The Ethics of Democracy: Individuality and Educational Policy

EDUCATIONAL POLICYANA M. MARTÍNEZ ALEMÁN

The Ethics of Democracy:Individuality and Educational Policy

ANA M. MARTÍNEZ ALEMÁN

The author revisits earlier discussions of the importance of the development ofthe individual for a democratic society, looking in particular at the “pragmaticutopianism” of John Dewey. The article proceeds from a view of personalgrowth, subjectivity, and communal relations that challenges the class stratifi-cation brought about by capitalist forces that serve to undermine an individ-ual’s democratic agency. The author explores the role and function of the indi-vidual in educational policy in the hope that such an examination will broadentheories and analyses of the role of class in educational policy.

The current debate about education . . . is a debate about the meaning of democ-racy, social criticism, and the status of utopian thought.

—H. A. Giroux (1992, p. 123)

In these early years of the 21st century, social critics, politicians, religiousleaders, and (even) educators have registered their concerns about the state ofAmerican education and the policies that determine the practice of schooling.Concerns about the need for standards, common curricula, teacher and pro-fessorial accountability, and school choice fill newspapers and periodicalsand find airplay on talk radio and in political candidates’ stump speeches.Americans, it seems, are anxious about education, in both its public, K-12and varied postsecondary manifestations.

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To many, the national apprehension about the education of 21st-centurychildren, 12.1 million of whom live in poverty (U.S. Census Bureau, 2000),certainly reflects a nostalgic longing for the presumed optimism of an educa-tional past when belief in the ability of education to defeat poverty, transcendclass, and revise citizens’ identities was unreserved. Today, however, confi-dence in the ability of education to improve economic and social opportuni-ties and promote citizenship has been shaken by certain realities. Thenational conviction that education can serve as a means to a better economicand social future is weakened by the knowledge that, although more educa-tion may protect workers from a steep decline in real wages, a newly mintedcollege graduate can anticipate a drop in real hourly wages (Heintz & Folbre,2000, p. 36). The gauzy dream of the promise of education is now upset by thereality that as a nation, America has turned away from the ethics of democ-racy that, made such social optimism possible. In doing so, educational pol-icy has been crafted that reinforces the very class stratification that demo-cratic education intended to alleviate. Such policy is consequentlyincompatible with democratic ends.

The conflict between belief in the democratic ideal of a class transcen-dence made possible by education and the reality of enthusiastic economicstratification, it seems to me, centers on the reassertion of an individualismfueled by capitalism’s millennial agenda: corporate globalism. It is a histori-cal parallel to the alienation of the industrial workers of the late 19th and early20th centuries. It is in this moment, as it was in its earlier expression, and inthe desire to train the next and new generation of workers, that Americansmay have lost sight of the ethics of democracy that were to guide Americanlife, those ethics of self-realization and individuality—not individualism—that were to inform educational policy and practice. The view of the Ameri-can individual and, in particular, the understanding of the development of hisor her individuality is now one of distorted democracy.1

Marxist educational theorists Peter McLaren and Ramin Farahmandpur(1999, p. 83) have pointed out that in succumbing to capitalism, the “greatfactory of dreams known as ‘America’ ” has rendered the individual immate-rial. Capitalism, they have argued, has exiled individual agency to “the cabi-net of lost memories” (p. 84). It is this expatriation of agency, of individuality,that I find most disturbing in educational policy. Educational policy dispos-sessed of the importance of the individual (by which I mean neither theneoidealist individual nor his neoliberal cousin) deprives people of the socialoptimism that an ethics of democracy asserts. This deprivation feeds anxi-eties about the ability of education to make democratic dreams possible; itmakes it difficult to revive the memory of the need to educate toward the

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realization of individuality and leaves people incapable of useful, construc-tive, utopian thinking.

In what follows, I revisit an earlier discussion of the importance of the fulldevelopment of the individual for democracy. This discussion rests on a viewof personal growth and subjectivity that challenges the class stratificationbrought about by capitalist forces that in turn serve to undermine an individ-ual’s democratic agency. Individual agency that is debilitated through educa-tional policies is incongruous with an ethics of democracy primarily becausethese policies most often serve to sabotage an individual’s ability to chooseamong opportunities and direct the course of his or her life, effectively limit-ing social optimism.

I introduced this article with Giroux’s (1992) reflections about educationin America as a guiding metaphor for this discussion. The pragmatic mean-ing of democracy, the need for pragmatic social criticism, and a call for prag-matic, utopian thinking frame my discussion. In this article, the pragmaticethics of democracy and the importance of the development of individualityfor democracy, as articulated by the American philosopher John Dewey,serve as the philosophical anchor. It is important for any discussion of therelationship between educational policy and the reproduction of class to con-sider Dewey’s conception of an ethics of democracy and its privileging ofindividuality because it was Dewey who held, throughout his long life, thatdemocratic societies, above all other forms of associated life, must provideall individuals with the opportunities for self-realization, and any limitationplaced on self-realization by public institutions (i.e., those that lead to thereproduction of class) negates society’s essential democratic character.

Dewey’s late 19th- and early 20th-century pragmatism constructs democ-racy as a metaphysics of sociality and as an understanding of the causes andeffects of egalitarian-associated life. Such a metaphysics holds the individualand society “organic to each other” (Dewey, 1888, p. 14), rendering each theconsequent dependent of the other, and is characterized by a visionary opti-mism that I find relevant to a discussion of 21st-century educational policy.The opportunity to develop individuality is both the source and the outcomeof Dewey’s democracy. According to Dewey, individuality that is freelydeveloped among an array of opportunities is both the means and end ofdemocracy. This dynamic relationship between individuality and democracyfashions social arrangements that are organic, imaginative, and inherentlyoptimistic. It is, in my view, these qualities that make Dewey’s articulation ofdemocracy and its ethics most useful and thus most promising because itsheds light on how educational policy has reneged on democracy’s pledge ofan equality of educational opportunity from which class transcendence was

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certain. And, it is hoped, a reading of Dewey can inspire a reimagination ofeducational policy with that end in view.

