The concept of experience and the formation for the democracy in a Deweyan perspective

Abstract

The scope of the present essay is to analyze the deweyan concept of experience in the formation process of a democratic society. Therefore we started showing that the educational philosophy developed by John Dewey (1859-1952) settled in a theory of experience structured around purposes, epistemological fundaments and potencial methods to provide the improvement of reasoning skills and critic spirit of students. In our interpretation, such elements are essentials to build a democratic education, because to Dewey, the democracy is not limited in a government regime, but it’s a shared way of life and the society becomes democratic when different social groups are able to exchange experiences with each other in a free and plural mode.

Keywords

• John Dewey
• Democratic education
• Experience
• Formative process