Legislation is a matter of more or less intelligent improvisation aiming at palliating conditions by means of patchwork policies. John Dewey More Quotes by John Dewey More Quotes From John Dewey The aim of education is growth: the aim of growth is more growth John Dewey literacy growth education 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? John Dewey students way ideas Education as growth or maturity should be an ever-present process. John Dewey maturity growth process 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. John Dewey groups quality needs 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. John Dewey thoughtful growing-up pain 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. John Dewey house may men 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. John Dewey communication community views ...the moment of passage from disturbance into harmony is that of intensest life. John Dewey harmony music moments Some experiences are mis-educative. Any experience is mis-educative that has the effect of arresting or distorting the growth of further experience. John Dewey educational growth philosophy The mere absorption of facts and truths is so exclusively an individual affair that it tends very naturally to pass into selfishness. There is no obvious social motive for the acquirement of mere learning, there is no clear social gain in success thereat. John Dewey selfishness gains facts Since education is not a means to living, but is identical with the operation of living a life which is fruitful and inherently significant, the only ultimate value which can be set up is just the process of living itself. And this is not an end to which studies and activities are subordinate means; it is the whole of which they are ingredients. John Dewey ingredients study mean Not perfection as a final goal, but the ever-enduring process of perfecting, maturing, refining is the aim of living. John Dewey finals goal perfection Nature as a whole is a progressive realization of purpose strictly comparable to the realization of purpose in any single plant or animal. John Dewey nature purpose animal Democracy is a way of life controlled by a working faith in the possibilities of human nature. . . . This faith may be enacted in statutes, but it is only on paper unless it is put in force in the attitudes which human beings display to one another in all the incidents and relations of daily life. John Dewey democracy paper attitude 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. John Dewey enlightenment government leader A narrow and moralistic view of morals is responsible for the failure to recognize that all the aims and values which are desirable in education are themselves moral. Discipline, natural development, culture, social efficiency, are moral traits - marks of a person who is a worthy member of that society which it is the business of education to further. John Dewey discipline development views 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? John Dewey political opportunity mean All education which develops power to share effectively in social life is moral. John Dewey moral share life-is Any experience, however, trivial in its first appearance, is capable of assuming an indefinite richness of significance by extending its range of perceived connections. John Dewey connections assuming firsts 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. John Dewey regulation individual consciousness
