Introduction

               

Democracy is an inherently unstable form of government.  Because the people and circumstances are changing, the institutions and formations of the democracy have to change with them.  It is my contention that our democracy has entered a transitional phase in its development.  The assumptions and institutions that carried us from the Great Depression through WWII and the unprecedented era of prosperity that followed no longer adequately address the current state of affairs.  There are several possible explanations for the decline of our democratic institutions.  The technological changes that are bringing on what some call the ‘fourth industrial revolution,’ which includes a new relationship between the economy and work is certainly a factor.  The collapse of a viable two-party system of government that results from a Republican Party no longer interested in democratic process or, as it seems somedays, reality is a factor.  But I think there is a more systemic problem that has always been at the root of our democracy.

Our democracy was the product of an oligarchy.  It advertised itself as by and for the people, but their definition of ‘the people’ was mostly limited to the interests of the wealthy few.  Even though, to its great credit, American democracy has fitfully expanded its franchise to include more and more of the folks the founders excluded, the governing institutions always assumed an elite class of citizens would benevolently guide us.  As that benevolent elite has given way to a malevolent minority intent on wealth and power at the expense of the majority, it seems harder and harder to imagine how to simply return to better times.  The more likely path is that our democracy and the institutions that define it are either in for a major overhaul or a complete collapse.  The signs of this are all around us.  Ideas about health care, taxes and the distribution of wealth, the environment and social justice that would have been dismissed as fringe proposals even just a decade ago are moving toward or have already achieved the support of a majority of the people.  These ideas aren’t just ‘tweaks’ to the current practices; they are the signs of a new, emerging set of institutions that will define and shape a new democracy.

My focus is how one of our institutions, education, can and must play a role in redefining a democracy that is going to have to figure out how to navigate a new economic, environmental and technological reality while honoring the hard won ideal of greater inclusivity.  I am not arguing that education alone can save or redefine democracy.  It can’t.  But I am arguing that without a new educational mission and system a new democracy is unlikely to be successful.  About a hundred years ago, John Dewey argued that democracy was in crisis and it needed a new educational system to save it and create a new class of educated people to run and protect it.  Part of his argument was woven in to the fabric of an American education system that expanded free public education in unprecedented ways.  But there is a part of Dewey’s sense of education and democracy, the most idealistic part, that has never been realized.  Dewey promoted a deeply personal and rigorous commitment to inquiry and change that has been given lip service but has never really been given the central and prominent role he saw for it.  His sense of democracy was participatory and not institutional.  It is that sense of democracy I want to make the focus of my critique of a democratic education.

There have always been a few pockets of elite private schools that took the development of the individual seriously, partly because they didn’t have to be concerned with their economic future.  The rest of us have been subjected to an increasingly vocationalized education that made a nod in the direction of deeper thought but rushed back to the crass instrumentalism of jobs and careers at every opportunity.  Community colleges and universities around the country are either scaling back or eliminating their General Education programs.  While there are plenty of valid criticisms of the way those programs were administered and delivered, eliminating them entirely only serves the short- term interests of those who already control the government and the economy.  We say we promote democratic literacy and values, but there is little evidence of democracy in our schools.

Maybe in a world where work led to social mobility and social mobility led to increased participation in the democracy, that focus was at least partially excusable.  But in a world where economic and social mobility in this country has almost ground to a halt, becoming one of the least mobile societies in the industrialized world, vocationalism has become antidemocratic.  The reality is that the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ is not only going to fundamentally change work, it is going to eliminate many of the jobs that currently exist.  What democratic purpose is served by rushing someone through a career focused education when the career on the other end no longer exists?  If democracy is sustainable, it will have to find a sustainability that is not dependent on work or careers.  It is possible that an educational system built around Dewey’s more democratic impulses can help us bridge the transition we face.  Without such a system, the future looks more like an episode of the Game of Thrones.

Our educational system has promoted a caste system where a few are taught to lead and most of us are taught our place.  Most people only “participate” in our democracy as sporadic voters, and often without much in the way of thought or inquiry.  We subject most students to a poorly designed and taught ‘civics’ class somewhere in their public school, but we still structure the education in that school around the 20^th century models of Ford and Taylor.  We still train people to answer bells and announcements, and more importantly we teach them to answer other peoples’ questions instead of their own.  The growing disconnect between school and issues people face in their lives has reached the point that school is openly mocked and disparaged.  Dewey is a way back into the lives people actually live.  In his view, democracy is a way of being in the world, a way of posing problems. Learning, failing and growing with others as a community of learners and doers.  That probably sounds utopian, but the promise of a real democracy is utopian.  As it stands now, we are devolving into a kleptocracy that benefits the few and imperils us all. 

My goal is to outline a democratic education true to Dewey’s vision, but not in a derivative sense.  He provides an inspiration, not a blueprint.  A radical democracy needs an education focused more on democracy than work.  It needs a system that is itself a democracy, one in which the whole community is involved in deciding what needs to be learned.  We’ve created a system where someone else tells us what to learn, but we do not interrogate the motives of those choices.  We have a bureaucracy of experts that is not serving the needs of the citizens.  We create unimaginable amounts of data every day but are still unable to use science to fight climate change.  Dewey’s sense of expertise wasn’t bureaucratic, it was experiential.  Democracy is experiential; it is a way of living and interacting more than it is an institutional practice.

My goal is to write a book informed by academic work without writing an academic book.  This conversation cannot be limited to educational experts.  I will supply an appendix for every chapter with the sources and data that the chapter is based on instead of citing works in a typical fashion.  When you think I am wrong, I hope that is a cause for dialog and not rejection.  No one is going to figure this one out on their own.  We need to stumble forward, remembering to learn the lessons that Dewey insisted failure taught.  We have to engage people who feel that the educational system has left them behind, and we have to listen to their reasons for being alienated from what should be their innate desire to learn.  School should become less of an edifice and more of an experience.  My fear is that we don’t have much time to start this process.