between analogies and differences
The
subject of this report has a complex treatment, so we should pay more attention to the various terms of the question: and first of all to the
interlacement of the probable connections and interferences between John Dewey and Anton S. Makarenko,
in relation to their personality, culture,
mutual acquaintance and their
unlike contexts of
belonging. But this is too far from the
aim of this report.
However it is necessary to start from contradictory opinions on Dewey and
Makarenko, both in USA and in URSS; and to bear at least these bibliographic indications, to begin with: J.
Boydson – R. L. Andersen, John Dewey: A
Chechlist of Translations 1900-1967, Southerns Illinois University Press, Carbondale, 1969; A.H.
Passow, Influenza di John Dewey
sull’educazione nel mondo, in Dewey. Ieri e oggi. Edited by N. Filograsso and
C. Nisi, Urbino, Quattro Venti, 1989, pp. 75-81 (with important bibliography); many
recent essays in reviews “Soviet Education” and “East/West Education” etc. But, as for Makarenko
and his world, we can not prescind
from some Dewey, Impressions of Soviet Russia. II. A Country in a State of Flux, in
id., The Later Works, 1925-1953,
Volume 3: 1927-1928, Edited by J.A. Boydston Textual Editor, P. Boysinger. With
an Introduction by D. Sidorsky, Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale
and Edwardsville, 1984, pp. 208 sgg.
Besides, it is impossible to
undervalue the presence of Dewey in
URSS a long time before of the Revolution: and
to remember Stanislas T. Šatskij, Moisei M. Pistrak, Aleksandr Zelenko etc.,
pedagogists and educationalists, with ascendency into Dewey’s work. Moreover
a different investigation is the
deepening about the Pavl N. Ignatev, liberal and progressive Minister for
Public Education before 1917, who like reformer was inspired by Dewey.
The research’s conjecture
Makarenko in the Pedagogical Poem, like Dewey in Logic,
the Theory of Inquiry and in Theory
of Valuation, resolved methodological, theoretical, and ethical-organizational
problems in a dialectical unity rather than separately, thereby strengthening
links between pedagogical theory and practice.
The Makarenko’s controversy with the “pedologia” (and on other hand with the
“’free-and-easy’ upbringing”) and the Dewey’s controversy with the “logic
atomism”, with the “abstractness” of
the “abuse of tests” etc., are quite
coherent.
This original integrated approach to the
investigation of upbringing processes enabled both to discover and to implement
the advanced pedagogical tendencies of
their time, and to foresee
precisely the prospect of the theory and practice of new upbringing. So Dewey in the theorethical,
educational and aesthetical works, that the researcher Makarenko into practical
experience made use of three paths of
cognition and action in indissoluble
unity: the theoretical metod of scientific research; original
social-pedagogical esperiences; and estehic assimilation of reality.
Particularly a book like Art as
Experience (1934) and a novel like the Pedagogical
Poem (1933-1937) are two different
expressions of same general educational project. But the condition of
life and social class, the respective contexts and the immediate aims of everyone are
different. Makarenko proposes to oneself a “communist education”, Dewey intends
to give the best social contents to democracy.
Makarenko experiments with “the new
man” (“Socialist”) and with his peculiar freedoms, Dewey warrants theoritically
and practically the premises of mondial widening of
the educational perspective. They compare problems of correlation between action’s aims and instruments, and they determine together the creative procedures
of a individual and collective improvement: a
gradual improvement, according to Dewey; through steps (“burst’s pedagogy“), according to Makarenko.
Besides, Dewey and Makarenko are persuaded that the true logic of
pedagogical means and systems of edicational means is not confined to the
narrow realm of school but entails the
broad social life of the community, of the State. It is in the exploitation of
these principles and traditions that already quite clearly Makarenko and
Dewey distinguish a society from all others.
A Dewey’s work like School and society (well known in USSR) and the Pedagogic Poema (immediately traslated
in USA) proceedes in same direction. Also into the Dewey works we do not find the same idea of “collective”. We find rather the
idea of generical “group”. But both
Makarenko and Dewey think that “personality” is formed by means of “social relations” (the parent-child
relationship, friendly relations,
sexual intercourse, relations between
employer and worker, business
relations etc.). And they - Dewey as philosoph-educator and Makarenko as
educator-writer - work on the potentation of personality, by
means of the growth of the sociality
(into the “collective” or into the “group”).
This is the reason because Makarenko is always against all the pedagogical
theories and self-criticist towards the
sovietic results on the education. This is the reason why Dewey is sensible
always to the numerous applications of
every pedagogy and his democracy…
However not accidentally when
Dewey gone in USSR (1928), with regard to the “besprizorniki” (that is the “wild children”, of the same type of
the “deserted children”, about which Makarenko narrates in the Pedagogical Poema) and their education, he expressed oneself in these terms:
Two-thirds
of the children are former “wild children” orphans, refugees, etc., taken from
the streets. There is nothing surprising, not to say unique, in the existence
of orphan asylum. I do not cite the presence of this one as evidence of any
special care taken of the young by the Bolshevik government. But taken as
evidence of the native capacity of the Russian stock, it was more impressive
than my command of words permits me to record. I have never seen anywhere in
the world such a large proportion of intelligent, happy and intelligently
occupied children. They were not lined up for inspection. We walked about the
grounds and found then engaged in their various summer occupations, gardening,
bee-keeping, repairing buildings, growing flowers in a conservatory (built and
now managed by a group of particularly tough boys who began by destroying
everything in sight), making simple tools and agricultural implements, etc. Not
what they were doing, but their manner and attitude is, however, what stays
with me. I cannot convey it; I lack the necessary literary skill. But the net
impression will always remain. (J. Dewy, Impression
of Soviet Russia, cit., p. 212).
