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There is no common understanding, and no community life. But in a shared activity, each person refers what he is doing to what the other is doing and vice-versa.

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
Understanding
Community
Common
Refers
Persons
Versa
Person
Shared
Life
Vice
Vices
Activity

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Even in a savage tribe, the achievements of adults are far beyond what the immature members would be capable of if left to themselves. With the growth of civilization, the gap between the original capacities of the immature and the standards and customs of the elders increases.
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A response is not just a re-action, a protest, as it were, against being disturbed it is, as the word indicates, an answer. It meets the stimulus, and corresponds with it.
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Anyone who has begun to think, places some portion of the world in jeopardy.
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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.
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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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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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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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Intelligence is in constant process of forming, and its retention requires constant alertness in observing consequences, an open-minded will to learn, and courage in readjustment.
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Education, in its broadest sense, is the means of this social continuity of life.
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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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We cannot set up, out of our heads, something we regard as an ideal society.
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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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Criticism of the commitment of religion to the supernatural is thus positive in import.
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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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Faith in the possibilities of continued and rigorous inquiry does not limit access to truth to any channel or scheme of things. It does not first say that truth is universal and then add there is but one road to it.
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Legislation is a matter of more or less intelligent improvisation aiming at palliating conditions by means of patchwork policies.
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An idea is a method of evading, circumventing or surmounting through reflection, obstacles that otherwise would have to be attacked by brute force.
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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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Even dogs and horses have their actions modified by association with human beings they form different habits because human beings are concerned with what they do.
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As a matter of fact, a modern society is many societies more or less loosely connected. Each household with its immediate extension of friends makes a society the village or street group of playmates is a community each business group, each club, is another.
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