Page 134 - Šolsko polje, XXVIII, 2017, no. 3-4: Education and the American Dream, ed. Mitja Sardoč
P. 134
šolsko polje, letnik xxviii, številka 3–4
electricity endlessly multiplying its productive force and at the same time
already showing its self-destructing ruptures. Graham Wallas (1967) per-
haps describes best how Progressive intellectuals saw the emerging new
actuality that was offering them the chances to demonstrate the potential
of their new methods of perfecting it. Wallas did not coin his term »The
Great Society« just as a result of his analytical attempt to describe a tech-
nical society after the second industrial revolution, but also as a part of the
following programme legitimised and derived from his analysis. His ar-
gument is clear, precisely because »The Great Society«1 was intellectual-
ly a creation of engineers, specialists and specialised sciences dealing with
forces of nature, therefore it could be brought under complete control,
considering its remaining unsolved question of the human nature, only by
those means that contributed most to its primary creation. He resorts to
social psychology as the most promising scientific technique of organising
the Great Society. Its promising applied knowledge could be made useful
for steering those who had to be organised anew, »to forecast, and there-
fore to influence, the conduct of large numbers of human being organised
in societies« (Wallas, 1967: p. 20). This typical turn in purpose toward
serving the needs of an industrial society can be traced in many found-
ing works of modern psychology of the time, where the founders volun-
tarily abandoned their purposes and put themselves as employees working
under the mandate of society like in case of Watson (1930), Münsterberg
(1913), Trotter (1919), Le Bon (1895), etc.
This excursion perhaps helps us to understand more thoroughly the
content of criticism pointing at Dewey’s reformist position that is in fact
valid for all Progressive thinkers. Their primary preoccupation was not to
restore community as a potential political entity known in the American
revolutionary tradition. »The Great Society«, was the »fact of modern
life« (Dewey, 1927: p. 127). Consequently, their primary concern was to
meet the needs of a new age and equip an industrial society, in order to en-
hance its own processes, with a cohesive force that was the exact opposite
of a political community, where people can gather as plural and different,
expressing their uniqueness and exchange their perspectives on the com-
mon world. To be exact, the type of cohesion they had in mind far more
resembled the primary group or the family community where relations
are based on love, intimacy and cooperation, where acting and thinking
as one is undoubtedly one of its basic constitutive characteristics. Perhaps
Cooley and his work »The Process of Social Change« (1897) is the finest
example how Progressive thinkers imagined human relations or, in other
1 This term with its implications was later reiterated as referential by both Dewey and Lip-
pmann in their central discussions.
132
electricity endlessly multiplying its productive force and at the same time
already showing its self-destructing ruptures. Graham Wallas (1967) per-
haps describes best how Progressive intellectuals saw the emerging new
actuality that was offering them the chances to demonstrate the potential
of their new methods of perfecting it. Wallas did not coin his term »The
Great Society« just as a result of his analytical attempt to describe a tech-
nical society after the second industrial revolution, but also as a part of the
following programme legitimised and derived from his analysis. His ar-
gument is clear, precisely because »The Great Society«1 was intellectual-
ly a creation of engineers, specialists and specialised sciences dealing with
forces of nature, therefore it could be brought under complete control,
considering its remaining unsolved question of the human nature, only by
those means that contributed most to its primary creation. He resorts to
social psychology as the most promising scientific technique of organising
the Great Society. Its promising applied knowledge could be made useful
for steering those who had to be organised anew, »to forecast, and there-
fore to influence, the conduct of large numbers of human being organised
in societies« (Wallas, 1967: p. 20). This typical turn in purpose toward
serving the needs of an industrial society can be traced in many found-
ing works of modern psychology of the time, where the founders volun-
tarily abandoned their purposes and put themselves as employees working
under the mandate of society like in case of Watson (1930), Münsterberg
(1913), Trotter (1919), Le Bon (1895), etc.
This excursion perhaps helps us to understand more thoroughly the
content of criticism pointing at Dewey’s reformist position that is in fact
valid for all Progressive thinkers. Their primary preoccupation was not to
restore community as a potential political entity known in the American
revolutionary tradition. »The Great Society«, was the »fact of modern
life« (Dewey, 1927: p. 127). Consequently, their primary concern was to
meet the needs of a new age and equip an industrial society, in order to en-
hance its own processes, with a cohesive force that was the exact opposite
of a political community, where people can gather as plural and different,
expressing their uniqueness and exchange their perspectives on the com-
mon world. To be exact, the type of cohesion they had in mind far more
resembled the primary group or the family community where relations
are based on love, intimacy and cooperation, where acting and thinking
as one is undoubtedly one of its basic constitutive characteristics. Perhaps
Cooley and his work »The Process of Social Change« (1897) is the finest
example how Progressive thinkers imagined human relations or, in other
1 This term with its implications was later reiterated as referential by both Dewey and Lip-
pmann in their central discussions.
132
