John Dewey
One might as well say he has sold when no one has bought as to say he has taught when no one has learned.Collection: Teacher
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.Collection: Philosophy
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.Collection: Art
Modern life means democracy, democracy means freeing intelligence for independent effectivenessthe emancipation of mind as an individual organ to do its own work. We naturally associate democracy, to be sure, with freedom of action, but freedom of action without freed capacity of thought behind it is only chaos.Collection: Mean
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.Collection: Art
Not only is social life identical with communication, but all communication (and hence all genuine social life) is educative.Collection: Communication
Poetry has historically been allied with religion and morals; it has served the purpose of penetrating the mysterious depths of things.Collection: Depth
To be a recipient of a communication is to have an enlarged and changed experience.Collection: Communication
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.Collection: Immature
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.Collection: Essence
The activity of the immature human being is simply played upon to secure habits which are useful. He is trained like an animal rather than educated like a human being. His instincts remain attached to their original objects of pain or pleasure. But to get happiness or to avoid the pain of failure he has to act in a way agreeable to others.Collection: Pain
Of all affairs, communication is the most wonderful.Collection: Communication
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.Collection: Good Man
Like the soil, mind is fertilized while it lies fallow, until a new burst of bloom ensues.Collection: Lying
If there is one conclusion to which human experience unmistakably points it is that democratic ends demand democratic methods for their realization.Collection: Realization
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.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Views
Method means that arrangement of subject matter which makes it most effective in use. Never is method something outside of the material.Collection: Education
The intellectual content of religions has always finally adapted itself to scientific and social conditions after they have become clear.... For this reason I do not think that those who are concerned about the future of a religious attitude should trouble themselves about the conflict of science with traditional doctrines.Collection: Religious
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.Collection: Emotional
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.Collection: Attitude
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.Collection: Educational
The moment philosophy supposes it can find a final and comprehensive solution, it ceases to be inquiry and becomes either apologetics or propaganda.Collection: Philosophy
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.Collection: School
I believe that in the ideal school we have the reconciliation of the individualistic and the institutional ideals.Collection: Believe
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.Collection: Names
By reading the characteristic features of any man's castles in the air you can make a shrewd guess as to his underlying desires which are frustrated.Collection: Reading
If the eye is constantly greeted by harmonious objects, having elegance of form and color, a standard of taste naturally grows up.Collection: Growing Up
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.Collection: Lying
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.Collection: Communication
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.'Collection: Philosophy
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.Collection: Light
The future of religion is connected with the possibility of developing a faith in the possibilities of human experience and human relationships that will create a vital sense of the solidarity of human interests and inspire action to make that sense a reality.Collection: Reality
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.Collection: Communication
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.Collection: Men
A democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience.Collection: Government
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.Collection: Attitude
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.Collection: Cities
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.Collection: Education
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.Collection: Regulation
Consensus demands communication.Collection: Communication
Things gain meaning by being used in a shared experience or joint action.Collection: Gains
The conduct of schools, based upon a new order of conception, is so much more difficult than is the management of schools which walk the beaten path.Collection: School
Inference is always an invasion of the unknown, a leap from the known.Collection: Invasion
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?Collection: Ideas
I should venture to assert that the most pervasive fallacy of philosophic thinking goes back to neglect of context.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Skills
As societies become more complex in structure and resources, the need of formal or intentional teaching and learning increases.Collection: Teaching
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.Collection: Art