Page 141 - TWO OF A KIND • Erik Renkema

DUTCH COOPERATION SCHOOLS AS DEMOCRATIC COMMUNITIES
What, then, is the contribution of Dewey’s concept of democracy to reflection on values and religious education at cooperation schools?
3. Dewey and Democracy in Education
The concept of democracy in education in Dewey’s view has two aspects: sociological and psychological (1897).
First, education has a sociological aim. Dewey stresses the “social responsibilities
of education” (1980, 200). Education can only be characterized in terms of its
ultimate objective: its contribution to societal and communal values and therefore 6 the presentation of “situations where problems are relevant to the problems of
living together” (1980, 200).
In his interpretation of society as “an organic union of individuals” (1897, 2), he emphasizes commonality in spirit and aims of its members (1899). In Democracy and Education, Dewey states that an “undesirable society (...) is one which internally and externally sets up barriers to free intercourse and communication of experience” (1980, 105). From his perspective, “a spirit of free communication” (1899, 13) must be practiced in society.
In Dewey’s view, there is a strong correlation between society and school education. A school has a “chance to be a miniature community, an embryonic society” (1899, 15). School is “a community life” (1897, 3). School is therefore correlated to the larger society encompassing all people and oriented towards promoting the collective prosperity of this society. Through education, students are involved in the development of a “spirit of social cooperation and community life” (1899, 14) and are regarded as “a social individual” (1897, 2). A child is always to be considered “a member of a unity” (1897, 1). The child learns what it means to be such a member in community from “the responses which others make to his own activities” (1897, 1).
These characteristics of an ideal society and education are democratic. Democracy is “a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience” (1980, 93). In their description of Dewey’s views, Sutinen, Kallioniemi and Pihlström relate education to democratic competencies of “empathy, acceptance and respect” (2015, 346). By learning from each other and encountering different
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