Dewey and Tagore: Together despite Differences

John Dewey (1859-1952) from the United States and Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) from then India can be positioned as two among some most important and influential philosophers of education in the twentieth century. The two scholars have written extensively about what purposes education should serve and how a good education should be. Dewey's Democracy and Education (1916) is a book that discusses in details his ideas and philosophies on education. Likewise, Tagore also has written extensively about educational systems and ideas, as rewritten in the chapter "Founding a New Education" in The Oxford India Tagore by Uma Das Gupta in 2009. These two scholars lived around the same time, but in two poles of the world. Thus, it is interesting to compare their ideas. What looks more interesting is that while Dewey and Tagore agree on some ideas like that education is not separate from life itself; they have many differences like what education should aim.

The most striking similarity that one can find in their philosophies of education is that both view education as a broad process which should not (and cannot) be limited to classrooms where students of a specific age group sit to learn for specific daytime. For Dewey, educational process – the process of teaching and learning – remains throughout life. He views that education is not a preparation for life, but it is a life in itself. Blurring the difference between life and learning, he has written, "…education is development…life is development and that developing, growing is life" (410). Thus, he concludes, "The educational process has no end beyond itself; it is its own end" and "the educational process is one of continual reorganising, reconstructing, transforming" (410) of life which cannot be limited to a narrow classroom.

Discussing limitations of a formal classroom, Dewey says, "Children doubtless go to school to learn, but it has yet to be proved that learning occurs most adequately when it is made a separate conscious business" (404). Claiming that schools in this way can serve what he calls 'training', but not education, he further explains, "…we cannot thereby get him to understand the meaning which things have in the life of which he is a part" because "we may secure technical specialised ability…but not the kind of intelligence which directs ability to useful ends" (404). 

Tagore, from the other part of the world, also echoes Dewey's backlash against narrow-minded concept of education conceived and practiced during that time. He argues that education should be provided to children in an open nature for nature is divinity for him. Against the practices that separated life from learning, he writes, "…what tortured me in my school-days was the fact that the school had not the completeness of the world. It was a special arrangement for giving lessons" (94). And, 'lessons' means mere lessons, not education for life as such! For Tagore, it shatters children's love with life for "Children are not born ascetics, fit to enter at once into the monastic discipline of acquiring knowledge" (Tagore 94).  His criticism becomes so intense when he announces "What we now call a school in this country is really a factory, and the teachers are part of it" (112) and "The teacher is now a tradesman, a vendor of education in search of customers" (121). 

In fact, Tagore in his life tried to exercise that idea with the school he established called Shanti Niketan. About the school, he writes, "I tried to establish a school where all boys might be free in spite of the school" like "the natural school which Nature supplies to all her creatures" (109). He believes that "nature's help is indispensable when we are still growing up, and still learning, and before we are drawn neck and crop into the whirlpool of affairs" (117). Such school, Tagore thinks, is "more important than classroom teaching" (110).  "This helped to create an atmosphere in which they could imbibe something intangible, but life giving…" (110), he writes hinting toward his idealism of universal harmony and transcendental spiritualism he imagined.

Both Dewey and Tagore have recognised children's potential in learning from the self and the environment. Both do not believe that children's minds are blank sheets of paper in which a teacher fills the gap in schools. Rather, they believe that children, like adults, in learning are active and external forces can only facilitate their learning which they actually do for themselves by themselves. Dewey says, "The child has specific powers… Normal child and normal adult alike, in other words, are engaged in growing. The difference between them is not the difference between growth and no growth…" (410). More clearly, "Growth is not something done to them; it is something they do" (Dewey 406) and for Dewey, this very growth is education. That means, it is not that adults educate children, but children educate themselves with help of adults.  

Tagore also has confidence on power and ability of children to learn. He believes that children are God's creation and official arrangements of schools and classrooms limit them in a man-made atmosphere (90). He says children's subconscious minds are very active which always imbibe knowledge and celebrate that.  They are capable "without any restraint, to master language, which is the most complex and difficult instrument of expression, full of indefinable ideas and abstract symbols" (Tagore 108). According to Tagore, "we are born with that God-given gift of taking delight in the world, but such delightful activity is fettered and imprisoned, muted by a force called discipline" (108).    

While Tagore and Dewey agree on what contemporary education lacks, they have very differing views on what the education should actually aim. This marks the greatest difference apparent between two philosophies of education being discussed. For Dewey, the purpose of education is growth, and continuity of that growth along with education. This growth as explained by Dewey seems growth in this world, but the aim that Tagore recommends one to have with education is beyond this world. His philosophy talks of transcendence from this world with freedom and perfection of the soul.     

