Reading Harry Potter: A Deweyan Fantasia

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Reading Harry Potter A Deweyan Fantasia

• Sean Cavazos-Kottke
• Robert B. Miller College Michigan State
  University
• cavazos-kottkes_at_millercollege.org

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Lets Have a Hand for Reading!
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Good evening. My name is John Dewey. Early in the
20th century, I gave a series of lectures on
education in which I argued that the school
curriculum should be centered on the immediate
needs, concerns and interests of children and
that the notion that school is some sort of
preparation for real life creates an artificial
barrier between school and society that will
ultimately undermine the foundations of
democratic, participatory government.
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I was especially opposed to what later educators
who shared my vision would call a pedagogy of
control, in which schools take on the mission of
manufacturing productive citizens by stamping out
students natural interests and inclinations and
granting legitimacy to a narrow range of
disciplines and texts. It would be absurd to
regard children as heathens in need of conversion
to the one true faith, yet this is precisely how
many childrens extracurricular lives are treated
by the traditional curriculum. It is
disheartening that this should still be so in the
21st century.
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On the other hand, I have been excited in recent
years to witness a growing movement toward
embracing the literacies and passions that
children bring with them to school. Talented
educators at every level have begun to recognize
the power of scaffolding instruction on
childrens strengths and interests, creating
spaces in the curriculum for the texts and topics
that most engage children in their
extracurricular pursuits. Such a permeable
curriculum has the potential to break down the
wall that students perceive between school and
the real world, as the school grants legitimacy
to the passions that define what counts as
reality in the students world.
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To express my support for these innovative
approaches that promise to restore children to
their rightful place at the center of the
curriculum, I have guided the hand of one of your
contemporaries in the creation of an allegorical
appreciation of my ideas, using the idiom of a
text that for many children and adults of your
time represents the apotheosis of real world
reading. It is ironic that one of the most
realistic depictions of the division between
school and the real world that many children
perceive not only appears within the pages of a
fantasy novel, but also reverses the usual order
of the relationship that children experience
between the two spheres. For Harry Potter, life
at Hogwarts (despite its physical isolation from
the rest of the world) represents a more
authentic world than does life among his Muggle
guardians, where he is never free to be himself
and is often literally imprisoned. This allegory
asks how Harry and his peers might react if
certain elements of Hogwarts began to resemble
Muggle schools. As the point of an allegory is to
illustrate a larger idea through the medium of
storytelling, I hope that you will forgive any
liberties that have been taken with details in
the continuity of the story of Harry Potter and
his compatriots. I leave you now in the capable
hands of one of my followers, as you experience
Reading Harry Potter A Deweyan Fantasia.