Democracy and Education, by John Dewey
Title: Democracy and Education
Author: John Dewey
Release Date: July 26, 2008 [EBook #852] Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION ***
Produced by David Reed, and David Widger
DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION
by John Dewey
Transcriber's Note:
I have tried to make this the most accurate text possible but I am sure that there are still mistakes.
I would like to dedicate this etext to my mother who was a elementary school teacher for more years than I can remember. Thanks. David Reed
Contents
Chapter One: Education as a Necessity of Life
Summary. It is the very nature of life to strive to continue in being. Chapter Two: Education as a Social Function
Summary. The development within the young of the attitudes
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Chapter Three: Education as Direction
Summary. The natural or native impulses of the young do not agree
Chapter Four: Education as Growth
Summary. Power to grow depends upon need for others and plasticity. Chapter Five: Preparation, Unfolding, and Formal Discipline
Summary. The conception that the result of the educative process
Chapter Six: Education as Conservative and Progressive
Summary. Education may be conceived either retrospectively
Chapter Seven: The Democratic Conception in Education
Summary. Since education is a social process, and there are many kinds
Chapter Eight: Aims in Education
Summary. An aim denotes the result of any natural process
Chapter Nine: Natural Development and Social Efficiency as Aims
Summary. General or comprehensive aims are points of view for surveying
Chapter Ten: Interest and Discipline
Summary. Interest and discipline are correlative aspects of activity
Chapter Eleven: Experience and Thinking
Summary. In determining the place of thinking
Chapter Twelve: Thinking in Education
Summary. Processes of instruction are unified in the degree
Chapter Thirteen: The Nature of Method
Summary. Method is a statement of the way the subject matter
Chapter Fourteen: The Nature of Subject Matter
Summary. The subject matter of education consists primarily
Chapter Fifteen: Play and Work in the Curriculum
Summary. In the previous chapter we found that the primary subject
Chapter Sixteen: The Significance of Geography and History
Summary. It is the nature of an experience to have implications
Chapter Seventeen: Science in the Course of Study
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Summary. Science represents the fruition of the cognitive factors
Chapter Eighteen: Educational Values
Summary. Fundamentally, the elements involved in a discussion of value
Chapter Nineteen: Labor and Leisure
Summary. Of the segregations of educational values
Chapter Twenty: Intellectual and Practical Studies
Summary. The Greeks were induced to philosophize
Chapter Twenty-one: Physical and Social Studies: Naturalism and Humanism
Summary. The philosophic dualism between man and nature is reflected
Chapter Twenty-two: The Individual and the World
Summary. True individualism is a product of the relaxation of the grip
Chapter Twenty-Three: Vocational Aspects of Education
Summary. A vocation signifies any form of continuous activity
Chapter Twenty-four: Philosophy of Education
Summary. After a review designed to bring out the philosophic issues
Chapter Twenty-five: Theories of Knowledge
Summary. Such social divisions as interfere with free and full
Chapter Twenty-six: Theories of Morals
Summary. The most important problem of moral education in the school
Chapter One: Education as a Necessity of Life
1. Renewal of Life by Transmission. The most notable distinction between living and inanimate things is that the former maintain themselves by renewal. A stone when struck resists. If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered into smaller bits. Never does the stone attempt to react in such a way that it may maintain itself against the blow, much less so as to render the blow a contributing factor to its own continued action. While the living thing may eas-ily 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. Understanding the word "control" in this sense, it may be said that a living being is one that subjugates and controls for its own continued activity the energies that would otherwise use it up. Life is a self-renewing process through action upon the environment.
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In all the higher forms this process cannot be kept up indefinitely. After a while they succumb; they die. The creature is not equal to the task of indefinite self-renewal. But continuity of the life process is not dependent upon the prolongation of the existence of any one individual. Reproduction of other forms of life goes on in continuous sequence. And though, as the geological record shows, not merely individuals but also species die out, the life process continues in increasingly complex forms. As some species die out, forms better adapted to utilize the obstacles against which they struggled in vain come into being. Continuity of life means continual readaptation of the environment to the needs of living organisms.
We have been speaking of life in its lowest terms--as a physical thing. But we use the word "Life" to denote the whole range of experience, individual and racial. When we see a book called the Life of Lincoln we do not expect to find within its covers a treatise on physiology. We look for an account of social antecedents; a description of early surroundings, of the conditions and occupation of the family; of the chief episodes in the development of character; of signal struggles and achievements; of the individual's hopes,
tastes, joys and sufferings. In precisely similar fashion we speak of the life of a savage tribe, of the Athenian people, of the American nation. "Life" covers customs, institutions, beliefs, victories and defeats, recreations and occupations.
We employ the word "experience" in the same pregnant sense. And to it, as well as to life in the bare physiological sense, the principle of continuity through renewal applies. With the renewal of physical existence goes, in the case of human beings, the recreation of beliefs, ideals, hopes, happiness, misery,