Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education

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Macmillan, 1916 - Education - 434 pages
In this book, Dewey tries to criticize and expand on the educational philosophies of Rousseau and Plato. Dewey's ideas were seldom adopted in America's public schools, although a number of his prescriptions have been continually advocated by those who have had to teach in them.
 

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Page 5 - Society not only continues to exist by transmission, by communication, but it may fairly be said to exist in transmission, in communication.
Page 62 - It is chosen and foreordained, and he only holds the key to his own secret. By your tampering and thwarting and too much governing he may be hindered from his end and kept out of his own. Respect the child. Wait and see the new product of Nature. Nature loves analogies, but not repetitions. Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.
Page 60 - 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.
Page 101 - A democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience.
Page 138 - He begins the work with, a restatement of his basal principle that "everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Author of Nature; but everything degenerates in the hands of man.
Page 97 - ... reducible almost to a common interest in plunder; and that they are of such a nature as to isolate the group from other groups with respect to give and take of the values of life. Hence, the education such a society gives is partial and distorted. If we take, on the other hand, the kind of family life which illustrates the standard, we find that there are material, intellectual, aesthetic interests in which all participate and that the progress of one member has worth for the experience of other...
Page 3 - Society exists through a process of transmission quite as much as biological life. This transmission occurs by means of communication of habits of doing, thinking, and feeling from the older to the younger.
Page 194 - Method means that arrangement of subject matter which makes it most effective in use. Never is method something outside of the material.
Page 281 - It is as true of arithmetic as it is of poetry that in some place and at some time it ought to be a good to be appreciated on its own account — just as an enjoyable experience, in short.
Page 101 - is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience. The extension in space of the number of individuals who participate in an interest so that each has to refer his own action to that of others, and to consider the action of others to give point and direction to his own, is equivalent to the breaking down of those barriers of class, race, and national territory which kept men from perceiving the full import of their activity.

About the author (1916)

Educator John Dewey originated the experimentalism philosophy. A proponent of social change and education reform, he founded The New School for Social Research."If I were asked to name the most needed of all reforms in the spirit of education I should say: 'Cease conceiving of education as mere preparation for later life, and make of it the full meaning of the present life.'" John DeweyWas born October 20, 1859, in Burlington, Vermont. He taught at universities from 1884 to 1930. An academic philosopher and proponent of educational reform, in 1894 Dewey started an experimental elementary school. In 1919 he cofounded The New School for Social Research. Dewey published over 1,000 pieces of writings during his lifetime. He died June 1, 1952, in New York, New York.

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