

Traditional European, especially Educational theory of American

German educational theory pragmatism

related to “philosophy” (p. 2), or related to empirical science, especially

“metaphysics”
“rigid European educational philosophy”
(p. 13)
“unscientific”, “static”, and “dogmatic”
method of education and instruction (p.
13)
based upon “abstract values and norms”
(p. 15)
“European ideal of personal cultivation”
(p. 19)
based on a Protestant/religious frame of
reference; “abstract relationship between
human beings and world” (cf. Oelkers
2002/2003: p. 268)
biology, physiology, psychology (cf. p.
13)
“dynamic theory of intelligent adaptation”
(p. 13)
“scientific” method of education and
instruction (p. 13)
based on the “social relationships”
between students, as well as between
students and teachers (p. 15)
American ideal of “civic education”, or of
“intelligent citizenship” (p. 20)
based on democracy as a frame of
reference for educational theory (cf. p. 4);
“grounding in democracy and public
opinion” (p. 15; cf. also Oelkers
2002/2003: p. 268)

Oelkers takes over some of these discursive strategies from Dewey and
some from other sympathisers and protagonists of the progressive move-
ment. Especially Ella Flagg Young (1845-1918) and Nicholas Murray
Butler (1862-1947) attempted with the aid of such dichotomising judge-
ments to distinguish the new education from the old, whereby the old
education, for them, was at the same time European education. What is inte-
resting now is what happens when these strategies of distinction are carried
over into a contemporary discursive context.

Oelkers claims that pragmatism’s criticism of traditional educational theory

was not only correct and justified in its own contemporary context, but also
that it still has continuing relevance in the present day. Following the initial
thesis in his above-mentioned article on “Pragmatism and Education”, “a
theory of democratic education requires a break with the pedagogical tradi-
tion, a break that was never carried out in German educational theory”
(Oelkers 2004: 5). For Oelkers, it is a certainty “that a theory of democratic
education is lacking in German educational thought up to the present day”
(ibid.: 4). This, overall, is also said about England and France (cf. ibid.: 15).
Therefore, he concludes, “the starting point for a democratic education can
hardly be sought anywhere else than in American educational theory, and it
is to be found only in a discussion with pragmatism” (ibid.: 21).

It is obvious that the reciprocal demarcation between American and

European educational theory operates with calculated generalisations and
exaggerations that to a great extent eliminate the internal heterogeneity of
the “blocks of tradition” opposed to each other. Arthur Lovejoy, the
historian of ideas (cf. 1908/1963), distinguished among thirteen versions of
pragmatism alone. The key word “democracy”, put forward to distinguish
pragmatism from the German educational tradition, is also anything but
 6

unambiguous. But, it is possibly precisely this ambiguity that is the

precondition for achieving high levels of approval in different discursive
contexts when making reference to “democracy”. As the American historian
James Kloppenberg remarks, “This political ideal now commands nearly
universal approbation but only because it means different things to different
people” (Kloppenberg 1998: 173).

The ambivalences in Dewey’s thought are resolved in the contemporary

German reception in favour of one side. What is presently of interest in the
German view is Dewey’s appeal to democracy, modernity and inter-
nationalism, not his Protestant anti-institutionalism, his radical criticism of
modern economics, or his communitarian contextualism. The fact that this
side of Dewey is of only marginal interest to the contemporary reception is
– so I presume – no accident. It is an expression of a strategic choice. Along
with Foucault, we can assume a discursive constellation of a higher order
that is responsible for this selectivity: “…there are conceptual syste-
matisations, chains of statements, groups and organisations of objects that
would have been possible […], but that are excluded by a discursive
constellation on a higher level and of greater extent” (Foucault 1973: 99).

“Pragmatism” in the context of contemporary educational

reform in Germany
Thus, we should look more closely at this higher discursive constellation,
into which the contemporary Dewey reception has been inserted. My
hypothesis is that contemporary German educational reform presents one
such higher discursive constellation, in which pragmatism appears to gain a
kind of intuitive plausibility. Speaking in favour of this hypothesis is not
only the temporal coincidence of the new popularity of pragmatism and the
new phase in educational reform since the 1990s. There appears to be
certain programmatic proximities as well. In Germany the present phase of
reform is usually considered to be “pragmatic” and not – as were the edu-
cational reforms of the 60s and 70s – “ideologically” oriented (cf. Kahl
2004).

