“Seek it in Poetry”:John Dewey,William Carlos Williams,and Avant-Gardist Educational Reform

This essay looks at the unlikely conjunction of avant-garde poetics, educational reform, and the ideas of John Dewey in the work of William Carlos Williams, a conjunction unaddressed in the major critical treatment of Williams and Dewey, John Beck’s Writing the Radical Center. I focus mainly on Williams’s work of the 1920s, when he was reading Dewey’s essays in The Dial and thinking through some of his most central poetic and philosophic principles in relation to Dewey. This decade culminates in the Dewey-influenced The Embodiment of Knowledge . Williams’s hopes in Embodiment that poetry might somehow contribute to reshaping the bases of the educational system had already appeared a few years earlier in one of the touchstones of avant-garde poetics, the 1923 Spring and All , where a number of the later work’s central concepts arise. With Spring and All seized by customs officials and Embodiment unpublished until 1974, this crucial aspect of Williams’s poetics went almost completely overlooked at the time. However, the notes that make up Embodiment extend Spring and All not just thematically but in their disjunctive, paratactic, and tonally confrontational method as Williams works out through the 1920s his avant-garde poetics of educational reform.

What Knowledge is of Most Worth?Considering the Neo-Confucians in the Contemporary Debate Between Moral and Intellectual Learning

●The perennial debate regarding the relative usefulness of various forms of knowledge,especially between the theoretical and practical and the intellectual and moral,lies at the heart of education in both past and present times in both the West and China(de Bary,1988,2004,2005,2015).●Neo-Confucians remain relevant in the 21st century and can help us to understand and elucidate contemporary debates in education-specifically,to answer the question Spencer asked nearly a century and a half ago:"What knowledge is of most worth?".●Mencius,Zhu Xi,Wang Yangming,Xu Ai,and Kang Youwei advocated for a type of learning that would strongly resonate with John Dewey(1938)and Paulo Freire(1970,1978).Foundational philosophies of education,particularly in the United States,have drawn heavily on 20th century European-American thinkers;this article attempts to correct this myopia and broaden perspectives.

Thinking in Dewey’s Experimentalist Education:The Contribution of the Internet and Digital Tools

Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to explain how the introduction of the Internet and digital tools renews and enriches John Dewey’s experimentalist model for teaching and learning with particular attention to the place of and resources for higher order thinking.Design/Approach/Methods-The methods include a close exposition of Dewey’s classical texts,and a thought experiment introducing ICT elements into Dewey’s design diagrams for teaching and learning.Findings-Dewey’s model has inherent difficulties,and that digital technologies helps resolve them.Originality/Value-With the Internet and new digital tools,teachers can design new virtual learning spaces and learning activities.Learners can use online information and communication tools to act more effectively using higher-order thinking skills.

Natural Realism or Transactionalism： On the Relationships between Putnam and Two Pragmatists, James and Dewey

The relationships between Hilary Putnam and the pragmatists （especially William James and John Dewey） are obvious but subtle. To shed some light on this issue, the author will explore a key issue that not only stands as Putnam＇s main inheritance from the pragmatists, but that also illuminates the relationships between them more clearly than any other issues. This key issue is the understanding of perception and the philosophical position that arises from this understanding. The author argues that in adopting Dewey＇s transactionalism （or interactionalism）, Putnam advances from James＇ insight to Dewey＇s, a shift that is particularly manifest in Putnam＇s attempt to add another layer of meaning to what he refers to as the second naivete that he detects and appreciates in James＇ natural realism.

＂Bodyheartminding＂ （Xin ,心）： Reconceiving the Inner Self and the Outer World in the Language of Holographic Focus and Field

In this essay, inspired by the somatic turn in philosophy initiated by Richard Shusterman, I want to invoke the language of classical Confucian philosophy to think through the best efforts of William James and John Dewey to escape the mind-body and nature-nurture dualisms--that is, to offer an alternative vocabulary that might lend further clarity to the revolutionary insights of James and Dewey by appealing to the processual categories of Chinese cosmology. What I will try to do first is to refocus the pragmatist＇s explanation of the relationship between mind and body through the lens of a process Confucian cosmology. And then, to make the case for James and Dewey, I will return to the radical, imagistic language they invoke to try and make the argument that this processual, holistic understanding of ＂vital bodyminding＂ is in fact what they were trying to say all along.

Confucius as a Critical Educator:Towards Educational Thoughts of Confucius

This paper is a cross-cultural comparative study in education philosophy.A comparative and philosophical approach is used to interpret texts from the Analects of Confucius and to find connections with ideas of critical educators.In comparing Confucius’educational thought with that of Paulo Freire,John Dewey and other theorists in critical pedagogy,this paper finds four common threads between Confucian concepts of education and critical pedagogy:mutual learning,integration of theory and practice,importance of reflection in teaching and learning,and democratic purpose of education.By presenting these interwoven themes,this paper contributes to a cross-cultural dialogue on global understanding in education.

On Generalization： Pragmatists＇ Contributions to Constructivism

Constructivism has been an important program in contemporary philosophy, but cannot itself cannot provide sufficient context for grasping its key points. To fully understand its power and potential we must borrow tools from other programs： specifically, Charles Peirce and John Dewey＇s pragmatism. By exploring these two pragmatists＇ articulations of ＂generalization,＂ which I hold is the most crucial question in constructivism, their prospective contributions to constructivism can be brought to light. If, as I argue, constructivism can incorporate the lessons of pragmatism, then it can still be considered a highly workable interpretation of reality and of human endeavors.