I have used frequently in what precedes the words "progressive" and "new" education. I do not wish to close, however, without recording my firm belief that the fundamental issue is not of new versus old education nor of progressive against traditional education but a question of what anything whatever must be to be worthy of the name education. I am not, I hope and believe, in favor of any ends or any methods simply because the name progressive may be applied to them. The basic question concerns the nature of education with no qualifying adjectives prefixed. What we want and need is education pure and simple, and we shall make surer and faster progress when we devote ourselves to finding out just what education is and what conditions have to be satisfied in order that education may be a reality and not a name or a slogan. It is for this reason alone that I have emphasized the need for a sound philosophy of experience.
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Democracy and Education:
An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education
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 and
Chapter Three: Education as Direction
Summary. The natural or native impulses of the young do not agree with
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 is
Chapter Six: Education as Conservative and Progressive
Summary. Education may be conceived either retrospectively or
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 brought to
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 in experience we first
Chapter Twelve: Thinking in Education
Summary. Processes of instruction are unified in the degree in which
Chapter Thirteen: The Nature of Method
Summary. Method is a statement of the way the subject matter of an
Chapter Fourteen: The Nature of Subject Matter
Summary. The subject matter of education consists primarily of the
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 which
Chapter Seventeen: Science in the Course of Study
Summary. Science represents the fruition of the cognitive factors in
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 discussed in the
Chapter Twenty: Intellectual and Practical Studies
Summary. The Greeks were induced to philosophize by the increasing
Chapter Twenty-one: Physical and Social Studies: Naturalism and Humanism