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Men Have Never Fully Used [their] Powers To Advance The Good In Life, Because They Have Waited Upon Some Power External To Themselves And To Nature To Do The Work They Are Responsible For Doing.

-John Dewey

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Men Have Never Fully

John Dewey

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Men Have Never Fully Used [their] Powers To Advance The Good In Life, Because They Have Waited Upon Some Power External To Themselves And To Nature To Do The Work They Are Responsible For Doing.

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No Government By Experts In Which The Masses Do Not Have The Chance To Inform The Experts As To Their Needs Can Be Anything But An Oligarchy Managed In The Interest Of The Few. And The Enlightenment Must Proceed In Ways Which Force The Administrative Specialists To Take Account Of The Needs. The World Has Suffered More From Leaders And Authorities Than From The Masses. The Essential Need ... Is The Improvement Of The Methods And Conditions Of Debate, Discussion And Persuasion. That Is The Problem Of The Public.

Things Gain Meaning By Being Used In A Shared Experience Or Joint Action.

Men Have Gone On To Build Up Vast Intellectual Schemes, Philosophies, And Theologies, To Prove That Ideals Are Not Real As Ideals But As Antecedently Existing Actualities. They Have Failed To See That In Converting Moral Realities Into Matters Of Intellectual Assent They Have Evinced Lack Of Moral Faith.

Traveling Is A Constant Arriving, While Arrival That Precludes Further Traveling Is Most Easily Attained By Going To Sleep Or Dying.

Of These Three Words, Direction, Control, And Guidance, The Last Best Conveys The Idea Of Assisting Through Cooperation The Natural Capacities Of The Individuals Guided; Control Conveys Rather The Notion Of An Energy Brought To Bear From Without And Meeting Some Resistance From The One Controlled; Direction Is A More Neutral Term And Suggests The Fact That The Active Tendencies Of Those Directed Are Led In A Certain Continuous Course, Instead Of Dispersing Aimlessly.

A Being Whose Activities Are Associated With Others Has A Social Environment. What He Does And What He Can Do Depend Upon The Expectations, Demands, Approvals, And Condemnations Of Others.

Too Rarely Is The Individual Teacher So Free From The Dictation Of Authoritative Supervisor, Textbook On Methods, Prescribed Course Of Study, Etc., That He Can Let His Mind Come To Close Quarters With The Pupil's Mind And The Subject Matter.

It Science Involves An Intelligent And Persistent Endeavor To Revise Current Beliefs So As To Weed Out What Is Erroneous, To Add To Their Accuracy, And, Above All, To Give Them Such Shape That The Dependencies Of The Various Facts Upon One Another May Be As Obvious As Possible.

Doctrine That Eliminates Or Even Obscures The Function Of Choice Of Values And Enlistment Of Desires And Emotions In Behalf Of Those Chosen Weakens Personal Responsibility For Judgment And For Action. It Thus Helps Create The Attitudes That Welcome And Support The Totalitarian State.

To Pull At A Rope At Which Others Happen To Be Pulling Is Not A Shared Or Conjoint Activity, Unless The Pulling Is Done With Knowledge That Others Are Pulling And For The Sake Of Either Helping Or Hindering What They Are Doing.

I Believe That The School Must Represent Present Life - Life As Real And Vital To The Child As That Which He Carries On In The Home, In The Neighborhood, Or On The Play-ground.

Experience Alone Cannot Deliver To Us Necessary Truths; Truths Completely Demonstrated By Reason. Its Conclusions Are Particular, Not Universal.

A Child May Have To Be Snatched With Roughness Away From A Fire So That He Shall Not Be Burnt.

Confidence Is Directness And Courage In Meeting The Facts Of Life.

Not Only Is Social Life Identical With Communication, But All Communication (and Hence All Genuine Social Life) Is Educative.

We Have Three Approaches At Our Disposal: The Observation Of Nature, Reflection, And Experimentation. Observation Serves To Assemble The Data, Reflection To Synthesise Them And Experimentation To Test The Results Of The Synthesis. The Observation Of Nature Must Be Assiduous, Just As Reflection Must Be Profound, And Experimentation Accurate. These Three Approaches Are Rarely Found Together, Which Explains Why Creative Geniuses Are So Rare.

Education, Therefore, Is A Process Of Living And Not A Preparation For Future Living. Without Some Goals And Some Efforts To Reach It, No Man Can Live. Education Is Not Preparation For Life; Education Is Life Itself.

Inspirational Life

The Scientific-religious Conflict Ultimately Is A Conflict Between Allegiance To This Method And Allegiance To Even An Irreducible Minimum Of Belief So Fixed In Advance That It Can Never Be Modified.

Always Make The Other Person Feel Important.

The First Step In Freeing Men From External Chains Was To Emancipate Them From The Internal Chains Of False Beliefs And Ideals.

The Phrase "think For One's Self" Is A Pleonasm. Unless One Does It For One's Self, It Isn't Thinking.

