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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.

-John Dewey

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The First Office Of

John Dewey

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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.

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Any Genuine Teaching Will Result, If Successful, In Someone's Knowing How To Bring About A Better Condition Of Things Than Existed Earlier.

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

The Premium So Often Put In Schools Upon External "discipline," And Upon Marks And Rewards, Upon Promotion And Keeping Back, Are The Obverse Of The Lack Of Attention Given To Life Situations In Which The Meaning Of Facts, Ideas, Principles, And Problems Is Vitally Brought Home.

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

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.

The Struggle For Democracy Has To Be Maintained On As Many Fronts As Culture Has Aspects: Political, Economic, International, Educational, Scientific And Artistic, Religious.

As Believers In Democracy We Have Not Only The Right But The Duty To Question Existing Mechanisms Of, Say, Suffrage And To Inquire Whether Some Functional Organization Would Not Serve To Formulate And Manifest Public Opinion Better Than The Existing Methods. It Is Not Irrelevant To The Point That A Score Of Passages Could Be Cited In Which Jefferson Refers To The American Government As An Experiment.

The Outstanding Problem Of The Public Is Discovery And Identification Of Itself

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

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.

An Empirical Philosophy Is In Any Case A Kind Of Intellectual Disrobing. We Cannot Permanently Divest Ourselves Of The Intellectual Habits We Take On And Wear When We Assimilate The Culture Of Our Own Time And Place. But Intelligent Furthering Of Culture Demands That We Take Some Of Them Off, That We Inspect Them Critically To See What They Are Made Of And What Wearing Them Does To Us. We Cannot Achieve Recovery Of Primitive Naïveté. But There Is Attainable A Cultivated Naïveté Of Eye, Ear And Thought.

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.

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.

Old Ideas Give Way Slowly; For They Are More Than Abstract Logical Forms And Categories. They Are Habits, Predispositions, Deeply Ingrained Attitudes Of Aversion And Preference.

Those Engaged In Directing The Actions Of Others Are Always In Danger Of Overlooking The Importance Of The Sequential Development Of Those They Direct.

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

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

To Savages It Would Seem Preposterous To Seek Out A Place Where Nothing But Learning Was Going On In Order That One Might Learn.

Experiences In Order To Be Educative Must Lead Out Into An Expanding World Of Subject Matter, A Subject Matter Of Facts Or Information And Of Ideas. This Condition Is Satisfied Only As The Educator Views Teaching And Learning As A Continuous Process Of Reconstruction Of Experience.

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

Every Society Gets Encumbered With What Is Trivial, With Dead Wood From The Past, And With What Is Positively Perverse.

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.

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.

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.

To Have An Idea Of A Thing Is Not Just To Get Certain Sensations From It. It Is To Be Able To Respond To The Thing In View Of Its Place In An Inclusive Scheme Of Action; It Is To Foresee The Drift And Probable Consequence Of The Action Of The Thing Upon Us And Of Our Action Upon It.

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.

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.

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

That Education Is Not An Affair Of "telling" And Being Told, But An Active And Constructive Process, Is A Principle Almost As Generally Violated In Practice As Conceded In Theory. Is Not This Deplorable Situation Due To The Fact That The Doctrine Is Itself Merely Told? It Is Preached; It Is Lectured; It Is Written About.

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.

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

Men's Fundamental Attitudes Toward The World Are Fixed By The Scope And Qualities Of The Activities In Which They Partake.

There's All The Difference In The World Between Having Something To Say, And Having To Say Something.

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

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.

I Know That There Are Many Persons To Whom It Seems Derogatory To Link A Body Of Philosophic Ideas To The Social Life And Cultureof Their Epoch. They Seem To Accept A Dogma Of Immaculate Conception Of Philosophical Systems.

Even When A Person Is Frightened By Threats Into Doing Something, The Threats Work Only Because The Person Has An Instinct Of Fear. If He Has Not, Or If, Though Having It, It Is Under His Own Control, The Threat Has No More Influence Upon Him Than Light Has In Causing A Person To See Who Has No Eyes.

