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The problem is to extract the desirable traits of forms of community life which actually exist, and employ them to criticize undesirable features and suggest improvement

John Dewey

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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
Life
Features
Improvement
Undesirable
Forms
Extract
Exist
Employ
Community
Suggest
Actually
Desirable
Form
Traits
Problem
Criticize

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Inside the modern city, in spite of its nominal political unity, there are probably more communities, more differing customs, traditions, aspirations, and forms of government or control, than existed in an entire continent at an earlier epoch.
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By object is meant some element in the complex whole that is defined in abstraction from the whole of which it is a distinction.
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Confidence is directness and courage in meeting the facts of life.
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Man's home is nature his purposes and aims are dependent for execution upon natural conditions. Separated from such conditions they become empty dreams and idle indulgences of fancy.
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Liberty 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.
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Intellectually religious emotions are not creative but conservative. They attach themselves readily to the current view of the world and consecrate it.
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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.
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Things gain meaning by being used in a shared experience or joint action.
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Like the soil, mind is fertilized while it lies fallow, until a new burst of bloom ensues.
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The theory of the method of knowing which is advanced in these pages may be termed pragmatic. ... Only that which has been organized into our disposition so as to enable us to adapt the environment to our needs and adapt our aims and desires to the situation in which we live is really knowledge.
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The teacher loses the position of external boss or dictator but takes on that of leader of group activities
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In the present state of the world, it is evident that the control we have gained of physical energies, heat, light, electricity, etc., without having first secured control of our use of ourselves is a perilous affair. Without the control of our use of ourselves, our use of other things is blind it may lead to anything.
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Education Proceeds ultimately from the patterns furnished by institutions, customs, and laws- If the patterns of institutions, customs, and laws are broken for this philosophy education should fix itself. There should be several different things taught instead of one Supreme Factor.
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There is more than a verbal tie between the words common, community, and communication.
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By reading the characteristic features of any man's castles in the air you can make a shrewd guess as to his underlying desires which are frustrated.
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Time and memory are true artists they remould reality nearer to the heart's desire.
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I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform.
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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.
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If humanity has made some headway in realizing that the ultimate value of every institution is its distinctively human effect - its effect upon conscious experience - we may well believe that this lesson has been learned largely through dealings with the young.
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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.
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