Unless Our Laboratory Results Are To Give Us Artificialities, Mere Scientific Curiosities, They Must Be Subjected To Interpretation By Gradual Re-approximation To Conditions Of Life.

One Lives With So Many Bad Deeds On One's Conscience And Some Good Intentions In One's Heart.

Good Intentions

If A Person Cannot Foresee The Consequences Of His Act, And Is Not Capable Of Understanding What He Is Told About Its Outcome By Those With More Experience, It Is Impossible For Him To Guide His Act Intelligently. In Such A State, Every Act Is Alike To Him.

All Education Which Develops Power To Share Effectively In Social Life Is Moral.

A Man Really Living Alone (alone Mentally As Well As Physically) Would Have Little Or No Occasion To Reflect Upon His Past Experience To Extract Its Net Meaning.

Insight Into Soul-action, Ability To Discriminate The Genuine From The Sham And Capacity To Further One And Discourage The Other.

Knowledge Is No Longer An Immobile Solid; It Has Been Liquefied. It Is Actively Moving In All The Currents Of Society Itself

Since Changes Are Going On Anyway, The Great Thing Is To Learn Enough About Them So That We Will Be Able To Lay Hold Of Them And Turn Them In The Direction Of Our Desires. Conditions And Events Are Neither To Be Fled From Nor Passively Acquiesced In; They Are To Be Utilized And Directed.

I Believe That The Only True Education Comes Through The Stimulation Of The Child's Powers By The Demands Of The Social Situations In Which He Finds Himself.

Since There Is No Single Set Of Abilities Running Throughout Human Nature, There Is No Single Curriculum Which All Should Undergo. Rather, The Schools Should Teach Everything That Anyone Is Interested In Learning.

The Bare Fact That Language Consists Of Sounds Which Are Mutually Intelligible Is Enough Of Itself To Show That Its Meaning Depends Upon Connection With A Shared Experience.

In Laying Hands Upon The Sacred Ark Of Absolute Permanency, In Treating The Forms That Had Been Regarded As Types Of Fixity And Perfection As Originating And Passing Away, The Origin Of Species Introduced A Mode Of Thinking That In The End Was Bound To Transform The Logic Of Knowledge, And Hence The Treatment Of Morals, Politics, And Religion.

Without Some Goals And Some Efforts To Reach It, No Man Can Live.

Religions Have Been Universal In The Sense That All The People We Know Anything About Have Had A Religion. But The Differences Among Them Are So Great And So Shocking That Any Common Element That Can Be Extracted Is Meaningless.... The Older Apologists For Christianity Seem To Have Been Better Advised Than Some Modern Ones In Condemning Every Religion But One As An Impostor, As At Bottom Some Kind Of Demon Worship Or At Any Rate A Superstitious Figment.

A Response Is Not Just A Re-action, A Protest, As It Were, Against Being Disturbed; It Is, As The Word Indicates, An Answer. It Meets The Stimulus, And Corresponds With It.

We Never Educate Directly, But Indirectly By Means Of The Environment. Whether We Permit Chance Environments To Do The Work, Or Whether We Design Environments For The Purpose Makes A Great Difference.

To Be Born, To Live And To Die Is Merely To Change Forms... And What Does One Form Matter Any More Than Another?... Each Form Has Its Own Sort Of Happiness And Unhappiness. From The Elephant Down To The Flea... From The Flea Down To The Sensitive And Living Molecule Which Is The Origin Of All, There Is Not A Speck In The Whole Of Nature That Does Not Feel Pain Or Pleasure.

The Origin Of Thinking Is Some Perplexity, Confusion Or Doubt.

Not Only Does Social Life Demand Teaching And Learning For Its Own Permanence, But The Very Process Of Living Together Educates. It Enlarges And Enlightens Experience; It Stimulates And Enriches Imagination; It Creates Responsibility For Accuracy And Vividness Of Statement And Thought.

If The Eye Is Constantly Greeted By Harmonious Objects, Having Elegance Of Form And Color, A Standard Of Taste Naturally Grows Up.

In Undeveloped Social Groups, We Find Very Little Formal Teaching And Training. Savage Groups Mainly Rely For Instilling Needed Dispositions Into The Young Upon The Same Sort Of Association Which Keeps Adults Loyal To Their Group. They Have No Special Devices, Material, Or Institutions For Teaching Save In Connection With Initiation Ceremonies By Which The Youth Are Inducted Into Full Social Membership. For The Most Part, They Depend Upon Children Learning The Customs Of The Adults, Acquiring Their Emotional Set And Stock Of Ideas, By Sharing In What The Elders Are Doing.

Without The English, Reason And Philosophy Would Still Be In The Most Despicable Infancy In France.

There Is More Than A Verbal Tie Between The Words Common, Community, And Communication.

When Others Are Not Doing What We Would Like Them To Or Are Threatening Disobedience, We Are Most Conscious Of The Need Of Controlling Them And Of The Influences By Which They Are Controlled.

The Religious Is Any Activity Pursued In Behalf Of An Ideal End Against Obstacles And In Spite Of Threats Of Personal Loss Because Of Its General And Enduring Value.