Dewey’s value in a discussion of educational policy can be better under-stood by recognizing that he understood that the role of philosophy is toattend not to theoretical abstractions but to the historical realities of people’ssocial and political lives. He recognized that philosophy’s role in Americansociety is to serve as an instrument of change and betterment. The attention ofthe philosopher, in Dewey’s view, must be on concrete, historical, and socialmatters such as schooling and its governing policies. In Dewey’s (1925/1958,p. 408) view, the task of philosophy and philosophers is to employ intelligent“criticism of beliefs, institutions, customs, policies” so that people can betterunderstand their experiences and act to improve on them. As cultural criti-cism, philosophy should point out the inadequacy and distortion of the valuesthat establish and shore up institutions and their practices (Dewey,1925/1958). Thus, it is the business of philosophy and philosophers in ademocracy to examine education and its policies to assess whether theirgrounding values and purposes are consistent with democratic ends.Dewey’s charge to philosophy and philosophers is to concern themselveswith how cultural values are linked to the policies that govern institutions. Inthe case of public schooling in a democracy, for example, philosophersshould concern themselves with how capitalist business interests can dictateeducational policy and legislation (e.g., the Smith-Hughes Act) or how a dis-regard for providing each and every student with equal opportunities to fullydevelop his or her individual capacities (individuality) can give rise tohigh-stakes testing policies.

In this article, I attempt to use Dewey’s pragmatic philosophy, in particu-lar his ethics of democracy and his conceptualizations of individuality andutopian thinking, to shed light on educational policies that are guided byundemocratic interests. These interests in turn determine and direct the per-verse promise of education in America: Through education, class transcen-dence is assured. To do this requires a discussion of Dewey’s conceptualiza-tion of the individual and individualism and, of course, his understanding ofthe meaning of democracy.2 I conclude with a hopeful discussion of the valueof pragmatic, utopian thinking for democracy.

THE MEANING OF DEMOCRACY:ETHICS AND INDIVIDUALITY REALIZED

Americans have come to know democracy as a form of government, as anarrangement of authority that, in principle, guarantees citizens equality in theshaping and application of that authority. Such a concept has been extended




to education in myriad ways. For example, the assertion that classroom teach-ing and learning can be democratic (Giroux, 1997) and that schooling andeducational opportunity should reflect these values (McLaren, 1997;Steinberg, 1995) stems from this instrumental idea of democracy. Many pres-ent concerns about educational standards and community control reflect thisunderstanding, and the historic construction and reconstruction of “educa-tion for citizenship” reinforce it.

By characterizing democracy as an ethics, Dewey suggested that democ-racy must be understood not as a form of government but as the foundingprinciples that justify people’s purposes and the systems they comprise. Anyethics, in Dewey’s view, is a “science that deals with conduct” and one that“aims to give a systematic account of our judgments about conduct” (Dewey& Tufts, 1909, p. 1). Thus, to think about an ethics of democracy requires themeasurement of the conduct of that democracy against its defining princi-ples. In the case of American democracy, the essential principle is individual-ity (Dewey, 1939/1976e).

In light of the 21st-century trend toward standardization in educationalpolicy, Dewey’s understanding of the ethics of democracy is most distin-guished and made relevant by its personal nature, the placement of an associ-ated individual at its conceptual center. Dewey (1937) wrote, “the foundationof democracy is faith in the capacities of human nature; faith in human intelli-gence and in the power of pooled and cooperative experience” (p. 458).

To Dewey (1888, p. 22), the individual and his or her development were“the first and final reality,” and as such, his or her conduct and forms of asso-ciation must reflect this. The primacy that Dewey gave to the individualstemmed from a belief that people are filled with “infinite and universal pos-sibility,” and thus, it is their communal obligation to construct social arrange-ments that reflect this value (pp. 17-28) . How people organize themselves,communicate, exchange goods, arrange social services such as education,and determine formal protections should reflect the value of the realized indi-vidual for society. Described as an actuated “ethical conception” by Dewey,democracy becomes the enacting of an ethics or a means to self-realizationfor all individuals. As both the means for self-development and its governingethic, democracy and the individual are consequently “synonymous” andcodependent.

As that form of associated living that “approaches most nearly the ideal ofsocial organization; that in which the individual and society are organic witheach other” (Dewey, 1888, p. 14). In Dewey’s democracy, people are not iso-lated, inanimate, or abstract units. Rather, they are active, interdependentorganisms with “infinite and universal possibility” (Dewey, 1888, p. 25). As aperspective that frames social order in psychological and cultural terms and




thus as humanly determined and derived, Dewey’s democracy does notreflect the ancient and often religious belief in an original human nature andin social organization that is predetermined by a divine power. Dewey’sdemocracy does away with the reliance on fixed, absolute codes of associa-tion and conduct, instead placing its origination and definition on the fact ofbeing and humanity, which will motivate communal action and individualdevelopment. As Dewey (1939/1976a) wrote, “democracy is a way of lifecontrolled by a working faith in the possibilities of human nature. Belief inthe Common Man is a familiar article in the democratic creed” (p. 226).

The optimism that Dewey placed in human capabilities meant that demo-cratic arrangements would have to attend positively and proactively to asso-ciations and formal arrangements such as schooling. At its core, this vision ofdemocracy is founded on a belief in the abilities of human beings and theircapacity for intelligence and on the belief that the vitality of collectivesociality is dependent on these. In Dewey’s view, democracy must be under-stood as a social arrangement, in which intersubjectivity is mutually benefi-cial, and in which the egalitarian communication of knowledge is necessaryfor both individual and communal growth. Policies that would limit the egali-tarian distribution and communication of knowledge would limit an individ-ual’s capacity for development, consequently reducing his or her potentialcontribution to the society. Limiting the growth of any individual conse-quently limits the growth of others. Thus, organizational or social policiesthat restrict individual growth, by definition, curb the positive developmentof the society they are intended to serve. Thus, any educational policy thatprivileges the self-realization of some and thwarts that of others, howeverthey are designated or limited, would, in Dewey’s view, be inherentlyundemocratic.

It is individuals’ peculiarity and uniqueness that was, to Dewey, the mostimportant element of democracy. According to Dewey (1960), as both thesource and consequence of association, individuality is not “ready-made”(p. 230). Uniqueness is a “temporal development” advanced through interac-tions with others. As an unshaped potentiality, each person is an incompleteindividuality that requires the democratic exchange of knowledge (or, inDewey’s term, experience) to develop. People are shaped by time and contextor, more precisely, by opportunities for interactions. Personality, individual-ity, or individual “careers” develop over time as a consequence of interac-tions in the world that elicit responses and fuel growth. Individuality, under-stood as the consequence of interactions or experience, is not assumed to be apreexisting condition that “proceeds to unroll as a ball of yarn may beunwound” (Dewey, 1940/1984, p. 103). According to Dewey (1940/1984),




people develop or realize individuality by the ways that they respond to theassociations, events, and opportunities for choice and action in their lives(p. 111).

