[MD] 42

[david]

Ron said:

If we reference the 1961 paper to Edith Buchanan, RMP suggests creativity can be taught and should be taught. I personally believe that the Academic bogeyman producing Cookie cutter clones is an impossible Fiction. It harkens on the rhetoric produced by conservative right wing ideology warning of collectivism and the fear of the loss of the individual. It leads to another sort of anti-intellectualism. An instructor in art school once Said to me that "you first need to learn the rules before you can break them", but also there is the tea ceremony through rigid static patterns dynamic freedom is also found. Freedom through constraint.



dmb said previously:


... Roughly speaking, we can use Dewey as a proxy MOQer and this is very freaking handy because Dewey's work in education has been central to the debates over education in America for a very long time. Seems like everyone is either for or against Dewey's approach to education; liberals love him and conservatives hate him. 


I recently noticed some examples of the conservative's hatred of Dewey. These are articles from the semi-literate, ham-handed right but the more intelligent critics usually whistle the same the tune...

"A hundred years ago John Dewey and his followers settled on this formula: they would take over the schools of education; they would brainwash future teachers to care more about social engineering than traditional education; and those teachers would go forth into public schools everywhere to brainwash kids and their parents into being comfortable with less education. That, clearly, is having your act together. We see malice aforethought, and a steely dedication to a subversive agenda."
That's from "Right Side News". http://www.rightsidenews.com/2014010933710/life-and-science/health-and-education/they-mean-well-they-just-cant-get-their-act-together-really.html

The next one is from "American Thinker". http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/01/education_establishment_giving_their_all_for_gold_glory_and_gospel.html
"That's the progressive doctrine according to John Dewey.  He provided the tools for a Marxist transformation of society.  His central teaching was that schools of education should be used to indoctrinate teachers, who in turn would indoctrinate their students and thus society."[T]his view of Dewey as the creator of an implementation strategy for a Marxian society is confirmed by what Lenin did in 1918 when he and the Bolsheviks were broke and the Russian Civil War was still raging. They started translating and publishing Dewey's books on education into Russian. ... Clearly the Kremlin considered Dewey's recommended educational practices to be an essential weapon to gain control over the Russian people."  That story has continued in America as well until the present day.  ("Credentialed to Destroy," page 49.)The Gospel according to John Dewey can be summarized this way: we need to control the public schools so we can level the children -- that's the foundation for a better society.  Thus spake John Dewey."

As the flavor of these criticisms might suggest, Dewey's educational philosophy was a victim of Red-baiting McCarthyism. The same right-wing attitude that put Pirsig on the list of subversives was also deployed against Dewey. It's not just a coincidence that pragmatism experienced a revival as soon as the cold war ended, I think.