Teacher as a benevolent dictator: Promoting a culture of democratic dialogic education in a conventional university
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
This essay provides a grounded critical discussion of why a professor might limit their undergraduate students’ sovereignty of educational decision-making to promote an opportunity for a democratic dialogic culture in the class situated in a conventional university. On the one hand, both democracy and dialogue require voluntary participation by the students in their education and dialogue and their sovereignty over collective decision-making and educational reasoning. On the other hand, this participation is based on the students’ socialization in a special culture which might often be at odds with their sovereignty. It is difficult for many students to freely choose democracy and dialogue in education when they are embedded in a conventional educational institution based on Kantian educational paternalism and foisted education. Also, the students are often culturally unfamiliar with such concepts as “democracy,” “dialogue,” and “self-education,” let alone their practical implications. To address these contradictions, I introduce the notion of the “teacher as a benevolent dictator.” I discuss, problematize, and analyze the forms of this benevolent dictatorship, its potential pitfalls, and promises.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- The Author retains copyright in the Work, where the term “Work” shall include all digital objects that may result in subsequent electronic publication or distribution.
- Upon acceptance of the Work, the author shall grant to the Publisher the right of first publication of the Work.
- The Author shall grant to the Publisher and its agents the nonexclusive perpetual right and license to publish, archive, and make accessible the Work in whole or in part in all forms of media now or hereafter known under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License or its equivalent, which, for the avoidance of doubt, allows others to copy, distribute, and transmit the Work under the following conditions:
- Attribution—other users must attribute the Work in the manner specified by the author as indicated on the journal Web site;
- The Author is able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the nonexclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the Work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), as long as there is provided in the document an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post online a prepublication manuscript (but not the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version of the Work) in institutional repositories or on their Websites prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. Any such posting made before acceptance and publication of the Work shall be updated upon publication to include a reference to the Publisher-assigned DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and a link to the online abstract for the final published Work in the Journal.
- Upon Publisher’s request, the Author agrees to furnish promptly to Publisher, at the Author’s own expense, written evidence of the permissions, licenses, and consents for use of third-party material included within the Work, except as determined by Publisher to be covered by the principles of Fair Use.
- The Author represents and warrants that:
- the Work is the Author’s original work;
- the Author has not transferred, and will not transfer, exclusive rights in the Work to any third party;
- the Work is not pending review or under consideration by another publisher;
- the Work has not previously been published;
- the Work contains no misrepresentation or infringement of the Work or property of other authors or third parties; and
- the Work contains no libel, invasion of privacy, or other unlawful matter.
- The Author agrees to indemnify and hold Publisher harmless from Author’s breach of the representations and warranties contained in Paragraph 6 above, as well as any claim or proceeding relating to Publisher’s use and publication of any content contained in the Work, including third-party content.
Revised 7/16/2018. Revision Description: Removed outdated link.
References
Bruner, J. (1986). Actual minds, possible words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Dewey, J. (1902). The child and the curriculum and the school and society (Combined ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Duberman, M. B. (1969). An Experiment in Education. In M. B. Duberman (Ed.), The uncompleted past (pp. 259-294). New York, NY: Random House.
Eisenstein, C. (2006). Confession of a hypocrite. Retrieved from https://charleseisenstein.org/short-reflection-essays/confessions-of-a-hypocrite/
Fendler, L. (1998). What is it impossible to think? A genealogy of the educated subject. In T. S. Popkewitz & M. Brennan (Eds.), Foucault's challenge: Discourse, knowledge, and power in education (pp. 39-63). New York: Teachers College Press.
Gates, L. (2020). Collaborative inquiry: Searching for ways to be a feminist educator in a university context. In K. Keifer-Boyd, L. Hoeptner-Poling, S. Klein, W. B. Knight, & A. P. d. Miles (Eds.), NAEA Women's Caucus LOBBY ACTIVISM: Feminism(s) + Art Education. Reston, VA: National Art Education Association.
Hayek, F. A. v. (1994). The road to serfdom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Heidegger, M., & Stambaugh, J. (1996). Being and time. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Holt, J. C. (1982). How children fail (Rev. ed.). New York: Delta/Seymour Lawrence.
Kant, I. (1784). An answer to the question: What is Enlightenment? Retrieved from https://www.stmarys-ca.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/files/Kant--What%20Is%20Enlightenment_.pdf
Klag, P. (1994). A new look at Invitational Education. The Collaborator, 5(14), 1-2.