Thus, individuality is a contextualized phenomenon, the result of the par-ticularity of the individual and his or her responses to the conditions of his orher life. In a democracy, then, institutions, organizations, and services (theconditions of life) must provide for the development of individuality. Thedevelopment of individuality serves democracy because the advancement ofsubjectivity ensures the continued expansion of possibility and the better-ment of society. Providing for the development of individuality is a funda-mental trait of Dewey’s democracy, a condition that reflects its liberal spirit(Westbrook, 1991, p. 431). Individuality, an essential principle of democra-cies, is dependent on the degree to which democratic societies do and do notlimit individual liberty, inquiry, and expression. What limits the developmentof individuality and, in particular, hinders or obstructs thinking or intelli-gence in a democracy (for example, its governing economic policy or educa-tional system) may confine individuals to unrealized lives, class arrange-ments, and unrealized contributions to the whole of society.

By enabling the “full and free” association of individuals (Dewey,1916/1944, p. 83), a democracy stays true to its essential liberal values of lib-erty, individuality, and freedom of intelligence and expression. Unlike whatDewey (1935/1976d) interpreted as the counterfeit liberalism of the19th-century interpretation of liberal values that gave absolute primacy to anabstract, unassociated, and autonomous individual, Dewey’s understandingof liberal values suggests that the individual or, more to the point, individual-ity should be the governing concern of all democratic arrangements. Individ-uality, the active realization of a citizen’s moral, intellectual, and physicalimprovement, should be the pragmatic aim of a society premised on humanequality. Thus, any social arrangement that subordinates individuals by limit-ing their opportunities for development, whether through “economic,” “psy-chological,” or “moral” means, compromises the spirit of both liberalism anddemocracy. Liberal ideologies that infuse culture with subtle forms of subor-dination such as “exclusion from participation” were to Dewey (1937, p. 458)the most insidious because they take on the character of normalcy. The “fixedsubordination” of individuals in a society, whether defined by race, sex, orclass, reflects undemocratic and illiberal sentiments because “individuals[are given] no opportunity to reflect and decide on what is good for them”(Dewey, 1937, p. 458). The loss of such liberty, especially if it is inculcated asa normative of caste or social status, by definition, makes any social arrange-ment undemocratic and illiberal. To restrict individuality by a “prior




principle” such as “family and birth or race and color or possession of mate-rial wealth” (Dewey, 1937, p. 459) is to infuse democracy with an illiberalauthoritarianism.

Such authoritarianism, wrote Dewey (1937), is contradictory to “the dem-ocratic faith in equality,” which is

the faith that each individual shall have the chance and opportunity to contribute what-ever he is capable of contributing and that the value of his contribution be decided byits place and function in the organized total of similar contributions, not on the basis ofprior status of any kind. (p. 459)

Thus, to limit individual growth is to limit the ability to contribute to demo-cratic society. Democratic societies, then, must ensure a full range of oppor-tunities for the development of individuals, their thinking, and their intelli-gence. A circular process of production, democracy, and individualitymotivates growth in both, and as such, impediments to one are hindrances tothe other. Impediments such as de jure or de facto prejudice on the basis ofrace or sex or “wealth or degree of culture” subvert democracy because whenthe “freedom and fullness of communication” are limited, individuals are leftwith fewer and fewer opportunities to expand their intelligence (Dewey,1906/1976b, p. 227). Without these freedoms of action, mind, and experi-ence, society is deprived of what each individual can contribute (Dewey,1937, p. 459). The loss or the negative expression of human capital, then,dilutes democracy’s promise.

THE INDIVIDUAL AND INDIVIDUALISM

The emphasis on individuality, not individualism, is what makes Dewey’spragmatism so relevant to a discussion of the meaning of democracy and edu-cation’s role in its fulfillment. Dewey took great pains to make clear the dif-ference between the two. This difference proves consequential for the abilityof democracy to fulfill its liberal promises. Dewey’s differentiation betweenindividualism and individuality as governing ideals in a democracy centerson his anxiety over the role of capitalism in democratic America. The rapidgrowth of corporate capitalism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries andthe heightening limitations placed on the working class signaled trouble forthe vitality of individuality in American democracy, according to Dewey, acondition that I suggest is paralleled today.

To Dewey (1939), the idea that individuals are inherently individualistic,that is, egocentric and narcissistic, was a product of cultural conditions that




he called the “cultural individualistic movement” characteristic of 18th-cen-tury liberalism. The liberalism Dewey disdained was the consequence of sev-eral social forces, two of which, John Locke’s “natural rights” philosophyand the doctrine of laissez-faire, he found particularly inimical to democracy.The natural rights philosophy of the late 17th century, which created thebelief that individual needs are primary, and the laissez-faire doctrine, whichgave rise to individual economic self-interest, were to Dewey primarilyresponsible for the retreat from an understanding of the individual as a socialbeing. This retreat from an associated individual to an autonomous,atomistic, self-fulfilling individual gave rise to a doctrine of “individualism”that held the rights and interests of the discrete, unassociated individual asprimary. Gaining prominence in 18th- and 19th-century England and France,this individualism, Dewey recognized, gave freedom to few and limitedopportunities to many (Dewey, 1930/1999). A consequence of medieval andfeudal institutions concerned with the salvation of individual souls and thesecular industrial revolution, which fostered the belief that the essential char-acteristic of all individuals is a motivation for personal gain, this form of indi-vidualism flourished in America despite democracy’s essential social andegalitarian character. Consequently, in Dewey’s view, America’s ethics ofindividualism displaced and unseated the ethics of democracy or the princi-ples that informed policies designed to provide genuine equality of opportu-nity for all.

