Love, Justice, and Education

John Dewey and the Utopians

By:
William H. Schubert, University of Illinois at Chicago

A volume in the series: Landscapes of Education. Editor(s): William H. Schubert, University of Illinois at Chicago. Ming Fang He, Georgia Southern University.

Published 2010

Love, Justice, and Education by William H. Schubert brings to life key ideas in the work of John Dewey and their relevance for the world today. He does this by imagining continuation of a highly evocative article that Dewey published in the New York Times in 1933. Dewey wrote from the posture of having visited Utopia. Schubert begins each of thirty short chapters with a phrase or sentence from Dewey's article, in response to which a continuous flow of Utopians consider what is necessary for educational and social reform among Earthlings. Schubert encourages the Utopians, who have studied Earthling practices and literatures, to recommend from their experience what Earthlings need for educational and social reform and how they can address obstacles to that reform. The Utopians speak to myriad implications of Dewey's report by drawing upon a wide range of philosophical, literary, and educational ideas - including many of Dewey's other writings. Their central message is that loving relationships and empathic dedication to social justice are necessary for educational reform that responds wholeheartedly to learner needs and interests. True to Dewey's original position, such education must be built upon social reform that works to overcome acquisitive society based on greed: the principal impediment to realizing human potential, democratic society, and educational relationships that enhance it. To overcome the debilitating acquisitiveness that plagues Earth is the challenge for educators and all human beings who seek to involve the young in composing their lives and cultivating a world of integrity, beauty, justice, love, and continuously evolving capacities of humanity.

CONTENTS
Prologue. Improvising Riffs on Dewey and the Utopian. 1. No Schools at All. 2. Gatherings. 3. Assembly Places. 4. Homelike Ambience. 5. Resources. 6. Parents and Peers. 7. All as Teachers and Learners. 8. Learning Community for Children. 9. Sharing of Gifts. 10. Responsibility for Cooperation. 11. Life, Not Objectives. 12. Toward Worthwhile Lives. 13. Purpose Engrained in Activities. 14. Discovery of Aptitudes and Development of Capacities. 15. Inevitability of Learning. 16. Analogy to Babies. 17. Creating Attitudes, Not Acquiring and Storing. 18. Resisting Acquisitive Society. 19. Overcome Acquisitiveness. 20. Cultivating Positive Capacities to Liberate. 21. Enjoyment Now, Not Deferred. 22. Always “Is” with Faith in “To Be”. 23. All-Around Development. 24. Sense of Positive Power. 25. Elimination of Fear. 26. Confidence, Eagerness, and Faith in Human Capacity. 27. Faith in the Environment. 28. Worthwhile Activities. 29. The “Right Way”. 30. From Love to Justice, “For Goodness Sake!” Epilogue: Riffs of Hopes and Dreams. Bibliography

REVIEWS
"Studying Schubert’s explorations on Dewey, we find ourselves in the honest and achievable pursuit of love, justice and education in the 21st century." Madhu Suri Prakash Pennsylvania State University

"A magnificent meditation on John Dewey's utopian vision of what education could and should be... . His book deserves a slow read." Larry A. Hickman Southern Illinois University

"Bill Schubert re-invigorates Dewey and re-engages his ideals for this generation." Gloria Ladson-Billings University of Wisconsin-Madison

"Bill Schubert is to be congratulated for doing what the great scholar, W. E. B. Dubois, defined as essential; the need to provide an education to equip students to judge the world not as it is but what it might be." Carl Glickman University of Georgia, Emeritus

"Schubert has written a book like no other I have ever read.This wonderful work ranges far beyond the bounds of the usual tiresome educational discourse obsessed with cognition and the quest for certainty." Jim Garrison Virginia Polytechnic and State University