Each Generation Is Inclined To Educate Its Young So As To Get Along In The Present World Instead Of With A View To The Proper End Of Education: The Promotion Of The Best Possible Realization Of Humanity As Humanity. Parents Educate Their Children So That They May Get On; Princes Educate Their Subjects As Instruments Of Their Own Purpose.

Arriving At One Goal Is The Starting Point To Another.

We Cannot Set Up, Out Of Our Heads, Something We Regard As An Ideal Society.

The Acquisition However Perfectly Of Skills Is Not An End In Itself. They Are Things To Be Put To Use As A Contribution To A Common And Shared Life.

The Routine Of Custom Tends To Deaden Even Scientific Inquiry; It Stands In The Way Of Discovery And Of The Active Scientific Worker. For Discovery And Inquiry Are Synonymous As An Occupation. Science Is A Pursuit, Not A Coming Into Possession Of The Immutable; New Theories As Points Of View Are More Prized Than Discoveries That Quantitatively Increase The Store On Hand.

As Long As Politics Is The Shadow Cast On Society By Big Business, The Attenuation Of The Shadow Will Not Change The Substance.

Any Education Given By A Group Tends To Socialize Its Members, But The Quality And The Value Of The Socialization Depends Upon The Habits And Aims Of The Group. Hence, Once More, The Need Of A Measure For The Worth Of Any Given Mode Of Social Life.

We Only Think When We Are Confronted With Problems.

An Education Could Be Given Which Would Sift Individuals, Discovering What They Were Good For, And Supplying A Method Of Assigning Each To The Work In Life For Which His Nature Fits Him.

We Talk Much More About Individualism And Liberty Than Our Ancestors. But As So Often Happens, When Anything Becomes Conscious, The Consciousness Is Compensatory For Absence In Practice.

Man's Home Is Nature; His Purposes And Aims Are Dependent For Execution Upon Natural Conditions. Separated From Such Conditions They Become Empty Dreams And Idle Indulgences Of Fancy.

Education Is Life Itself.

It Is A Familiar And Significant Saying That A Problem Well Put Is Half-solved.

The End Justifies The Means Only When The Means Used Are Such As Actually Bring About The Desired And Desirable End.

Our Historic Imagination Is At Best Slightly Developed. We Generalise And Idealise The Past Egregiously. We Set Up Little Toys To Stand As Symbols For Centuries And The Complicated Lives Of Countless Individuals.

Education, In Its Broadest Sense, Is The Means Of This Social Continuity Of Life.

The Only Way To Abolish War Is To Make Peace Seem Heroic.

The Mere Absorption Of Facts And Truths Is So Exclusively An Individual Affair That It Tends Very Naturally To Pass Into Selfishness. There Is No Obvious Social Motive For The Acquirement Of Mere Learning, There Is No Clear Social Gain In Success Thereat.

The Aim Of Education Is To Enable Individuals To Continue Their Education ... (and) The Object And Reward Of Learning Is Continued Capacity For Growth. Now This Idea Cannot Be Applied To All The Members Of A Society Except Where Intercourse Of Man With Man Is Mutual, And Except Where There Is Adequate Provision For The Reconstruction Of Social Habits And Institutions By Means Of Wide Stimulation Arising From Equitably Distributed Interests. And This Means A Democratic Society.

Good Manners Come, As We Say, From Good Breeding Or Rather Are Good Breeding; And Breeding Is Acquired By Habitual Action, In Response To Habitual Stimuli, Not By Conveying Information.

The Problem Of Restoring Integration And Co-operation Between Man's Beliefs About The World In Which He Lives And His Beliefs About Values And Purposes That Should Direct His Conduct Is The Deepest Problem Modern Life. It Is The Problem Of Any Philosophy That Is Not Isolated From Life.

We Have Advanced Far Enough To Say That Democracy Is A Way Of Life. We Have Yet To Realize That It Is A Way Of Personal Life And One Which Provides A Moral Standard For Personal Conduct.

When "reality" Is Sought For At Large, It Is Without Intellectual Import; At Most The Term Carries The Connotation Of An Agreeableemotional State.

The Empiric Easily Degenerates Into The Quack. He Does Not Know Where His Knowledge Begins Or Leaves Off, And So When He Gets Beyond Routine Conditions He Begins To Pretend-to Make Claims For Which There Is No Justification, And To Trust To Luck And To Ability To Impose Upon Others-to "bluff."

As A Child Lives Today, He Will Live Tomorrow.

Without Initiation Into The Scientific Spirit One Is Not In Possession Of The Best Tools Which Humanity Has So Far Devised For Effectively Directed Reflection. One In That Case Not Merely Conducts Inquiry And Learning Without The Use Of The Best Instruments, But Fails To Understand The Full Meaning Of Knowledge.

Science Is A Systematic Means Of Gaining Reliable Knowledge.

Just As A Flower Which Seems Beautiful And Has Color But No Perfume, So Are The Fruitless Words Of The Man Who Speaks Them But Does Them Not.

