“If a plague carried off the members of a society all at once, it is obvious that the group would be permanently done for. Yet the death of each of its constituent members is as certain as if an epidemic took them all at once. But the graded difference in age, the fact that some are born as some die, makes possible through transmission of ideas and practices the constant reweaving of the social fabric. Yet this renewal is not automatic. Unless pains are taken to see that genuine and thorough transmission takes place, the most civilized group will relapse into barbarism and then into savagery.”
– John Dewey: Democracy and Education, 1916
As is so often the case with John Dewey’s prose, this passage is a bit difficult to understand, but ultimately worth the effort. I found it especially relevant this week because a new grandchild had just entered my life. I had learned of her conception on my 75th birthday back in December, and now that she had made her appearance, I found myself paying close attention to Dewey’s thoughts about what the succession of generations means to democracy.
That came into even sharper focus as the House of Representatives’ Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol commenced its work. Dewey’s warning of a “relapse into barbarism and then into savagery” had come to seem like an all-too-accurate description of the world into which my newest granddaughter had been born. All the more reason, then, to hope that the select committee might somehow succeed not only in its directive “to investigate and report upon the facts, circumstances, and causes relating to the January 6, 2021, domestic terrorist attack upon the United States Capitol Complex,” but even more urgently “to strengthen the security and resilience of the United States and American democratic institutions.”
That most far-reaching of the select committee’s objectives would lie beyond the reach of even the most broadly supported congressional committee, let alone this one, afflicted from the outset by the debilitating partisanship that now so thoroughly infects all our governing institutions. We certainly have to hope for the best from the committee’s work, and do whatever little any of us can do to contribute to that outcome. As I argue at length in Citizens Uniting to Restore Our Democracy, we all have opportunities to participate in organizations or initiatives seeking to loosen the grip of what that book calls “partisan quicksand.”
Yet now I will contribute to the partisan divide myself, by chiding my Republican friends for having allowed their party, over the span of a generation, to root itself securely in an electoral base that might fairly be characterized as the embodiment of willful ignorance. With daily jolts of energy from the likes of Rush Limbaugh, a constituency held together by mean-spiritedness, narrow-mindedness and short-sightedness gradually became the controlling base of the Republican Party in one state after another.
This long-simmering dynamic finally came to full fruition in the emergence of Donald Trump on the political stage. A long list of otherwise sensible Republicans who had thought they could play with this smoldering populist fire but always contain it were suddenly swept up in the maelstrom as the Trump juggernaut rolled on. Now, even after Trump’s decisive defeat in 2020, the servile cravenness of all but a tiny handful of elected Republicans is a constant reminder of how potent this dynamic has become — potent and dangerous.
The danger is both clear and present, manifesting itself in the current Delta variant surge. There are certainly many reasons that have led individuals to delay or question vaccination. But when millions of people have prolonged the epidemic and endangered their neighbors by refusing to get vaccinated in the face of overwhelming evidence of the safety and value of that procedure, something is seriously amiss. That something has its roots in the same cultivation of willful ignorance that eventually produced the most starkly unqualified president in American history.
The attack on the capitol and the needless surge of the Delta strain are just two manifestations of the dangerous reign of ignorance against which honorable Republicans must struggle. Democrats, though, have also sometimes fanned the flames of ignorance – and paid a heavy price for it. Whoever thought up the “Defund the Police” slogan, for example, is not going to win any prizes for political acumen. In 2020, those three words were weaponized by Republicans in places like Montana to help turn a purple state the deepest shade of red we have seen in decades.
The simple fact is that neither ignorance nor knee-jerk ideology serves our species or its societies very well. That is why the wisest proponents of democracy have always given education such high priority. Writing at a moment of vigorous and far-reaching democratic reform, and contributing substantially to the Progressive Movement that had carried that renewal forward, John Dewey was nevertheless insisting that there was something even more fundamental than reform to the health of our democracy: the “constant reweaving of the social fabric” through that “transmission of ideas and practices” that we call education.
In emphasizing the indispensable role of education in any meaningful form of democracy, Dewey was of course echoing a theme that had been central place to the thought of an earlier proponent of democratic reform. “I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves,” Thomas Jefferson had written in 1820, going on to argue that “if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.”
Now, as we work our way out of our deep governing dysfunction, as we step gingerly back from the “relapse into barbarism and … savagery” that John Dewey feared, we are going to have to supplement immediate remedies (like filibuster or redistricting reform) with longer-term strategies like a serious re-examination of the role of education in preparing democratic citizens. There are no silver bullets or simple solutions here, but I would invite your thoughts about two ideas. First, that we do our level best to move the nation’s conversation about education out of the ideological quagmire into which the “critical race theory” controversy has enmeshed it. Second that we begin examining seriously the idea of universal service to which the Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship has invited us.
I agree that, unfortunately, there also is a move to limit education to the conservative, even extremist, doctrine and that this too needs to be addressed. As an aside, I should note that Rush Limbaugh died a few months ago, but there are many others who play the same role on talk radio (I make it a point to listen to some of this to the extent that I can tolerate it). And, of course, we are threatened not only by the anti-vaxxers but also by the anti-maskers. I travelled by air recently and was alarmed by the failure to enforce mask wearing both in airports and on planes.
Excellent posting. I would add the need for full-fledged civics education in K-12, community college and undergraduate core requirements. Ideally this would also include ethics training and its centrality in self-governing representative democracies.
