Connectedness, Newness and Democracy in Schooling. The Lesson of Democracy and Education

Over the last couple of decades, the narrative of educational competitiveness and the current climate of economic efficiency, have narrowed down the role of schooling and education, thus reducing their function to that of mere providers of skills and competencies functional to neoliberal educational apparatus. Neoliberal educational agenda, on the one hand, and the spreading Right-wing populism, on the other, grip education and schooling in a kind of claws maneuver that put at risk priceless educational features, such as students’ capacity to autonoumously set one’s aims and purposes, democratic attitude, and the primacy of the common good. In such a landscape, it is enough clear how a democratic and critical education is cornered. Nonetheless, room for alternative narratives remain. In my paper, by analysing Deweyan oeuvre, I wish to offer an interpretation of education and schooling far removed from the failures of both neoliberalism and populism. Deweyan theory of social intelligence is, in fact, at poles with any reductive conception of education, be such reductivism dependent on neoliberalism or populism. Particularly, Deweyan lesson as it is expressed in Democracy and Education, goes deep into the meaning of interrelatedness and connectedness as essential not just to democratic education, but also to intelligence and self-formation. Otherwise stated, the Deweyan lesson about interconnetedness, democracy, newness and education is of priceless educational value.