Time With His Old Flail Beat Me Full Sore; Till: Hold, I Cried, I'll Stand No More. Then I Heard A Wail And Looking Spied How Love's Little Bow Had Laid Time Low.

Intelligence Is In Constant Process Of Forming, And Its Retention Requires Constant Alertness In Observing Consequences, An Open-minded Will To Learn, And Courage In Readjustment.

Mankind Likes To Think In Terms Of Extreme Opposites.

Such Words As "society" And "community" Are Likely To Be Misleading, For They Have A Tendency To Make Us Think There Is A Single Thing Corresponding To The Single Word.

Education Is Not An Affair Of 'telling' And Being Told, But An Active And Constructive Process.

Education As Growth Or Maturity Should Be An Ever-present Process.

Man Is Not Logical And His Intellectual History Is A Record Of Mental Reserves And Compromises. He Hangs On To What He Can In His Old Beliefs Even When He Is Compelled To Surrender Their Logical Basis.

What, After All, Is The Public Under Present Conditions? What Are The Reasons For Its Eclipse? What Hinders It From Finding And Identifying Itself? By What Means Shall Its Inchoate And Amorphous Estate Be Organized Into Effective Political Action Relevant To Present Social Needs And Opportunities? What Has Happened To The Public In The Century And A Half Since The Theory Of Political Democracy Was Urged With Such Assurance And Hope?

Even Dogs And Horses Have Their Actions Modified By Association With Human Beings; They Form Different Habits Because Human Beings Are Concerned With What They Do.

Education Has No More Serious Responsibility Than The Making Of Adequate Provision For Enjoyment Of Recreative Leisure Not Only For The Sake Of Immediate Health, But For The Sake Of Its Lasting Effect Upon The Habits Of The Mind.

What The Best And Wisest Parent Wants For His Own Child, That Must The Community Want For All Of Its Children.

Every One Of The Constituent Elements Of A Social Group, In A Modern City As In A Savage Tribe, Is Born Immature, Helpless, Without Language, Beliefs, Ideas, Or Social Standards. Each Individual, Each Unit Who Is The Carrier Of The Life-experience Of His Group, In Time Passes Away. Yet The Life Of The Group Goes On.

Adequate Control Means That The Successive Acts Are Brought Into A Continuous Order; Each Act Not Only Meets Its Immediate Stimulus But Helps The Acts Which Follow.

In Fact, The Human Young Are So Immature That If They Were Left To Themselves Without The Guidance And Succor Of Others, They Could Not Acquire The Rudimentary Abilities Necessary For Physical Existence.

An Inanimate Being Is, Of Course, Continuous With Its Surroundings; But The Environing Circumstances Do Not, Save Metaphorically, Constitute An Environment. For The Inorganic Being Is Not Concerned In The Influences Which Affect It.

It Is Commonplace That A Problem Stated Is Well On Its Way To Solution, For Statement Of The Nature Of A Problem Signifies That The Underlying Quality Is Being Transformed Into Determinate Distinctions Of Terms And Relations Or Has Become An Object Of Articulate Thought.

Method Means That Arrangement Of Subject Matter Which Makes It Most Effective In Use. Never Is Method Something Outside Of The Material.

The Reactionaries Are In Possession Of Force, In Not Only The Army And Police, But In The Press And The Schools

We Cannot Think Of Ourselves Save As To Some Extent Social Being. Hence, We Cannot Separate The Idea Of Ourselves And Our Own Good From Our Idea Of Others And Their Good.

There Is Nothing Left Worth Preserving In The Notions Of Unseen Powers, Controlling Human Destiny, To Which Obedience And Worship Are Due.

How Many Students ... Were Rendered Callous To Ideas, And How Many Lost The Impetus To Learn Because Of The Way In Which Learning Was Experienced By Them?

Poetry Has Historically Been Allied With Religion And Morals; It Has Served The Purpose Of Penetrating The Mysterious Depths Of Things.

When We Consider The Close Connection Between Science And Industrial Development On The One Hand, And Between Literary And Aesthetic Cultivation And An Aristocratic Social Organization On The Other, We Get Light On The Opposition Between Technical Scientific Studies And Refining Literary Studies. We Have Before Us The Need Of Overcoming This Separation In Education If Society Is To Be Truly Democratic.

One Code Prevails In The Family; Another, On The Street; A Third, In The Workshop Or Store; A Fourth, In The Religious Association. As A Person Passes From One Of The Environments To Another, He Is Subjected To Antagonistic Pulls, And Is In Danger Of Being Split Into A Being Having Different Standards Of Judgment And Emotion For Different Occasions. This Danger Imposes Upon The School A Steadying And Integrating Office.

Mere Physical Growing Up, Mere Mastery Of The Bare Necessities Of Subsistence Will Not Suffice To Reproduce The Life Of The Group. Deliberate Effort And The Taking Of Thoughtful Pains Are Required.

The Future Of Our Civilisation Depends Upon The Widening Spread And Deepening Hold Of The Scientific Habit Of Mind.

