Habit, Education, and the Democratic Way of Life: The Vital Role of Habit in John Dewey\u27s Philosophy of Education

Abstract

Some have claimed that John Dewey was one of few thinkers that developed an educational theory that is comparable to Plato.1 Dewey did something that William James and Charles Sanders Peirce did not do; he applied Pragmatism and the Pragmatic method to the study of education. The main tasks of this dissertation are as follows: (1) Argues that habit is the most important and unifying element in John Dewey\u27s philosophy of education, (2) Critically investigates habit\u27s fundamental role in his democratic project of reconstructing culture toward establishing and sustaining the democratic way of life. In addition to the latter points, this project shows how and why the critique of habits and cultural values is central to Dewey\u27s philosophy of education and reveals how important the process of unlearning is to the continual development of human possibilities. The latter tasks will be carried out by first reviewing the historical influences on Dewey\u27s thinking with regard to habit and surveying secondary literature that has dealt with his position on habit. Second, the Deweyan conception of the nature of habit and the formation of habit in immediate experience will be explored. Third, Dewey\u27s educational philosophy will be examined. Education, which Dewey asserts to be Democracy\u27s midwife, should produce growth that is characterized by perpetual reconstruction of habits of thought and practical conduct. Fourth, in investigating habit, individuality, and community, a close reading of Dewey\u27s position on habit highlights that the political enterprise of education and the transactional process of learning are cultural projects that demand ongoing re-evaluation and refinement community values. The conclusion will argue how important the ongoing improvement of a cultural instrumentalism, through schooling, is to sustaining a steady path of cultural self-correction. For Dewey, schooling, in cultivating the requisite habits, serves the crucial social function of developing and recasting new forms of the Democratic way of life toward creating a Great Community. Dewey had a persistent concern for the ethos of the Democratic way of life but feared that the stultification of an individual\u27s plasticity of habit will inevitably bring on the social arterial sclerosis of the public. Like his pragmatism, experimentalism, and instrumentalism, the Democratic way of life, for Dewey, is an attitude. This attitude, like any attitude, is shaped and channeled by a force as powerful as gravity, habit