Quotes & Sayings About Education John Dewey

Education is life itself. — John Dewey

The aim of education is to enable individuals to continue their education ... (and) the object and reward of learning is continued capacity for growth. Now this idea cannot be applied to all the members of a society except where intercourse of man with man is mutual, and except where there is adequate provision for the reconstruction of social habits and institutions by means of wide stimulation arising from equitably distributed interests. And this means a democratic society. — John Dewey

The aim of education is growth: the aim of growth is more growth — John Dewey

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. As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the return it gets: it grows. — John Dewey

Cease conceiving of education as mere preparation for later life, and make it the full meaning of the present life. — John Dewey

The breakdown of his(Plato's) philosophy is made apparent in the fact that he could not trust to gradual improvements in education to bring about a better society which should then improve education, and so on indefinitely. Correct education could not come into existence until an ideal state existed, and after that education would be devoted simply to its conservation. For the existence of this state he was obliged to trust to some happy accident by which philosophic wisdom should happen to coincide with possession of ruling power in the state. — John Dewey

That education is not an affair of "telling" and being told, but an active and constructive process, is a principle almost as generally violated in practice as conceded in theory. Is not this deplorable situation due to the fact that the doctrine is itself merely told? It is preached; it is lectured; it is written about. — John Dewey

The result of the educative process is capacity for further education. — John Dewey

I had a great education. From kindergarten to John Dewey High School in Coney Island, I am public-school educated. — Spike Lee

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. — John Dewey

A society which makes provision for participation in its good of all its members on equal terms and which secures flexible readjustment of its institutions through interaction of the different forms of associated life is in so far democratic. Such a society must have a type of education which gives individuals a personal interest in social relationships and control, and the habits of mind which secure social changes without introducing disorder. — John Dewey

The central problem of an education based upon experience is to select the kind of present experience that live fruitfully and creatively in subsequent experiences. — John Dewey

Schools should take an active part in directing social change, and share in the construction of a new social order — John Dewey

Schools should take part in the great work of construction and organization that will have to be done. — John Dewey

All education which develops power to share effectively in social life is moral. — John Dewey

One of the saddest things about US education is that the wisdom of our most successful teachers is lost to the profession when they retire. — John Dewey

A narrow and moralistic view of morals is responsible for the failure to recognize that all the aims and values which are desirable in education are themselves moral. Discipline, natural development, culture, social efficiency, are moral traits - marks of a person who is a worthy member of that society which it is the business of education to further. — John Dewey

Were all instructors to realize that the quality of mental process, not the production of correct answers, is the measure of educative growth something hardly less than a revolution in teaching would be worked. — John Dewey

The problem of education in a democratic society is to do away with ... dualism and to construct a course of studies which makes thought a guide of free practice for all and which makes leisure a reward of accepting responsibility for service, rather than a state of exemption from it. — John Dewey

The goal of education is to enable individuals to continue their education. — John Dewey

Education, in its broadest sense, is the means of this social continuity of life. — John Dewey

Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living. — John Dewey Polt

Education as growth or maturity should be an ever-present process. — John Dewey

The real process of education should be the process of learning to think through the application of real problems. — John Dewey

For in spite of itself any movement that thinks and acts in terms of an 'ism becomes so involved in reaction against other 'isms that it is unwittingly controlled by them. For it then forms its principles by reaction against them instead of by a comprehensive, constructive survey of actual needs, problems, and possibilities. — John Dewey

Each generation is inclined to educate its young so as to get along in the present world instead of with a view to the proper end of education: the promotion of the best possible realization of humanity as humanity. Parents educate their children so that they may get on; princes educate their subjects as instruments of their own purpose. — John Dewey

Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results. — John Dewey

There is, I think, no point in the philosophy of progressive education which is sounder than its emphasis upon the importance of the participation of the learner in the formation of the purposes which direct his [sic] activities in the learning process, just as there is no defect in traditional education greater than its failure to secure the active cooperation of the pupil in construction of the purposes involved in his studying. — John Dewey

Vocational training is the training of animals or slaves. It fits them to become cogs in the industrial machine. Free men need liberal education to prepare them to make a good use of their freedom. — John Dewey

The conception of education as a social process and function has no definite meaning until we define the kind of society we have in mind. — John Dewey

The devotion of democracy to education is a familiar fact. The superficial explanation is that a government resting upon popular suffrage cannot be successful unless those who elect and who obey their governors are educated. 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. — John Dewey

