Quote

Every one of the constituent elements of a social group, in a modern city as in a savage tribe, is born immature, helpless, without language, beliefs, ideas, or social standards. Each individual, each unit who is the carrier of the life-experience of his group, in time passes away. Yet the life of the group goes on.

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
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Dewey
Experience
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Units
Carrier
Social
Cities
Helpless
Constituents
Away
Goes
Passes
Immature
Ideas
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Tribe
Without
Belief
Group
Unit
Every
Language
Standards
Savage
Time
Individual
Elements
Tribes
Life
Born
City
Savages
Constituent

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A child might be made to bow every time he met a certain person by pressure on his neck muscles, and bowing would finally become automatic. It would not, however, be an act of recognition or deference on his part, till he did it with a certain end in view - as having a certain meaning.
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When reality is sought for at large, it is without intellectual import at most the term carries the connotation of an agreeableemotional state.
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Not perfection as a final goal, but the ever-enduring process of perfecting, maturing, refining is the aim of living.
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While every social arrangement is educative in effect, the educative effect first becomes an important part of the purpose of the association in connection with the association of the older with the younger.
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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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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.
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Various epochs of the past have had their own characteristic struggles and interests. Each of these great epochs has left behind itself a kind of cultural deposit, like a geologic stratum. These deposits have found their way into educational institutions in the form of studies, distinct courses of study, distinct types of schools.
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Mere physical growing up, mere mastery of the bare necessities of subsistence will not suffice to reproduce the life of the group. Deliberate effort and the taking of thoughtful pains are required.
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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.
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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.
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There is no greater egoism than that of learning when it is treated simply as a mark of personal distinction to be held and cherished for its own sake. ... [K]knowledge is a possession held in trust for the furthering of the well-being of all
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We rarely recognize the extent in which our conscious estimates of what is worth while and what is not, are due to standards of which we are not conscious at all.
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Independent self-reliant people would be a counterproductive anachronism in the collective society of the future where people will be defined by their associations.
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The end justifies the means only when the means used are such as actually bring about the desired and desirable end.
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Every 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.
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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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Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living. Without some goals and some efforts to reach it, no man can live. Education is not preparation for life education is life itself.
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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
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Not only is social life identical with communication, but all communication (and hence all genuine social life) is educative.
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To the being of fully alive, the future is not ominous but a promise it surrounds the present like a halo.
John Dewey