Tafsir atas buku “Democracy and Education” karya John Dewey oleh pendukung demokrasi

Abstract

John Dewey’s book, Democracy and Education, published in 1916, was considered a millstone of democratic education. This article was aimed at tracing and identifying variants of interpretations among Deweyan. This article is a literature review. There are at least eight perceptions relating to Dewey’s writing on Democratic education. There are elitist, liberal, neoliberal, deliberative, multiculturalist, participative, critical, and agonistic. Each of them has a different conception, implication, suggestion, and criticism as well as debate relating to Dewey’s writing. In this article, however, just elaborates on two of them, namely liberalist and neoliberalist. Teaching Democracy has the benefit of that multi-interpretations. It is suggested that the teacher select and modify various suggestions offered by scholars of democratic education in accordance with circumstances or contextual factors in teaching democracy.