If Humanity Has Made Some Headway In Realizing That The Ultimate Value Of Every Institution Is Its Distinctively Human Effect - Its Effect Upon Conscious Experience - We May Well Believe That This Lesson Has Been Learned Largely Through Dealings With The Young.

We Have Lost Confidence In Reason Because We Have Learned That Man Is Chiefly A Creature Of Habit And Emotion.

Language Fails Not Because Thought Fails, But Because No Verbal Symbols Can Do Justice To The Fullness And Richness Of Thought. Ifwe Are To Continue Talking About "data" In Any Other Sense Than As Reflective Distinctions, The Original Datum Is Always Such A Qualitative Whole.

Some Experiences Are Mis-educative. Any Experience Is Mis-educative That Has The Effect Of Arresting Or Distorting The Growth Of Further Experience.

Schools Have Ignored The Value Of Experience And Chosen To Teach By Pouring In.

When Words Do Not Enter As Factors Into A Shared Situation, Either Overtly Or Imaginatively, They Operate As Pure Physical Stimuli, Not As Having A Meaning Or Intellectual Value. They Set Activity Running In A Given Groove, But There Is No Accompanying Conscious Purpose Or Meaning.

Democracy Means The Belief That Humanistic Culture Should Prevail.

The Ultimate Aim Of Production Is Not Production Of Goods But The Production Of Free Human Beings Associated With One Another On Terms Of Equality.

As Some Species Die Out, Forms Better Adapted To Utilize The Obstacles Against Which They Struggled In Vain Come Into Being.

We Are A People Of Many Races, Many Faiths, Creeds, And Religions. I Do Not Think That The Men Who Made The Constitution Forbade The Establishment Of A State Church Because They Were Opposed To Religion. They Knew That The Introduction Of Religious Differences Into American Life Would Undermine The Democratic Foundations Of This Country. What Holds For Adults Holds Even More For Children, Sensitive And Conscious Of Differences. I Certainly Hope That The Board Of Education Will Think Very, Very Seriously Before It Introduces This Division And Antagonism In Our Public Schools.

It Is Obvious To Any Observer That In Every Western Country The Increase Of Importance Of Public Schools Has Been At Least Coincident With The Relaxation Of Older Family Ties.

The Primary Ineluctable Facts Of The Birth And Death Of Each One Of The Constituent Members In A Social Group Determine The Necessity Of Education.

But Progress In Knowledge Has Made Us Aware Of The Superficiality Of Plato's Lumping Of Individuals And Their Original Powers Into A Few Sharply Marked-off Classes; It Has Taught Us That Original Capacities Are Indefinitely Numerous And Variable. It Is But The Other Side Of This Fact To Say That In The Degree In Which Society Has Become Democratic, Social Organization Means Utilization Of The Specific And Variable Qualities Of Individuals, Not Stratification By Classes.

We Rarely Recognize The Extent In Which Our Conscious Estimates Of What Is Worth While And What Is Not, Are Due To Standards Of Which We Are Not Conscious At All.

The Good Society Was, Like The Good Self, A Diverse Yet Harmonious, Growing Yet Unified Whole, A Fully Participatory Democracy In Which The Powers And Capacities Of The Individuals That Comprised It Were Harmonized By Their Cooperative Activities Into A Community That Permitted The Full And Free Expression Of Individuality.

The School Has The Function Of Coordinating Within The Disposition Of Each Individual The Diverse Influences Of The Various Social Environments Into Which He Enters.

How Can The Child Learn To Be A Free And Responsible Citizen When The Teacher Is Bound?

The Central Problem Of An Education Based Upon Experience Is To Select The Kind Of Present Experience That Live Fruitfully And Creatively In Subsequent Experiences.

Many Of The Obstacles For Change Which Have Been Attributed To Human Nature Are In Fact Due To The Inertia Of Institutions And To The Voluntary Desire Of Powerful Classes To Maintain The Existing Status.

Education Is A Regulation Of The Process Of Coming To Share In The Social Consciousness; And That The Adjustment Of Individual Activity On The Basis Of This Social Consciousness Is The Only Sure Method Of Social Reconstruction.

Where There Is Giving There Must Be Taking.

Any Experience, However, Trivial In Its First Appearance, Is Capable Of Assuming An Indefinite Richness Of Significance By Extending Its Range Of Perceived Connections.

The Educative Value Of Manual Activities And Of Laboratory Exercises, As Well As Of Play, Depends Upon The Extent In Which They Aid In Bringing About A Sensing Of The Meaning Of What Is Going On. In Effect, If Not In Name, They Are Dramatizations.

Conflict Is The Gadfly Of Thought. It Stirs Us To Observation And Memory. It Instigates Invention. It Shocks Us Out Of Sheep-like Passivity, And Sets Us At Noting And Contriving…conflict Is A Sine Qua Non Of Reflection And Ingenuity.

