In this paper I wish to provide a re-examination of G. H. Mead’s educational ideas and
their radical democratic import. Drawing on both published and unpublished materials, I
discuss how Mead applies his social psychological insights to a number of educational matters.
In particular, I will focus on the relation between the family and the school, the role
model performed by the problem-solving attitude of experimental science for teaching activities,
the relation between the school and the industrial world, the importance of schooling
to a participative conception of democratic politics, and Mead’s conception of the university
as a scientific institution devoted not to vocational training, but to fundamental
research.
