Dewey Quotations

Experience, Educative, Miseducative

• "Every experience is a moving force, its value ... (p. 38)
• "... create conditions for further growth ... (p.36)
• "If experience arouses curiosity, strengthen's initiative and sets up desires and purposes ... (p. 38)
• "Education is based on ... of connection to experience. " (p. 109)
• "All genuine education comes about through experience." (p. 25)
• "Any experience is miseducative that has the effect of arresting or distorting the growth of further experience. (p. 25)
• "Everything depends on the quality of the experience which is had ... later experiences." (p. 27)
• "I assume ... experimental philosophy. (p. 25)
• "Does experience = education?"

Democracy

• "... the primary source of social control resides in the very nature of the work done as a social enterprise in which all individuals have an opportunity to contribute and to which all feel a responsibility." (p. 56)
  "Diversity of stimulations means novelty, and novelty means challenge to thought." (p.103)
• "Why 'should' we prefer democracy?" (pp. 34,35)
• Philosophical docs p. 104)

Freedom, Social Control

• "In discussing the conduct of games as an example of social control, reference was made to the presence of a standardized conventional factor. The counterpart of this factor in school life is found in the question of manners ..." (p. 59)
• "Frying pan -> fire. It is easy ... to escape one form of external control only to find oneself in another and more dangerous one .... It may be a loss rather than a gain to escape from the control of another person only to find one's conduct dictated by immediate whim and caprice." (pp. 64,65)
• "... it is not the will or desire of any one person which establishes order but the moving spirit of the whole group. The control is social ... " (p.54)
• "The only freedom this 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 worthwhile." (p. 61)

Aims of Education

• "The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning." (p. 48)
• "Education is a regulation of the process of coming to share in the social consciousness; and that the adjustment of the individual activity on the basis of this social consciousness is the only sure method of social reconstruction." (p. 99)
• "The teacher is not in the school to impose certain ideals or to form certain habits in the child, but is there as a member of the community to select the influences which shall affect the child and to assist him in properly responding to these influences." (p.64)

Means of Education

• "... an increased measure of freedom of outer movement is a means, not an end." (p. 61)
• "...intelligently directed development of the possibilities inherent in ordinary experience." (p. 89)
• "... growth depends upon the presence of difficulty to be overcome by the exercise of intelligence." (p. 59)
• "The way out of the scholastic systems that made the past an end in itself is to make acquaintance with the past as a means to understanding the present." (p. 78)

"imposition from above ... new and progressive education is -> expression and cultivation of individuality ... free activity ... learning through experience ... acquaintance with a changing world ..." (pp. 19,20)

Experiential Continuum

• " ... principle of continuity of experience means that every experience takes up something from those who have gone before and modifies in some way the quality of those which come after." (p.35)
• " ... 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." (p. 37)
• ".. the educator views teaching and learning as a continuous process of reconstruction of experience." (p. 87)

Business of the Educator

• "It is then the business of the educator to see in what direction an experience is heading." (p. 38)
• "Educators are responsible to not only be aware of shaping experience by environmental conditions but also recognize conditions that lead to have experiences of growth." (p. 109)
• The teacher's business is to see that the occasion is taken advantage of." (p. 71)
• It is his business to arrange for the kind of experiences, which awhile they do not repel the student but rather engage his activities are, nevertheless more than immediately enjoyable since they promote having desirable future experiences." (p. 27)

Continuity of Interaction

• "The two principles of continuity and interaction are not separate .... As an individual passes from one situation to another, his world, his environment , expands or contracts... What he has learned in the way of knowledge and skill in one situation becomes an instrument of understanding and dealing effectively with the situations that follow." (p. 44)

Organization

• Revolt against the kind of organization characteristic of the traditional school constitutes a demand for a kind of organization base upon idea. (p. 29)

Situation

• "Conceptions of interaction and situation are inseparable." (p. 109)
• "Any normal experience is an interplay of [objective and internal conditions] Taken together they form what we call a situation." (p. 42)

Preparation

• "I do not think that weakness in control when it is found in progressive schools arises in any event from such exceptional cases. It is much more likely to arise from failure to arrange in advance for the kind of work ... which will create situations that of themselves tend to exercise control ..." (p. 57)
• "What then is the true meaning of preparation in the educational scheme? In the first place, it means that a person young or old, gets out of his present experience all there is in it... only by extracting at each present time the full meaning ... are we prepared for doing the same thing in the future. This is the only preparation which in the long run amounts to anything." (p. 49)

Collateral Learning

• "Collateral learning in the way of enduring attitudes , of likes and dislikes, maybe and often is much more important than the spelling lesson." (p. 48)

Roles of Past, Present and Future in Planning Learning Experiences

• "The idea of using the present simply to get ready for the future contradicts itself." (p. 49)
• "The principle of continuity in its educational application means ... that the future has to be taken into account at every stage of the educational process." (p. 47)
• "What about the role of subject-matter? Because the studies of the traditional school consisted of subject-matter that was selected and arranged on the basis of the judgment of adults as to what would be useful for the young sometime in the future, the material to be learned was settled upon outside of the present life experience of the learner. In consequence it had to do with the past." (p. 77)
• "We may reject knowledge of the past as the end of education and thereby only emphasize its importance as a means." (p. 23)