Dewey believes aims/ends should not be separated from means. Thus, for him, education is both means and end of life. The aim of education/learning is hence continuity of learning that invites growth and progress. He writes, "Since in reality there is nothing to which growth is relative save more growth, there is nothing to which education is subordinate save more education" (411). Dewey says education in an earlier phase enables one for education next to that, as it is both means and end. "The purpose of school education is to ensure the continuance of education by organising the powers that insure growth" and "The inclination to learn from life itself and to make the conditions of life such that all will learn in the process of living is the finest product of schooling" (411). 

Growth, for Dewey, is holistic. "For Dewey growth is an inclusive and not a single exclusive end. It embraces all the positive intellectual, emotional, and moral ends that appear in everybody's easy schedule of the good life and the good education" (Hook 492).  This growth for Dewey also excludes growth of such aspects which interfere or reverse the direction of change, like growth in prejudice, arbitrariness, hate, invidious prestige, power and status (Hook 492) for they are against the purpose of life and education – continuity of education and growth.

But, for Tagore, such inclusive and holistic growth as an aim of education is narrow and limited. He thinks education should serve a greater purpose which is beyond this world with its physical and mental aspects.  He talks of spirit and spirituality while talking about objects of education. Expressing his dissatisfaction with the current practice in education, he writes, "When there came the separation of the intellect from the spiritual and the physical, the school education put entire emphasis on the intellect and the physical side of the man" (95-96). He seeks to include the spiritual aspect as well in the education system because he views it is "not as anything separate from this world - but as its innermost truth" (96).

Tagore believes that the highest purpose of man is to attain the fullest growth and freedom of soul. And, the same should be the purpose of education, according to him (97). This is an ultimate truth for him, which "emancipates us from the bondage of the dust and gives us the wealth, not of things but of inner life, not of power but of love" (98). This is the need of the hour, for Tagore, "…what was needed was not any particular material object, not wealth or comfort or power, but our awakening to full consciousness in soul freedom, the freedom of the life in God" (98). Tagore imagines such an ideal objective come into the reality, "It will be a great future, when base passions are no longer stimulated within us, when human races come closer to one another… There will be a sunrise of truth and love… (112).

Another related difference between two great philosophers is what scope they talk of. As the title suggests, Dewey largely talks of education in a democratic society. He does not think that his ideas can apply in all societies of the world including ones which do not move democratically. He writes, "Education will vary with the quality of life which prevails in a group…a society which not only changes but which has the ideal of such change as will improve it, will have different standards and methods of education…" (415). Of course, Dewey may have wanted all the societies become democratic, but he is not sure that education can make the whole universe a single society. It is not that Dewey wants education to create fragments; he is also against the trend that "the state was substituted for humanity… To form the citizen, not the man, became the aim of education" (423). But he does not advocate for universalism and sees it closer and more immediate as of Tagore.

Tagore aims that with his model of education such a universal humanity can be established where no boundary exists. In discussing objectives of education, he imagines of the world "where we have no enmity with those who must fight, no competition with those who must make money, where all are beyond all attacks and above all insults" (98). He wants the "man's world as God's Kingdom to whose citizenship they have to aspire" (106). "There are of course natural differences in human races…the task of our education should be to realise unity in spite of them, to discover truth through the wilderness of their contradictions" Tagore 110).  Apparently against narrower nationalism, Tagore advocates for "a real League of Humanity, there will be men large enough to see the human race as a whole" (83).

The differences are there perhaps due to the socio-cultural and geographical settings they were brought up in. But, as philosophers of education, both have extensively presented some important ideas on how we can better educational practices so that our life will be easier, better and more dignified. Their contribution, hence, is significant for the whole humankind for they have become influential in guiding educational practices till the date. Many of the ideas may remain mere ideals difficult or impossible to reflect into practice, yet they serve as models which one can aim toward. In this regard, both John Dewey and Rabindranath Tagore together hold important positions in modern educational philosophy.

Works Cited

Dewey, John. "Democracy and Education."  Philosophy of Education: The Essential Texts. Ed. Steven M. Cahn. New York: Routledge. 2009. 379-489.

Hook, Sidney. "Afterword."  Philosophy of Education: The Essential Texts. Ed. Steven M. Cahn. New York: Routledge. 2009. 490-497.

Tagore, Rabindranath. "Founding a New Education." The Oxford India Tagore: Selected Writings on Education and Nationalism. Ed. Uma Das Gupta. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009.  83-131.