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Mind.
He said the "difficulty of Bloom's position is that, like Leo Strauss, he
has not emancipated himself from the Greek notion that the cosmos is also an
ethos and that what is good and bad, right and wrong for man is essentially
related to the cosmic order, rather than to the choices ofmen and women con–
fronted by problems and what to do." Finally, Michael Oakeshott, not a
romantic naturalist, in his great essay, "Learning and Teaching;' says, "But this
inheritance is an historic achievement.
It
is positive and not necessary."
Frankly I know of no American philosopher who was as clear about the con–
tingency of the inheritance and the importance of it in American education.
Rita Kramer: Well, perhaps I should have taken greater pains to say the
followers of Dewey, who, like the followers of Freud, the followers of
Maria Montessori, the followers of many thinkers, have done more harm
than good in the name of those they profess to follow.
It
certainly is so in
the philosophy of progressive education, the child-centered school, as
taught at Columbia Teacher's College, that has wreaked as much havoc in
American classrooms as anything I can think of, including all other social,
economic, intellectual ventures. I do not dispute the important place of
Dewey in American philosophy but the influence of those who profess to
be his followers has been very destructive.
Victor Kestenb aum: I have heard that so often. I have heard it from
Diane Ravitch, my former colleague Roger Scruton, Paul Gagnon, and so
forth . The argument usually is that Dewey's writings are so obscure, so
dense, and so ambiguous, that he virtually invited misinterpretation by his
"followers." Without some close analysis of Dewey's educational writings,
the superficial condemnations and exonerations of Dewey will continue to
be the extent to which his thinking is included in foundational thinking
about educational reform. When someone like Jacques Barzun tells us that
the nonsense did not begin with James or Dewey, I pay attention because
we see in his wonderful book,
A Stroll with William James,
that Barzun
knows a thing or two about James and has a "feel" for the more elusive
aspects ofJames. Perhaps someone will wri te a similar book about Dewey.
Chester Finn: I certainly don't expect to do justice to a philosopher talk–
ing about Dewey. And I plead guilty to gross oversimplification. However,
it needs to be said that Dewey is to educational thought as the
Encyclopedia
Britannica
is to knowledge. There is almost no educational thought that you
cannot find somewhere in the writings of Dewey. He wrote on many top–
ics, he modified, adapted, evolved his views. A number of his writings are
sufficiently inscrutable that they are open to more than one interpretation
as well. The central point is that Dewey's followers at Teacher's College,