Strait-jacket and chain-gang procedures had to be done away with if there was to a chance for growth of individuals in the intellectual springs of freedom without which there is no assurance of genuine and continued normal growth. — John Dewey

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. — John Dewey

There is no god and there is no soul. Hence, there is no need for the props of traditional religion. With dogma and creed excluded, then immutable truth is dead and buried. There is no room for fixed and natural law or permanent moral absolutes. — John Dewey

One can think effectively only when one is willing to endure suspense and to undergo the trouble of searching. — John Dewey

A genuine purpose always starts with an impulse. Obstruction of the immediate execution of an impulse converts it into a desire. Nevertheless neither impulse nor desire is itself a purpose. A purpose is an end-view. That is, it involves foresight of the consequences which will result from acting upon impulse. — John Dewey

Experiences in order to be educative must lead out into an expanding world of subject matter, a subject matter of facts or information and of ideas. This condition is satisfied only as the educator views teaching and learning as a continuous process of reconstruction of experience. — John Dewey

Since in reality there is nothing to which growth is relative save more growth, there is nothing to which education is subordinate save more education. — John Dewey

We are a people of many races, many faiths, creeds, and religions. I do not think that the men who made the Constitution forbade the establishment of a State church because they were opposed to religion. They knew that the introduction of religious differences into American life would undermine the democratic foundations of this country. What holds for adults holds even more for children, sensitive and conscious of differences. I certainly hope that the Board of Education will think very, very seriously before it introduces this division and antagonism in our public schools. — John Dewey

The lesson for progressive education is that it requires in an urgent degree, a degree more pressing than was incumbent upon former innovators, a philosophy of education based upon a philosophy of experience.
I remarked incidentally that the philosophy in question is, to paraphrase the saying of Lincoln about democracy, one of education of, by and for experience. No one of these words, of, by, or for, names anything which is self-evident. Each of them is a challenge to discover and put into operation a principle of order and organization which follows from understanding what educative experience signifies. — John Dewey

To oscillate between drill exercises that strive to attain efficiency in outward doing without the use of intelligence, and an accumulation of knowledge that is supposed to be an ultimate end in itself, means that education accepts the present social conditions as final, and thereby takes upon itself the responsibility for perpetuating them. A reorganization of education so that learning takes place in connection with the intelligent carrying forward of purposeful activities is a slow work. It can be accomplished only piecemeal, a step at a time. — John Dewey

Traditional education tended to ignore the importance of personal impulse and desire as moving springs. But this is no reason why progressive education should identify impulse and desire with purpose and thereby pass lightly over the need for careful observation, for wide range of information, and for judgment is students are to share in the formation of the purposes which activate them — John Dewey

All genuine education comes about through experience. — John Dewey

The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning. — John Dewey

What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that that must community want for all it's children. — John Dewey

The origin of thinking is some perplexity, confusion or doubt. — John Dewey

Education is not an affair of 'telling' and being told, but an active and constructive process. — John Dewey

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. — John Dewey

Education is a social process; education is growth; education is not preparation for life but is life itself. — John Dewey

The ideal may seem remote of execution, but the democratic ideal of education is a farcical yet tragic delusion except as the ideal more and more dominates our public system of education. — John Dewey

The very problem of mind and body suggests division; I do not know of anything so disastrously affected by the habit of division as this particular theme. In its discussion are reflected the splitting off from each other of religion, morals and science; the divorce of philosophy from science and of both from the arts of conduct. The evils which we suffer in education, in religion, in the materialism of business and the aloofness of "intellectuals" from life, in the whole separation of knowledge and practice
all testify to the necessity of seeing mind-body as an integral whole. — John Dewey

Whole object of intellectual education is formation of logical disposition — John Dewey

Since education is not a means to living, but is identical with the operation of living a life which is fruitful and inherently significant, the only ultimate value which can be set up is just the process of living itself. And this is not an end to which studies and activities are subordinate means; it is the whole of which they are ingredients. — John Dewey

Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife. — John Dewey

It is part of the educator's responsibility to see equally to two things: First, that the problem grows out of the conditions of the experience being had in the present, and that it is within the range of the capacity of students; and, secondly, that it is such that it arouses in the learner an active quest for information and for production of new ideas. The new facts and new ideas thus obtained become the ground for further experiences in which new problems are presented. — John Dewey

Only in education, never in the life of farmer, sailor, merchant, physician, or laboratory experimenter, does knowledge mean primarily a store of information aloof from doing. — John Dewey