We Sometimes Talk As If "original Research" Were A Peculiar Prerogative Of Scientists Or At Least Of Advanced Students. But All Thinking Is Research, And All Research Is Native, Original, With Him Who Carries It On, Even If Everybody Else In The World Already Is Sure Of What He Is Still Looking For.

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

There Is No Greater Egoism Than That Of Learning When It Is Treated Simply As A Mark Of Personal Distinction To Be Held And Cherished For Its Own Sake. ... [k]knowledge Is A Possession Held In Trust For The Furthering Of The Well-being Of All

The Real Process Of Education Should Be The Process Of Learning To Think Through The Application Of Real Problems.

Like The Soil, Mind Is Fertilized While It Lies Fallow, Until A New Burst Of Bloom Ensues.

Vocational Training Is The Training Of Animals Or Slaves. It Fits Them To Become Cogs In The Industrial Machine. Free Men Need Liberal Education To Prepare Them To Make A Good Use Of Their Freedom.

[t]he Schools, Through Reliance Upon The Spur Of Competition And The Bestowing Of Special Honors And Prizes, Only Build Up And Strengthen The Disposition That Makes An Individual When He Leaves School Employ His Special Talents And Superior Skill To Outwit His Fellow Without Respect For The Welfare Of Others

The Breakdown Of Plato's Philosophy Is Made Apparent In The Fact That He Could Not Trust To Gradual Improvements In Education To Bring About A Better Society Which Should Then Improve Education, And So On Indefinitely. Correct Education Could Not Come Into Existence Until An Ideal State Existed, And After That Education Would Be Devoted Simply To Its Conservation. For The Existence Of This State He Was Obliged To Trust To Some Happy Accident By Which Philosophic Wisdom Should Happen To Coincide With Possession Of Ruling Power In The State.

Legislation Is A Matter Of More Or Less Intelligent Improvisation Aiming At Palliating Conditions By Means Of Patchwork Policies.

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.

The Function Of Criticism Is The Reeducation Of Perception Of Works Of Art? The Conception That Its Business Is To Appraise, To Judge In The Legal And Moral Sense, Arrests The Perception Of Those Who Are Influenced By The Criticism That Assumes This Task.

That The Ulterior Significance Of Every Mode Of Human Association Lies In The Contribution Which It Makes To The Improvement Of The Quality Of Experience Is A Fact Most Easily Recognized In Dealing With The Immature.

Social Engaged Intellectuals Must Accept Reality As They Found It And Shape It Toward Positive Social Goals, Not Stand Aside In Self-righteous Isolation.

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

A Moral Principle Is Not A Command To Act Or To Forbear Acting In A Given Way: It Is A Tool For Analyzing A Special Situation, The Right Or Wrong Being Determined By The Situation In Its Entirety, Not By The Rule As Such.

Failure Is Instructive. The Person Who Really Thinks Learns Quite As Much From His Failures As From His Successes.

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.

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

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.

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.

To Be A Recipient Of A Communication Is To Have An Enlarged And Changed Experience.

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

When The Child Sees The Parent Looking For Something, It Is As Natural For It Also To Look For The Object And To Give It Over When It Finds It, As It Was, Under Other Circumstances, To Receive It. Multiply Such An Instance By The Thousand Details Of Daily Intercourse, And One Has A Picture Of The Most Permanent And Enduring Method Of Giving Direction To The Activities Of The Young.

Democracy Is A Form Of Government Only Because It Is A Form Of Moral And Spiritual Association.

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 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.

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

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

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.

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.

What Nutrition And Reproduction Are To Physiological Life, Education Is To Social Life.

I Believe That Education Is The Fundamental Method Of Social Progress And Reform.

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

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.

Society Exists Through A Process Of Transmission Quite As Much As Biological Life. This Transmission Occurs By Means Of Communication Of Habits Of Doing, Thinking, And Feeling From The Older To The Younger.

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.

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

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.

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.

