A volume in Research in Curriculum and InstructionSeries Editor: O.
L. Davis, Jr. The University of Texas at AustinMatthew Arnold, 19th
century English poet, literary critic and school inspector, felt
that each agehad to determine that philosophy that was most
adequate to its own concerns and contexts. Thisstudy looks at the
influence that Matthew Arnold had on John Dewey and attempts to
fashion aphilosophy of education that is adequate for our own
peculiarly awkward age. Today, Arnold andDewey are embraced by
opposing political positions. Arnold, as the apostle of culture, is
oftenadvocated by conservative educators who see in him a support
for an education founded on greatbooks and Victorian values, while
Dewey still has a notably liberal coloring and is not too
infrequentlytarred for the excesses of progressive education, even
those for which he bears no responsibilityat all. Both, no doubt,
are misread by those who rather carelessly use them as idols for
theirown politics of education.This study proposes a pluralistic
approach to education in which pluralism means not only plurality
of voices, but also plurality of processes.Using a model built out
of a study of rhetoric and hermeneutics, four aspects of mind are
indentified that draw Arnold andDewey into close correspondence.
These aspects are the tentacle mind (using Dewey's favorite
metaphor for breaking down the barrierbetween mind and body), the
critical mind (which builds on the concepts of criticism that
animated both Arnold and Dewey's approachto experience), the
intentional mind (which attempts a long overdue rehabilitation of
the concept of authority and an expansion upon theincreasingly
apparent limitations of reader-response theory) and the
reflective-response mind (in which the contemplative mind istreated
to that active quality that makes it more a true instrumentality
and less an obscuring mechanism of isolation).Dewey echoed Matthew
Arnold who himself echoed so many of the voices that preceded
andwere contemporary with his own. Theirs were awkward echoes, as
all such echoes invariablyare. They caught at the intentionality of
those voices they echoed, trying for nearness, buthoping, at least,
for adequacy. Awkward, but adequate, is what this study offers, but
it maywell be what we most need right now.
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