John Dewey was an influential American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer known for his contributions to pragmatism and progressive education. He believed that education should be focused on the needs and interests of the individual, fostering critical thinking, problem-solving skills, and democratic citizenship. Dewey emphasized hands-on learning experiences and the integration of education with real-life situations. He argued that education should not only transmit knowledge but also cultivate the ability to think independently and adapt to a changing world. Dewey’s ideas have had a profound impact on educational theory and practice, shaping modern pedagogy and curriculum development. Additionally, his work in philosophy, psychology, and social theory continues to be influential across a range of disciplines, emphasizing the importance of experience, inquiry, and democracy in human development and societal progress.
John Dewey Quotes
01. “We do not learn from experience… we learn from reflecting on experience.”
― John Dewey
02. “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.”
― John Dewey
03. “Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.”
― John Dewey
04. “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
05. “A problem well put is half solved.”
― John Dewey
06. “We only think when confronted with a problem.”
― John Dewey
07. “The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action.”
― John Dewey
08. “Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination. ”
― John Dewey
09. “If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.”
― John Dewey
10. “Hunger not to have, but to be”
― John Dewey
11. “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
12. “There’s all the difference in the world between having something to say, and having to say something.”
― John Dewey
13. “Art is the most effective mode of communications that exists.”
― john Dewey
14. “Education is a social process; education is growth; education is not preparation for life but is life itself.”
― John Dewey
15. “The good man is the man who, no matter how morally unworthy he has been, is moving to become better.”
― John Dewey
16. “The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning.”
― John Dewey
17. “The deepest urge in human nature is the desire to be important.”
― John Dewey
18. “Scientific principles and laws do not lie on the surface of nature. They are hidden, and must be wrested from nature by an active and elaborate technique of inquiry. ”
― John Dewey
19. “To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness.”
― John Dewey
20. “To me faith means not worrying”
― John Dewey
21. “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
22. “The path of least resistance and least trouble is a mental rut already made. It requires troublesome work to undertake the alteration of old beliefs. ”
― John Dewey
23. “We always live at the time we live and not at some other time, and only by extracting at each present time the full meaning of each present experience are we prepared for doing the same thing in the future.”
― John Dewey
24. “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
25. “The only way to abolish war is to make peace seem heroic.”
― John Dewey
26. “Every one has experienced how learning an appropriate name for what was dim and vague cleared up and crystallized the whole matter. Some meaning seems distinct almost within reach, but is elusive; it refuses to condense into definite form; the attaching of a word somehow (just how, it is almost impossible to say) puts limits around the meaning, draws it out from the void, makes it stand out as an entity on its own account.”
― John Dewey
27. “Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another.”
― John Dewey
28. “The educational process has no end beyond itself; it is its own end.”
― John Dewey
29. “Conflict is the gadfly of thought. It stirs us to observation and memory. It instigates invention. It shocks us out of sheep-like passivity, and sets us at noting and contriving…conflict is a sine qua non of reflection and ingenuity.”
― John Dewey
30. “The only freedom that is of enduring importance is the freedom of intelligence, that is to say, freedom of observation and of judgment, exercised in behalf of purposes that are intrinsically worth while. The commonest mistake made about freedom is, I think, to identify it with freedom of movement, or, with the external or physical side of activity.”
― John Dewey
31. “Like the soil, mind is fertilized while it lies fallow, until a new burst of bloom ensues.”
― John Dewey
32. “The goal of education is to enable individuals to continue their education.”
― John Dewey
33. “As long as politics is the shadow of big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance.”
― John Dewey
34. “wonder is the mother of all science.”
― John Dewey
35. “Every art communicates because it expresses. It enables us to share vividly and deeply in meanings… For communication is not announcing things… Communication is the process of creating participation, of making common what had been isolated and singular… the conveyance of meaning gives body and definiteness to the experience of the one who utters as well as to that of those who listen.”
― John Dewey
36. “Anyone who has begun to think, places some portion of the world in jeopardy.”
― John Dewey
37. “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.”
― John Dewey
38. “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.”
― John Dewey
39. “A problem well-defined is a problem half solved.”
― John Dewey
40. “Of all affairs, communication is the most wonderful.”
― John Dewey
41. “The ultimate function of literature is to appreciate the world, sometimes indignantly, sometimes sorrowfully, but best of all to praise when it is luckily possible.”
― John Dewey
42. “An empirical philosophy is in any case a kind of intellectual disrobing. We cannot permanently divest ourselves of the intellectual habits we take on and wear when we assimilate the culture of our own time and place. But intelligent furthering of culture demands that we take some of them off, that we inspect them critically to see what they are made of and what wearing them does to us. We cannot achieve recovery of primitive naïveté. But there is attainable a cultivated naïveté of eye, ear and thought.”
― John Dewey
43. “Knowledge is humanistic in quality not because it is about human products in the past, but because of what it does in liberating human intelligence and human sympathy. Any subject matter which accomplishes this result is humane, and any subject matter which does not accomplish it is not even educational.”
― John Dewey
44. “إن أعمق دافع في طبيعة الإنسان هو الرغبة في أن يكون مهماً”
― John Dewey
45. “Insecurity cuts deeper and extends more widely than bare unemployment. Fear of loss of work, dread of the oncoming of old age, create anxiety and eat into self-respect in a way that impairs personal dignity.”
― John Dewey
46. “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
47. “Intellectual progress usually occurs through sheer abandonment of questions together with both of the alternatives they assume — an abandonment that results from their decreasing vitality and a change of urgent interest. We do not solve them: we get over them.”
― John Dewey
48. “I feel the gods are pretty dead, though I suppose I ought to know that however, to be somewhat more philosophical in the matter, if atheism means simply not being a theist, then of course I’m an atheist.
[Letter to Max Otto]”
― John Dewey
49. “Now in many cases—too many cases—the activity of the immature human being is simply played upon to secure habits which are useful. He is trained like an animal rather than educated like a human being.”
― John Dewey
50. “Nothing is more tragic than failure to discover one’s true business in life, or to find that one has drifted or been forced by circumstance into an uncongenial calling.”