Dewey (1930/1999) addressed the problem of individualism for democ-racy in Individualism, Old and New. Charging that participatory democracyand associated life were in peril at the hands of America’s ever-expandingcorporate capitalism, Dewey set out in Individualism, Old and New to reas-sert the development of the individuality of all of society’s members as thetrue ambition of a democratic America and to serve notice that unfetteredcapitalism would violate that very aim. As both “an ideal and endeavor,” theegalitarian development of individuals was, in Dewey’s (p. 8) view, theessential characteristic of democracy that 20th-century capitalism chal-lenged. The rise of industrialization or the “novel combination of machineand money” besieged or “crowded out” the democratic sensibilities and ide-als of “equal opportunity and free association and intercommunication” (p.9). Overwhelmed by capitalism, democratic America turned away from thedevelopment of individuality to a brand of individualism that would ensureits own growth and reproduction through capitalism. Dewey wrote,

Instead of the development of individualities which [democracy] prophetically setforth, there is a perversion of the whole ideal of individualism to conform to the




practices of a pecuniary culture. It has become the source and justification of inequali-ties and oppressions. Hence our compromises and the conflicts in which aims andstandards are confused beyond recognition. (p. 9)

The “perversion” of the ideal of individualism is simply the distortion by cap-italism of the ideal of individuality, a parody of democratic ends. In Dewey’sview, capitalism generated by mass production and the alienation of theworker would infuse social policy with an understanding of the Americandemocratic mission that valued the attainment of private gain and individualautonomy, not individuality. Such a misrepresentation of democracy wouldhave its costs, Dewey warned, the most important of which would be thetapering of the full range of individual human capacities. In his view, the fullrealization and development of individuality as a principle democraticendeavor would be defeated.

The loss of the development of individuality as an American democraticideal was a matter of actuated ethics to Dewey. He recognized that corporatecapitalism’s cost of production in a democracy is fundamentally moral. Therestriction of freedom, the suppression of intelligence, the loss of meaningfulintersubjectivity, all constraints on individuality, are essential for the life ofcapitalism and simultaneously contradictory to democratic life (Dewey &Tufts, 1909). Individuals, now treated as economic factors far removed fromcollective labor and decision making, become workers bound by the stan-dardization of efficiency, specialization, and wage dependency. Each workermust be like all others; the development of all workers’ idiosyncratic talents,abilities, and intelligence was a liability for 20th-century capitalistproduction.

Because the development of individuality is so greatly dependent on dem-ocratic associations—full, free, and varied—Dewey recognized that the idealof individualism that fuels capitalist enterprise requires a redefining of rela-tionships. In particular, capitalism demands a move away from understand-ing that individual growth is dependent on the growth of others. As Dewey(1930/1999) remarked, “the exploitative possessive individualism fosteredby capitalism . . . inhibits the formation of participating communities of dem-ocratic action essential to self-development and social welfare” (Dewey,1930/1999, p. 434). Restricted by the demands of production and profit, rela-tions between employers and employees, for example, reflect the “imper-sonal” nature of capitalism, a condition that is the consequence of its purelyeconomic objectives (Dewey & Tufts, 1909). Dewey recognized that profitmaking, the driving organizational force in capitalism, changes the interac-tion between employers and employees, buyers and sellers, and consumersand distributors. Once relationships that were “not organized for purely




economic reasons,” they were in the past more likely, given their collectivecharacter, to provide the democratic conditions for individual growth (Dewey& Tufts, 1909, pp. 497-499). With the shift to profit-driven employment andrelationships of profit-making exchange, in Dewey’s view, individuality wascompromised. The need for the accrual of capital now restricted and nar-rowed opportunities for growth. Especially hard hit in Dewey’s view wereworking-class individuals whose opportunities for development were largelycontrolled by capitalism’s need for their uniform and consistent labor. Theirlabor, now understood as “work,” became inevitable drudgery that only tran-scendence into the business or professional classes would alleviate (Dewey,1930/1999, p. 5). Demanding compulsory repetition and a predictable end,the work of the working class in capitalism did not require an idiosyncraticcharacter. Instead, because how things were made or produced could not bearthe mark of individuality, the distinction between work and its productbecame unnecessary. As capitalism increasingly made individuality andwork unconnected, workers looked to move to the professional class if onlybecause there, individuality appeared validated, or at a minimum, “the exag-geration of opportunity of personal expression” made it seem that way(Dewey, 1930/1999, p. 26).

The “submergence of the individual” by capitalism and its individualisticprinciples could not assure the democratic development of individualitybecause it was not an inherently “social” enterprise in Dewey’s (1930/1999,p. 26) view. To Dewey, capitalism was fundamentally an organized and sys-temic reproduction of power that necessitated the subjugation of individual-ity. Capitalistic enterprises functioned effectively by restricting workers’understanding of and control over their work and by limiting their decisionmaking. In an industrial America, capitalism could not provide workers withthe full social meaning of their work. But, even as capitalist enterprises pur-posely limited and controlled the opportunities for individual workers’ devel-opment, to Dewey, the real danger lay in the effect that this had on society atlarge. In Dewey’s (p. 21) view, the “business mind” would and did seep intothe general consciousness and conduct of society, as exemplified by thebrokered state of politics, big-time collegiate athletics, and organized,white-collar crime. Individuals’ “working ideas, beliefs and conduct” wouldand did take on a characteristic of capitalism—individualism—guaranteeingthe expansion of opportunity for a few and the assumed natural fate of arestricted social and economic caste for the many.

Dewey understood that democratic society organized and controlled bycapitalism would lose its ability to offer all individuals the full range ofopportunities for individuation. As a regime of power, state capitalism couldnot risk the heterogeneity and idiosyncrasy of the democratic individual,




each equal and equally free to individuate. Capitalism would need to system-atically control individuals or, more to the point, create (minimally) a class ofindividuals indistinguishable from one another to guarantee its ends. Theopportunities for the individual growth and development of the working class(classes) would have to be, in number and character, what would guaranteecapitalism. And, because capitalism affected the “working ideas, beliefs, andconduct of all of us” (Dewey, 1930/1999, p. 20), workers’ preconceptions ofthe range of opportunities possible in their lives and the actual array of“choices” would be supported and inculcated by those structural forces thathelped reproduce capitalism. For example, when schools teach “the myth ofindividual achievement” (Kincheloe, 1999, p. 53), a fiction generated by theethics of individualism, while limiting students’ academic opportunitiesthrough class-biased tracking, working-class students may accept their nar-row range of opportunities as the natural order of things. Thus, whether for-mally through schooling or informally through the development of consum-erism, inculcating the working class with a belief in the limitations ofopportunity as a consequence of membership in their socioeconomic casteand the hope of class transcendence as a means to greater opportunity, that is,expanded potential for the realization of self, is essential for capitalistAmerica.