The alleged “pragmatic” character of the present educational reform is often

illustrated with reference to the concept of literacy used in PISA. Large-
scale international student assessments like PISA focus on competencies for
problem-solving that are relevant in daily life, not on the knowledge of a
traditional educational curriculum. How does one get from A to B in a
public transportation system in the fastest and best way possible (cf. OECD
2004: 71 ff.)? It is rather amazing that this PISA example for problem-sol-
ving is also found in a similar form in the first edition of John Dewey’s How
We Think (cf. MW 6: 234). Competence instead of canon – this, in fact,
reminds us of the “pragmatic” precedence of “knowing how” over against
“knowing that”.

Also in the study written by Franz Weinert for the OECD, “Concepts of
Competence”, which was taken as a conceptual basis for PISA, one finds
again and again the explicit reference to the “pragmatic” character of the
developed model of competence (cf. Weinert 1999: 15f.). Competence is
measured in performance, that is, in the actual coping with concrete tasks.
 7

This pragmatic definition, so it is said, is at the same time of “pragmatic

use” in research (cf. ibid.: 22) for it allows for the measurement of “inner-
individual differences in intra-individual change” (ibid.: 16), which is seen
as the basis for comparative large-scale student assessments.

I concede that the term “pragmatic”, or “pragmatism”, which is used

everywhere in the contemporary policy talk, does not always refer to
American pragmatism as a developed philosophical doctrine. Mostly “prag-
matic” just denotes “problem-oriented” or “dealing with real-life chall-
enges” (cf. OECD 2001: 16). In this sense the term “pragmatic” is also used
in colloquial language.

At the same time, however, several German scholars in the field of

education refer explicitly to a linkage of the PISA program with philo-
sophical pragmatism, or have produced such a linkage.

One of them presents PISA as a “re-orientation of epoch-making character

in our understanding of education” (Messner 2003: 401), stating that, “[t]he
PISA program in its basic orientation shows connections with philosophical
pragmatism as it was founded by Charles S. Peirce and represented by
William James” (ibid.: 403).

A prominent German scholar in the field of teacher education has also

recently constructed a link from PISA to philosophical pragmatism: “Given
the expertise in the history of pragmatism and philosophy of education, one
undoubtedly can write a demanding book on educational theory in the
context of PISA” (Terhart 2006: 27).

The clearest linkage of PISA to philosophical pragmatism has been made by

Oelkers. In a book about new instruments of school reform he writes: “The
philosophy of PISA is pragmatic: learning is understood as a lifelong adjust-
ment that aims at application and benefit. Clearly discernible are two
concepts from John Dewey, namely, the constant reconstruction of expe-
rience and an understanding of learning based upon action” (Oelkers 2003:
89).

The examples above show that in the context of contemporary educational

reform, philosophical pragmatism appears for many German authors to gain
a sort of intuitive plausibility. Whether this plausibility is able to withstand
closer scrutiny however needs to be discussed. Before I address the question
I will first have a look at references to Dewey in U. S. reform debates.

Dewey in U. S. reform debates

In the tough contemporary debates on the new instruments and objectives of
educational reform in the U. S., such as standards, high-stakes testing and
accountability, there seems to be a consensus in both camps that John
Dewey must be regarded as a critic of these reform strategies.

One example is Diane Ravitch (2000), the prominent American historian of

education and adviser to the Bush administration on the issue of standards-
based reform. In her study, Dewey is described as the most influential
 8

