Education and culturE 30 (1) (2014): 79-94 79
Dystopian schools: RecoveRing Dewey's
R
aDical aesthetics in an age of Utopia-
g
one-wRong
Jessica A. Heybach and Eric C. Sheffield
While utopians cannot produce what they can imagine,
we can no longer imagine what we produce.
— Günther Anders
abstract
In this article, we rst suggest that contemporary school policies and prac-
tices represent a utopia-gone-wrong. In striving for an unattainable edu-
cational utopia—that is, all students will be procient in math and read-
ing by 2014—current polices and their resulting practices have brought
a classic dystopian turn—the dehumanization of students, teachers, and
administrators. We then argue that such a turn can best be seen and then
potentially stopped via a complete dystopian theory of education grounded
in John Dewey’s radical aesthetics. In utilizing Dewey’s aesthetic theory
as a lens of analysis, we argue that this turn toward dystopia is resulting
in an increasingly numbing, anaesthetic educational experience at best;
and a dehumanizing, violent educational experience at worst. Finally, we
briey ponder an antidote for our dystopian malaise: human love.
introduction: a dystopian aEsthEtic VignEttE
It is increasingly the case that undergraduate teacher candidates nd themselves
enrolled in courses that have been developed “in partnership” with local school
districts—districts adjacent to the actual universities where they are enrolled. Re-
cently, one such partnership arrangement had a foundation of education professor
and initial certication students oscillating between two school districts located
in the same large suburban area. One side of town is inhabited by mostly minority
children in underfunded schools—commonly viewed as the “bad” district. e
other side of town has the “better” district, as it is the home of better school fund-
ing mechanisms, and many beautiful newly built school buildings; the particu-
lar school discussed below opened its doors less than a decade ago. is district
also has the addition of newer middle and upper middle class families in luxury
E&C EduCation and CulturE
80 JEssica a. hEybach and Eric c. shEffiEld
suburban homes; such disparity in the midst of geographical proximity is, of course,
nothing new. However, both districts have felt the devastating eects of violence,
drugs, bullying, and an over-active police presence—in the grand scheme of sub-
urban expectations, neither of these districts represents the rst choice for parents
desperate to provide an idyllic, utopian schooling experience for their children.
As this professor sat teaching class one aernoon (in the better of the two
districts described above), half of the students (who were completing a lunchroom
observation) arrived back in class aghast at what they had just experienced. ey all
began talking at once, describing a rant they had witnessed by the Dean of Students
to sixth graders: “I am prepared to take you down;” “We are tired of this crap;” “I
will tackle you if I have to!” e undergraduate teacher candidates reported that
the sixth graders had sat in silence listening to the Dean’s tirade about the previ-
ous day’s trouble between a small group of “black and Mexican” students while
they, the soon-to-be teachers, looked on in awkward silence. e undergraduates
reported feeling disbelief at what they had heard—many of them clearly troubled if
not completely distraught. Within minutes of their return, the ranting Dean entered
the “partnership” classroom and asked for class time to provide some context for
what the pre-service teachers had just witnessed. Instead of explaining this context,
the Dean proceeded to defend what was said, repeating a willingness to use might-
against-might, threatening to have any student arrested who did not comply with
school policies, espousing a strong relationship between the school and the police
department, and so on. Following the Dean’s comments, one of the undergradu-
ates raised his hand and asked, “We are reading John Dewey and learning about his
notion of experience . . . what do you think about those ideas?” e Dean quickly
replied, “Yeah, that’s all good in theory.” e obvious corollary is that in practice
those ideas are all but dead—especially so given how youth today are seemingly
dierent from previous generations of compliant and respectful youth.
In the week leading up to this unintended experience—now a collateral
learning experience in the Deweyan sense—these pre-service teachers had read
Experience and Education, and watched parts of the documentary lm, e War
on Kids.