― John Dewey
51. “For, as I have suggested, disruption of the unity of the self is not limited to the cases that come to physicians and institutions for treatment. They accompany every disturbance of normal relations of husband and wife, parent and child, group and group, class and class, nation and nation. Emotional responses are so total as compared with the partial nature of intellectual responses, of ideas and abstract conceptions, that their consequences are more pervasive and enduring. I can, accordingly, think of nothing of greater practical importance than the psychic effects of human relationships, normal and abnormal, should be the object of continues study, including among the consequences the indirect somatic effects.” – The unity of the human being”
― John Dewey
52. “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
53. “Collateral learning in the way of formation of enduring attitudes, of likes and dislikes, may be and often is much more important than the spelling lesson or lesson in geography or history that is learned. For these attitudes are fundamentally what count in the future. The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning. If impetus in this direction is weakened instead of being intensified, something much more than mere lack of preparation takes place. The pupil is actually robbed of native capacities which otherwise would enable him [sic] to cope with the circumstances that he meets in the course of his life. We often see persons who have had little schooling and in whose case the absence of set schooling proves to be a positive asset. They have at least retained their native common sense and power of judgement, and its exercise in the actual conditions of living has given them the precious gift of ability to learn from the experiences they have.”
― John Dewey
54. “Forty years spent in wandering in a wilderness like that of the present is not a sad fate–unless one attempts to make himself believe that the wilderness is after all itself the promised land”
― John Dewey
55. “most notable distinction between living and inanimate beings is that the former maintain themselves by renewal.”
― John Dewey
56. “The conception that growth and progress are just approximations to a final unchanging goal is the last infirmity of the mind in its transition from a static to a dynamic understanding of life.”
― John Dewey
57. “The way our group or class does things tends to determine the proper objects of attention, and thus to prescribe the directions and limits of observation and memory. What is strange or foreign (that is to say outside the activities of the groups) tends to be morally forbidden and intellectually suspect.”
― John Dewey
58. “Preparation” is a treacherous idea. In a certain sense every experience should do something to prepare a person for later experiences of a deeper and more expansive quality. That is the very meaning of growth, continuity, reconstruction of experience. But it is a mistake to suppose that the mere acquisition of a certain amount of arithmetic, geography, history, etc., which is taught and studied because it may be useful at some time in the future, has this effect, and it is a mistake to suppose that acquisition of skills in reading and figuring will automatically constitute preparation for their right and effective use under conditions very unlike those in which they were acquired.”
― John Dewey
59. “Expertness of taste is at once the result and reward of constant exercise of thinking.”
― John Dewey
60. “Collateral learning in the way of formation of enduring attitudes, of likes and dislikes, may be and often is much more important than the spelling lesson or lesson in geography or history that is learned.”
― John Dewey
61. “It is [the teacher’s] business to be on the alert to see what attitudes and habitual tendencies are being created. In this direction he[sic] must, if he is an educator, be able to judge what attitudes are actually conducive to continued growth and what are detrimental. He must, in addition, have that sympathetic understanding of individuals as individuals which gives him an idea of what is actually going on in the minds of those who are learning.”
― John Dewey
62. “Men have gone on to build up vast intellectual schemes, philosophies, and theologies, to prove that ideals are not real as ideals but as antecedently existing actualities. They have failed to see that in converting moral realities into matters of intellectual assent they have evinced lack of moral faith. Faith that something should be in existence as far as lies in our power is changed into the intellectual belief that it is already in existence. When physical existence does not bear out the assertion, the physical is subtly changed into the metaphysical. In this way, moral faith has been inextricably tied up with intellectual beliefs about the supernatural.”
― John Dewey
63. “Democracy is a way of life controlled by a working faith in the possibilities of human nature. Belief in the Common Man is a familiar article in the democratic creed. That belief is without basis and significance save as it means faith in the potentialities of human nature as that nature is exhibited in every human being irrespective of race, color, sex, birth and family, of material or cultural wealth. This faith may be enacted in statutes, but it is only on paper unless it is put in force in the attitudes which human beings display to one another in all the incidents and relations of daily life. To denounce Nazism for intolerance, cruelty and stimulation of hatred amounts to fostering insincerity if, in our personal relations to other persons, if, in our daily walk and conversation, we are moved by racial, color or other class prejudice; indeed, by anything save a generous belief in their possibilities as human beings, a belief which brings with it the need for providing conditions which will enable these capacities to reach fulfillment. The democratic faith in human equality is belief that every human being, independent of the quantity or range of his personal endowment, has the right to equal opportunity with every other person for development of whatever gifts he has.”
― John Dewey
64. “Empirically, things are poignant, tragic, beautiful, humorous, settled, disturbed, comfortable, annoying, barren, harsh, consoling, splendid, fearful; are such immediately and in their own right and behalf…. These traits stand in themselves on precisely the same level as colours, sounds, qualities of contact, taste and smell. Any criterion that finds the latter to be ultimate and “hard” data will, impartially applied, come to the same conclusion about the former. -Any- quality as such is final; it is at once initial and terminal; just what it is as it exists. it may be referred to other things, it may be treated as an effect or a sign. But this involves an extraneous extension and use. It takes us beyond quality in its immediate qualitativeness….
The surrender of immediate qualities, sensory and significant, as objects of science, and as proper forms of classification and understanding, left in reality these immediate qualities just as they were; since they are -had- there is no need to -know- them. But… the traditional view that the object of knowledge is reality par excellence led to the conclusion that the object of science was preeminently metaphysically real. Hence, immediate qualities, being extended from the object of science, were left thereby hanging loose from the “real” object. Since their -existence- could not be denied, they were gathered together into a psychic realm of being, set over against the object of physics. Given this premise, all the problems regarding the relation of mind and matter, the psychic and the bodily, necessarily follow. Change the metaphysical premise; restore, that is to say, immediate qualities to their rightful position as qualities of inclusive situations, and the problems in question cease to be epistemological problems. They become specifiable scientific problems; questions, that is to say, of how such and such an event having such and such qualities actually occurs.”