Individuality, for members of the working class in capitalist America,comes to be understood not as an essential value and requirement of demo-cratic society and its policies and services but as a singular, personal condi-tion relatively unrelated to their work but resident in the labor of the upper orbusiness class. Appearing unregulated to the working class, the labor of themiddle-upper and upper classes appears to hold opportunities for individua-tion and self-realization that are assumed to be accessible through education.For capitalists, then, because the development of individuality among theworking class is problematic for production, individuality must be sup-pressed, and public schooling is an obvious means for its suppression. Thus,such structural entities as public education and educational policies, directedby upper-middle-class and upper-class power, can assure the development ofa working class consciousness that assumes a social order and its range ofcorrelate experiences that are natural but can be surpassed (Kincheloe, 1999).Ironically, in America, public schooling, the very social service that engen-ders the psychology of class around individuality, is the same social servicethat sells itself as the means to expanded opportunity, greater possibility forthe realization of individuality, and class transcendence. Thus, in both raisingthe hope of class transfer and in guaranteeing class stability for capitalism,public education in America enacts an undemocratic paradox.




SOCIAL CRITICISM: PUBLIC SCHOOLING IN AMERICA

In his classic study on the impact of socioeconomic class on educationalachievement, On Equality of Educational Opportunity, sociologist James S.Coleman (1966) made empirical what educational reformers since the early20th century had known: The socioeconomic compositions of schools andfamilies are the best predictors of student achievement. The Coleman report,as it came to be known, reminded Americans at the time of its “war on pov-erty” that public education’s role in their children’s achievement was inextri-cably tied to economic positions. Thus, educational achievement, histori-cally purported as and believed necessary for movement out of the poor andworking classes, now seemed irrevocably tied to class and conventionallypreordained. Coleman communicated Dewey’s earlier philosophic assess-ment as empirical fact.

With educational achievement correlated so positively to a family’s and aschool’s economic profile, little else needed to be done in schools to assurethe limitation of opportunity for the individuation of poor and working-classchildren, and yet, many policies employed at these schools served to eitherreinforce or further the restrictions on the development of individuality. Forexample, standardization and high-stakes testing policies bring to America’sschools a culture of efficiency and “Taylorization” (Taylor, 1911/1967) thatcan be said to undermine individuation by narrowing and shrinking the cur-riculum, “mechanizing” education (Dorn, 1998), and privileging account-ability over individual student learning. As a case in point, because theiractual interest is institutional accountability, not individual learning,high-stakes testing policies ignore individual student needs, further restrictlearning opportunities for individual students, and disregard individuals’psychosocial, developmental requirements. Because of the interest inaccountability, high-stakes testing policies are essentially concerned with theschool as an agency of the government and a beneficiary of government fund-ing and consequently are not crafted with the full development of individualstudent capacities in mind. Such policies do not value individuality (certainlynot in the Deweyan sense) as an educational concern and objective becausetheir motivating interests—to publicly fund only certain elements of the“public” because not all citizens are equal members of the public3—prohibitsuch aims.

Anchored to the principles of capitalist production, these and other educa-tional policies institute educational tasks and purposes aligned with prepara-tion for wage-earning work outside the home. As a consequence, individualsbegin to believe that “the only valid questions about education” have to dowith training for the workplace (Martin, 1985, p. 6). School policy is crafted




with the values of efficiency and functionalism in mind, guidelines that helpmaintain education as the servant of the state, in this case, the capitalist state(Brosio, 1994; Martin, 1985).

In what follows, I highlight vocational education tracking in America asevidence that education has been and continues to be used to limit the devel-opment of individuality, consequently achieving undemocratic ends. Othereducational policies instituted in this and in the previous century also supportthis assertion. For example, voucher or “school choice” policies; 20th-century segregation by gender or race; and the “call for behavioral objec-tives” that sanction curricula and a pedagogy that internalizes these ideals,thereby maintaining economic order (Apple, 1979, p. 118), are but threeillustrations of the phenomenon. By extension, in the postsecondary context,I offer that institutional diversification and its consequent stratification(Ambler & Neatherly, 1999) and its reproduction of elites (Youn, Arnold, &Salkever, 1998), as well as tuition trends and financial aid policies (Gladieux& King, 1999; Institute for Higher Education Policy, 1999), also serve asexamples. For the purposes of this article, I choose to focus on vocationaleducation tracking, if only because its long and successful history renders ituseful as a means to judge educational policies in general.

Vocational Education Tracking

American industrialists have a long history of involvement in the develop-ment and implementation of legislated public educational policy (Wise,1979). Understanding that public schooling could serve to transition the citi-zenry from life in the home to life in the workplace, throughout much of the20th century, American businesses looked to educational policy as a means todevelop, cultivate, and be assured of an identifiable group of workers. Indica-tive of the need for workers in an era of then unparalleled industrial growth,the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917 established vocational education programs inthe nation’s public schools. A milestone in federal and state cooperation insetting and enacting educational policy, the Smith-Hughes Act provided forthe funding of employment training programs, education deemed directlyutilitarian and “socially efficient” (Studer, 1998, p. 382). But, more impor-tantly, as educational policy, the Smith-Hughes Act made formal the inculca-tion of values partnered with industrialists’ interests and “furthered the causeof a class-based education” (Kincheloe, 1999, p. 125).

As Kincheloe (1999) noted, the foundation of vocational education in theUnited States revealed a desire among industrialists to shore up the pool ofworkers who could produce certain ends. Concerned primarily with workers’values and attitudes and less with their abilities, industrialists saw vocationaleducation in the public schools as a means to a subordinated workforce




(Kincheloe, 1999, p. 107). Through vocational education, America’s publicschools could “produce a consciousness that induced workers to passivelyaccept the degradations of the industrial workplace as the natural experienceof labor” (Kincheloe, 1999, p. 109). But, not all students were deemed eligi-ble or appropriate for vocational education. As a consequence of class, gen-der, and race, vocational education primarily tracked working-class boys andgirls, new immigrants, and African Americans into a narrow range of educa-tional opportunities, subsequently limiting their potential for individualdevelopment and empowerment (Carnoy & Levin, 1985; Katz, 1975). Fed-eral allocation of vocational education funding further narrowed the range byenacting race-specific allocations in southern states, further exacerbating theinequities in opportunities for the development of individuality among Afri-can Americans (Werum, 1999). Working-class boys of the 1920s and 1930swere advised to enter their schools’ vocational training tracks, a means to anend very different from the arts and science track designated for middle-classand upper-middle-class boys (Kincheloe, 1999, p. 126). In a reification ofcapitalist ideas, the authority given to the school to determine eligibility formanual or industrial labor or white-collar work was carried forth by the voca-tional guidance system and its subsequent incarnations (Spring, 1996).

