Quote

That education is not an affair of telling and being told, but an active and constructive process, is a principle almost as generally violated in practice as conceded in theory. Is not this deplorable situation due to the fact that the doctrine is itself merely told? It is preached it is lectured it is written about.

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
Almost
Teaching
Dues
Practice
Theory
Affair
Fact
Teacher
Doctrine
Lectured
Process
Told
Generally
Deplorable
Facts
Principles
Principle
Conceded
Education
Active
Violated
Situation
Merely
Preached
Written
Telling
Constructive

More quotes by John Dewey

Image
In brief, the function of knowledge is to make one experience freely available to other experiences.
John Dewey
Image
With respect to the development of powers devoted to coping with specific scientific and economic problems we may say that the child should be growing in manhood. With respect to sympathetic curiosity, unbiased responsiveness, and openness of mind, we may say that the adult should be growing in childlikeness.
John Dewey
Image
Men have never fully used [their] powers to advance the good in life, because they have waited upon some power external to themselves and to nature to do the work they are responsible for doing.
John Dewey
Image
An idea is a method of evading, circumventing or surmounting through reflection, obstacles that otherwise would have to be attacked by brute force.
John Dewey
Image
Since a democratic society repudiates the principle of external authority, it must find a substitute in voluntary disposition and interest these can be created only by education.
John Dewey
Image
Independent self-reliant people would be a counterproductive anachronism in the collective society of the future where people will be defined by their associations.
John Dewey
Image
Always make the other person feel important.
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
No system has ever as yet existed which did not in some form involve the exploitation of some human beings for the advantage of others.
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
By object is meant some element in the complex whole that is defined in abstraction from the whole of which it is a distinction.
John Dewey
Image
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.
John Dewey
Image
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.
John Dewey
Image
Things gain meaning by being used in a shared experience or joint action.
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
If there is one conclusion to which human experience unmistakably points it is that democratic ends demand democratic methods for their realization.
John Dewey
Image
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
Image
...the moment of passage from disturbance into harmony is that of intensest life.
John Dewey
Image
While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing.
John Dewey
Image
All direction is but re-direction it shifts the activities already going on into another channel. Unless one is cognizant of the energies which are already in operation, one's attempts at direction will almost surely go amiss.
John Dewey