School and Democracy: A Reassessment of G. H. Mead’s Educational Ideas

Abstract

In this paper I wish to provide a re-examination of G. H. Mead’s educational ideas and their radical democratic import. Drawing on both published and unpublished materials, I discuss how Mead applies his social psychological insights to a number of educational matters. In particular, I will focus on the relation between the family and the school, the role model performed by the problem-solving attitude of experimental science for teaching activities, the relation between the school and the industrial world, the importance of schooling to a participative conception of democratic politics, and Mead’s conception of the university as a scientific institution devoted not to vocational training, but to fundamental research.