I have often said that once I retired from paid labor, I would work on a blog to be entitled “How dumb are we?” I joked that I would have an infinite array of material — even if I stuck to topics related to education. Well, the events of 2020 (indeed, the past two decades) have certainly proved me correct. Political insanity, a global pandemic, and continuing environmental blindness only confirm my sense that we humans, well, at least we Americans, are intent on our own pain and suffering, if not destruction.

The classical American pragmatists — John Dewey, Jane Addams, William James, Alain Locke, Mary Parker Follett, W.E.B. DuBois, Anna Julia Cooper — understood that this didn’t have to be the case. They knew that we could and sometimes did act intelligently by fully interpreting and responding to “what the known demands” as Dewey put it. Our intelligent action was not guaranteed to be right, but it would, in the long run, be at least better. And pursuing co-ordinated intelligent action, as Follett would have it, was the only path that might enable win-win rather than win-lose outcomes.

I’m not going to ask every day “How dumb are we?” but I’m sure you’ll hear something of that in my tone. Instead, I’m going to think — with you, I hope — about what the known demands in this situation, under these circumstances, give the current context.

Education (including, but not only, schooling) will be my starting point, my point of departure. But as Dewey also observed, “Education is not preparation for life; it is life.” So be prepared to range far afield in order to come to an understanding of what education is and can be in this time and place.