From Daniel Kemmis:
In addition to the responses that came through the “comment” channel, I received a number of provocative or otherwise helpful email responses to this post. Here are a few of them, with personal notes removed in some cases, or otherwise edited to fit this format.
Simple shout-outs may not seem worth the reader’s trouble, but they are in fact encouraging to writers; they keep us going. So, when Steve McArthur writes, “Good and important thoughts and a call to action,” it not only cheers me, but it reminds me that calls to action are often more engaging than efforts to change people’s minds. By the same token, David Biespiel’s “Thanks, Dan. Universal service!” was one more indication, among a growing number that I’ve been noticing, that people are starting to pay attention to the idea of some kind of shared service.
A more extended comment to that effect, from someone who has had experience with service learning, came from Dean McGovern, who wrote, “As you know, I’m a proponent of combining and integrating service with education. I think this type of pedagogy is a terrific way to recharge and renew democracy in each generation, by providing kids opportunities to put what they are learning into practice for the common good. Perhaps it is also a powerful way for people to learn not only the rights and freedoms that our democracy provides, but also the responsibilities that it requires.”
I think Dean has recalled us, in very helpful 21st century terms, to the fundamental connection between democracy and education that the John Dewey quote opened the blog with. Dean has reminded us that self-government rests on a set of civic virtues that we’re not necessarily born with, but can be trained into.
Jane Duncan’s personal experience in the Peace Corps gave weight to her observation that “I think the idea of universal service is great.” Jane went on to note that “Discussion [would be] needed about the kind of service and whether keeping it non-politicized or independent is important. My Peace Corps experience made me aware of the belief that the PC should have no ties to the military or the intelligence communities.” Jane cracks open here the door to what would surely have to be an intense and difficult conversation about how anything like universal service could gain broad enough bipartisan support to be adopted as national policy.
Jane also reminded me that, while I and many others have been calling for more classroom attention to civics and civic virtue, this will not be easy to implement. “People rue the lack of civics instruction,” she writes. “Yet math, science, English (or language arts) are the courses seen as important and tested. Even if one wants to teach more history or geography, the day isn’t long enough. The explosion and need for tech or computer instruction has pushed other subjects to the margins.” At the very least, this underscores the need for a serious discussion about how serious we are about making the long-term investment of educational resources (not least of teachers’ time) to developing basic democratic competencies.
Geoff Badenoch took the discussion in a slightly different direction by digging deeper into my somewhat offhand comment about the role of what I called “willful ignorance” in our contemporary political culture. I’ll let Geoff speak for himself:
Someone wiser than I am observed that the two great motivators of human activity are Love and Fear. In the case you have made in “Educating Democratic Citizens” it may be useful to keep in mind why it is that anyone would be “willfully ignorant.” It is said that “love blinds” but so does fear. One of the things that I observe in the divisiveness of our politics is this element of fear that is so often used as a motivator to stir up feelings against immigrants, minorities, the poor, etc. Fear of the other, the “they” who are coming for our country, your guns, to rip you off, to twist your children’s minds, etc.
We would do well to remember that we almost mindlessly call our country ‘the land of the free and the home of the BRAVE.’ How different would our politics, our educational systems, our society be if each of us were taught how bravery (and love)—not bravado—was the informing motivator that got us up and engaged with one another rather than the fear that motivates events like the January 6 insurrection.
Fear stifles outreach, listening, risk-taking and, perhaps more importantly, our faith in other citizens’ capacity to be patriotic or even decent human beings while being or believing other than we do. Fear narrows our thinking about what is possible. Fear dampens all forms of love, too, so it is a double whammy.
Geoff’s comments certainly carry implications for how we go about educating people for citizenship. They also have much to say about the messages that we might hope to hear coming from pulpits, and from any other platform at which people listen attentively.
Finally, Hedrick Smith, to whom I had devoted my own attention in an earlier blog, offered a number of characteristically wise observations. I was especially appreciative of his reminder of the not inconsiderable number of elected Republicans who have kept the common good in focus:
BRAVO TO YOU, Daniel, my friend, for both showing the courage to speak out, calmly but firmly, and for your trenchant articulation of the argument for education to dispel and replace the willful ignorance of Trump mob and too many [elected] Republican officials.
It seems as though periodically in American history we are assaulted by a wave of Know Nothings. So, to carry on your theme of education and rationality, we are fortunate that some Republicans in sensitive positions faced the crisis in 2020, acted with the wisdom and from their personal commitment to fairness and the rule of law.
For our democracy to survive and succeed, we desperately need CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLICANS. Even though their numbers seem to be woefully small, their role was crucial in protecting our democracy in 2020-21 against an incipient Justice Department legal coup last December and January, against Trump’s feverish attempt to overturn the vote counts in Georgia, Arizona and Michigan, and the Jan 6 insurrection against Congressional certification of the 2020 election results.
It is easy to forget but essential to remember that the honest count of the vote in 2020 hinged heavily on the political honesty and integrity of Republicans like Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Jack Sellers and three other Republican county commissioners in Maricopa County, Arizona; GOP election board members in Wayne County, Michigan; both former Atty Gen William Barr and Acting Atty Gen Jeffrey Rosen, Vice President Mike Pence and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, each of whom refused to bow to Trump’s blowtorch pressure to change the election results.
So it goes to show that a few people in the right places help us all as “CITIZENS UNITING TO RESTORE OUR DEMOCRACY.” You and your website are a beacon of rationality. Here’s my toast to you for all that you do.