Dewey, Lipman and the tradition of reflective education.doc

Taylor, Michael, Schreier, Helmut and Ghiraldelli, Jr., Paulo, (eds.). Pragmatism, Education, and Children: International Philosophical Perspectives. Amsterdam and New York: Editions Rodopi, 2006.
Dewey, Lipman and the Tradition of Reflective Education
Philip Cam
School of Philosophy, University of New South Wales
There is a passage near the beginning of Matthew Lipman’s Philosophy Goes to School Matthew Lipman, Philosophy Goes to School (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988).
that encapsulates the influence of John Dewey upon his work. While relishing the ground-breaking advent of philosophy in elementary schools, Lipman reminds us that it belongs to a tradition—the tradition of ‘reflective education’. Socrates, most famously, stands at the beginning of this tradition, while Lipman names Montaigne and Locke as major figures along the way. In the more immediate past, however, it was Dewey who carried the torch for reflective education:
For surely it was Dewey who, in modern times, foresaw that education had to be defined as the fostering of thinking rather than as the transmission of knowledge; that there could be no difference in the method by which teachers were taught and the method by which they would be expected to teach; that the logic of a discipline must not be confused with the sequence of discoveries that would constitute its understanding; that student reflection is best stimulated by living experience, rather than by a anized, ated text; that reasoning is sharpened and perfected by disciplined discussion as by nothing else and that reasoning skills are essential for essful reading and writing; and that the alternative to indoctrinating students with values is to help them reflect effectively on the values that are constantly being urged on them. Ibid., p. 4.
I will explore the influence of Dewey upon Lipman by elaborating on these remarks. I will show that Lipman’s project is an important and direct extension of Dewey’s conception of refl