Imposing An Alleged Uniform General Method Upon Everybody Breeds Mediocrity In All But The Very Exceptional. And Measuring Originality By Deviation From The Mass Breeds Eccentricity In Them.

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.

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.

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.

The Professor Took The Old Practices And Studied Them, Worked Out Their Mechanical Principles And Then Devised A Graded Scientific Set Of Tricks, But Is Based On The Elementary Laws Of Mechanics, A Study Of The Equilibrium Of The Human Body, The Ways In Which It Is Disturbed, How To Recover Your Own And Take Advantage Of The Shifting Of The Center Of Gravity Of The Other Person. The First Thing That Is Taught Is How To Fall Down Without Being Hurt, That Alone Is Worth The Price Of Admission And Ought To Be Taught In All Our Gyms.

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

A Book Or A Letter May Institute A More Intimate Association Between Human Beings Separated Thousands Of Miles From Each Other Than Exists Between Dwellers Under The Same Roof.

The Good Man Is The Man Who, No Matter How Morally Unworthy He Has Been, Is Moving To Become Better.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

It Requires Troublesome Work To Undertake The Alteration Of Old Beliefs.

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.

As We Have Seen There Is Some Kind Of Continuity In Any Case Since Every Experience Affects For Better Or Worse The Attitudes Which Help Decide The Quality Of Further Experiences, By Setting Up Certain Preference And Aversion, And Making It Easier Or Harder To Act For This Or That End.

Purposeful Action Is Thus The Goal Of All That Is Truly Educative.

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

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.

Communication Of Science As Subject-matter Has So Far Outrun In Education The Construction Of A Scientific Habit Of Mind That To Some Extent The Natural Common Sense Of Mankind Has Been Interfered With To Its Detriment.

The Devotion Of Democracy To Education Is A Familiar Fact. The Superficial Explanation Is That A Government Resting Upon Popular Suffrage Cannot Be Successful Unless Those Who Elect And Who Obey Their Governors Are Educated. Since A Democratic Society Repudiates The Principle Of External Authority, It Must Find A Substitute In Voluntary Disposition And Interest; These Can Be Created Only By Education.

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.

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

Individualistic

As Long As Art Is The Beauty Parlor Of Civilization, Neither Art Nor Civilization Is Secure.

The Deepest Urge In Human Nature Is The Desire To Feel Important.

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.

As Societies Become More Complex In Structure And Resources, The Need Of Formal Or Intentional Teaching And Learning Increases.

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.

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.

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

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.

A Problem Well Put Is Half Solved.

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 Eyes Are Open And There Is Light, Seeing Occurs; The Stimulus Is But A Condition Of The Fulfillment Of The Proper Function Of The Organ, Not An Outside Interruption. To Some Extent, Then, All Direction Or Control Is A Guiding Of Activity To Its Own End; It Is An Assistance In Doing Fully What Some Organ Is Already Tending To Do.

Written Symbols Are Even More Artificial Or Conventional Than Spoken; They Cannot Be Picked Up In Accidental Intercourse With Others. In Addition, The Written Form Tends To Select And Record Matters Which Are Comparatively Foreign To Everyday Life.

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.

The Importance Of Language In Gaining Knowledge Is Doubtless The Chief Cause Of The Common Notion That Knowledge May Be Passed Directly From One To Another. It Almost Seems As If All We Have To Do To Convey An Idea Into The Mind Of Another Is To Convey A Sound Into His Ear. Thus Imparting Knowledge Gets Assimilated To A Purely Physical Process.

Art Is Not The Possession Of The Few Who Are Recognized Writers, Painters, Musicians; It Is The Authentic Expression Of Any And All Individuality.

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.

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.

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.

The Most Important Factor In The Training Of Good Mental Habits Consists In Acquiring The Attitude Of Suspended Conclusion, And In Mastering The Various Methods Of Searching For New Materials To Corroborate Or To Refute The First Suggestions That Occur.

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.

We Always Live At The Time We Live And Not At Some Other Time, And Only By Extracting At Each Present Time The Full Meaning Of Each Present Experience Are We Prepared For Doing The Same Thing In The Future.