― John Dewey
65. “The only way to prepare for social life is to engage in social life. To form habits of social usefulness and serviceableness apart from any direct social need and motive, apart from any existing social situation, is, to the letter, teaching the child to swim by going through motions outside of the water.”
― John Dewey
66. “Leonardo virtually announced the birth of the method of modern science when he said that true knowledge begins with opinion.”
― John Dewey
67. “Education is not preparation for life, Education is life itself.”
― John Dewey
68. “Who can reckon up the loss of moral power that arises from the constant impression that nothing is worth doing in itself, but only as a preparation for something else, which in turn is only a getting ready for some genuinely serious end beyond?”
― John Dewey
69. “An intelligent home differs from an unintelligent one chiefly in that the habits of life and intercourse which prevail are chosen, or at least colored, by the thought of their bearing upon the development of children.”
― John Dewey
70. “. . . have not some religions, including the most influential forms of Christianity, taught that the heart of man is totally corrupt? How could the course of religion in its entire sweep not be marked by practices that are shameful in their cruelty and lustfulness, and by beliefs that are degraded and intellectually incredible? What else than what we can find could be expected, in the case of people having little knowledge and no secure method of knowing; with primitive institutions, and with so little control of natural forces that they lived in a constant state of fear?”
― John Dewey
71. “In the mass of people, vegetative and animal functions dominate. Their energy of intelligence is so feeble and inconstant that it is constantly overpowered by bodily appetite and passion.Such persons are not truly ends in themselves, for only reason constitutes a final end. Like plants, animals and physical tools, they are means, appliances, for the attaining of ends beyond themselves, although unlike them they have enough intelligence to exercise a certain discretion in the execution of the tasks committed to them. Thus by nature, and not merely by social convention, there are those who are slaves—that is, means for the ends of others.”
― John Dewey
72. “If a plague carried off the members of a society all at once, it is obvious that the group would be permanently done for. Yet the death of each of its constituent members is as certain as if an epidemic took them all at once. But the graded difference in age, the fact that some are born as some die, makes possible through transmission of ideas and practices the constant reweaving of the social fabric. Yet this renewal is not automatic. Unless pains are taken to see that genuine and thorough transmission takes place, the most civilized group will relapse into barbarism and then into savagery.”
― John Dewey
73. “The two limits of every unit of thinking are a perplexed, troubled, or confused situation at the beginning, and a cleared up, unified, resolved situation at the close.”
― John Dewey
74. “Cease conceiving of education as mere preparation for later life, and make it the full meaning of the present life.”
― John Dewey
75. “When theories of values do not afford intellectual assistance in framing ideas and beliefs about values that are adequate to direct action, the gap must be filled by other means. If intelligent method is lacking, prejudice, the pressure of immediate circumstance, self-interest and class-interest, traditional customs, institutions of accidental historic origin, are not lacking, and they tend to take the place of intelligence.”
― John Dewey
76. “As formal teaching and training grow in extent, there is the danger of creating an undesirable split between the experience gained in more direct associations and what is acquired in school. This danger was never greater than at the present time, on account of the rapid growth in the last few centuries of knowledge and technical modes of skill.”
― John Dewey
77. “The intermingling in the school of youth of different races, differing religions, and unlike customs creates for all a new and broader environment. Common subject matter accustoms all to a unity of outlook upon a broader horizon than is visible to the members of any group while it is isolated. The assimilative force of the American public school is eloquent testimony to the efficacy of the common and balanced appeal.”
― John Dewey
78. “Thinking and feeling that have to do with action in association with others is as much a social mode of behavior as is the most overt cooperative or hostile act.”
― John Dewey
79. “The scientific method is the only authentic means at our command for getting at the significance of our everyday experiences of the world in which we live…scientific method provides a working pattern of the way in which and conditions under which experiences are used to lead ever onward and outward.”
― John Dewey
80. “If humanity has made some headway in realizing that the ultimate value of every institution is its distinctively human effect—its effect upon conscious experience—we may well believe that this lesson has been learned largely through dealings with the young.”
― John Dewey
81. “وأن لنا أن نتعزى بأن نقول إن ظروفاَ غير عادية، مثل ما قد ىيصيب بعض الدول من خذلان وإذلال قومي، قد دفع الناس إلى الترحيب بأي شكل من أشكال الحُكم، يمكن أن يعيد إليهم الاحترام لوقميتهم وكرامتهم الأهلية”
― John Dewey
82. “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
83. “I believe finally, that education must be conceived as a continuing reconstruction of experience; that the process and the goal of education are one and the same thing.”
― John Dewey
84. “I believe that the school must represent life – life as real and vital to the child as that which he carries on in the home, in the neighborhood, or on the playground.”
― John Dewey
85. “Except in dealing with commonplaces and catch phrases one has to assimilate, imaginatively, something of another’s experience in order to tell him intelligently of one’s own experience.”
― John Dewey
86. “New inventions, new machines, new methods of transportation and intercourse are making over the whole scene of action year by year. It is an absolute impossibility to educate the child for any fixed station in life.”
― John Dewey
87. “To be intelligently experimental is but to be conscious of [the] intersection of natural conditions so as to profit by it instead of being at its mercy. The Christian idea of this world and this life as a probation is a kind of distorted recognition of the situation; distorted because it applied wholesale to one stretch of existence in contrast with another, regarded as original and final”
― John Dewey
88. “The most important factor in the training of good mental habits consists in acquiring the attitude of suspended conclusion, and in mastering the various methods of searching for new materials to corroborate or to refute the first suggestions that occur. To maintain the state of doubt and to carry on systematic and protracted inquiry ― these are the essentials of thinking.”
― John Dewey
89. “Absence of social blame is the usual mark of goodness for it shows that evil has been avoided. Blame is most readily averted by being so much like everybody else that one passes unnoticed. Conventional morality is a drab morality, in which the only fatal thing is to be conspicuous. If there be flavor left in it, then some natural traits have somehow escaped being subdued.”
