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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.

-John Dewey

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The Function Of Criticism

John Dewey

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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.

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I Should Venture To Assert That The Most Pervasive Fallacy Of Philosophic Thinking Goes Back To Neglect Of Context.

The Intimation Never Wholly Deserts Us That There Is, In The Unformed Activities Of Childhood And Youth, The Possibilities Of A Better Life For The Community As Well As For Individuals Here And There. This Dim Sense Is The Ground Of Our Abiding Idealization Of Childhood.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Balance Is Balancing.

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.

No System Has Ever As Yet Existed Which Did Not In Some Form Involve The Exploitation Of Some Human Beings For The Advantage Of Others.

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.

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 Development Occurs Through Reciprocal Give-and-take, The Teacher Taking But Not Being Afraid Also To Give.

You Cannot Teach Today The Same Way You Did Yesterday To Prepare Students For Tomorrow.

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.

As A Society Becomes More Enlightened, It Realizes That It Is Responsible Not To Transmit And Conserve The Whole Of Its Existing Achievements, But Only Such As Make For A Better Future Society. The School Is Its Chief Agency For The Accomplishment Of This End.

Modern Philosophy Certainly Exacts A Surrender Of All Supernaturalism And Fixed Dogma And Rigid Institutionalism With Which Christianity Has Been Historically Associated

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

By Various Agencies, Unintentional And Designed, A Society Transforms Uninitiated And Seemingly Alien Beings Into Robust Trustees Of Its Own Resources And Ideals. Education Is Thus A Fostering, A Nurturing, A Cultivating, Process.

When Things Have A Meaning For Us, We Mean (intend, Propose) What We Do: When They Do Not, We Act Blindly, Unconsciously, Unintelligently.

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.

As A Child Lives Today, He Will Live Tomorrow.

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.

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.

To Oscillate Between Drill Exercises That Strive To Attain Efficiency In Outward Doing Without The Use Of Intelligence, And An Accumulation Of Knowledge That Is Supposed To Be An Ultimate End In Itself, Means That Education Accepts The Present Social Conditions As Final, And Thereby Takes Upon Itself The Responsibility For Perpetuating Them. A Reorganization Of Education So That Learning Takes Place In Connection With The Intelligent Carrying Forward Of Purposeful Activities Is A Slow Work. It Can Be Accomplished Only Piecemeal, A Step At A Time.

Every Teacher Should Realize The Dignity Of His Calling.

But The Individual Butterfly Or Earthquake Remains Just The Unique Existence Which It Is. We Forget In Explaining Its Occurrence That It Is Only The Occurrence That Is Explained, Not The Thing Itself.

Inference Is Always An Invasion Of The Unknown, A Leap From The Known.

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

I Believe That In This Way The Teacher Always Is The Prophet Of The True God And The Usherer In Of The True Kingdom Of God.

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.

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

I Do Not Think That Any Thorough-going Modification Of College Curriculum Would Be Possible Without A Modification Of The Methods Of Instruction.

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?

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.

In The Olden Times, The Diversity Of Groups Was Largely A Geographical Matter. There Were Many Societies, But Each, Within Its Own Territory, Was Comparatively Homogeneous. But With The Development Of Commerce, Transportation, Intercommunication, And Emigration, Countries Like The United States Are Composed Of A Combination Of Different Groups With Different Traditional Customs. It Is This Situation Which Has, Perhaps More Than Any Other One Cause, Forced The Demand For An Educational Institution Which Shall Provide Something Like A Homogeneous And Balanced Environment For The Young.

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

There Is No Discipline In The World So Severe As The Discipline Of Experience Subjected To The Tests Of Intelligent Development And Direction.

Skepticism: The Mark And Even The Pose Of The Educated Mind.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Knowledge Is Humanistic In Quality Not Because It Is About Human Products In The Past, But Because Of What It Does In Liberating Human Intelligence And Human Sympathy. Any Subject Matter Which Accomplishes This Result Is Humane, And Any Subject Matter Which Does Not Accomplish It Is Not Even Educational.

