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We never educate directly, but indirectly by means of the environment. Whether we permit chance environments to do the work, or whether we design environments for the purpose makes a great difference.

John Dewey

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John Dewey
Age: 92 †
Born: 1859
Born: October 20
Died: 1952
Died: June 1
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More quotes by John Dewey

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Education is life itself.
John Dewey
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Just as a flower which seems beautiful and has color but no perfume, so are the fruitless words of the man who speaks them but does them not.
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Giving and taking of orders modifies actions and results, but does not of itself effect a sharing of purposes, a communication of interests.
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Nature is the mother and the habitat of man, even if sometimes a stepmother and an unfriendly home.
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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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The intimation never wholly deserts us that there is, in the unformed activities of childhood and youth, the possibilities of a better life for the community as well as for individuals here and there. This dim sense is the ground of our abiding idealization of childhood.
John Dewey
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...the moment of passage from disturbance into harmony is that of intensest life.
John Dewey
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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.
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I should venture to assert that the most pervasive fallacy of philosophic thinking goes back to neglect of context.
John Dewey
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The premium so often put in schools upon external discipline, and upon marks and rewards, upon promotion and keeping back, are the obverse of the lack of attention given to life situations in which the meaning of facts, ideas, principles, and problems is vitally brought home.
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Those engaged in directing the actions of others are always in danger of overlooking the importance of the sequential development of those they direct.
John Dewey
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That which distinguishes the Soviet system both from other national systems and from the progressive schools of other countries is the conscious control of every educational procedure by reference to a single and comprehensive social purpose.
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By doing his share in the associated activity, the individual appropriates the purpose which actuates it, becomes familiar with its methods and subject matters, acquires needed skill, and is saturated with its emotional spirit.
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When others are not doing what we would like them to or are threatening disobedience, we are most conscious of the need of controlling them and of the influences by which they are controlled.
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Such words as society and community are likely to be misleading, for they have a tendency to make us think there is a single thing corresponding to the single word.
John Dewey
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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
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The phrase think for one's self is a pleonasm. Unless one does it for one's self, it isn't thinking.
John Dewey
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Choice is the declaration by self that a certain ideal of self shall be realized.
John Dewey
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Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to observation and memory. It instigates invention. It shocks us out of sheep-like passivity, and sets us at noting and contriving…conflict is a sine qua non of reflection and ingenuity.
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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.
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