― John Dewey
90. “If a mans actions are not guided by thoughtful conclusions, then they are guided by inconsiderate impulse, unbalanced appetite, caprice, or the circumstances of the moment. To cultivate unhindered, reflective external activity is to foster enslavement, for it leaves the person at the mercy of appetite, sense and circumstance”
― John Dewey
91. “As an individual passes from one situation to another, his [sic] world, his environment, expands or contracts. He does not find himself living in another world but in a different part or aspect of one and the same world. What he has learned in the way of knowledge and skill in one situation becomes an instrument of understanding and dealing effectively with the situations which follow. The process goes on as long as life and learning continue. Otherwise the course of experience is disorderly, since the individual factor that enters into making an experience is split. A divided world, a world whose parts and aspects do not hang together, is at once a sign and a cause of a divided personality. When the splitting-up reaches a certain point we call the person insane. A fully integrated personality, on the other hand, exists only when successive experiences are integrated with one another. It can be built up only as a world of related objects is constructed.”
― John Dewey
92. “Mind as a concrete thing is precisely the power to understand things in terms of the use made of them; a socialized mind is the power to understand them in terms of the use to which they are turned in joint or shared situations. And mind in this sense is the method of social control.”
― John Dewey
93. “Active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusions to which it tends, constitutes reflective thought… It is a conscious and voluntary effort to establish belief upon a firm basis of reasons.”
― John Dewey
94. “it is of the highest concernment that care should be taken of its conduct is a moderate statement. While the power of thought frees us from servile subjection to instinct, appetite, and routine, it also brings with it the occasion and possibility of error and mistake. In elevating us above the brute, it opens to us the possibility of failures to which the animal, limited to instinct, cannot sink.”
― John Dewey
95. “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
96. “In a sense the mind of savage peoples is an effect, rather than a cause, of their backward institutions.”
― John Dewey
97. “ان التهديد الخطير الذي يواجه ديمقراطيتنا ليس هو وجود دول تسلطية شمولية ، بل انه الوجود داخل مواقفنا الشخصية وداخل مؤسساتنا هو الذي يعطي انتصارا للسلطة الخارجية والنظام والهيمنة والاعتماد على (الزعيم) في الدول الاجنبية . ومن ثم ايضا فان ساحة المعركة هي هنا – داخل انفسنا ومؤسساتنا.”
― John Dewey
98. “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
99. “The savage deals largely with crude stimuli; we have weighted stimuli. Prior human efforts have made over natural conditions. As they originally existed they were indifferent to human endeavors. Every domesticated plant and animal, every tool, every utensil, every appliance, every manufactured article, every esthetic decoration, every work of art means a transformation of conditions once hostile or indifferent to characteristic human activities into friendly and favoring conditions. Because the activities of children today are controlled by these selected and charged stimuli, children are able to traverse in a short lifetime what the race has needed slow, tortured ages to attain. The dice have been loaded by all the successes which have preceded.”
― John Dewey
100. “Since the artist cares in a peculiar way for the phase of experience in which union is achieved, he does not shun moments of resistance and tension. He rather cultivates them, not for their own sake but because of their potentialities, bringing to living consciousness an experience that is unified and total.”
― John Dewey
101. “Whole object of intellectual education is formation of logical disposition”
― John Dewey
102. “…never let fear define who you are, and never let where you came from determine where you are going.”
― John Dewey
103. “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
104. “Experience presents itself as the method, and the only method, for getting at nature, penetrating its secrets, and wherein nature empirically discloses (by the use of empirical method in natural science) deepens, enriches and directs the further development of experience.”
― John Dewey
105. “we may lead a horse to water we cannot make him drink; and that while we can shut a man up in a penitentiary we cannot make him penitent.”
― John Dewey
106. “We rarely recognize the extent in which our conscious estimates of what is worth while and what is not, are due to standards of which we are not conscious at all. But in general it may be said that the things which we take for granted without inquiry or reflection are just the things which determine our conscious thinking and decide our conclusions.”
― John Dewey
107. “Life itself consists of phases in which the organism falls out of step with the march of surrounding things and then recovers unison with it—either through effort or by some happy chance. And, in a growing life, the recovery is never mere return to a prior state, for it is enriched by the state of disparity and resistance through which it has successfully passed. If the gap between organism and environment is too wide, the creature dies. If its activity is not enhanced by the temporary alienation, it merely subsists. Life grows when a temporary falling out is a transition to a more extensive balance of the energies of the organism with those of the conditions under which it lives.”
― John Dewey
108. “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
109. “To me, faith means not worrying.”
― John Dewey
110. “Individuality, conceived as a temporal development involves uncertainty, indeterminacy, or contingency. Individuality is the source of whatever is unpredictable in the world….genuine time, if it exists as anything else except the measure of motions in space, is all one with the existence of individuals as individuals, with the creative, with the occurrence of unpredictable novelties. Everything that can be said contrary to this conclusion is but a reminder that an individual may lose his individuality, for individuals become imprisoned in routine and fall to the level of mechanisms. Genuine time then ceases to be an integral element of their being. Our behavior becomes predictable, because it is but an external rearrangement of what went before….surrender of individuality by the many to someone who is taken to be a superindividual explains the retrograde movement of society. Dictatorships and totalitarian states, and belief in the inevitability of this or that result coming to pass are, strange as it may sound, ways of denying the reality of time and the creativeness of the individual….the artist in realizing his own individuality reveals potentialities hitherto unrealized. The revelation is the inspiration of other individuals to make the potentialities real, for it is not sheer revolt against things as they are which stirs human endeavor to its depth, but vision of what might be and is not. Subordination of the artists to any special cause no matter how worthy does violence not only to the artist but to the living source of a new and better future.”
― John Dewey
111. “Reflection involves not simply a sequence of ideas, but a consequence—a consecutive ordering in such a way that each determines the next as its proper outcome, while each in turn leans back on its predecessors.”
― John Dewey
112. “We must stop even thinking of standing up straight. To think of it is fatal, for it commits us to the operation of an established habit of standing wrong. We must find an act within our power which is disconnected from any thought about standing. We must start to do another thing which on one side inhibits our falling into the customary bad position and on the other side is the beginning of a series of acts which may lead into the correct posture.[2] The hard-drinker”
― John Dewey
113. “Each individual that comes into the world is a new beginning; the universe itself is, as it were, taking a fresh start in him and trying to do something, even if on a small scale, that it has never done before.”