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

Nature As A Whole Is A Progressive Realization Of Purpose Strictly Comparable To The Realization Of Purpose In Any Single Plant Or Animal.

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.

To Me Faith Means Not Worrying.

The Very Problem Of Mind And Body Suggests Division; I Do Not Know Of Anything So Disastrously Affected By The Habit Of Division As This Particular Theme. In Its Discussion Are Reflected The Splitting Off From Each Other Of Religion, Morals And Science; The Divorce Of Philosophy From Science And Of Both From The Arts Of Conduct. The Evils Which We Suffer In Education, In Religion, In The Materialism Of Business And The Aloofness Of "intellectuals" From Life, In The Whole Separation Of Knowledge And Practice -- All Testify To The Necessity Of Seeing Mind-body As An Integral Whole.

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

Education Proceeds Ultimately From The Patterns Furnished By Institutions, Customs, And Laws- If The Patterns Of Institutions, Customs, And Laws Are Broken For This Philosophy Education Should Fix Itself. There Should Be Several Different Things Taught Instead Of One "supreme Factor".

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.

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.

Science Is A Systematic Means Of Gaining Reliable Knowledge.

Experience, In Short, Is Not A Combination Of Mind And World, Subject And Object, Method And Subject Matter, But Is A Single Continuous Interaction Of A Great Diversity (literally Countless In Number) Of Energies.

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

Always Make The Other Person Feel Important.

A Society Which Makes Provision For Participation In Its Good Of All Its Members On Equal Terms And Which Secures Flexible Readjustment Of Its Institutions Through Interaction Of The Different Forms Of Associated Life Is In So Far Democratic. Such A Society Must Have A Type Of Education Which Gives Individuals A Personal Interest In Social Relationships And Control, And The Habits Of Mind Which Secure Social Changes Without Introducing Disorder.

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.

A Large Part Of The Art Of Instruction Lies In Making The Difficulty Of New Problems Large Enough To Challenge Thought, And Small Enough So That, In Addition To The Confusion Naturally Attending The Novel Elements, There Shall Be Luminous Familiar Spots From Which Helpful Suggestions May Spring.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Criticism Of The Commitment Of Religion To The Supernatural Is Thus Positive In Import.

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.

To Avoid A Split Between What Men Consciously Know Because They Are Aware Of Having Learned It By A Specific Job Of Learning, And What They Unconsciously Know Because They Have Absorbed It In The Formation Of Their Characters By Intercourse With Others, Becomes An Increasingly Delicate Task With Every Development Of Special Schooling.

That The Great Majority Of Those Who Leave School Should Have Some Idea Of The Kind Of Evidence Required To Substantiate Given Types Of Belief Does Not Seem Unreasonable. Nor Is It Absurd To Expect That They Should Go Forth With A Lively Interest In The Ways In Which Knowledge Is Improved And A Marked Distaste For All Conclusions Reached In Disharmony With The Methods Of Scientific Inquiry.

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.

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.

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.

Teaching Can Be Compared To Selling Commodities. No One Can Sell Unless Someone Buys ... Yet There Are Teachers Who Think They Have Done A Good Day's Teaching Irrespective Of What The Pupils Have Learned.

All Of Us Have Many Habits Of Whose Import We Are Quite Unaware, Since They Were Formed Without Our Knowing What We Were About. Consequently They Possess Us, Rather Than We Them. They Move Us; They Control Us. Unless We Become Aware Of What They Accomplish, And Pass Judgment Upon The Worth Of The Result, We Do Not Control Them.

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.

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.

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.

The Devotion Of Democracy To Education Is A Familiar Fact. . . . [a] Government Resting Upon Popular Suffrage Cannot Be Successful Unless Those Who Elect . . . Their Governors Are Educated.

