Abstract

I came to this review not as an emerging scholar in political science or philosophy, but rather in language education. As such, the questions that I brought to the text were informed by my disciplinary formation and professional aspirations. I wondered: What benefits might language educators in the twenty-first century derive from reading The Public and its Problems? How might Deweyan reflections on the public, the state, community, and democracy inform or refresh ongoing debates in my field? As I read, it struck me that Dewey’s writings do not feature more prominently in my field despite a great deal of overlap between his beliefs and those of many contemporary language educators and researchers. While the..