For John Dewey, the connection between education and real life was central to his vision of how teaching and learning should take place. From this, it followed that at the heart of educational experience were the concerns and interests of the child, both within school and the wider community. Dewey characterised ‘interest’ as active, objective and personally important. However, these features were not to be understood simply in terms of present interests but in the potential of the child for further growth and development. The biological metaphor of growth as an aim of education was subsequently treated to stringent criticism from R.S. Peters and others, on account of its vagueness, potential for undesirable consequences and for possessing only historical significance. Whilst close reading of Dewey does provide the means to counter these criticisms, it is arguably the case that in the language of growth, he loses sight of his own understanding that things of interest have personal importance. To address this, and to retrieve the powerful personal dimension of Deweyan interests, I turn to the American philosopher Stanley Cavell, who, in the words of his French translator Sandra Laugier, teaches us the importance of importance. I will argue that this will allow us to expand on Dewey’s conception of interest and why it is still relevant for our understanding of education.
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Adrian Skilbeck is Senior Lecturer in Education Studies at Winchester. He is author of Stanley Cavell and Education: Voice, Seriousness and Drama (Bloomsbury, forthcoming, 2025) and was co-editor with Paul Standish of Wittgenstein and Education: On Not Sparing Others The Trouble of Thinking (Wiley-Blackwell, 2023). Adrian is the chair of the PESGB Development Committee, a member of the PESGB Executive Committee and also sits on the editorial board of the Journal of Philosophy of Education (JOPE). Adrian is a member of the CREATE research centre at Winchester, leading on research in Philosophy of Education.
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