ABSTRACT
The American philosopher and educational thinker John Dewey's image of “the branching of the road” intimates a polemic against the traditionalist way of thinking that presumes to solve all new problems in old, rule-bound ways. This time-honored way of thinking, and learning too, suggests that when any problem arises, we need merely look up the right answer in a sacred or classical source and then proceed to act on the basis of eternal verities. Caged in by allegedly perennial truths, rule-bound or normative persons fail to solve, or even to see, new problems and thus are kept from dealing reasonably and responsibly with them. Viewing the Dewey passage as a polemic against normative thinking, teachers quite naturally use it for purposes of juxtaposition: between tradition and inquiry, between eternally valid values and deliberation, between stultifying “holy texts” and new thinking that proceeds not from ancient insights but from present needs.
