Education for Self-Control: Some Similarities Between Dewey’s Experience and Education and Locke’s Theory of Rational Agency

One of the themes that runs through Dewey’s Experience and Education is an argument to the effect that education aims at self-control. The details of this argument reveal close affinity between Dewey’s philosophy of education and the ideals of the Enlightenment. They are also strikingly similar to John Locke’s thoughts about freedom and education published in the seventeenth century. Comparison of their texts shows that Dewey and Locke worked with similar distinctions between positive and negative freedom. They both saw freedom and guidance as compatible, and conceived of self-control as dependent on autonomy-friendly habits instilled through education.