democracy: in name only?

When in 1888 John Dewey published "The Ethics of Democracy," a long essay aimed at refuting elitist claims that power in the hands of the masses produced disastrous consequences for government and society, he radically broadened the idea of democracy beyond merely a form of government. Democracy, he wrote, "is a social, that is to say, an ethical conception and upon its ethical significance is based its significance as governmental....There is no need to beat about the bush in saying that democracy is not in reality what it is in name until it is industrial, as well as civil and political." Although Dewey remained idealistically theoretical in this early essay--vague about how "real" democracy might be achieved--the essay provided an agenda for subsequent work by him and by many others he influenced.

Dewey's radically broadened conception of democracy and the set of critical questions it raised about being a genuinely democratic society are matters that have in recent decades receded from public attention and debate, let alone action. However, are we now entering a historical era in which attention to matters of common good and of authentic personal development is on the rise? Just as it was to become Dewey's practical way to advance, rather than just theorize about participatory democracy, does education reform offer us, too, a way of changing the conflicted world we know for the better?