― John Dewey
114. “Just as the senses require sensible objects to stimulate them, so our powers of observation, recollection, and imagination do not work spontaneously, but are set in motion by the demands set up by current social occupations. The main texture of disposition is formed, independently of schooling, by such influences. What conscious, deliberate teaching can do is at most to free the capacities thus formed for fuller exercise, to purge them of some of their grossness, and to furnish objects which make their activity more productive of meaning.”
― John Dewey
115. “If the eye is constantly greeted by harmonious objects, having elegance of form and color, a standard of taste naturally grows up. The effect of a tawdry, unarranged, and over-decorated environment works for the deterioration of taste, just as meager and barren surroundings starve out the desire for beauty. Against such odds, conscious teaching can hardly do more than convey second-hand information as to what others think. Such taste never becomes spontaneous and personally engrained, but remains a labored reminder of what those think to whom one has been taught to look up.”
― John Dewey
116. “our daily associations cannot be trusted to make clear to the young the part played in our activities by remote physical energies, and by invisible structures. Hence a special mode of social intercourse is instituted, the school, to care for such matters.”
― John Dewey
117. “Since language represents the physical conditions that have been subjected to the maximum transformation in the interests of social life—physical things which have lost their original quality in becoming social tools—it is appropriate that language should play a large part compared with other appliances.”
― John Dewey
118. “it is not exact or relevant to say “I experience” or “I think.” “It” experiences or is experienced, “it” thinks or is thought, is a juster phrase. Experience, a serial course of affairs with their own characteristic properties and relationships, occurs, happens, and is what it is. Among and within these occurrences, not outside of them nor underlying them, are those events which are denominated selves.”
― John Dewey
119. “Holding the mind to a subject is like holding a ship to its course; it implies constant change of place combined with unity of direction.”
― John Dewey
120. “Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.”
― John Dewey
121. “In object lessons in elementary education and in laboratory instruction in higher education, the subject is often so treated that the student fails to “see the forest on account of the trees.”
― John Dewey
122. “Let us say, in a word, that the correlation between the laws of mathematics and of physics is the evidence of the rational character of nature. Nature may be reduced to motions; and motions can be understood only as force, activity. But the laws which connect motions are fundamentally mathematical laws,- laws of reason. Hence force, activity, can be understood only as rational, as spiritual. Nature is thus seen to mean Activity, and Activity is seen to mean Intelligence”
― John Dewey
123. “It is mere ignorance that leads then to the supposition that connection of art and esthetic perception with experience signifies a lowering of their significance and dignity.”
― John Dewey
124. “Experience in the degree in which it is experience is heightened vitality. Instead of signifying being shut up within one’s own private feelings and sensations, it signifies active and alert commerce with the world; at its height it signifies complete interpenetration of self and the world of objects and events.”
― John Dewey
125. “We cannot expect to gain true knowledge without acting upon our ideas.”
― John Dewey
126. “The “matter” of materialists and the “spirit” of idealists is a creature similar to the constitution of the United States in the minds of unimaginative persons. Obviously the real constitution is certain basic relationships among the activities of the citizens of the country; it is a property or phase of these processes, so connected with them as to influence their rate and direction of change. But by literalists it is often conceived of as something external to them; in itself fixed, a rigid framework to which all changes must accommodate themselves.”
― John Dewey
127. “When the organization called soul is free, moving and operative, initial as well as terminal, it is spirit. Qualities are both static, substantial, and transitive. Spirit quickens; it is not only alive, but spirit gives life. Animals are spirited, but man is a living spirit. He lives in his works and his works do follow him. Soul is form, spirit informs. It is the moving function of that of which soul is the substance. Perhaps the words soul and spirit are so heavily laden with traditional mythology and sophisticated doctrine that they must be surrendered; it may be impossible to recover for them in science and philosophy the realities designated in idiomatic speech. But the realities are there, by whatever names they be called.”
― John Dewey
128. “No words are oftener on our lips than thinking and thought. So profuse and varied, indeed, is our use of these words that it is not easy to define just what we mean by them.”
― John Dewey
129. “The very essence of civilized culture is that we deliberately erect monuments and memorials, lest we forget…”
― John Dewey
130. “hear you don’t believe I know enough to hold office. I wish you to understand that I am thinking about something or other most of the time.”
― John Dewey
131. “Professed scientific philosophers have been wont to employ the remoter and refinished products of science in ways which deny, discount or pervert the obvious and immediate facts of gross experience, unmindful that thereby philosophy itself commits suicide.”
― John Dewey
132. “In an experience, flow is from something to something. As one part leads into another and as one part carries on what went before, each gains distinctness in itself. The enduring whole is diversified by successive phases that are emphases of its varied colors.”
― John Dewey
133. “Thinking is not a case of spontaneous combustion; it does not occur just on “general principles.”
― John Dewey
134. “Zıt yönde bir aşırılığa gidilerek, mevcut koşullar altında her ne kadar doğal görünse de yine de talihsiz olan bir şekilde, eğitimin kullanacağı materyali şimdideki deneyimden seçmesi ve öğrencinin şimdinin ve geleceğin sorunları ile baş edebilmesini sağlaması biçimindeki geçerli düşünce, çoğu zaman ilerlemeci anlayışa sahip okulların geçmişi büyük ölçüde yok sayabileceği düşüncesine dönüştürülmüştür. Eğer şimdi, geçmişten koparılabilecek olsaydı bu çıkarım geçerli olurdu. Ancak şimdiyi anlamakta kullanılabilecek tek yol geçmişin başarılarıdır. Tıpkı bireyin kendisini içerisinde bulduğu koşulları anlamak için belleğine yönelmek zorunda olması gibi, şimdideki toplumsal yaşamın sorunları geçmişle o kadar yakın ve doğrudan bir ilişki içerisindedir ki; öğrenciler bu sorunların geçmişte yatan kökenlerini incelemeden ne bu sorunları anlayabilirler ne de en iyi çözüm yollarını bulabilirler. Başka bir deyişle, öğrenmenin amaçlarının gelecekte ve kullanması gereken materyalin de şimdide olduğu şeklindeki geçerli prensip, ancak ve ancak şimdideki deneyimin geriye doğru genişletilebildiği oranda hayata geçirilebilir. Deneyim, geleceğe doğru ancak geçmişe doğru da genişlediği sürece genişleyebilir.”
