The Ideology of the American Dream

Two Competing Philosophies in Education, 1776-2006

Bibliographic Data

ID8923539
AuthorsJ M Beach (0000-0002-4313-9059, University of California, Riverside, corresponding author)
Year2007
Volume41
Issue2
Pages148-164
Publication date2007-05-25
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEducational Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-1946 • E-ISSN: 1532-6993
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00131940701312488
OpenAlexW2072864048
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited35

This article puts forth 2 competing notions of the American Dream, 1 radical and 1 conservative (both put forth by Thomas Jefferson), as the basis for 2 competing public philosophies of American democracy and education. This article traces out the ecology of inequality that has determined the context of these 2 competing public philosophies, especially in relation to the evolution of U.S. education. The ideology of the American Dream is still a potent philosophical means for constructing reformist discourses for American politics and education. The rhetoric of the American Dream focuses on the unrealized promises found within the Declaration of Independence and it articulates the need of equality and freedom for all members of our society. This article traces the framework of these conflicting American Dreams from their inception and into our contemporary context. Notes 1. The editor of this issue of The Federalist brings in a contrasting view to Madison's use of the word "faction." Burke used the term party in Thoughts on the Present Discontents (1770), but defined it in more neutral terms as "a body of men united, for promoting by their joint endeavors the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed" (p. 33). Under Burke's definition, the unpropertied majority need not be a negative, self-serving, and destructive group of individuals out for their own good at the expense of a nation. One must be reminded, however, that Burke was not one to support democratic causes and thus this contrast should be contextually qualified by his intended usage, although it does give modern readers a glimpse of how Madison could have conceptualized his term if he had not been bent on disparaging a truly democratic government. 2. One Common School proponent in Kansas wrote, "Americanism is Protestantism... Protestantism is Life, is Light, is Civilization, is the spirit of the age. Education with all its adjuncts, is Protestantism. If fact, Protestantism is education itself" (CitationTyack & Hansot, 1982, p. 76). 3. A Republican candidate for governor in 1891 declared, "The public school is needed to Americanize our youth. It is the great digestive apparatus by which the many nationalities in our state will become assimilated" (CitationTyack & Hansot, 1982, p. 81). 4. In 1909, Ellwood P. Cubberley of Stanford University, a member of the educational trust, proudly stated, "Each year the child is coming to belong more to the state, and less and less to the parent" (CitationTyack & Hansot, 1982, p. 103). 5. The top 1% of the U.S. population earned 33.9% of all personal income; the bottom 20% earned only 8.3% (CitationTyack & Hansot 1982, 109) 6. Educational theorists like CitationSchutz (2001) worry that even Greene's (1988) philosophy does not acknowledge "extensively enough" the "affects of power and oppression" on an individual's ability to participate in even the smallest of communities" (CitationSchutz, 2001, p. 14). 7. The neoliberal English weekly The Economist has recently run several stories on the subject of the "American Dream" and the ever-hardening class system within the United States (Meritocracy in America, 2005; Middle of the Class, 2005; Missing Rungs in the Ladder, 2005)

Aesthetics · Dream · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Ideology · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · Educational Philosophies and Pedagogies · Law · Neuroscience · Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Pragmatism in Philosophy and Education · Psychology