Democracy and Education

While some may consider the phrase oxymoronic, the belief in democratic education expressed by the father of progressive education, John Dewey, is worthy of reflection.

"I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform. All reforms which rest simply upon the law, or the threatening of certain penalties, or upon changes in mechanical or outward arrangements, are transitory and futile.... But through education society can formulate its own purposes, can organize its own means and resources, and thus shape itself with definiteness and economy in the direction in which it wishes to move.... Education thus conceived marks the most perfect and intimate union of science and art conceivable in human experience."
- John Dewey, My Pedagogic Creed, 1897