― John Dewey
135. “Let us admit the case of the conservative: If we once start thinking, no one can guarantee what will be the outcome, except that many objects, ends, and institutions will be surely doomed. Every thinker puts some portion of an apparently stable world in peril, and no one can wholly predict what will emerge in its place.”
― John Dewey
136. “I question whether the spiritual life does not get its surest and most ample guarantees when it is learned that the laws and conditions of righteousness are implicated in the working processes of the universe; when it is found that man in his conscious struggles, in his doubts, temptations and defeats, in his aspirations and successes, is moved on and buoyed up by the forces which have developed nature.”
― John Dewey
137. “Genuine ignorance is more profitable because likely to be accompanied by humility, curiosity, and open-mindedness; while ability to repeat catch-phrases, cant terms, familiar propositions, gives the conceit of learning and coats the mind with a varnish waterproof to new ideas.”
― John Dewey
138. “Not perfection as a final goal, but the ever-enduring process of perfecting, maturing, refining is the aim of living.”
― John Dewey
139. “A culture that permits science to destroy traditional values but which distrusts its power to create new ones is a culture which is destroying itself.”
― John Dewey
140. “Education is not preparation for life. Education is life itself.”
― John Dewey
141. “Education is not preparation for life; it is life itself.”
― John Dewey
142. “Art is the living and concrete proof that man is capable of restoring consciously, and thus on the plane of meaning, the union of sense, need, impulse and action characteristic of the live creature. The intervention of consciousness adds regulation, power of selection, and redisposition. Thus it varies the arts in ways without end. But its intervention also leads in time to the idea of art as a conscious idea—the greatest intellectual achievement in the history of humanity.”
― John Dewey
143. “Although recognition of the fact still halts, because of traditions established before the power of art was adequately recognized, science itself is but a central art auxiliary to the generation and utilization of other arts.*”
― John Dewey
144. “The psychologist, in his most remote and technical occupation with mechanism, is contributing his bit to that ordered knowledge which alone enables mankind to secure a larger and to direct a more equal flow of values in life.”
― John Dewey
145. “Only in this connection of knowledge and social action can education generate the understanding… necessary for the continued existence of democracy.”
― John Dewey
146. “Progressivism |ilerlemecilik| gibi bir -izm’in bile dâhil olduğu eğitimle ilgili bir grup ‘izm’lere değil de, sadece ‘Eğitim’ kavramının kendisine dayalı olarak düşünmek gerekmektedir. Çünkü herhangi bir -izm’e dayalı olarak düşünen ve davranan her hareket, diğer -izm’lere karşı tepki gösterme davranışının içerisinde öylesine kaybolur ki; bir noktada, kendisine rağmen ve kendisi bile farkına varmadan, diğer ‘izm’ler tarafından yönetilmeye başlar. Çünkü böyle bir durumda bu hareket kendi prensiplerini gerçek ihtiyaçların, sorunların ve ihtimallerin kapsamlı ve yapıcı bir değerlendirmesini yaparak değil de, sırf başka hareketlere tepki olarak oluşturmuş duruma gelir.”
― John Dewey
147. “Gerçek eğitimin deneyimler yoluyla gerçekleştiğine inanmak tüm deneyimlerin gerçek anlamda veya eş düzeyde eğitici olduğuna inanmak anlamına gelmez. Deneyim ve eğitim birbiriyle doğrudan eşleştirilemez. Çünkü bazı deneyimler yanlış yönde eğiticidir. Başka deneyimlerin gelişmesini engellemek veya sekteye uğratmak gibi bir etkisi olan tüm deneyimler yanlış yönde eğiticidir. Bir deneyim vurdumduymazlığa yol açabilir; duyarlılığın ve tepkiselliğin eksilmesine neden olabilir. Bu durumda gelecekte daha zengin deneyimler elde etme ihtimali sınırlanmış olur. Yine aynı şekilde, başka bir deneyim kişinin özdevinimlilik becerisini belirli bir yönde arttırıp diğer taraftan da aynı kişiyi önceden belirlenmiş bir kalıba sokma eğiliminde olabilir; bu durumda da sonuç yine başka deneyimlerin gerçekleşebileceği alanın daralmasıdır. Bir deneyim bir taraftan çok eğlenceli olabilir, ama diğer taraftan gevşek ve dikkatsiz bir tutum oluşmasına yol açabilir; böyle bir durumdaysa bu tutum, gelecekteki deneyimlerin niteliğini, kişinin bu deneyimlerin vereceği şeylerin tümünü almasını engelleyecek şekilde değiştirir. Benzer şekilde, deneyimler birbirlerinden öylesine kopuk olabilir ki; her biri kendi başına kabul edilebilir ve hatta heyecan verici olsa da, bu deneyimler arasında sayıca giderek artan ve güçlenen bağlar kurulamaz. Bunun sonucu olarak da enerji düzensiz bir şekilde dağılır ve kişi dağınık fikirli olur. Her bir deneyim kendi başına canlı, berrak ve “heyecan verici” olabilir, ancak diğer deneyimlerden kopuk olduğu zaman bu durum suni olarak dağınık, bütünlüğü olmayan ve savruk alışkanlıklar doğurur. Bu tür alışkanlıkların oluşması da gelecekteki deneyimleri kontrol edebilmede yetersizlikle sonuçlanır. Bu durumdaysa, sözkonusu deneyimler ya zevkle ya da hoşnutsuzluk ve isyanla edinilir. Bu tür koşullar altındaysa öz denetimden bahsetmek boşunadır.”
