Small caveat first - this morning on WCBE (local NPR), I heard a story about legislation a group of folks are trying to pass to include 120 additional curriculum instruction hours on american's historical documents (i.e., a greater focus on american history and engagement with "seminal" documents related to said history)... I immediately thought of Dewey ;) - how does such instruction allow students to engage in relevant problem-solving in their lives and societies? It was interesting that the major "road block" in this legislation appeared to be that it is not currently tested in Ohio's proficiency test (but the relevant folks involved claimed the proficiency test needed to be updated anyway...) - I'm sure behind all of this, was a thought that such changes in education would allows students to better understand democracy (as an object). Even as I wrote that sentence - the ideas of "trust" and "permission" and "elite" are so entrenched.... what "we" "allow" the citizenry to "know," our level of mistrust in their ability to figure out and decipher on their own was is needed, the experts know what we should be doing...
But I digress ;) - one of the biggest issues I found myself wrestling with this week was how to rectify Freud's assumptions about humanity with what is presented by Dewey/Locke/Kallen - "The idea that there are competing groups with competing interests is an illusion the groups must work towards overcoming in the process of dealing with the problem. The more individuals work together as part of different groups, where the difference are defined by the particular problem, the more they realize they have the same, or similar core human interest, and that solutions to their problems can emerge from any quarter" (p. 27-28). Within this, I am lead to a a more optimistic view of humanity, a more "humanist" - positive psychology perspective, if you will, and I find myself trying to figure out if Freud's ideas about the development and maintenance of societies fit with what is presented by these other theorists.
Interesting thoughts about Freud and Dewey. Society's inherent competitiveness versus working together in a group to problem solve. From this perspective, I would think that the reason why there are still many factions and hostility between groups is that they don't work together to problem solve and perhaps never learned how to do so effectively. I wonder, would Dewey think in terms of us and them? If so is that the purpose of democracy then to allow for participation from all and avoid the forming of cliques but individual and collective progress. Hmm I wonder.
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