2
ey had discussed Dewey’s ideas about experience, purpose, social con-
trol, continuity, and the give and take between traditional and progressive forms
of education and classroom organization. ey had debated what Dewey meant
by democracy, and whether schools could or should be a site in which to expand
the project of democracy. In an all-too-perfect interruption to the images of chil-
dren being subjected to police dogs and ocers with weapons drawn in a South
Carolina school drug raid in the lm e War on Kids, a school-wide announce-
ment came over the loud speakers: “Excuse the interruption teachers, we need all
faculty and sta to stand and search students for a missing walkie-talkie that was
taken from the gym.” e students and professor alike stared at each other in mo-
mentary silence, and before the class could begin again, a voice reemerged on the
dystopian schools 81
Volume 30 (1) 2014
speakers, “And whoever is found to be in possession of the missing walkie-talkie
will be immediately arrested by Ocer ____.” e class erupted in an awkward
laughter and the pre-service students asked, “Did you plan this?” e professor sar-
castically responded, “Yep, I stole the walkie-talkie to prove a point about school
policy.” Of course, none of this is in fact funny (and the professor had obviously
not actually stolen the walkie-talkie)—but, might both the students and professor
imagine for a moment what it must be like to be 11, 12, and 13 years of age in this
kind of environment?
To be fair, we tell this story not to bash the local administrators, or to oer
up the Dean as a jester in the court of academia. e Dean was clearly shaken by
the events, and in public conversations since, he has repeated to both the professor
and the teacher candidates, “I don’t know what to do anymore. I spend my days
reading and searching for an answer about what to do with all these problems.”
Following that dystopian day, the teacher candidates came to empathize with the
Dean, but they remained skeptical of the apparent conclusion that there are no bet-
ter means available to reach at-risk youth. One student even jokingly invited the
Dean to “read this little book Dewey wrote.” e professor reported being shocked
at how committed the pre-service teacher candidates became to what Dewey had
oered them, and the skepticism they retained as they witnessed the construction
(and deconstruction) of youth in the school. Many of these students were deeply
bothered by these experiences, and they openly wondered whether these young
students in fact needed to be saved from themselves through oppressive dictato-
rial administrative actions—actions that can only be described as dystopian—the
epitome of a Deweyan anaesthetic, miseducative experience.
As an object of critical analysis, we believe that the use of dystopia to inves-
tigate the current state of education conjures up the telltale signs usually associ-
ated with imaginary dystopian places: oppression, terror, deprivation, surveillance,
dehumanization, punitive discipline, state sponsored violence, and many more
characteristics to be highlighted later. However, we hesitate, and caution our reader
that our critique of schooling through a dystopian lens does not assume that con-
temporary school policy and practice have yet created a totalizing overt system of
surveillance and control, as is the case, for example, in George Orwell’s Oceania.
On the other hand, education is a powerful tool (think Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s
Soviet Union, or even the lm Jesus Camp), and dystopian themes and practices
constitute the slipperiest of slopes.
3
Might it be that it is the covert institutional
destruction of self, rather than the overt version found in 1984, which is most dif-
cult to locate and resist?
For those of us who nd that the work of John Dewey continues to provide
important insights (even in the face of Dewey fatigue), we certainly must question
whether he—the epitome of the modern thinker—can have anything much to say
to us “postmoderns” in regards to a dystopian critique of contemporary schooling.
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82 JEssica a. hEybach and Eric c. shEffiEld
We believe Dewey continues to speak to us in indispensable ways, especially so in
his theorizing about imaginary utopian schools, and in a recovery of his radical-
ized aesthetics that help us begin to see our dystopian malaise and its inuence on
our socially constructed schooling experiences. First, we will revisit Dewey’s 1933
article where he outlines what he believes to be a utopian vision for schools; and
then, we utilize Dewey’s aesthetic theory, in tandem with his theory of experience,
to reveal what has become of our current utopian plans for schooling in America.
Before concluding with some thoughts as to why a dystopian theory is potentially
so important, we revisit the classic dystopian antidote: human love.
dEwEy’s utopian Vision
Dewey opens his 1933 New York Times op-ed with the statement: “e most Utopian
thing in Utopia is that there are no schools at all” (our emphasis).
4
e utopian move
to eliminate schools and create a society without schools seems silly even for the
most imaginative among us. Is such a reality even conceivable in today’s context?