― John Dewey
148. “Herhangi bir deneyimin niteliğinde bakılması gereken iki nokta vardır. Birinci nokta deneyimin kabul edilebilirliği veya kabul edilemezliğiyle; ikincisi ise bu deneyimin daha sonraki deneyimler üzerindeki etkisiyle ilgilidir. Bunlardan birincisini görmek ve hükümde bulunmak kolaydır. Fakat, bir deneyimin etkisi kendisine bakılarak görülemez. Bu durum eğitimci açısından bir sorun teşkil etmektedir. Bir yandan öğrencinin faaliyetlerini geri plana değil de ön plana iten, diğer yandan da gelecekteki deneyimlere karşı istek aşılayarak eğlenceli hale gelen tarzda deneyimler düzenlemek öğretmenin işidir. Tıpkı bir insanın kendisiyle yaşayıp kendisiyle ölmemesi gibi, bir deneyim de kendisiyle yaşayıp kendisiyle ölmez. Bütün deneyimler istek veya amaçtan bağımsız olarak başka deneyimler içerisinde yaşamaya devam eder. Bu neden le, deneyim temeli üzerinde kurulu bir eğitim anlayışının çözmesi gereken sorun, daha sonraki deneyimlerde de üretken ve yaratıcı bir şekilde yaşamaya devam edebilecek deneyimlerin şimdide seçilmesidir.”
― John Dewey
149. “The rhythm of loss of integration with environment and recovery of union not only persists in man but becomes conscious with him; its conditions are material out of which he forms purposes. Emotion is the conscious sign of a break, actual or impending. The discord is the occasion that induces reflection. Desire for restoration of the union converts mere emotion into interest in objects as conditions of realization of harmony. With the realization, material of reflection is incorporated into objects as their meaning.”
― John Dewey
150. “Bu açıdan bakıldığında, deneyimin devamlılığı prensibinin anlamı, her deneyimin daha önceki deneyimlerden bir şeyler alması ve kendinden sonra gelecek deneyimlerin niteliğini de bir şekilde değiştirmesidir. Tıpkı şairin söylediği gibi,
… tüm deneyim bir su kemeridir,
Her kıpırdamamla sınırları sonsuzda kaybolan
Gezilmemiş bir dünyanın parıldayarak içerisinden aktığı.*
― John Dewey
151. “Lord Alfred Tennyson’ın 1842 tarihli “Ulysses” (Odiseus) başlıklı şiirinin 19-21’nci mısralarından tercüme edilmiştir. Ç.N.”
― John Dewey
152. “Kısaca ifade etmek gerekirse, doğumumuzdan ölümümüze kadar büyük oranda daha önceki insan faaliyetlerinin meydana getirdiği ve sonraki kuşaklara aktarılmış olan deneyimlerin neden olduğu bir insanlar ve nesneler dünyası içerisinde yaşarız. Eğer bu gerçek göz ardı edilirse, deneyim sanki sadece bireyin bedeninde ve zihninde devam eden bir şeymiş gibi algılanmış olur. Hâlbuki deneyimin bir boşluk içerisinde gerçekleşmediğini söylemeye gerek bile olmaması lazımdır. Bireyin dışında da deneyime yol açan kaynaklar vardır. Deneyim sürekli olarak bu pınarlardan beslenmektedir. Kenar mahallede yaşayan bir çocuğun kültürlü bir evde yaşayan çocuktan; kırsal kesimde yaşayan bir delikanlının şehir çocuğundan veya deniz kenarında yaşayan bir çocuğun denizden uzak çayırlarda yetişmiş olan delikanlıdan farklı deneyimlere sahip olduğu gerçeğini hiç kimse sorgulamaz. Bu tür gerçekleri zaten olmaları gerektiği gibi olduklarından sıradan bulur ve kayda değer görmeyiz. Ancak bu gerçeklerin eğitimsel önemi anlaşılırsa, eğitimcinin zorlama yapmadan gençlerin deneyimlerine yön vermekte kullanabileceği ikinci yolu işaret ettikleri görülecektir. Eğitimcilerin birincil sorumluluğu, gerçek deneyimin sadece o deneyimi çevreleyen koşullarla şekillendiği genel prensibinden haberdar olmak değil, aynı zamanda hangi çevrelerin büyümeye yol açan deneyimlerin elde edilmesine yardımcı olduğunu somut bir şekilde anlamaktır. Her şeyin ötesinde, eğitimciler var olan fiziksel ve toplumsal çevreleri nasıl kullanabileceklerini ve bu çevrelerin işe yarar deneyimler oluşturma için sunduklarını nasıl çıkarıp alabileceklerini bilmelidirler.”
― John Dewey
153. “Sorun şudur ki; ilgili konu tecrit içerisinde, diğer şeylerden yalıtılmış bir şekilde öğrenilmiştir; adeta su geçirmez bir bölmeye konulmuştur. Konuyla ilgili bilgiye ne olduğu, nereye gittiği sorularına verilecek en doğru cevap da bu bilginin hala en başından beri içerisine yerleştirilmiş olduğu özel bölmede olduğu olacaktır. Öğrenildiği andaki koşulların tıpatıp aynılarının mevcut olması halinde yüzeye çıkıp kullanıma hazır olacaktır. Ancak ilk öğrenildiği anda tecrit edilmiş olduğu için diğer deneyimlerden öylesine kopuktur ki; gerçek yaşam koşulları altında ortaya çıkamaz. İlk öğretildiği zamanda ne kadar iyi yerleştirilmiş olursa olsun, bu tür bir öğrenmenin gerçek bir hazırlanma olduğunu varsaymak deneyim kanunlarına ters düşmektedir.”