The Result Of The Educative Process Is Capacity For Further Education.

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

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

The Belief That All Genuine Education Comes About Through Experience Does Not Mean That All Experiences Are Genuinely Or Equally Educative.

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.

There Is More Than A Verbal Tie Between The Words Common, Community, And Communication.... Try The Experiment Of Communicating, With Fullness And Accuracy, Some Experience To Another, Especially If It Be Somewhat Complicated, And You Will Find Your Own Attitude Toward Your Experience Changing.

Expertness Of Taste Is At Once The Result And Reward Of Constant Exercise Of Thinking.

A Society Which Is Mobile, Which Is Full Of Channels For The Distribution Of A Change Occurring Anywhere, Must See To It That Its Members Are Educated To Personal Initiative And Adaptability.

Various Epochs Of The Past Have Had Their Own Characteristic Struggles And Interests. Each Of These Great Epochs Has Left Behind Itself A Kind Of Cultural Deposit, Like A Geologic Stratum. These Deposits Have Found Their Way Into Educational Institutions In The Form Of Studies, Distinct Courses Of Study, Distinct Types Of Schools.

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.

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.

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

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.

For One Man Who Thanks God That He Is Not As Other Men There Are A Thousand To Offer Thanks That They Are As Other Men, Sufficiently As Others Are To Escape Attention.

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.

Where There Is Giving There Must Be Taking.

We Have Already Noticed The Difference In The Attitude Of A Spectator And Of An Agent Or Participant. The Former Is Indifferent To What Is Going On; One Result Is Just As Good As Another, Since Each Is Just Something To Look At. The Latter Is Bound Up With What Is Going On; Its Outcome Makes A Difference To Him.

Making A Difference

A Democracy Is More Than A Form Of Government; It Is Primarily A Mode Of Associated Living, Of Conjoint Communicated Experience.

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.

The Best Preparation For The Future Is A Well-spent Today.

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

Schools Should Take Part In The Great Work Of Construction And Organization That Will Have To Be Done.

Mind Is A Verb Not A Noun.

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.

Faith In The Possibilities Of Continued And Rigorous Inquiry Does Not Limit Access To Truth To Any Channel Or Scheme Of Things. It Does Not First Say That Truth Is Universal And Then Add There Is But One Road To It.

Thinking And Feeling That Have To Do With Action In Association With Others Is As Much A Social Mode Of Behavior As Is The Most Overt Cooperative Or Hostile Act.

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

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

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 Outstanding Problem Of The Public Is Discovery And Identification Of Itself

Intelligent Thinking Means An Increment Of Freedom In Action-an Emancipation From Chance And Fatality. 'thought' Represents The Suggestion Of A Way Of Response That Is Different From That Which Would Have Been Followed If Intelligent Observation Had Not Effected An Inference As To The Future.

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.

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

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

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

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

Giving And Taking Of Orders Modifies Actions And Results, But Does Not Of Itself Effect A Sharing Of Purposes, A Communication Of Interests.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Man Lives In A World Of Surmise, Of Mystery, Of Uncertainties.

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.

To Find Out What One Is Fitted To Do, And To Secure An Opportunity To Do It, Is The Key To Happiness.

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.

Politics Is The Shadow Cast On Society By Big Business.

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.

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.

Luck, Bad If Not Good, Will Always Be With Us. But It Has A Way Of Favoring The Intelligent And Showing Its Back To The Stupid.

The Experience Has To Be Formulated In Order To Be Communicated.

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.

Instruction Is Important.

By Doing His Share In The Associated Activity, The Individual Appropriates The Purpose Which Actuates It, Becomes Familiar With Its Methods And Subject Matters, Acquires Needed Skill, And Is Saturated With Its Emotional Spirit.

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.