And in
conclusion:
If the children had come from the most advantageously situated families,
the scene would have been a remarkable one, unprecedented in my experience. Wen
their almost unimaginable earlier history and background were taken into
account, the effect was to leave me
with the profoundest admiration for the capacities of the people from which
they sprang, and an unshakable belief
in what they accomplish. I am aware that is a marked disproportion between the breadth of my conclusion and the
narrowness of the experience upon which it rests […] (Ibidem).
After about
seven years, in the 1935, Dewey provides
an ulterior evidence of his attention to the world of Makarenko. In general on the URSS and
particularly on the Ukraine (the
place where the sovietic educatinalist principally has
operated), Dewey writes:
The
nine divisions of the Educational Exhibit present the vast scope of the
educational work of the USSR. They also reveal the close articulations of the
various lines of work. Pre-school work, technical education in the factories, popular instruction of the
masses, improvement of health, individual and public, are not so many
independent lines centrifugally conducted, but part of a planned social system,
having a common goal.
Such a unified system suggests excessive centralization and growth of
bureaucratic routine. But in the USSR there are powerful forces
operating against these undoubted perils. There is the ardor and the enthusiasm
of youth, together with a habit of
self-discipline. There is also the federated system, allowing great autonomy to
the federated socialist states – witness, for example, the exhibit of the
Ukraine. Then is the cultural autonomy of the various racial minorities.
There is one phase of the exhibit to which I wish to call special
attention. If industry is to become what
agriculture once was – a way of life and not an enslavement to machines,
every factory must become itself an educational institution. It must be devoted
to producing human beings inspired with social purposes, informed with
knowledge and equipped with something more mechanical skill.
[J. Dewey,
Foreword to Education in the Soviet Union. First published in Education
in the Soviet Union, ed. W. A. Neilson. Catalogue
of an exhibition under the auspices of the American Russian Institute for
Cultural Relations with the Soviet Union, held in the American Museum of
Natural History, New York City, 16 January to 22 February 1935 (New York:
American Russian Institute, 1935), p. 3; and now in J. Dewey, The Later
Works, 1925-1953. Vol II:
1935-1937. Edited by A. Boydston. Textual Editor, K. E. Poulos. Associate
Textual Editors: B. Levine. A. Sharpe, H. F. Simon. With an Introduction by J.
J. McDermott, Carbondale d Edwardsville, Southern Illinois University Press,
1987, p. 509].
The
Dewey’s notations are very important, both for agreement and for antithesis. They encourage the reasons about the connection of Dewey, Makarenko and the Pedagogical Poem between
analogies and differences.
A
dialogue in the distance?
Dewey
who - as we said above -
has visited the USSR
in the 1928. At the same time, in the Pedagogical Poem,
Makaranko was to meet the American gentlemen (also pedagogues). With following
narrative and instructive result:
Visitors would come to us on Sundays – students, workers’ excursions, pedagogues, journalists. The newspapers and magazines printed simple, friendly accounts of our life, illustrated by portraits of the boys and snapshots of the hog-house and woodworking shop.[...].
Foreigners were being brought to see us more and more frequently. Well-dressed gentlemen narrowed their eyes politely at our primitive prosperity, the ancient monastery domes, the boys’ thin cotton overalls. Nor could we impress them with our cowsheds. But the lively boyish faces, the restrained business-like hum, the almost imperceptible irony of the glances directed at speckled hose and short jackets, at smoothly-groomed countenances and diminutive notebooks – these did seem to make an impression on our visitors.
And so on:
They
bombarded their interpreters with insidious questions – for some reason unable
to believe that we had broken up the
monastery wall, though there was obviously no wall any more. They asked
permission to speak to the boys, and I gave it, only strictly stipulating that
there should be no questions about the boys’ pasts. This put them on their
guard, and started them arguing. The interpreter, a trifle embarrassed, told
me:
“They want to know why you conceal the past of your changes. If it
was bad – all the more credit to you!”
But it was with entire satisfaction
that the interpreter transmitted my reply:
“We don’t want any credit. I only
ask for the most ordinary delicacy. We don’t pry into the past of our
visitors.”
The visitors blossomed out into
smiles and nodded cordially.
“Yes, yes!”
Then they departed in their
expensive motorcars, and our life went on as before.
[A.
S. Makarenko, The Road to Life: an epic of education, traslated from the
Russian by I. And T. Litvinov, Moskow, Foreing Languages Publiching House,
1951, pp. 408; and A. S. Makarenko, Sočinenija, Tom pervyj. Pedagogičeskaja
poema, Moskva, Izdatel’stvo Akademii pedagogičeskich nauk RSFSR, 1950,
pp. 601-602].