Kohn, A. (2011). The case against grades. Educational Leadership, 69(3), 28-33. Retrieved from https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/grading/?print=pdf
Kuhn, T. S. (1996). The structure of scientific revolutions (3rd ed.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Matusov, E. (2007). In search of the appropriate unit of analysis. Culture & Psychology, 13(3), 307-333.
Matusov, E. (2015). Legitimacy of non-negotiable imposition in diverse approaches to education. Dialogic Pedagogy: An International Online Journal, 3, A174-A211. Retrieved from http://dpj.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/dpj1/article/view/110/105
Matusov, E. (2018). Chronotopic analysis of values in critical ontological dialogic pedagogy. In A. U. Branco & M. C. Lopes-de-Oliveira (Eds.), Alterity, Values and Socialization: Human Development within Educational Contexts (pp. 1-29). Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
Matusov, E. (2020a). A student's right to freedom of education and a teacher's fiduciary obligation to support it: Reply to the commentaries. Dialogic Pedagogy: An International Online Journal, 8, SF97-SF114, doi:10.5195/dpj.2020.357.
Matusov, E. (2020b). A student’s right to freedom of education. Dialogic Pedagogy: An International Online Journal, 8, SF1-SF28, doi:10.5195/dpj.2020.356.
Matusov, E. (2021a). Progressive education is the opium of the educators. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 1-34.
Matusov, E. (2021b). The relationship between education and learning and its consequences for dialogic pedagogy. Dialogic Pedagogy: An International Online Journal, 9, E1-E19, doi:10.5195/dpj.2021.425.
Matusov, E. (2021c). Teacher as a benevolent dictator. In R. L. Hampel (Ed.), Radical Teaching in Turbulent Times: Martin Duberman's Princeton Seminars, 1966–1970 (pp. 207-226). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Matusov, E. (2022a). Community versus society: The normative vision of sociality in joint self-education. Culture & Psychology, 1-27, doi:10.1177/1354067X221147681.
Matusov, E. (2022b). The teachers’ pedagogical fiduciary duty to their students. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 1-26, doi:10.1007/s12124-022-09690-8.
Matusov, E. (2022, submitted). Gadgets in the “caged” university democratic education: The pros, cons, and temptations. Other Education.
Matusov, E., Baker, D., Fan, Y., Choi, H. J., & Hampel, R. L. (2017). Magic Learning Pill: Ontological and instrumental learning in order to speed up education. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 51(3), 456–476, doi:10.1007/s12124-017-9384-8.
Matusov, E., & Brobst, J. (2013). Radical experiment in dialogic pedagogy in higher education and its centaur failure: Chronotopic analysis. Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers.
Matusov, E., & Lemke, J. L. (2015). Values in dialogic pedagogy (Editorial). Dialogic Pedagogy: An International Online Journal, 3, E1-E20, doi:0.5195/dpj.2015.141.
Matusov, E., & Marjanovic-Shane, A. (2015). Rehabilitation of power in Democratic Dialogic Education. In K. Jezierska & L. Koczanowicz (Eds.), Democracy in dialogue, dialogue in democracy (pp. 193-209). Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.
Matusov, E., & Marjanovic-Shane, A. (2017). Promoting students’ ownership of their own education through critical dialogue and democratic self-governance. Dialogic Pedagogy: An International Online Journal, 5, E1-E29, doi:10.5195/dpj.2017.199.
Matusov, E., & Marjanovic-Shane, A. (2019). Intrinsic education and its discontents. In L. Tateo (Ed.), Educational dilemmas: A cultural psychological perspective (pp. 21-40). New York: Routledge.
Matusov, E., Marjanovic-Shane, A., & Gradovski, M. (2019). Dialogic pedagogy and polyphonic research art: Bakhtin by and for educators: Palgrave Macmillan.
Matusov, E., von Duyke, K., & Kayumova, S. (2016). Mapping concepts of agency in educational contexts. Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science, 50(3), 420–446, doi:10.1007/s12124-015-9334-2.
McLaren, P. (1993). Schooling as a ritual performance: Towards a political economy of educational symbols and gestures (2nd ed.). London ; New York: Routledge.
Pettit, P. (2014). Just freedom: A moral compass for a complex world (First Edition. ed.). New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Rietmulder, J. (2019). When kids rule the school: The power and promise of democratic education. Gabriola Island, Canada: New Society Publishers.
Shor, I. (1996). When students have power: Negotiating authority in a critical pedagogy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Tobin, J. J., Davidson, D. H., & Wu, D. Y. H. (1989). Preschool in three cultures: Japan, China, and the United States. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Yang, C.-P. (2015). Education for appreciating environment: An example of curriculum design of natural aesthetic education in Taiwan. International Education Studies, 8(5), 88-100.