I Believe That The Community's Duty To Education Is, Therefore, Its Paramount Moral Duty. By Law And Punishment, By Social Agitation And Discussion, Society Can Regulate And Form Itself In A More Or Less Haphazard And Chance Way. But Through Education Society Can Formulate Its Own Purposes, Can Organize Its Own Means And Resources, And Thus Shape Itself With Definiteness And Economy In The Direction In Which It Wishes To Move.

Democracy Means The Belief That Humanistic Culture Should Prevail.

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

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.

Arriving At One Goal Is The Starting Point To Another.

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.

You Can Teach Students To Develop The Ability To Think Reflectively, And You Can Help Them Understand What This Means, But If They Are Not Inclined To Do So They Never Will.

The Notion That "applied" Knowledge Is Somehow Less Worthy Than "pure" Knowledge, Was Natural To A Society In Which All Useful Work Was Performed By Slaves And Serfs, And In Which Industry Was Controlled By The Models Set By Custom Rather Than By Intelligence. Science, Or The Highest Knowing, Was Then Identified With Pure Theorizing, Apart From All Application In The Uses Of Life; And Knowledge Relating To Useful Arts Suffered The Stigma Attaching To The Classes Who Engaged In Them.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

The Real Purveyors Of The News Are Artists, For Artists Are The Ones Who Infuse Fact With Perception, Emotion, And Appreciation...we Are Beginning To Realize That Emotions And Imagination Are More Potent In Shaping Public Sentiment And Opinion Than Information And Reason.

Personality Must Be Educated, And Personality Cannot Be Educated By Confining Its Operations To Technical And Specialized Things, Or To The Less Important Relationships Of Life. Full Education Comes Only When There Is A Responsible Share On The Part Of Each Person, In Proportion To Capacity, In Shaping The Aims And Policies Of The Social Groups To Which He Belongs.

Important Relationships

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Every Serious-minded Person Knows That A Large Part Of The Effort Required In Moral Discipline Consists In The Courage Needed To Acknowledge The Unpleasant Consequences Of One's Past And Present Acts.

Schools Are, Indeed, One Important Method Of The Transmission Which Forms The Dispositions Of The Immature; But It Is Only One Means, And, Compared With Other Agencies, A Relatively Superficial Means. Only As We Have Grasped The Necessity Of More Fundamental And Persistent Modes Of Tuition Can We Make Sure Of Placing The Scholastic Methods In Their True Context.

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

No Thought, No Idea, Can Possibly Be Conveyed As An Idea From One Person To Another. When It Is Told It Is To The One To Whom It Is Told Another Fact, Not An Idea. The Communication May Stimulate The Other Person To Realize The Question For Himself And To Think Out A Like Idea, Or It May Smother His Intellectual Interest And Suppress His Dawning Effort At Thought. But What He Directly Gets Cannot Be An Idea. Only By Wrestling With The Conditions Of The Problem At First Hand, Seeking And Finding His Own Way Out, Does He Think.

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.

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

Were All Instructors To Realize That The Quality Of Mental Process, Not The Production Of Correct Answers, Is The Measure Of Educative Growth Something Hardly Less Than A Revolution In Teaching Would Be Worked.

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.

A Society With Too Few Independent Thinkers Is Vulnerable To Control By Disturbed And Opportunistic Leaders. A Society Which Wants To Create And Maintain A Free And Democratic Social System Must Create Responsible Independence Of Thought Among Its Young.

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.

Teaching May Be Compared To Selling Commodities. No One Can Sell Unless Somebody Buys.

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

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

It Is Not A Nature Cure, A System Of Faith Healing, Or A Physical Culture, Or A Medical Treatment, Or A Semi-occult Philosophy. As To What It Is, Dewey's Brief But Striking Description Appeals Most And Has The Least Chance Of Being Proved Incorrect: 'it The Alexander Technique Bears The Same Relation To Education That Education Itself Bears To All Other Human Activities.'

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

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

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.

Nothing Takes Root In Mind When There Is No Balance Between Doing And Receiving.

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

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

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.

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