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.

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.

There Is Not, In Fact, Any Such Thing As The Direct Influence Of One Human Being On Another Apart From Use Of The Physical Environment As An Intermediary. A Smile, A Frown, A Rebuke, A Word Of Warning Or Encouragement, All Involve Some Physical Change. Otherwise, The Attitude Of One Would Not Get Over To Alter The Attitude Of Another.

The Parts Of A Machine Work With A Maximum Of Cooperativeness For A Common Result, But They Do Not Form A Community. If, However, They Were All Cognizant Of The Common End And All Interested In It So That They Regulated Their Specific Activity In View Of It, Then They Would Form A Community. But This Would Involve Communication. Each Would Have To Know What The Other Was About And Would Have To Have Some Way Of Keeping The Other Informed As To His Own Purpose And Progress.

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 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.

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.

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.

Education Is Life Itself.

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.

Just Because Life Signifies Not Bare Passive Existence (supposing There Is Such A Thing), But A Way Of Acting, Environment Or Medium Signifies What Enters Into This Activity As A Sustaining Or Frustrating Condition.

The Theory Of The Method Of Knowing Which Is Advanced In These Pages May Be Termed Pragmatic. ... Only That Which Has Been Organized Into Our Disposition So As To Enable Us To Adapt The Environment To Our Needs And Adapt Our Aims And Desires To The Situation In Which We Live Is Really Knowledge.

Nature Is The Mother And The Habitat Of Man, Even If Sometimes A Stepmother And An Unfriendly Home.

Philosophy Recovers Itself When It Ceases To Be A Device For Dealing With The Problems Of Philosophers And Becomes A Method, Cultivated By Philosophers, For Dealing With The Problems Of Men.

Time And Memory Are True Artists; They Remould Reality Nearer To The Heart's Desire.

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.

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.

Continuity Of Life Means Continual Readaptation Of The Environment To The Needs Of Living Organisms.

Continuity Of Life

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.

We Only Think When We Are Confronted With Problems.

The Aim Of Education Is Growth: The Aim Of Growth Is More Growth

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

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.

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.

All Genuine Learning Comes Through Experience.

To "learn From Experience" Is To Make A Backward And Forward Connection Between What We Do To Things And What We Enjoy Or Suffer From Things In Consequence.

There Can Be No Doubt ... Of Our Dependence Upon Forces Beyond Our Control. Primitive Man Was So Impotent In The Face Of These Forces That G , Especially In An Unfavorable Natural Environment, Fear Became A Dominant Attitude, And, As The Old Saying Goes, Fear Created Gods.

Most Notable Distinction Between Living And Inanimate Beings Is That The Former Maintain Themselves By Renewal.

What's In A Question, You Ask? Everything. It Is Evoking Stimulating Response Or Stultifying Inquiry. It Is, In Essence, The Very Core Of Teaching.

Cooperation Called Fraternity In The Classic French Formula Is As Much A Part Of The Democratic Ideal As Is Personal Initiative. That Cultural Conditions Were Allowed To Develop (markedly So In The Economic Phase) Which Subordinated Cooperativeness To Liberty And Equality Serves To Explain The Decline In The Two Latter.

Democratic Ideals

All Communication Is Like Art. It May Fairly Be Said, Therefore, That Any Social Arrangement That Remains Vitally Social, Or Vitally Shared, Is Educative To Those Who Participate In It. Only When It Becomes Cast In A Mold And Runs In A Routine Way Does It Lose Its Educative Power.

Every Great Advance In Science Has Issued From A New Audacity Of Imagination. What Are Now Working Conceptions, Employed As A Matter Of Course Because They Have Withstood The Tests Of Experiment And Have Emerged Triumphant, Were Once Speculative Hypotheses.

Just As The Senses Require Sensible Objects To Stimulate Them, So Our Powers Of Observation, Recollection, And Imagination Do Not Work Spontaneously, But Are Set In Motion By The Demands Set Up By Current Social Occupations.

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.

