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.
John DeweyThe moment philosophy supposes it can find a final and comprehensive solution, it ceases to be inquiry and becomes either apologetics or propaganda.
John DeweyThe end justifies the means only when the means used are such as actually bring about the desired and desirable end.
John DeweyA 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 DeweyWere 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.
John DeweyKnowledge is no longer an immobile solid; it has been liquefied. it is actively moving in all the currents of society itself
John DeweyCommunication is a process of sharing experience till it becomes a common possession. It modifies the disposition of both the parties who partake in it.
John DeweyThe reactionaries are in possession of force, in not only the army and police, but in the press and the schools
John DeweyWhat, 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 DeweyIf 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.
John DeweyThe 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.
John DeweyThe school must be "a genuine form of active community life, instead of a place set apart in which to learn lessons".
John DeweyBeings who are born not only unaware of, but quite indifferent to, the aims and habits of the social group have to be rendered cognizant of them and actively interested. Education, and education alone, spans the gap.
John DeweyEvery 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.
John DeweySince growth is the characteristic of life, education is all one with growing; it has no end beyond itself. The criterion of the value of school education is the extent in which it creates a desire for continuous growth and supplies means for making the desire effective in fact.
John DeweyLike the soil, mind is fertilized while it lies fallow, until a new burst of bloom ensues.
John DeweyScientific 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.
John DeweyThe words "environment," "medium" denote something more than surroundings which encompass an individual. They denote the specific continuity of the surroundings with his own active tendencies.
John DeweySocial engaged intellectuals must accept reality as they found it and shape it toward positive social goals, not stand aside in self-righteous isolation.
John DeweySince 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 DeweyLiberty is not just an idea, an abstract principle. It is power, effective power to do specific things. There is no such thing as liberty in general; liberty, so to speak, at large.
John DeweyWe 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.
John DeweyWe 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.
John DeweyIn 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.
John DeweyDespite the never ending play of conscious correction and instruction, the surrounding atmosphere and spirit is in the end the chief agent in forming manners.
John DeweyThose engaged in directing the actions of others are always in danger of overlooking the importance of the sequential development of those they direct.
John DeweyMen 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.
John DeweyIntellectually religious emotions are not creative but conservative. They attach themselves readily to the current view of the world and consecrate it.
John DeweyThat 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.
John DeweyWhat the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children.
John DeweyTo "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.
John DeweyA democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience.
John DeweyThe 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.
John DeweyEven 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.
John Dewey