Most ancient civilizations had some type of method for educating their youth. These education systems were all very practical, such as how to execute the hunter-gatherer lifestyle or how a good, young man or woman behaves in society.

In Greek education, apprenticeships were emphasized, with a focus on military virtues like obedience and self-control in addition to critical thinking. In Rome, as in Greece, education focused on everyday realities, as exemplified by parents taking children to the town square to experience adult responsibilities.

Our education system is inherited from these concepts and therefore finds its roots in combining “apprenticeship” with “philosophy.” However, deviation began in the late nineteenth century, predominantly due to John Dewey, who, according to Aliya Sikandar in “John Dewey and His Philosophy of Education,” saw education as a means of social reform rather than for the development and growth of individual students, families, and communities.

Dewey’s influence on our society cannot be overstated. Dewey, Sikandar argues, saw education as a way of furthering social reform and “as a means of serving the democratic process through making corrections in the economic evils and by obtaining political ends that would lead to progression of a society.”

Sikandar states the following regarding Dewey:

Dewey was largely inspired by Marx’s theory of social struggle and conflict between classes. Marx’s theory of conflict is that the society is stratified and layered with different strata and there is a competition within the different classes. Marx stressed that social analysis should focus on class structure and relations.

Hence, if education is supposed to be the transformer of society, these ideas and curricula should be integrated into the school days to work toward that end.

Dewey, like his hero Rousseau, spent much of his career theorizing about the purposes of life and education despite having relatively little firsthand experience in the field he would so profoundly influence. Although Dewey emphasized the importance of connecting learning to practical experience, he often intertwined that goal with a broader vision of social reform. As Sikandar explains, Dewey, inspired by the ideals of a free society, “realized the pressing need of freedom and equality, emancipation from social bounds to liberate individual and society from the structures of power.” Thus, while Dewey advocated for practical education, he also saw schooling as a vehicle for reshaping society and challenging existing power structures.

Henry T. Edmondson writes in John Dewey & Decline Of American Education: How Patron Saint Of Schools Has Corrupted Teaching & Learning that,

Thanks in no small part to Dewey, much of what characterizes contemporary education is a revolt against various expressions of authority: a revolt against a canon of learning, a revolt against tradition, a revolt against religious values, a revolt against moral standards, a revolt against logic—even a revolt against grammar and spelling. In many classrooms, the concern is whether sufficient authority exists simply to guarantee physical safety and survival. Dewey’s revolt has carried American education to the place where he himself admitted he had arrived late in life: ‘I seem to be unstable, chameleon-like, yielding one after another to many diverse and even incompatible influences; struggling to assimilate something from each and yet striving to carry it forward.’ (p. 56)

Edmondson lays the current societal chaos and division at Dewey’s feet.

Promisingly, there were those who, later, after seeing the effect of Dewey’s ideas put in practice, wrote about the dangers of the progressive education movement. Peter McAllister, writing for the Cato Journal, discussed various post-WWII intellectuals and their responses to this movement. He stated,

In Educational Wastelands, published in 1953, Arthur E. Bestor (1953) accused progressive educators of abdicating the responsibility to teach the ‘power to think.’ That same year, Robert M. Hutchins (1953), in The Conflict in Education in a Democratic Society, criticized what he referred to as progressive educators’ ‘doctrine of adjustment,’ which prized conformity and devalued independent thought. Albert Lynd (1953: 36), in Quackery in the Public Schools, also published in 1953, characterized the methods of teacher training and certification, wherein teachers are taught and certified only by teachers who are themselves steeped in progressive educational theory, as ‘one of the neatest bureaucratic machines created by any professional group in any country anywhere.’

Potentially, one of the after-effects of the progressive education movement set forth by Dewey was the erroneous idea that philosophical or moral reasoning is not very important.

Barry Linton, the author of History’s Greatest Military Commanders, opens his book with the statement that I think should be on every educator’s mind: “For as long as mankind has existed there has been war” (p. 6). The inclination of the heart of humanity is toward war, not towards peace. We must be taught moral reasoning to prevent such war-filled populations from forming.

Much of the research coming out of the education system needs to consider: What is an education, and is a formal education necessary? Should we listen to research from higher education? Why or why not?