Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

John Dewey
Age: 92 †
Born: 1859
Born: October 20
Died: 1952
Died: June 1
Aesthetician
Pedagogue
Philosopher
Professor
Psychologist
Sociologist
Teacher
Trade Unionist
Burlington
Vermont
Dewey
Mean
Education
Ingredients
Life
Since
Activities
Subordinate
Values
Operations
Fruitful
Living
Significant
Subordinates
Process
Ultimate
Inherently
Means
Activity
Identical
Ends
Value
Operation
Whole
Study
Studies

More quotes by John Dewey

Image
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.
John Dewey
Image
Teaching may be compared to selling commodities. No one can sell unless somebody buys.
John Dewey
Image
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.
John Dewey
Image
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.
John Dewey
Image
I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform.
John Dewey
Image
Nature is the mother and the habitat of man, even if sometimes a stepmother and an unfriendly home.
John Dewey
Image
Just because life signifies not bare passive existence (supposing there is such a thing), but a way of acting, environment or medium signifies what enters into this activity as a sustaining or frustrating condition.
John Dewey
Image
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.
John Dewey
Image
The 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 Dewey
Image
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.
John Dewey
Image
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.
John Dewey
Image
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.
John Dewey
Image
Things gain meaning by being used in a shared experience or joint action.
John Dewey
Image
Such happiness as life is capable of comes from the full participation of all our powers in the endeavor to wrest from each changing situations of experience its own full and unique meaning.
John Dewey
Image
For in spite of itself any movement that thinks and acts in terms of an ‘ism becomes so involved in reaction against other ‘isms that it is unwittingly controlled by them. For it then forms its principles by reaction against them instead of by a comprehensive, constructive survey of actual needs, problems, and possibilities.
John Dewey
Image
Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking learning naturally results.
John Dewey
Image
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.
John Dewey
Image
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.
John Dewey
Image
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.
John Dewey
Image
Education has no more serious responsibility than the making of adequate provision for enjoyment of recreative leisure not only for the sake of immediate health, but for the sake of its lasting effect upon the habits of the mind.
John Dewey