There Is, I Think, No Point In The Philosophy Of Progressive Education Which Is Sounder Than Its Emphasis Upon The Importance Of The Participation Of The Learner In The Formation Of The Purposes Which Direct His [sic] Activities In The Learning Process, Just As There Is No Defect In Traditional Education Greater Than Its Failure To Secure The Active Cooperation Of The Pupil In Construction Of The Purposes Involved In His Studying.

...the Moment Of Passage From Disturbance Into Harmony Is That Of Intensest Life.

Mind Is A Verb Not A Noun.

If We Learn Not Humility, We Learn Nothing.

Popular Psychology Is A Mass Of Cant, Of Slush And Of Superstition Worthy Of The Most Flourishing Days Of The Medicine Man.

Every Great Advance In Science Has Issued From A New Audacity Of Imagination.

The Development Of Science Has Produced An Industrial Revolution Which Has Brought Different Peoples In Such Close Contact With One Another Through Colonization And Commerce That No Matter How Some Nations May Still Look Down Upon Others, No Country Can Harbor The Illusion That Its Career Is Decided Wholly Within Itself.

The Bad Man Is The Man Who No Matter How Good He Has Been Is Beginning To Deteriorate, To Grow Less Good. The Good Man Is The Man Who No Matter How Morally Unworthy He Has Been Is Moving To Become Better. Such A Conception Makes One Severe In Judging Himself And Humane In Judging Others.

The Difference Between Play And What Is Regarded As Serious Employment Should Be Not A Difference Between The Presence And Absence Of Imagination, But A Difference In The Materials With Which Imagination Is Occupied.

An Undesirable Society, In Other Words, Is One Which Internally And Externally Sets Up Barriers To Free Intercourse And Communication Of Experience.

The Imagination Is The Medium Of Appreciation In Every Field. The Engagement Of The Imagination Is The Only Thing That Makes Any Activity More Than Mechanical. Unfortunately, It Is Too Customary To Identify The Imaginative With The Imaginary, Rather Than With A Warm And Intimate Taking In Of The Full Scope Of A Situation.

The Only Thing That Is Unqualifiedly Given Is The Total Pervasive Quality; And The Objection To Calling It "given" Is That The Word Suggests Something To Which It Is Given, Mind Or Thought Or Consciousness Or Whatever, As Well Possibly As Something That Gives.

It May Be Seriously Questioned Whether The Philosophies... Which Isolate Mind And Set It Over Against The World Did Not Have Their Origin In The Fact That The Reflective Or Theoretical Class Of Men Elaborated A Large Stock Of Ideas Which Social Conditions Did Not Allow Them To Act Upon And Test. Consequently Men Were Thrown Back Into Their Own Thoughts As Ends In Themselves.

Men Have Never Fully Used [their] Powers To Advance The Good In Life, Because They Have Waited Upon Some Power External To Themselves And To Nature To Do The Work They Are Responsible For Doing.

When Men Think And Believe In One Set Of Symbols And Act In Ways Which Are Contrary To Their Professed And Conscious Ideas, Confusion And Insincerity Are Bound To Result.

A Possibility Of Continuing Progress Is Opened Up By The Fact That In Learning One Act, Methods Are Developed Good For Use In Other Situations. Still More Important Is The Fact That The Human Being Acquires A Habit Of Learning. He Learns To Learn.

Give The Pupils Something To Do, Not Something To Learn; And The Doing Is Of Such A Nature As To Demand Thinking; Learning Naturally Results.

There Is No Common Understanding, And No Community Life. But In A Shared Activity, Each Person Refers What He Is Doing To What The Other Is Doing And Vice-versa.

With Respect To The Development Of Powers Devoted To Coping With Specific Scientific And Economic Problems We May Say That The Child Should Be Growing In Manhood. With Respect To Sympathetic Curiosity, Unbiased Responsiveness, And Openness Of Mind, We May Say That The Adult Should Be Growing In Childlikeness.

Fundamental Modes Of Speech, The Bulk Of The Vocabulary, Are Formed In The Ordinary Intercourse Of Life, Carried On Not As A Set Means Of Instruction But As A Social Necessity.

While [plato] Affirmed With Emphasis That The Place Of The Individual In Society Should Not Be Determined By Birth Or Wealth Or Any Conventional Status, But By His Own Nature As Discovered In The Process Of Education, He Had No Perception Of The Uniqueness Of Individuals. For Him They Fall By Nature Into Classes, And Into A Very Small Number Of Classes At That.

Every One Has Experienced How Learning An Appropriate Name For What Was Dim And Vague Cleared Up And Crystallized The Whole Matter. Some Meaning Seems Distinct Almost Within Reach, But Is Elusive; It Refuses To Condense Into Definite Form; The Attaching Of A Word Somehow (just How, It Is Almost Impossible To Say) Puts Limits Around The Meaning, Draws It Out From The Void, Makes It Stand Out As An Entity On Its Own Account.

Teachers Are The Agents Through Which Knowledge And Skills Are Communicated And Rules Of Conduct Enforced.

Every Living Being Needs Continually Renewed, And Education Is Simply The Chief Process By Which Renewal Occurs.