protagonist of the progressives, who for a long time sabotaged the develop-
pment of standards for academic achievement. Ravitch illustrates the
distance Dewey maintained in regard to standards by citing his much-read
and influential volume on Schools of Tomorrow, in which Dewey, together
with his daughter Evelyn, offered portraits of progressives schools that were
regarded as models to follow. It is especially the “organic school” of
Marietta Pierce Johnson, mentioned in positive terms in Dewey’s book, that
stands, in Ravitch’s view, in blatant contrast to the declared goals of
contemporary educational reform. “The organic school,” Ravitch writes,
“featured a completely natural education, free of rewards, punishments,
tests, grades, promotions, prohibitions, commands, and other pressures. It
emphasised freedom, self-initiative, and spontaneity. Formal studies such as
reading, writing, spelling, and arithmetic were delayed as long as possible;
Johnson would have preferred to wait until children were ten but acceded to
parents’ demands to begin teaching these skills at eight. She believed that if
children waited to read until they were ready, they would be as adept as
those who started earlier” (Ravitch 2000: 175). Even if one takes into
account Dewey’s careful critique of the progressive movement, expressed in
later texts such as Experience and Education (cf. LW 13), doubts remain as
to whether Dewey’s pragmatism in fact can be considered “the philosophy
of PISA”. When Dewey presented those mostly private and independent
progressive schools as “the schools of tomorrow”, it was a kind of wishful
thinking on his part, not a serious prognosis. Under today’s conditions of
output orientation, with standards and high-stakes testing, progressive
schools like those favoured by Dewey would soon vanish from the scene.

It is no wonder that even the critics of standards-based reform in the U. S.

often underpin their position by making reference to Dewey. Three brief
examples illustrate this, as follows:

The first is the National Center for Restructuring Education, Schools and
Teachers, NCREST. At a conference at Teachers College, Columbia
University, in 1992, the front line was drawn quite clearly. First of all, the
conference pointed out “the need to restructure schools along the line of the
democratic and egalitarian community envisioned by Dewey almost a
century earlier”. Then “a stark contrast” was noted “between the rhetoric of
Washington-based reform with its emphasis on assessment, accountability
and excellence, and the conference’s concern with progressive principles
and practices such as equity, democracy, integrated curriculum, authentic
assessment and cooperative learning” (Sadovnik/Semel 1998: 147).

As another example for the appropriation of Dewey in the U. S. reform

discourse, I would like to mention Kenneth Strike, former president of the
Philosophy of Education Society. In his crusade against standards-based
reform he assigns Dewey a prominent role. He claims that from a Deweyan
perspective, education always has specific communitarian commitments.
This view is contrasted with the abstract universalism of contemporary
educational reform, which is accused of having lost any connection with
concrete communities and educational cultures. In a programmatic essay on
educational policy entitled “Community, the Missing Element of School
Reform: Why Schools Should Be More like Congregations than Banks”,
Strike says: “My central concern with standards-based reform, however, is
 9

that its ethos is that of the bank. It expresses no shared conception of a good
education beyond the idea that higher test scores are better. There is no
consensus and little discussion as to what ends higher scores serve beyond
economic aspirations. Hence standards-based reform tends to instrument-
talize education and privatize individual goals. It makes competition for
scarce commodities, jobs, and further education the heart of the enterprise of
learning” (Strike 2004: 228).

The third and last example of the contemporary reform discourse in the U.
S. is from a panel discussion on “Humanistic Education” at the Boston
Research Center held in 2002. Controversial instruments of the current
reform era, such as standards, high-stakes testing and accountability, were
discussed by the panel. Larry Hickman, director of the Center for Dewey
Studies, and Nel Noddings, well-known philosopher of education and
former Stanford faculty, repeatedly underpinned their critique of these re-
form instruments by using Deweyan arguments. Dewey was treated as if he
was a contemporary who could comment directly on present-day issues. “If
he were here today”, Hickman said, “I would expect he would also reject
‘teaching to the test’” (BRC 2002). “Dewey would not approve of the
federal government taking over education”, he continued. “He would say
that ‘national education’ would come when we begin to trust our experience
in the classroom and when we begin to trust teachers to do the kind of job
that works at the personal level” (ibid.). Noddings also made himself a
mouthpiece for Dewey, declaring, “He never meant a national curriculum,
national standards, or high-stakes testing”. While Dewey advocated
“common commitments and common values”, he would be opposed to the
“uniformity and coercion we see in schools today”. (ibid.)

In my investigations into the current reform discourse in the U. S., I could

not find a single instance where Dewey would have been appropriated to
defend contemporary educational reform and its instruments. In the history
of American education, Dewey is far too tied to the progressive movement
to be appropriated for the technocratic approach to contemporary reform.
That the U. S. Department of Education might have converted to Deweyan
pedagogy is far too unlikely for most observers.

The result of the German-American comparison so far is that Dewey is

currently appropriated for contrary objectives. So who is right? Who has the
correct interpretation of Deweyan pragmatism? On the other hand, is this
question relevant? I maintain not, as I hold that the process of reception is
not about understanding or misunderstanding but about a re-interpretation
and a re-adaptation within new discursive contexts (cf. Bellmann 2004).

