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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

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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
Thing
Medium
Way
Mediums
Signifies
Life
Condition
Supposing
Activity
Sustaining
Conditions
Enters
Environment
Bare
Existence
Frustrating
Acting
Passive

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Since 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.
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Science is a systematic means of gaining reliable knowledge.
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Thought is impossible without words.
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Education is not preparation for life education is life itself.
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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 brief, the function of knowledge is to make one experience freely available to other experiences.
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I do not think that any thorough-going modification of college curriculum would be possible without a modification of the methods of instruction.
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Schools should take an active part in directing social change, and share in the construction of a new social order
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Mankind likes to think in terms of extreme opposites.
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The bare fact that language consists of sounds which are mutually intelligible is enough of itself to show that its meaning depends upon connection with a shared experience.
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The imagination is the medium of appreciation in every field. The engagement of the imagination is the only thing that makes any activity more than mechanical. Unfortunately, it is too customary to identify the imaginative with the imaginary, rather than with a warm and intimate taking in of the full scope of a situation.
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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.
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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.
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When things have a meaning for us, we mean (intend, propose) what we do: when they do not, we act blindly, unconsciously, unintelligently.
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Doctrine that eliminates or even obscures the function of choice of values and enlistment of desires and emotions in behalf of those chosen weakens personal responsibility for judgment and for action. It thus helps create the attitudes that welcome and support the totalitarian state.
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Etymologically, the word education means just a process of leading or bringing up.
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Everything which bars freedom and fullness of communication sets up barriers that divide human beings into sets and cliques, into antagonistic sects and factions, and thereby undermines the democratic way of life.
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A 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.
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What's in a question, you ask? Everything. It is evoking stimulating response or stultifying inquiry. It is, in essence, the very core of teaching.
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To savages it would seem preposterous to seek out a place where nothing but learning was going on in order that one might learn.
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