Maura Striano

After its publication in 1916, Democracy and Education opened up a global debate about educational thought that is still ongoing. Various translations of Dewey's work, appearing at different times, have aided in introducing his ideas within different conversations and across different cultures. The introduction of Dewey's masterwork through academic, institutional, or political avenues has influenced its reception within contemporary educational scenarios; these avenues need to be taken into account when analyzing the book's reception as well as its impact on the reconstruction of educational discourse.

There are few, if any, other educational philosophers that have left their mark internationally as John Dewey has. Author of 40 books and no less than 700 articles that appeared in over 140 journals, Dewey's work has been translated into at least 35 languages. His landmark Democracy and Education - published over a century ago in 1916 - is one of the most cited educational texts ever. Dewey has inspired educators and provoked controversies in his day, and still does so today. This volume sets out to engage with Dewey's educational thought, especially as it relates to its circulation in the countries bordering on the Mediterranean. Authors consider his enduring influence, and reflect on the 'push' and 'pull' forces that served to anchor progressivism, in its multiple manifestations, in the region. The notion of a unidirectional force - personified by Dewey - that is somehow absorbed by the 'receiving' country is problematised by most if not all chapters in this volume. Rather, contributors carefully show how context affects a process marked by active appropriation, re-interpretation, adaptation, as well as resistance.

Starting from an emblematic episode described by Rorty in Trotsky and the Wild Orchids, which is an effective narrative example of making public a private experience, the article provides an inquiry into Rorty’s thinking around education, with a particular focus on his notions of contingency and luck.In particular, the article offers an analysis of Rorty’s frequent use of the term “luck,” in accordance with a literary (non-philosophical) method, which informs his understanding of the role and function of education and his view of the educational process. The use of a literary method is useful to give shape and meaning to the contingency of human experience, creating a narrative thread to connect the past and present and make meaning of the present through the images of the past. Within this framework, Rorty understands “luck” as a specific and crucial condition that highlights the presence of an undetermined space within which education can make a difference in individual life.

According to Matthew Lipman, the community of philosophical inquiry can be understood as a social matrix generating a variety of social relationships and building up the framework of the cognitive matrices whose outcomes are cognitive relationships. From this perspective, the community, intended both as an existential as well as a social structure, is the ground for the emergence and development of complex thinking involving both critical, creative and caring cognitive processes. A community goes back to a pattern of relationships and interactions built on the recognition and acceptance of a cultural, ideological, religious or social reference with which the members of the group identify, and which represents the reason for them to form as a group. Communities generate relationships of commitment, sharing, and understanding that are the ground of caring thinking habits, but they are also the generative context of a process of continuous building/re-building/validation of shared meanings and sensibilities which is the ground for critical thinking. In a community context the dynamic between individual-individual and individual-community is both the expression and the management of conflict and opposition, and the construction of new existential, expressive and cognitive forms that allow for the emergence of thoughts capable of composition, integration, qualitative leaps, and surpassing and transcending phases therefore generating creative forms of thinking. As such, the community of philosophical inquiry represents a socio-relational matrix that is inseparably both epistemic and existential, and which reverberates along new links that build up between objects, between people, and within the world in a continuous circuit, and in which new senses and meanings are always being generated. For these reasons it can be extended to many other contexts other than those involving the teaching of complex thinking to children and adolescents, including a community development

This text focuses on the idea that philosophical inquiry can be understood as a practice for social development as far as a real social development requires a qualitative change in the way society carries out its activities, such as through more progressive and more reflective attitudes and behavior by the population, the adoption of more democratic and participative social forms of organization, the use of more advanced technology, and the dissemination and circulation of more advanced forms of knowledge. Philosophical inquiry is, indeed, a powerful means of spreading intelligence in all the contexts of associated life; since it enhances human intellectual potential through sound reflection both on human experiences as well as on the beliefs, understandings, values which frame and give meaning to these experiences. This practice requires and promotes contexts of shared meanings as well as contexts of social development, aiming at: clarification of ideas; construction of new meanings; and development of new interpretative perspectives of reality. In these terms it can be acknowledged as a social development device for the construction of new ideas and the transformation and emancipation of individuals and social groups as it introduces and enhances reflection in different fields of associated living. The outcomes of philosophical inquiry are, by consequence, new ideas, values, and actions that can make for a new sense of, and construct a new understanding of human experience, indicating new developmental directions to human societies