COUNT'S DEMOCRACY

Count's Democracy

Count's Democracy

The interpretation of democracy varies from one to another based on people's belief and point of view. Some defined democracy as "Government by the people exercised either directly or through elected representative" while others believe "In a democracy government we the people, have the right to run the government and if we are not satisfied with the government, we have to power to change it." The meaning of democracy leave a lot of room for further interpretation. Emile Durkheim, a functionalist wrote The Normality of Crime and Karl Marx along with Frederick Engle who is the author of Manifesto of the Communist Party, each have different perspective views in democracy.

After publishing two comparative studies of the Soviet education system, The New Russian Primer. (1931) and The Soviet Challenge to America. (1931), Counts was invited to address to the Progressive Education Association. His papers, delivered over three separate speeches, formed the core of the book, Dare the School Build a New Social Order, published in 1932.(Counts, G.S. 1932) Counts provides a clear examination of the cultural, social and political purposes of education, and proponents the deliberate examination and navigation of teaching for political purposes.

In his address Counts proposed that teachers "dare build a new social order" through a complex, but definitely possible, process. He explained that only through schooling could students be educated for a life in a world transformed by massive changes in science, industry, and technology. Counts insisted that responsible educators "cannot evade the responsibility of participating actively in the task of reconstituting the democratic tradition and of thus working positively toward a new society." Counts' address to the PEA and the subsequent publication put him in the forefront of the social re-constructionism movement in education.

Conservative educators attacked the premise of Counts' assertion, and progressive educators recoiled at his criticism of their practices. W. E. B. Du Bois issued a rebuttal to Counts' assertions that teachers were capable of building a "new social order". In 1935 he spoke to a Georgia African American teacher's convention, curtly discounting the nature of the education system today.

After this period, Counts continued teaching at Columbia. His other books include The Social Foundations of Education (1934); The Prospects of American Democracy (1938); The Country of the Blind (1949), and; Education and American Civilization (1952). He taught at Columbia University Teachers College for almost thirty years. Several of his students, including William ...