If There Is One Conclusion To Which Human Experience Unmistakably Points It Is That Democratic Ends Demand Democratic Methods For Their Realization.

Scientific Principles And Laws Do Not Lie On The Surface Of Nature. They Are Hidden, And Must Be Wrested From Nature By An Active And Elaborate Technique Of Inquiry.

It Has Been Petrified Into A Slavery Of Thought And Sentiment, As Intolerant Superiority On The Part Of The Few And An Intolerable Burden On The Part Of The Many.

The Path Of Least Resistance And Least Trouble Is A Mental Rut Already Made. It Requires Troublesome Work To Undertake The Alternation Of Old Beliefs.

Even Today, In Our Industrial Life, Apart From Certain Values Of Industriousness And Thrift, The Intellectual And Emotional Reaction Of The Forms Of Human Association Under Which The World's Work Is Carried On Receives Little Attention As Compared With Physical Output.

Every Subject At Some Phase Of Its Development Should Possess, What Is For The Individual Concerned With It, An Aesthetic Quality.

A Tribe, Let Us Say, Is Warlike. The Successes For Which It Strives, The Achievements Upon Which It Sets Store, Are Connected With Fighting And Victory.

The Only Freedom That Is Of Enduring Importance Is The Freedom Of Intelligence, That Is To Say, Freedom Of Observation And Of Judgment, Exercised In Behalf Of Purposes That Are Intrinsically Worth While. The Commonest Mistake Made About Freedom Is, I Think, To Identify It With Freedom Of Movement, Or, With The External Or Physical Side Of Activity.

In A World That Has So Largely Engaged In A Mad And Often Brutally Harsh Race For Material Gain By Means Of Ruthless Competition, It Behooves The School To Make Ceaseless And Intelligently Organized Effort To Develop Above All Else The Will For Co-operation And The Spirit Which Sees In Every Other Individual One Who Has An Equal Right To Share In The Cultural And Material Fruits Of Collective Human Invention, Industry, Skill And Knowledge

One Can Think Effectively Only When One Is Willing To Endure Suspense And To Undergo The Trouble Of Searching.

By Object Is Meant Some Element In The Complex Whole That Is Defined In Abstraction From The Whole Of Which It Is A Distinction.

Of What Use, Educationally Speaking, Is It To Be Able To See The End In The Beginning?

Inside The Modern City, In Spite Of Its Nominal Political Unity, There Are Probably More Communities, More Differing Customs, Traditions, Aspirations, And Forms Of Government Or Control, Than Existed In An Entire Continent At An Earlier Epoch.

The Method Of Democracy Is To Bring Conflicts Out Into The Open Where Their Special Claims Can Be Seen And Appraised, Where They Can Be Discussed And Judged.

Such Happiness As Life Is Capable Of Comes From The Full Participation Of All Our Powers In The Endeavor To Wrest From Each Changing Situations Of Experience Its Own Full And Unique Meaning.

Etymologically, The Word Education Means Just A Process Of Leading Or Bringing Up.

The Moment Philosophy Supposes It Can Find A Final And Comprehensive Solution, It Ceases To Be Inquiry And Becomes Either Apologetics Or Propaganda.

The First Office Of The Social Organ We Call The School Is To Provide A Simplified Environment. It Selects The Features Which Are Fairly Fundamental And Capable Of Being Responded To By The Young. Then It Establishes A Progressive Order, Using The Factors First Acquired As Means Of Gaining Insight Into What Is More Complicated.

That Which Distinguishes The Soviet System Both From Other National Systems And From The Progressive Schools Of Other Countries Is The Conscious Control Of Every Educational Procedure By Reference To A Single And Comprehensive Social Purpose.

I Believe That The Teacher's Place And Work In The School Is To Be Interpreted From This Same Basis. The Teacher Is Not In The School To Impose Certain Ideas Or To Form Certain Habits In The Child, But Is There As A Member Of The Community To Select The Influences Which Shall Affect The Child And To Assist Him In Properly Responding To These Influences.

Everything Which Bars Freedom And Fullness Of Communication Sets Up Barriers That Divide Human Beings Into Sets And Cliques, Into Antagonistic Sects And Factions, And Thereby Undermines The Democratic Way Of Life.

The Plea For The Predominance Of Learning To Read In Early School Life Because Of The Great Importance Attaching To Literature Seems To Be A Perversion.

One Of The Saddest Things About Us Education Is That The Wisdom Of Our Most Successful Teachers Is Lost To The Profession When They Retire.

To Be A Recipient Of A Communication Is To Have An Enlarged And Changed Experience. One Shares In What Another Has Thought And Felt And In So Far, Meagerly Or Amply, Has His Own Attitude Modified.

In The Present State Of The World, It Is Evident That The Control We Have Gained Of Physical Energies, Heat, Light, Electricity, Etc., Without Having First Secured Control Of Our Use Of Ourselves Is A Perilous Affair. Without The Control Of Our Use Of Ourselves, Our Use Of Other Things Is Blind; It May Lead To Anything.