By the 1970s, vocational education and vocational guidance had evolvedinto “career education,” a curricular and guidance system that refocused theeconomic role of the school. The 1972 amendments to the Vocational Educa-tion Act of 1963 categorically recommitted public schooling to focus its cur-ricular offerings on their relevance to existing employment opportunities.Now concerned with the transition from school to work, career educationsought to match students with the current employment markets, continuing tosort them by race, class, and gender. Tracking students toward existingemployment opportunities did nothing to widen the scope of opportunitiesfor working-class students and minorities (Spring, 1996), let alone provideunrestricted opportunities for the development of individuality. Through thesecond half of the 20th century, the vocational tracking of individuals inschooling continued to serve American capitalists’ aims by helping sort thelabor force and in the process restricting the opportunities for access tohigh-status knowledge that would expand the possibilities for individuation.Curricular gerrymandering assigned critical-thinking skills and conceptualunderstanding to subject areas designated for the “college-bound” studentpopulation, a practice that continued to reinforce the class distinctions thatvocational education had started decades earlier with the Smith-Hughes Act.

Although late 20th-century legislation such as the Perkins Vocational andApplied Technology Education Act of 1990 attempted to integrate these“higher” order cognitive skills with education-for-work programs, scholars




questioned the legislation’s ability to guarantee equitable distribution of edu-cational opportunity (Pullin, 1994). At the beginning of the 20th century,Dewey (1913/1976f, 1915/1976c) publicly questioned educational policiesthat linked school to work and ostensibly limited the intellectual potential ofsome students through the bifurcation of the curriculum. A “vocationaltrack” and an “academic track” in public schooling signaled to Dewey a for-malized subjugation of individuality. Whatever the track chosen for the stu-dent (in fact, it would be unlikely that students or their parents would beallowed to make that choice), the polarization of skills inherent in a dividedcurriculum—manual training devoid of critical thinking and liberal educa-tion devoid of manual activities—would limit individual growth and stand toreproduce undemocratic social arrangements regardless of the track taken(Dewey, 1916/1944).4

Dewey’s anxiety over the dual system of schooling endorsed by theSmith-Hughes Act and Massachusetts’s commissioner of education, DavidSnedden, in 1915, stemmed from his belief that education in a democracycould not actively participate in the reproduction of a “labor” and a “leisure”class system. The undemocratic tradition in education that prepared some for“useful labor” and some for “a life of leisure” reflected a contrived antithesisthat served capitalist aims because it did not provide for the full and variedopportunities necessary for the development of individuality (Dewey,1916/1944, p. 250). Dewey rightly suspected that a dual educational systemwould be an effective means to a “social predestination” antithetical to demo-cratic societies (p. 318). He warned that elites in power

will demand a liberal, a cultural occupation, and one which fits for directive power theyouth in whom they are directly interested. To split the system, and to give others, lessfortunately situated, an education conceived mainly as specific trade preparation, is totreat the schools as an agency for transferring the older division of labor and leisure,culture and service, mind and body, directed and directive class, into a society nomi-nally democratic. (p. 318)

Dewey correctly assessed the historical construction of a dual system of edu-cation as an undemocratic policy built on undemocratic ethics. By definition,an ethics of democracy could not stipulate that birthright determined therange and scope of one’s opportunities for self-realization, for the develop-ment of individuality.

Additionally, it did not escape Dewey that, in using the school to perpetu-ate capitalism’s existing and undemocratic class stratification, Americanbusinesses were reaping the direct benefits of public taxation. Through




vocational education, as outlined by federal legislation (the Smith-HughesAct), private, profit-making enterprises now profited from public taxation.As Dewey reasoned, taxes that were appropriated for public education inAmerican democracy now funded narrow, private aims, not the purposesguided by an ethics of democracy. Through vocational education, schoolswould become the employment brokers for corporations and businesses, arole that changed the schools from purveyors of democratic opportunity togratis suppliers of proletariats (Dewey, 1913/1976f). If anything, Dewey rea-soned with vocational track supporters, such as Snedden, that educationalpolicy should “strive for a kind of vocational education which will first alterthe existing industrial system and ultimately transform it” (p. 412), a trans-formation that would promise all individuals a truly equal chance atindividuation.

Late 20th-century research bore out Dewey’s concerns about the undemo-cratic nature of vocational education and tracking (Mallery & Mallery, 1999;Oakes, 1992a; Romo, 1998). Even the belief that vocational education prac-tices could effectively tie work to schooling was challenged by the absence ofevidence that such schooling actually affected American economic perfor-mance (Bailey & Gribovskaya, 1999). According to Bailey and Gribovskaya,the exact skills that would improve economic growth and the pedagogy asso-ciated with them are not evident. Longitudinal data on participation in voca-tional versus combined programs suggests that in combined programs, stu-dents’ socioeconomic compositions were proportional to the entire studentpopulation and reported higher levels of confidence about completing sec-ondary studies (Delci & Stern, 1999), ostensibly bringing the merits of thePerkins Act into question. Smaller studies of urban high schools verified theassumption that low-income and working-class students and disadvantagedracial and ethnic minority students took more vocational or occupationallyoriented courses as a consequence of biased guidance policies (Oakes,1992b).

Whether in empirical documentation or in challenges to its driving ideol-ogy (Goodlad, 1984; Oakes, 1985), the deleterious effects of vocational edu-cation and its tracking mechanisms have been attended to by American schol-ars, and yet, they remain unconvinced of its inherent undemocraticobjectives. Despite its alleged utility, vocational education, whether a sepa-rate or combined curriculum, has served to reinforce class distinctions andgreatly limit the mobility of the working class. The contracted nature of thebreadth of opportunities for the development of individuality that is funda-mental to such schooling promises little hope of amplifying and making thebest use of human potentialities.




