Description: It is our aim in this paper, not only to explore the central arguments raised by Michael Apple in Democratic Schools, a work that is co-authored and co-edited with James Beane, but also to confront this particular work with some of the foremost arguments that we have drawn from John Dewey's Schools of To-Morrow, co-authored with his daughter Evelyn, and from John Dewey's Experience and Education. In so doing we will argue over (1) the need to understand both Schools of To-Morrow and Democratic Education in context, (2) the main reasons behind a political and pedagogical work such Democratic Schools (3) how Democratic Schools shows some explicit parallels with Schools of To-Morrow and Experience and Education - despite some undisputable differences, eg. Public vs. Private, and finally (4) particular puzzling silences portrayed in Democratic Schools. It is a pure textual analysis a symptomatic critical reading in which we were able to establish a dialogue between John Dewey and Michael Apple, a dialogue that, among other issues, allow one to perceive, not only that Michael Apple political strategy stands on the shoulders of a powerful progressive curriculum tradition - one which Dewey assumes a laudable position - that since the end of the nineteenth century has been fighting for a more just and equal society, but also a kind of epistemological break, or a continuity - discontinuity tension with, say, Michael Apple's Ideology and Curriculum and Official Knowledge. Methodology: It is a pure critical textual analysis based on a symptomatic reading that tries to unveil both ideological and cultural Parallels, unparallels, and silences between John Dewey and Michael Apple's discourses. As Ong, Reinhart, Grice and Kress mention (1989: 35), "all discourse is ideologically and textually determined [and also] institutionally determined", especially since, as is highlighted by Terry Eagleton (1976: 80) "ideology pre-exists the text, [however] the ideology of the text defines, operates and constitutes that ideology in ways unpremeditated, so to speak, by ideology itself". That is to say that "the text itself is not a terminus; […] it exists in some complex relation to history which has yet to be determined; [in other words] history one might say, is the ultimate signifier of literature, as it is the ultimate signified" (Eagleton, 1976: 67-72). Moreover, and this is quite important, "the text does not merely take ideological conflicts in order to resolve them aesthetically, for the character of those conflicts is itself overdetermined by the textual modes in which they are produced, [that is to say] the text's mode of resolving a particular ideological conflict may then produce textual conflicts elsewhere … which need in turn to be processed" (Eagleton, 1976: 88). That is why in "every text something happens" (Eagleton, 1976 87) in such a way that it forces a reaction, from both sides. Given the political option that we made, we cannot hope for anything else to happen to all those who had contact with this research. More important than its content, the autobiography is precisely that which permits the interpretation as a socially symbolic act (Jameson, 1981), especially since, as Terry Eagleton (1976: 89) reiterates, "ideology is [also] present in the text in the form of its eloquent silences". Conclusions: Among some of the conclusions we highlight that (1) for both John Dewey and Michael Apple it is impossible to achieve a really democratic and just society without truly democratic institutions (in which the school has a responsibility), it is also impossible to have and secure a democratic school without a democratic curriculum. Also we were able to desiccate (2) some puzzling concerns with regards Democratic Schools, among others, the silence on private and religious schooling, and the silence before the need of a real democratic teacher training. We end our analyzes building undisputable evidence that as Roth (1962: 144) highlighted the "future thought in America must go beyond Dewey [though] it is difficult to see how it can avoid going through him".