I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform. — John Dewey

I believe that the community's duty to education is, therefore, its paramount moral duty. By law and punishment, by social agitation and discussion, society can regulate and form itself in a more or less haphazard and chance way. But through education society can formulate its own purposes, can organize its own means and resources, and thus shape itself with definiteness and economy in the direction in which it wishes to move. — John Dewey

Education is a regulation of the process of coming to share in the social consciousness; and that the adjustment of individual activity on the basis of this social consciousness is the only sure method of social reconstruction. — John Dewey

As we have seen there is some kind of continuity in any case since every experience affects for better or worse the attitudes which help decide the quality of further experiences, by setting up certain preference and aversion, and making it easier or harder to act for this or that end. — John Dewey

Communication of science as subject-matter has so far outrun in education the construction of a scientific habit of mind that to some extent the natural common sense of mankind has been interfered with to its detriment. — John Dewey

Who was the founder of American education? John Dewey - you know that very well - card-carrying Communist. The American education system, in America - one of the so-called 'founders' was a Communist — Rafael Cruz

Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. — John Dewey

It may be said that an education which does not succeed in making poetry a resource in the business of life as well as in its leisure, has something the matter with it. — John Dewey

An education could be given which would sift individuals, discovering what they were good for, and supplying a method of assigning each to the work in life for which his nature fits him. — John Dewey

I believe that the only true education comes through the stimulation of the child's powers by the demands of the social situations in which he finds himself. — John Dewey

Personality must be educated, and personality cannot be educated by confining its operations to technical and specialized things, or to the less important relationships of life. Full education comes only when there is a responsible share on the part of each person, in proportion to capacity, in shaping the aims and policies of the social groups to which he belongs. — John Dewey

Any education given by a group tends to socialize its members, but the quality and the value of the socialization depends upon the habits and aims of the group. Hence, once more, the need of a measure for the worth of any given mode of social life. — John Dewey

The belief that all genuine education comes about through experience does not mean that all experiences are genuinely or equally educative. — John Dewey

A single course of studies for all progressive schools is out of the question; it would mean abandoning the fundamental principle of connection with life-experiences. — John Dewey

A basic flaw in contemporary American educational philosophy as much as it is under the influence of the late John Dewey, is it s failure to grasp the essentially artistic character of teaching. Due to an inflated opinion of "science" and all things supposedly "scientific," educators have been loathe to admit that teaching is an art, not a science. The art of teaching is a mingling of the liberal and the dramatic arts. Above and beyond the subject matter, the teacher actually needs but two assets: (a) a grasp of the liberal arts of grammar, rhetoric,and logic; (b) a mastery of the dramatic art of presentation." - pg 126 footnote 1. — Frederick D. Wilhelmsen

It is not a nature cure, a system of faith healing, or a physical culture, or a medical treatment, or a semi-occult philosophy. As to what it is, Dewey's brief but striking description appeals most and has the least chance of being proved incorrect: 'It the Alexander Technique bears the same relation to education that education itself bears to all other human activities.' — John Dewey

There is no such thing as educational value in the abstract. The notion that some subjects and methods and that acquaintance with certain facts and truths possess educational value in and of themselves is the reason why traditional education reduced the material of education so largely to a diet of predigested materials. — John Dewey

For Dewey, the Great Community was the basic fact of history. The individual and the soul were invalid concepts, man was truly man, not as an individual, but as after Aristotle, in society and supremely in the State. Thus, for Dewey, true education mean not the development of the individual in terms of learning, but his socialization.
Progressive education ... educates the individual in terms of particular facts of the universe without reference to God, truth, or morality. — Rousas John Rushdoony

While [Plato] affirmed with emphasis that the place of the individual in society should not be determined by birth or wealth or any conventional status, but by his own nature as discovered in the process of education, he had no perception of the uniqueness of individuals. For him they fall by nature into classes, and into a very small number of classes at that. — John Dewey

When we consider the close connection between science and industrial development on the one hand, and between literary and aesthetic cultivation and an aristocratic social organization on the other, we get light on the opposition between technical scientific studies and refining literary studies. We have before us the need of overcoming this separation in education if society is to be truly democratic. — John Dewey

In roughly the last century, important experiments have been launched by such charismatic educators as Maria Montessori, Rudolf Steiner, Shinichi Suzuki, John Dewey, and A. S. Neil. These approaches have enjoyed considerable success[ ... ] Yet they have had relatively little impact on the mainstream of education throughout the contemporary world. — Howard Gardner