UTOPIAN THINKING: DESIRE, HOPE, AND PRAGMATISM

In 1930, Dewey (1930/1999) recognized that the “pecuniary culture char-acteristic of [American] civilization” prevented the full development of indi-viduality and that it was the “perversion” of individualism that became both“the source and justification of inequalities and oppressions” (p. 9). In thoseearly years of what would be the most devastating blow to American capital-ism (which was, ironically, saved in part by the socialist democratic programsof the New Deal), Dewey understood that the distortion of individualism bycapitalism made for undemocratic conditions, the most serious of which wasthe inhibition of individuality. Because they provided a means for the contin-uation of capitalist economy, these undemocratic conditions—social inequi-ties caused by economic disparity—would become a matter of cultural habit-uation. In Dewey’s view, Americans would reiterate the norms of capitalistideology through its institutions, such as schooling, by reinforcing class divi-sions, a process designed to limit the individuality and thus the potential con-tribution of all citizens. By limiting opportunities for individual growth,schooling would become the means to capitalist ends, a process that includedbeing a source of unfounded optimism for the working class. The ambition ofworking-class parents to have their children “climb” into the business or pro-fessional class was fueled by the promise that education could provide themeans to that ascendance (p. 5), a promise alleged to be an enacted conditionof American democracy. Dewey and other 20th-century pragmatists wouldargue that schooling, commandeered by capitalist imperatives, habituatedcertain ideas, values, and beliefs designed to perpetuate the socioeconomicstatus quo. Schooling, as an instrument of capitalist culture, encouraged theworking-class desire for upward mobility and kept alive the hope of its attain-ment, all the while implementing policies designed to reproduce existingstratification.

To pragmatists such as Dewey, this hope is unreasonable. It is instilled as adesire for an objective that has been both systematically obstructed and heldup as readily attainable. Because schooling in capitalist America is intendedto both reproduce class stratification and proffer itself as the means to classtransfer, the desire for the latter objective must logically be nullified (to someextent) by the former. In other words, the hope of class transfer by the work-ing class is on tenuous logical footing. This is the perversity of schooling forpragmatists like Dewey. It is desire or hope (activity) aimed at a goal thatpractical reason would render seemingly unworkable. To the pragmatist, theactivity (desire and hope)—using schooling as the means for class transfer—takes on an unintelligent character because intelligence translates desire into“systematic plans based on assembling facts” for their consequent analysis




(Dewey, 1922, p. 255). If one assembles the facts (e.g., a college degree trans-lates into $20,000 more in annual earnings than a high school diploma alone(U.S. Census Bureau, 1999), and for American students from families in thebottom 25% of the income distribution, college enrollment remains far lesslikely than for those whose families are in the top 25% of the income distribu-tion [Gladieux & King, 1999, pp. 165-166]) and then does the analysis (it istherefore not a certainty that lower income high school graduates will attaincollege degrees, thereby enabling transfer into a higher economic class) oneis left knowing that the hope that the poor and working classes place inschooling for their children’s class ascendance is likely to be dashed.

But, despite the uncertainty and the unlikelihood, poor and working-classfamilies in America continue to have hope that education will help their chil-dren move into the higher socioeconomic classes. Ironically, fueled in part bythe culture of capitalism, this hope finds some measure of confidence in thestories of those poor and working-class individuals who have managed totranscend their socioeconomic status as a consequence of education. Mexi-can American boys from working-class schools can rise to be part of the cul-tural elite; Richard Rodriguez did so (Rodriguez, 1982). African Americangirls can use education to transcend poor, working-class backgrounds; GloriaWadkins (aka bell hooks) did so (hooks, 1989). There are stories of collegeprofessors who grew up poor in rural Kentucky or in urban New York (Dews& Law, 1995). Poor and working-class boys can grow up to be president (e.g.,Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton), and poor andworking-class girls such as Ruth J. Simmons can grow up to be ivy leagueuniversity presidents. The successes of these and other poor and work-ing-class individuals show the promise of education, and so parents hold outhope.

But, pragmatists know that this hope is anchored to the logic of the“exception to the rule.” These individuals are exceptions. Because no systemcan fully and absolutely regulate and restrict the development of individual-ity, these boys and girls and women and men have attained what the majorityin their class could not. These individualities, as a consequence of access toand partaking of the opportunities provided through scholarships, patrons,and chance, have been realized despite the rule. These individualities havesomehow asserted themselves against the prevailing rule or institutional con-ventions that would otherwise block their development. To a pragmatist suchas Dewey, these exceptions to the rule should invite not unfounded, hopefuloptimism but “a certain intellectual pessimism” that can enable triumph overthe rule (Dewey & Tufts, 1909, p. 413).

The intellectual pessimism that Dewey offered as a way of “making theright prevail” (Dewey & Tufts, 1909, p. 413) is why latter-day pragmatist




Richard Rorty believes that pragmatism is a viable means to social justice.Rorty (1998, pp. 174-175) noted that pragmatists, such as Dewey, concernthemselves with looking at the future and its betterment, social improvementwith democratic ends. Dewey’s pragmatism, like Rorty’s, imagines a demo-cratic utopia not based on real experience, actual existence, or idealized com-munities but on the imagined possibilities of unrestricted individualities.Pragmatism’s imagined possibilities rest on “logical spaces” where hypothe-ses about the means to a more egalitarian world can be continually tried andtested (Rorty, 1998, p. 214). As a departure from an abstract and absoluteunderstanding of justice as a moral virtue whereby inequities can be allevi-ated by charity or chance, a pragmatic utopia offers a vision of unrestrictedindividuality. In this utopia, then, education would not be an injustice everynow and then reversed. Instead, the objective of education would be the fulland coherent emancipation of individuality for all, a goal previouslyunimagined.

The injustice that schools have committed in American democracy isabout nothing more than the suppression of individuality, yours and mine.From this basic oppression enacted in the schools, all others follow simply asa matter of degree. As institutions in a democracy, schools should make pos-sible new practices and customs that free human potential and help developcoherent and authentic individuality in all students. But, as both Dewey(1922) and Rorty (1998) noted, to imagine this kind of world requires know-ing the value of the individualities of others, not just the promise of one’s ownindividuation. This will require the courage to abandon old ideas and habits,such as individualism and old questions, conventions, strategies, and cri-tiques, such as standards and testing for the possibilities of what can be imag-ined. For the pragmatist, this means the courage to change custom.

