What do you think the Commission on Social Issues should be doing?

[Craig A. Cunningham]

The Commission had a workshop at AERA but I'm sure many of you did not attend; we talked about how we can further the Society's mission of keeping Dewey's ideas alive in practice. What specific paths/tasks/goals do you think the Commission should pursue?

[Kathleen Knight Abowitz]

Craig, thanks for setting this discussion up.

My ideas for JDS revolve around interests I've had for a few years now regarding the role of intellectuals in public life. Assuming there ARE some intellectuals at colleges and universities in education departments (and, I think there are), and assuming some of them have time for public discourse (beyond doing silly stuff like NCATE), I'd like to see more of us doing it. The "it" is tricky. We were not "trained" to write philosophy for public audiences, and in fact, I think some doctoral programs teach exactly the opposite -- scholarly writing that is sometime impenetrable. I feel as though I have been trying, since tenure, to teach myself new ways of writing and trying to loose a lot of the jargon. And I think I'm not alone in all this -- I believe a lot of professors are wishing their work to be more "public" and engaged with real problems in their communities (variously defined).

So I think JDS can help with this. The HOWs of writing philosophy for public audiences, engaging with local issues/problems, and the WHEREs -- what are some forums that we might join? Developing these ideas began at the Commissions's work session in New York: developing/sharing style sheets, making exemplars available, sharing topic ideas.

Ideas on how to proceed?

[Kathryn M. Benson]

The Commission could seek other organizations with similar missions in order to unite, at some level, with those organizations -- a banding for common purposes -- to form a more powerful voice for the goals and purposes of promoting Dewey's ideas for purposes of the common good -- his ideas form a basis for undermining the arguments of the technocrats who are determined that a standardized test is the basis for passing/failing students, schools, teachers, administrators, etc. We are remiss in promoting broader goals and ideals of education and are caught up in the futile argument against -- this and that -- we need to move forward with positives for -- this and that.....

[Leonard Waks]

Kathryn is right. One important strategy is to link up with other organizations and serve as a vehicle for their members to exchange ideas about social issues and the public presentation of these.

When I was at the AAACS meeting in March Tony Whitsun, who was organizing a similar effort for that organization, mentioned our commission as a model, and spoke about our blog. At his workshop, many members were keen on the idea of public ideas, but others worried that the society (AAACS) was not organized for that purpose.

Wel guess what: the Dewey Society is!! And there it is right in the mission statement. So I think we can do good things by bringing other organizations constrained by this worry about "mission creep" and providing an appropriate vehicle for their expression.

I am working on this and I hope others will as well.

Len

[Leonard Waks]

At our workshop in March the participants strongly urged the commissioners to enlist a group of committed authors for the SOCIAL ISSUES blog, and create a steady supply of appropriate posts for other JDS members to reply to and use in their classes.

I am now actively inviting individual members of JDS to join SOCIAL ISSUES as authors. If anyone wishes to join the board of authors, please let me know. I'll send you my ideas about what you might do as an author, and sign you up. If you need any support in figuring out how to use the blogger format, let me know and I'll hand hold you through the process.

Len

[Scott F. Gregory]

In Dewey's time, progressive education had three key components in my opinion. There was of course, the research based wing which came out with new ideas regarding education and that featured feedback after certain things were tried. The second item would be of course, practice. I'd like to see conferences and material geared towards practitioners who seek to apply progressive principles to their respective curriculum and classrooms. The last component has to do with social advocay and this can not be stressed enough in my humble opinion. Progressive education sought to better society and to ameliorate problems facing society through critical pedagogy and engaged practice. Henry Giroux's "Teachers as Intellectuals" is a great read and along his line of thought, I'd like to see the Commission work towards empowering teachers and other concerned citizens to further the goals of progressive education and society. To me, conferences, publications, and online venues would be utilized to gather together researchers, practitioners, and advocates to help push progressive goals in the 21st century. I'm not certain how all of that will be accomplished, but discussion is a good start!

[Craig A. Cunningham]

Scott: good ideas! Check out the social issues blog, at http://deweycsi.blogspot.com/. It's a start!!!