Dewey on educational theory and educational policy

Despite my perception above, I was interested to see what Dewey said, in
his own context, about basic skills, literacy, achievement standards,
measurement and so on. Dewey’s views on these issues were to a large
extent shaped by his opposition to Thorndike’s behaviourist psychology and
its methods of exact measurement, which soon began to conquer the world
of education, too (cf. Lagemann 2002: 56ff.).
 10

In contrast to Thorndike, Dewey focussed on the pragmatic method of

experimental problem solving, not as a method applied to education but
rather as a medium in which education proceeds. In his view competencies
of problem solving obtain their significance and their value only in the
overriding process of an educative experience. In Experience and Ed-
ucation, Dewey names only two criteria for this non-concludable process:
continuity and interaction, that is, the linking of an experience with past and
subsequent experiences in the continuity of the educational biography, as
well as the diversification of interactions with the world and with others in
concrete situations (cf. LW 13: 17ff.). This process of “educative
experience” (cf. ibid.), according to Dewey, means at the same time an
increasing integration of the personality and a deepening and widening of
democratic communication and exchange.

Competencies in problem solving are thus assessed against the background

of this leading idea of the educative experience. This also explains why, in
Dewey’s view, an educative experience must go beyond literacy, or rather,
how literacy attains its importance only in the overriding process of
educative experience. In a brief statement on women’s suffrage, Dewey
writes, “If by an educational qualification is meant a certain degree of
literacy, it is a piece of academic foolishness to suppose that that ability to
read or write is an adequate test of social and political intelligence” (A
Symposium on Woman’s Suffrage, 1910; MW 6: 153f.).

The example of Germany illustrates for Dewey the merely superficial

success of an educational culture that is oriented towards literacy and
academic achievement. Of all countries, as Dewey wrote in 1939, not
without ridicule, the one with the highest worldwide literacy rate and with
educational institutions admired the world over falls victim to totalitarian
propaganda: “Its schools were so efficient that the country had the lowest
rate of illiteracy in the world, the scholarship and scientific researches of its
universities were known throughout the civilised globe. In fact it was not so
many years ago that a distinguished American educator held them up as
models to be followed in this country if the weaknesses of our higher
institutions were to be remedied. Nevertheless German lower schools
furnished the intellectual fodder for totalitarian propaganda, and the higher
schools were the centers of reaction against the German Republic”
(Freedom and Culture, 1939; LW 13: 92).

In scattered comments like this one on literacy and basic skills, Dewey
emphasises again and again their merely instrumental character in an
individual biography. Against this theoretical background, it is under-
standable that throughout his life, Dewey took a critical view of standards
and the standardisations widespread in educational reality.

This becomes clear for example in the article “The Classroom Teacher”
from 1922. In order to do justice to the individuality of the learner’s
biography, Dewey writes, the pedagogical work of the teacher requires
“truly artistic standards” (MW 15: 180): “When we come to dealing with
living things, especially living characters that vary as human individuals do,
and attempt to modify their individual dispositions, develop their individual
powers, counteract their individual interests, we have to deal with them in
 11

an artistic way, a way which requires sympathy and interest to make all of
the needed adjustments to the particular emergencies of the act” (ibid.). The
grammar of schooling, that is, the institutionalised form of instruction in
school classes, on the other hand, forces a kind of standardisation, “which is
unfavorable to the development of the teacher’s individuality and to the
teacher’s cooperating in the development of the pupil’s individuality” (ibid.:
181). The system of standardised tests and measurements of academic
achievement, correspondingly, also receives sharp criticism. It leads, Dewey
writes, to a form of relationship between teachers and pupils in which the
fulfilment of “external standards” (ibid.: 188) is of more interest that the
prerequisites and possibilities of an individual learning history. This
relationship, oriented towards the duty to be accountable to external guide-
lines, says Dewey, repeats itself in the relationship between teachers and the
school administration (cf. ibid.): “The way business is done influences
unconsciously all our ideas” (ibid.: 187).

