Quotation
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“A democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience.”
John Dewey · Pragmatism · Modern · 1916
What does it mean?
The usual reading is that ballots and offices are not the whole of democracy. Primarily it is a way of living together in which experience is conjoint and communicated, so that each person has to refer his action to others and take theirs into account. A competing reading turns the sentence into a mood, as if warm association could replace law. He does not say the form of government is nothing. He says democracy is more than that form, and then he ties the extension of shared interests to the breaking of barriers and to a liberation of powers that stay suppressed in an exclusive group. The sentence is in chapter 7, on the democratic conception in education. Communicated is doing as much work as associated. A togetherness that does not circulate experience is not yet what he means.
Did John Dewey really say this?
The library’s label is Well attested. Dewey's own English, in chapter 7 of Democracy and Education (1916), in the section on the democratic ideal. He goes on to say that a wider sharing of interests breaks barriers of class, race, and national territory. The sentence is not the 1897 line that education is a process of living.
Where it comes from
Democracy and Education, chapter 7
Approximate date: 1916.
How to use it
A school council in Manchester that holds an election and then never tells the voters what was done with the vote has the form and missed the communicated experience. The sentence does not say elections are a sham. It says the life between them, the shared inquiries and the referred actions, is the primary thing. A staff meeting where only one grade of job is allowed to know the plan fails it inside a single building. He wrote the line as an educational claim. Institutions that do not teach people to exchange experience are, on his view, weakly democratic even when the procedures are correct.
A mindset reading
Look past the procedure to the circulation of experience, and do not accept a feeling of community that shares no account of what it is doing. The habit fits his pedagogy. Learning is the exchange, not the seating plan. A democracy that cannot say what it has understood together is only the form of one.
Understand the philosophy
Democracy and Education, 1916, treats schools as part of social life rather than as a preparation parked beside it. Chapter 7 states the democratic ideal. The key phrase is a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience. The 1897 Pedagogic Creed, already in this library, says education is a process of living and not a preparation for future living. This sentence is the political form of that claim. It is why he thinks a classroom can be more or less democratic before anyone votes.
- society
- knowledge
- freedom
FAQ
What does it mean?
The usual reading is that ballots and offices are not the whole of democracy. Primarily it is a way of living together in which experience is conjoint and communicated, so that each person has to refer his action to others and take theirs into account. A competing reading turns the sentence into a mood, as if warm association could replace law. He does not say the form of government is nothing. He says democracy is more than that form, and then he ties the extension of shared interests to the breaking of barriers and to a liberation of powers that stay suppressed in an exclusive group. The sentence is in chapter 7, on the democratic conception in education. Communicated is doing as much work as associated. A togetherness that does not circulate experience is not yet what he means.
Did John Dewey really say this?
Well attested. Dewey's own English, in chapter 7 of Democracy and Education (1916), in the section on the democratic ideal. He goes on to say that a wider sharing of interests breaks barriers of class, race, and national territory. The sentence is not the 1897 line that education is a process of living.
Which work is it in?
Democracy and Education, chapter 7 Approximate date: 1916.