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

Knowledge Falters When Imagination Clips Its Wings Or Fears To Use Them.

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

If The Members Who Compose A Society Lived On Continuously, They Might Educate The New-born Members, But It Would Be A Task Directed By Personal Interest Rather Than Social Need. Now It Is A Work Of Necessity.

The Ideal May Seem Remote Of Execution, But The Democratic Ideal Of Education Is A Farcical Yet Tragic Delusion Except As The Ideal More And More Dominates Our Public System Of Education.

Democratic Ideals

A Child Might Be Made To Bow Every Time He Met A Certain Person By Pressure On His Neck Muscles, And Bowing Would Finally Become Automatic. It Would Not, However, Be An Act Of Recognition Or Deference On His Part, Till He Did It With A Certain End In View - As Having A Certain Meaning.

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

Mind Is A Verb Not A Noun.

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.

Every Thinker Puts Some Portion Of An Apparently Stable World In Peril.

Cease Conceiving Of Education As Mere Preparation For Later Life, And Make It The Full Meaning Of The Present Life.

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.

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

As A Matter Of Fact, A Modern Society Is Many Societies More Or Less Loosely Connected. Each Household With Its Immediate Extension Of Friends Makes A Society; The Village Or Street Group Of Playmates Is A Community; Each Business Group, Each Club, Is Another.

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?

The Need For Growth - What We Might Call Immaturity - Is Not A Negative State Of Being.

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

Intellectually Religious Emotions Are Not Creative But Conservative. They Attach Themselves Readily To The Current View Of The World And Consecrate It.

Education, Therefore, Is A Process Of Living And Not A Preparation For Future Living.

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.

Resort To Military Force Is A First Sure Sign That We Are Giving Up The Struggle For The Democratic Way Of Life, And That The Old World Has Conquered Morally As Well As Geographically Succeeding In Imposing Upon Us Its Ideals And Methods.

Education Is Not Preparation For Life; Education Is Life Itself.

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

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.

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

Good Intentions

If We Learn Not Humility, We Learn Nothing.

In England, Philosophers Are Honoured, Respected; They Rise To Public Offices, They Are Buried With The Kings... In France Warrants Are Issued Against Them, They Are Persecuted, Pelted With Pastoral Letters: Do We See That England Is Any The Worse For It?

Consensus Demands Communication.

Thought Is Impossible Without Words.

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.

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

When Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Medicine, Contribute To The Detection Of Concrete Human Woes And To The Development Of Plans For Remedying Them And Relieving The Human Estate, They Become Moral; They Become Part Of The Apparatus Of Moral Inquiry Or Science? When The Consciousness Of Science Is Fully Impregnated With The Consciousness Of Human Value, The Greatest Dualism Which Now Weighs Humanity Down, The Split Between The Material, The Mechanical And The Scientific And The Moral And Ideal Will Be Destroyed.

It May Be Said That An Education Which Does Not Succeed In Making Poetry A Resource In The Business Of Life As Well As In Its Leisure, Has Something The Matter With It.

Since A Democratic Society Repudiates The Principle Of External Authority, It Must Find A Substitute In Voluntary Disposition And Interest; These Can Be Created Only By Education.

We Do Not Learn From Experience...we Learn From Reflecting On Experience.

Learning From Mistakes

Learning Experience

It Is Difficult To Connect General Principles With Such Thoroughly Concrete Things As Children.

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 The Office Of The School Environment To Balance The Various Elements In The Social Environment, And To See To It That Each Individual Gets An Opportunity To Escape From The Limitations Of The Social Group In Which He Was Born, And To Come Into Living Contact With A Broader Environment.

Since In Reality There Is Nothing To Which Growth Is Relative Save More Growth, There Is Nothing To Which Education Is Subordinate Save More Education.‎

The School Must Be "a Genuine Form Of Active Community Life, Instead Of A Place Set Apart In Which To Learn Lessons".

Selection Aims Not Only At Simplifying But At Weeding Out What Is Undesirable.

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

Every Teacher Should Realize The Dignity Of His Calling.

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

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