Life and unlife

In Democracy & Education, Dewey (1916) argues that the distinction between living and inanimate things is the capacity for renewal.Living things renew themselves through a continuous, transactional relationship with their material environment and socio-cultural milieu that generates energy.If the energy derived is in ample supply, we grow.If it is equal to our needs, we subsist, and if it is insufficient, we begin to die.In school, this energetic exchange is articulated through curriculum.Whether one understands curriculum as a course, or as the running or walking of the course, curriculum is the central, organisational medium through which educational experiences are planned, enacted, and lived (Marsh & Willis, 2007).Dewey writes that such experiences can be educative or mis-educative.Educative experiences promote growth, while mis-educative experiences distort it, causing the "wrong kind" of growth or growth in the wrong direction (Dewey, 1938, p. 26).Regardless of the type or direction, educative and mis-educative experiences share a biophilic quality (Fromm, 1964) because they reflect an intrinsic orientation toward life, renewal, and growth that is achieved through the doings and undergoings (Dewey, 1925) of experience. DOING AND UNDERGOINGFor Dewey, doings and undergoings encapsulate the rhythm and structure of experience itself.At its core, experience arises through the dynamic, reciprocal interaction between what an individual does-their actions, impulses, and engagements with the world-and what they undergo in return, the consequences and feedback of those actions.Dewey (1934) writes that these actions are driven by "impulsions" (p.64), or the innate tendencies or drives that prompt action.While there are theoretical tensions between Dewey's and Freire's philosophies, Freire's (1994) conceptualisation of hope as an "ontological need" (p. 2) and existential necessity adds an important dimension to these motivations.Impulsions refer to a need to be satisfied through a transaction with one's environment, but hope is the belief that this need can be met.If impulsions guide our education (and life), then hope motivates, mediates, and makes education manifest.Dewey argues that meaningful experiences are those in which this rhythm achieves balance and harmony.This interplay is not merely sequential but transactional, where doing and undergoing form a unified whole, mutually informing and shaping each other in a continuous process (Pappas, 2016).In education, this process underpins how curriculum mediates the relationship between learners and their environment.When the organism engages with its environment, it temporarily falls out of alignment with it, encountering tension or imbalance.Through effort or adaptation, however, equilibrium is restored-not passively, but through active participation in a process that generates energy and promotes further possibilities for action.