Balance Is Balancing.

There Is No Such Thing As Educational Value In The Abstract. The Notion That Some Subjects And Methods And That Acquaintance With Certain Facts And Truths Possess Educational Value In And Of Themselves Is The Reason Why Traditional Education Reduced The Material Of Education So Largely To A Diet Of Predigested Materials.

Individuals Are Certainly Interested, At Times, In Having Their Own Way, And Their Own Way May Go Contrary To The Ways Of Others. But They Are Also Interested, And Chiefly Interested Upon The Whole, In Entering Into The Activities Of Others And Taking Part In Conjoint And Cooperative Doings. Otherwise, No Such Thing As A Community Would Be Possible.

Perhaps The Greatest Of All Pedagogical Fallacies Is The Notion That A Person Learns Only The Particular Thing He Is Studying At The Time.

Human Nature Exists And Operates In An Environment. And It Is Not 'in' That Environment As Coins Are In A Box, But As A Plant Is In The Sunlight And Soil.

The Educational Process Has No End Beyond Itself; It Is Its Own End.

A Problem Well Put Is Half Solved.

In General, Every Stimulus Directs Activity. It Does Not Simply Excite It Or Stir It Up, But Directs It Toward An Object.

In Order To Have A Large Number Of Values In Common, All The Members Of The Group Must Have An Equable Opportunity, To Receive And To Take From Others. There Must Be A Large Variety Of Shared Undertakings And Experiences. Otherwise, The Influences Which Educate Some Into Masters, Educates Others Into Slaves.

Every Teacher Should Realize The Dignity Of His Calling.

One Might As Well Say He Has Sold When No One Has Bought As To Say He Has Taught When No One Has Learned.

Schools Should Take An Active Part In Directing Social Change, And Share In The Construction Of A New Social Order

I Believe That In The Ideal School We Have The Reconciliation Of The Individualistic And The Institutional Ideals.

Individualistic

Every Teacher Should Realize He Is A Social Servant Set Apart For The Maintenance Of The Proper Social Order And The Securing Of The Right Social Growth. In This Way, The Teacher Always Is The Prophet Of The True God And The Usherer-in Of The True Kingdom Of God.

Society Not Only Continues To Exist By Transmission, By Communication, But It May Fairly Be Said To Exist In Transmission, In Communication.

A Good Aim Surveys The Present State Of Experience Of Pupils, And Forming A Tentative Plan Of Treatment, Keeps The Plan Constantly In View And Yet Modifies It As Conditions Develop. The Aim, In Short, Is Experimental, And Hence Constantly Growing As It Is Tested In Action.

Art Is The Most Effective Mode Of Communications That Exists.

Even In A Savage Tribe, The Achievements Of Adults Are Far Beyond What The Immature Members Would Be Capable Of If Left To Themselves. With The Growth Of Civilization, The Gap Between The Original Capacities Of The Immature And The Standards And Customs Of The Elders Increases.

Men Live In A Community In Virtue Of The Things Which They Have In Common; And Communication Is The Way In Which They Come To Possess Things In Common. What They Must Have In Common In Order To Form A Community Or Society Are Aims, Beliefs, Aspirations, Knowledge - A Common Understanding - Likemindedness As The Sociologists Say.

A Man Can Be Prevented From Breaking Into Other Persons' Houses By Shutting Him Up, But Shutting Him Up May Not Alter His Disposition To Commit Burglary.

Collateral Learning In The Way Of Formation Of Enduring Attitudes, Of Likes And Dislikes, May Be And Often Is Much More Important Than The Spelling Lesson Or Lesson In Geography Or History That Is Learned.

Likes And Dislikes

Within Even The Most Social Group There Are Many Relations That Are Not As Yet Social.

Forty Years Spent In Wandering In A Wilderness Like That Of The Present Is Not A Sad Fate - Unless One Attempts To Make Himself Believe That The Wilderness Is After All Itself The Promised Land.

A Person Who Is Trained To Consider His Actions, To Undertake Them Deliberately, Is In So Far Forth Disciplined. Add To This Ability A Power To Endure In An Intelligently Chosen Course In The Face Of Distraction, Confusion, And Difficulty, And You Have The Essence Of Discipline.

For In Spite Of Itself Any Movement That Thinks And Acts In Terms Of An ‘ism Becomes So Involved In Reaction Against Other ‘isms That It Is Unwittingly Controlled By Them. For It Then Forms Its Principles By Reaction Against Them Instead Of By A Comprehensive, Constructive Survey Of Actual Needs, Problems, And Possibilities.

Education Must Be Understood As Growth, Or The Facilitation Of Growth.

As Formal Teaching And Training Grow In Extent, There Is The Danger Of Creating An Undesirable Split Between The Experience Gained In More Direct Associations And What Is Acquired In School. This Danger Was Never Greater Than At The Present Time, On Account Of The Rapid Growth In The Last Few Centuries Of Knowledge And Technical Modes Of Skill.

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Charlaine Harris

H. Rider Haggard

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