Many leftist educators and educational policy critics who concern them-selves with class issues may have come to believe as a consequence of the fallof the Soviet Union in 1991 and the energetic rise of global capitalism thatutopian thinking is a thing of the past. Although it is in need of resuscitation,utopian thinking is still possible despite this new century’s capitalistic drive.In fact, it may well be that the heightened hypergrowth of capitalism in thiscentury demands it. The value of utopian thinking, however, lies in its prag-matic interpretation, which I find absent in most educational discourses,whatever their ideology or politics, and especially lacking in the formulationof educational policy.

Elsewhere, I have urged educators to appropriate (or reappropriate)Dewey’s pragmatism as a blueprint for thinking about and resolving undem-ocratic conditions in education (Martínez Alemán, 1994, 1999, 2001, inpress-a; Martínez Alemán & Salkever, 2001). I have reasoned in this work




that Dewey’s pragmatism offers the social optimism that serves to inspireaction. A hopeful and confident project, Dewey’s pragmatism consequentlypresents a view of utopia not as an abstract ideal with little foundation inexperience, nor as Sir Thomas More’s social and political island of perfectionin Utopia (1516/1995). Rather, utopias or, in pragmatic terms, utopian think-ing is a visionary system that inspires and engages the imagination to solveproblems and create new possibilities for growth. To the pragmatist, utopia isuseful in that it is an “imagined possibility that stimulates men to new effortsand realizations” (Dewey, 1948, p. 118). Utopian thinking is the imaginationat play. It is thinking that “takes in the full scope of a situation” (Dewey,1916/1944, p. 236), ultimately becoming an “instrumentality of action”(Dewey, 1948, p. 118). Problems are solved through imagination, through theintelligent deliberation of means and ends. The imagined possibilities of uto-pias enable one to “see the actual in light if the possible” (Shade, 2001, p. 32).A pragmatic use of utopias can serve as a tool to make schools and societyfunction as consequences of an ethics of democracy. For those leftists readyto forego the possibility of a socially just America, Dewey’s pragmatism maybe the way to envision such a utopia and a means to its advancement.

In these pages, I have proposed Dewey’s pragmatism as a means torecover utopian thinking, a tactic whose democratic character should notoffend American sensibilities. In particular, I have suggested beginning withDewey’s pragmatic understanding of the importance of universally realizedindividuality, a personhood very different from the traditional and neoliberalsense and defined by expanded experience and choice, two very Americanprinciples. To ground educational policy in Dewey’s pragmatism wouldenable the privileging not of institutions but individuals, not of monolithicmeasures of professional competency but the distinctive gifts of dedicatedteachers, and not of schools and systems but students. Educational policyanchored to and motivated by Dewey’s (1888) pragmatism begins with theconviction that “in every individual lives an infinite and universal possibility”and that the development of individuality is both the “true meaning of equal-ity” and the foundation of an ethics of democracy (p. 25). To craft, employ,and test educational policies grounded in these ethics would in turn form “asociety in which every man has a chance and knows it—and we may add, achance to which no possible limits can be put, a chance which is truly infinite,the chance to become a person” (p. 25).

This is Dewey’s utopian vision for America: a society in which the real-ization of the talents and abilities of all individuals is unlimited and unre-stricted. That is the utopian vision that I propose for educational policy; avision grounded in such a way would rightly interpret many existent educa-tional policies (e.g., accountability plans, high-stakes testing, school choice,




the privatization of public education through vouchers, racially suspectretention programs in urban centers such as Chicago and New York [House,1999], and vocational tracking) as undemocratic practices that fortifyinequalities. Without keeping a pragmatic eye on the value of individualityand its realization for democratic ends, I am not hopeful that educational pol-icy in America will do much to alleviate social and economic class inequali-ties. A view that misses this essential democratic element by focusing insteadon macro, large-scale treatments simply reinvents, refashions, and reassertssocial ordering devoid of the equality of opportunity that will enhance societythrough the full realization of each individual and his or her idiosyncraticcapacities. The more educational policy in America is allowed to turn awayfrom the value of individuality realized for democracy, the more educationwill lead to a social and economic feudalism worthy of the aristocraciesAmerica has historically sought to disdain.

NOTES

1. Although I rely on the assertion that the ideology that drives corporate capitalism funda-mentally contradicts a democratic understanding of the individual, individuality, and class strati-fication, what follows is not a direct examination of the economics of America’s educational pol-icies. Many scholars have provided a critical view of the direct effects of economic policies onAmerican education (Apple, 1996; Kozol, 1992; Newman, 1996). Instead, I am interested inreconsidering the role and function of individuality in educational policy. I hope that this exami-nation will broaden theories and analyses of the role of class in educational policy.

2. A caveat: Given the depth and volume of his writings on these topics, readers are encour-aged to deepen their understanding of Dewey’s ideas by consulting his extensive writings.

3. See Dorn (1998) for a related point on the “narrowing” of school issues and the monolithictreatment of schools as an aim of accountability and high-stakes testing policies. Haney (2000)made a related point in his claims about the unequal consequences of a high-stakes testing policy,the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills, for Hispanic and African American students.Referring to Haney, Murphy (2001) wrote that the debate over high-stakes testing may be about“who we hold to be the first client of public education—the individual student, the economy, orsociety” (p. 59).

4. It is important to note that Dewey understood that students who were enrolled in the aca-demic track suffered a similar undemocratic fate, the narrowing of individuality. Dewey did notprivilege intellectual studies over vocational studies precisely because the full range of opportu-nities for self-realization was not made available to either track by virtue of theirdichotomization. A consequence of history, the dichotomy is false, a binary relationship con-structed by ancient, class-based societies (Dewey, 1916/1944). An educational system thatsought to educate some for “culture” and others for “utility” reinforced these ancient social divi-sions of the labored and leisured classes. Dewey warned that such a scheme would likely producea society much like that of ancient Greece, in which elites determined the self-realization ofnonelites. The determination of individuality by elites is undemocratic. According to Dewey(1888), individuality “cannot be procured for anyone, however degraded or feeble, by anyoneelse, however wise and strong” (p. 22). By definition, in Dewey’s (1916/1944) view, democraticsocieties should “do away with the dualism [of intellectual and vocational tracks] and to




construct a course of studies which makes leisure a reward of accepting responsibility for ser-vice, rather than a state of exemption from it” (p. 261).

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The Ethics of Democracy: Individuality and Educational Policy

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