Citation

Margonis F. Educ. Theory 2009; 59(1): 17-39.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009, Board of Trustees - University of Illinois, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1741-5446.2009.00305.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

John Dewey’s willingness to endorse a remedial form of education for African American students offers us a rare glimpse of the racial assumptions underlying Dewey’s educational philosophy. By considering a variety of clues — Dewey’s silences on racial equality, his understanding of race and racial progress, and his respective prescriptions for European American and African American students — Frank Margonis offers in this essay a speculative case suggesting that the visionary child-centered education for which Dewey was most well-known was intended for European American students and not African American students. Because of the racial assumptions operative in Dewey’s educational philosophy, Margonis suggests, Dewey’s fundamental conceptions of the “student” and “classroom community” would best be abandoned by educational philosophers hoping to write philosophy that serves all students.