Conclusions
What do we learn from Dewey’s invectives against the procedures of
measurement and standardisation as quoted above? One of the first answers
to this question is that they do not necessarily speak for Dewey and against
contemporary educational reform. One can also regard them as documents
of a naïve philosophy of progressive education that never developed suffi-
cient theoretical instruments for defining the office of mass schooling as a
modern institution. Nonetheless, the quotations show that using Dewey as
an authority for contemporary educational reform is hardly a tenable
strategy.

From a German perspective, “American educational theory” is welded

together into a block of tradition that obviously serves as a point of
reference for externalisation (cf. Schriewer 1988: 62f.). There, so it appears,
one can find what one’s own tradition is lacking. Amid controversial
debates on educational policy, one can create additional meaning and
orientation precisely through reference to another educational culture that is
presented as a radical alternative.

What do the observable differences in the appropriation of Dewey tell us

about the diffusion and reception of educational ideas? According to the
“world culture research programme”, as developed by John Meyer,
Francisco Ramirez and colleagues, those educational reforms and ideas that
travel most extensively have both a universalistic and a rationalising quality
(cf. Ramirez 2002: 13). They celebrate education as a human right, which
reflects the universalistic trait, and at the same time they celebrate education
as human capital, reflecting the rationalising trait. Thus, justice and progress
are considered to be the core concepts of globalised models on the level of
practice, policy and principle.

There is no doubt that John Dewey‘s ideas did indeed travel most
extensively. Hence, according to a world cultural perspective, this suggests
the conclusion that Dewey’s philosophy of education must have both a
universalistic and a rationalising quality. And indeed, there are two
prominent concepts throughout his philosophy, namely democracy and
 12

scientific method, that represent a certain universalism and a certain form of

rationalisation. From Dewey’s point of view both concepts are reconciled in
a wholesale naturalism that entails not only methodological but also
metaphysical aspects (Bellmann 2006). With his focus on both justice and
progress, Dewey would be an excellent example for proving the core
assumptions of the “world culture research programme” with respect to the
diffusion of ideas.

The problem is that there are many different concepts of justice and
rationality. The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy differentiates at least
six notions of justice. It is even worse with rationality. In a handbook article
about types of rationality, for example, the authors differentiate no less than
21 concepts (Lenk/Spinner 1989). The claim that those educational ideas
and reforms that appeal to justice and rationality travel most extensively is
hard to either verify or falsify unless you define exactly what reference
model is meant by the terms.

Contemporary reform policies like the No Child Left Behind Act, for
instance, also strongly appeal to rationality and justice, but their under-
standing of these concepts and their way of reconciling both seem to differ
considerably from what we find in Dewey.

The point I am trying to make is that Dewey’s international career may be

due to the fact that he pervasively alludes to progress and justice but at the
same time the notion of progress and justice retains a certain degree of
vagueness and uncertainty. Thus Dewey’s philosophy of education is
particularly apt in sustaining and supporting different, sometimes even
opposing, interpretations. Due to its ambiguity, it can work in different
contexts, and different experiences and world views can be connected with
it. In this respect, a certain degree of vagueness is not a deficit but a
strategic advantage in a globalised educational discourse.

Apparently, the international communication of educational ideas does not

follow the “sender-receiver” model, where one and the same idea is encoded
on the one side and decoded on the other. The world culture research project
emphasises the process of enactment, which introduces creativity and
innovation in the process of the adoption of global concepts. Yet, in this
view, the creativity of enactment is limited to the interpretation of a given
script or a given role. There are different actors, but the same play with the
same script is performed in the world theatre.

The reception of John Dewey in the context of contemporary educational

reform does not and can not only show context-specific re-interpretations. It
also shows that exactly which concepts Dewey enacted can become
irrelevant in the process of reception. What counts is the authority of Dewey
as a famous actor on the stage of educational theory. Which script he
enacted has been forgotten. By focussing on the “political” aspects of re-
ception the German-American comparison does not end the appropriation of
Dewey, but it can reintroduce differences and contingencies on each side,
thus confirming the critical function of comparison in both an international
and a historical perspective.
 13

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© Texten får fritt kopieras för icke kommersiella ändamål under förutsättning att fullständig referens anges.
Belmann, Johannes 2006:
The Reception of John Dewey in the Context of Contemporary Educational Reform
– A German-American Comparison
I Studies in Educational Policy and Educational Philosophy:
E-tidskrift, 2006:1 <http://www.upi.artisan.se>
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