Responsible Freedom

I would like to briefly comment on Chapter 5 and 6 of John Dewey's Experience in Education. I found these chapters quite insightful and surprisingly easier to follow, perhaps because of its short length. Chapter 5 talks about freedom and the advantages and disadvantages of "increasing outward freedoms". Chapter 6 talks about "purpose". I was most surprised not to find the term "responsibility" in these chapters. When I think of freedom, I cannot help but to think about the responsibilities that come with freedom.

It is not that Dewey does not include the theme of responsibility in his writing. With the students in mind, the author does elude to "responsibility" by talking about "self -control" and refers to thinking as a "postponement of immediate action". We discussed in class that for Dewey, the teachers have the responsibility of providing the appropriate environment to tie the classroom experiences to the world as a whole. This is also emphasized on chapter 6. It seems that the challenge with increasing outward freedoms for students seems to lie in the responsible choices that the students and teachers should make. Transmitting to the students that their actions have repercussions should also be a fundamental function of school.

This leads us to what Dewey calls "intelligent judgments" and what I see as "responsible judgments". I noticed that these judgments are closely tied to the prior chapter(chapter 4) dealing with social control. Within this context I have to ask the following questions:

1. Where does the personal morality of the student come into play in education? It seems that all of these "intelligent judgments" and practices of "self-control" are all based around what is socially acceptable in the particular culture or society that the particular person is in.
2. Is Dewey hoping that the particular socially controlled environment would help set the grounds for the student moral opinions and personal believes?

I gathered from these chapters that in the end, a proper education would guide students in the process of "forming" their own opinions or to somewhat find themselves as individuals. However, these individuals are to be molded within the already set rules of the society as responsible and educated adults. I can easily tie Dewey's views back to Tyak and Cuban's reading at the beginning of the semester as well as Functionalism and Marxism, but this would be an entirely new blog entry.

At the end of the day, I still have chapters 7 and 8 to read, so I better get to it. I may have some more concrete answers to my questions within these chapters.