How would youth learn the necessary skills to become productive adults who could
contribute to economic imperatives of the times without schooling? How can chil-
dren be properly educated and shaped without a systematic and organized delivery
of curriculum? We ask these questions in jest, as rhetorical fodder, knowing that
these ideas oer a counternarrative of impossibility (a society without schools?).
Yet, Dewey’s opening salvo can be thought of as the impetus for its inverse: is the
most dystopian thing in Dystopia the institution of schooling? Are schools, in fact,
the core mechanism by which Dystopia is achieved? Are the usual systemic sus-
pects of surveillance, fear, loss of autonomy and violence not nearly as disturbing
as the vision that children must be “schooled?” To begin this discussion, we want
to outline Dewey’s theorizing about utopian schools and then for contrast, move
towards a dystopian theory of schools.
Dewey begins his description of schools with an examination of how relation-
ships are formed as a central feature of the schools that he encounters in Utopia: “close,
intimate personal acquaintance on the part of people who associate together.”
5
Learn-
ing by and through associations with others becomes a vital, a priori, understand-
ing in Utopia. As many adults and children know, today’s schooling structures and
practices oen result in a detached, impersonal experience that lacks deep personal
associations with others. Moreover, the school has become a place that oen exag-
gerates the felt experience of student isolation, loneliness, inadequacy, and indier-
ence. Whereas Dewey’s utopian school fosters meaningful, oen loving relationships
by design to achieve the aims of Utopia, contemporary dystopian schooling realities
should be seen as by design as well, and thus, could be un-designed.
As Dewey continues his visit to Utopia, he includes a description of the “as-
sembly places” where children of all ages would meet. He describes utopian “as-
sembly places” as similar to “our present open-air schools in their physical struc-
dystopian schools 83
Volume 30 (1) 2014
ture... [but] none of the things we usually associate with our present schools.”
6
Similarly, the school in the opening vignette was architecturally designed in the
spirit of this utopian ideal of physical space. Each classroom has a double-wide
glass garage door that could be opened up to create a large common area among
multiple classrooms. Today, these doors have been covered up with student work
and instructional posters so that students cannot see out of the classroom—mini-
mizing the potential for distractions and moments for the mind to wander out the
“window” while optimizing the amount of content that can be delivered to students.
ese doors, once meant to stimulate freedom of movement, are now padlocked
so that they may not be opened. Although these locks may not be a permanent re-
ality—they could be unlocked—the padlock is sadly symbolic of what appears to
have been lost in recent years as the pressure for standardization and corporate
models of accountability have increased in American schooling.
Another aspect of Dewey’s description of utopian schools is an educational ex-
perience where children of various ages can engage in learning together, some nov-
ices, some experts, but all together participating in simultaneous co-learning—in
relationships. Conversely, today, we nd rigid congurations that sequester children
by age and ability into particular groups destined for particular ends. In the case
of middle schools, oen there is the practice of segregating all student movement
by grade level. us, 6th graders would never be seen eating lunch nor occupying
the same passing period as 8th graders. All interactions have been arranged and
managed, with parental and societal consent, by the adults in the building, so as to
limit children’s ability to inuence each other physically in the assumed negative
ways. As a result, students are routinely “batched” into a system that makes gross
assumptions regarding the uniformity of human and academic development, thus
resulting in the unintended consequence of children rarely learning the necessary
capacity needed to relate to dierence. Although this practice may be grounded in
individual psychological imperatives of adolescent development, philosophically
speaking, it is reective of something entirely dierent.
Dewey prophetically critiques the state of schooling today and what appears
to be a persistent, if not neurotic, attachment to the belief that learning objectives
must be incremental, linear, and can be prescribed by others far removed from the
activity of learning. Dewey writes,
Naturally I inquired what were the purposes, or, as we say now, the objec-
tives, of the activities carried on in these centres. At rst nothing puzzled
me more than the fact that my inquiry aer objectives was not at all un-
derstood, for the whole concept of the school, of teachers and pupils and
lessons, had so completely disappeared that when I asked aer the special
objectives of the activity of these centres, my Utopian friends thought I
was asking why children should live at all, and therefore they did not take
my questions seriously.