Dewey Prophet or Philosopher of Democracy?

ABSTRACT. The process of post-war reconstruction in Italy has been closely connected with the establishment in 1946 of the democratic republic, which required a deep cultural and political renewal. This implied different and innovative cultural references and models and a thorough transformation of educational models and practices, conceived as the most effective tools to cultivate new forms of citizenship. Within this framework Dewey’s thought proved to be a meaningful reference and an important role in the reception of his vision of education and democracy was played by Ernesto Codignola and his son Tristano who founded La Nuova Italia (the New Italy) publishing house based in Florence, and the journal Scuola e Città (Schooling and the City). As a matter of fact, La Nuova Italia was not simply a publishing house but rather the main tool of a cultural and political project aimed at “renewing” Italian culture. This was undertaken by means of a careful selection of authors who could represent new cultural references and could inspire an effective transformation of educational models and practices in order to sustain an effective political and social change. Democracy and Education was one of the first Dewey’s works to be translated and published within the series “Educatori Antichi e Moderni” (Ancient and Modern Educators) in 1949. The translation of Dewey’s masterpiece was carried out by Enzo Enriques Agnoletti, a scholar of Piero Calamandri and his successor in the direction of the monthly review “Il Ponte”, which was, as Norberto Bobbio points out, “the spokesman for an open, non doctrinaire democratic socialism” (Bobbio, 1995). Within this historical and cultural context, this was conceived mainly as a political operation, with the purpose of defining a shared ethical and political aim to be subsequently developed and translated into democratic forms of education and teaching for the construction of a new democratic citizenship. Democracy and Education has therefore become the core of a pedagogical “manifesto” and the reference textbook for the cultural, ethical and political formation of the following two generations of educational scholars and practitioners. As a matter of fact, it is true that in many cases, within the Italian educational debate, the approach to Dewey’s ideas has not been grounded in a philosophical and theoretical area of discourse, but rather in other practical areas, such as, for example, in an institutional or political field. This approach has progressively detached Dewey’s reasoning from the discursive context within which it was conceived as well as from the overall development of his thought. Moreover, the prevalent political focus of the first readings of Democracy and Education has, to a great extent, diverted Italian scholars from the core meaning of Dewey’s masterpiece, as a result divorcing the democratic and educational issues from the philosophical and epistemological ones. historical period in Italy) obscured Deweys’ critical positioning towards liberalism and did not contribute to sustain a thorough vision of the American philosopher’s thought (Baldacci, 2017). For this reason, Luciana Bellatalla is very critical of a ritual and simplified reading of Dewey’s thought which represents the American philosopher mainly as “the prophet of democracy” and of Democracy and Education as its “manifesto”, and highlights the necessity to read the book from an epistemic perspective, which allows us to see how it represents an epistemological turning point from an holistic to a systemic vision of the world, identifying the utopian tension which sustains Dewey’s reasoning (Bellatalla, 2017). Also Giuseppe Spadafora notes that, for an effective understanding of the whole meaning of the book it is necessary to focus symultaneusly on the philosophical, educational and political dimensions of Dewey’s reasoning (Spadafora, 2017). It is therefore important to promote a new and theoretical reading of Democracy and Education aimed at recovering its theoretical structure adn discover its implications for the construction of a democratic theory of education which is he ultimate goal envisaged by its author.