― John Dewey
154. “Okul, şimdi olduğundan çok daha büyük ölçüde hayati toplumsal bir kurum olmak zorundadır. Şehrin birinde yüzme için zorunlu olan çeşitli hareketleri tekrar ettirerek suya girdirmeden gençlere yüzme öğreten bir yüzme okulunun var olduğunu duymuştum. Bu şekilde eğitilen gençlerden birine, suya girdiği zaman ne yaptığı sorulduğunda lafı dolandırmadan ‘battığını’ söylemiştir. Bu hikâye, gerçek olsa da olmasa da okulun toplumla olan etik ilişkisini simgelemesi bakımından güzel bir hikâyedir. Okul, kendi içinde tipik toplumsal yaşam koşullarını oluşturmadıkça, toplumsal yaşama hazırlayıcı güçte olamaz. Şu anda da zaten büyük ölçüde havanda su dövmekle meşgul görünüyor!”
― John Dewey
155. “Intelligence converts desire into plans, systematic plans based on assembling facts, reporting events as they happen, keeping tab on them and analyzing them.”
― John Dewey
156. “The atomic doctrine with Democritus’ thoroughgoing undertaking to substitute a quantitative185 for a qualitative conception of matter with the location of the qualitative aspects of the world in the experience of the soul appealed only to the Epicurean who used the theory as an exorcism to drive out of the universe the spirits which disturbed the calm of the philosopher.”
― John Dewey
157. “Öyleyse eğitimsel anlamda hazırlanmanın gerçek anlamı nedir? Her şeyden önce, bu, genç ya da yaşlı olsun, kişinin tecrübe etmekte olduğu deneyimden kendi tecrübe ettiği anda kendisi için alabileceği ne varsa almakta olduğu anlamına gelmektedir. Eğer hazırlanma düşüncesi maksat haline getirilirse, bu durumda şimdinin potansiyeli varsayılan bir gelecek için feda edilmiş olur. Bu olduğunda da geleceğe yönelik yapılacak gerçek hazırlanma şansı elden kaçmış veya saptırılmış demektir. Şimdiyi sadece geleceğe hazırlanmak için kullanmak aslında kendisiyle çelişki içerisinde olan bir düşüncedir. Bu düşünce, kişinin geleceğine hazırlanmakta kullanabileceği koşulları kenara itmekte ve hatta yok etmektedir. Daima yaşadığımız zaman içerisinde yaşarız ve ancak ve ancak her bir ‘şimdi’de mevcut olan her bir deneyimin tam anlamını çıkararak aynı şeyi gelecekte de yapmaya kendimizi hazırlayabiliriz. Uzun vadede bir sonuca ulaşan tek hazırlanma şekli budur.”
― John Dewey
158. “Gençler hakkındaki yaklaşımım, her öğrencinin veya normal olarak güçlü güdülere sahip her çocuğun tüm durumlara karşı tepki vereceğini düşünecek kadar romantik değil. Bu çocukların okula geldikleri zamana kadar okul dışındaki zedeleyici koşulların kurbanı olmuş ve herhangi bir katılımda bulunamayacak kadar edilgen ve aşırı derecede suskun hale gelmiş çocuklar olması ihtimali de vardır. Muhtemelen, daha önceki deneyimlerinin bir sonucu olarak kibirli, haylaz ve hatta tam anlamıyla isyankâr hale gelmiş başka çocuklar da olacaktır. Ancak şu da kesindir ki; toplumsal denetim prensibi bu tür vakalarda geçerli olamayacaktır. Bu tür vakalarla başa çıkmak için herhangi bir genel kural bulunamayacağı da doğrudur. Öğretmenin bu durumlarla tek tek ilgilenmesi gereklidir. Bu durumlar belki genel olarak sınıflandırılabilecektir ama hiçbiri birbirinin aynı olmayacaktır. Öğretmen, öğrencilerin serkeş tavırlarının sebeplerini kendisi keşfetmek zorundadır. Eğer eğitim süreci devam edecekse, öğretmen bunu bir ‘daha güçlü olanı bulmak için iki iradeyi çarpıştırma’ meselesi haline getiremez ve aynı zamanda da haylaz ve katılımcı olmayan öğrencilerin diğerlerinin eğitimsel faaliyetlerini kalıcı olarak engelleyecek bir noktada durmalarına da izın veremez. Bu öğrencileri dışlamak belki de alınabilecek tek mevcut önlemdir, ama kesinlikle çözüm değildir. Çünkü bu önlemin dikkat çekme veya gösteriş yapma gibi istenmedik anti-sosyal tavırların ortaya çıkmasındaki sebepleri pekiştirmesi ihtimali de vardır.”
― John Dewey
159. “Bu yazı vesilesiyle öğretmenin yeri ve mevkisi hakkında da bir şeyler söylemek uygun olacaktır. Deneyim gelişiminin etkileşim yoluyla gerçekleştiği prensibi, eğitimin özünde toplumsal bir süreç olduğu anlamına gelmektedir. Bu özellik bireylerin toplumsal bir grup oluşturduğu nispette gerçekleşir. Öğretmeni grup üyeliğinin dışında tutmak çok saçmadır. Grubun en olgun üyesi olarak öğretmenin grubun bir topluluk olarak toplumsal deneyimini oluşturan etkileşimlerin ve karşılıklı iletişimlerin yürütülmesini sağlamak gibi özel bir sorumluluğu vardır. Bir yandan çocukların özgürlüklerine saygı duyulması gereken bireyler olduğunu söylerken, diğer taraftan da daha olgun bir birey olan öğretmenin hiçbir özgürlüğünün olmaması gerektiğini ifade etmek tartışılmaya bile değmeyecek kadar saçma bir düşüncedir. Öğretmeni, üyesi olduğu bir topluluğun etkinliklerini yönlendirmede olumlu ve önderlik eden bir konumdan dışlama eğilimi, bir aşırı uçtan diğer aşırı uca giderek tepki verme durumunun başka bir örneğidir. Öğrenciler bir toplumsal gruptan ziyade bir sınıfken, öğretmen herkesin katılımının olduğu değiş-tokuş süreçlerinin yönlendiricisi olarak içeriden değil, mecburen çoğunlukla dışarıdan etki yapmaya çalışmaktaydı. Eğitim, deneyim üzerine kurulu olduğunda ve eğitici deneyim toplumsal bir süreç olarak algılandığında, bu durum köklü bir değişikliğe uğrar. Öğretmen dışarıdan etki yapan patron veya diktatör konumunu kaybedip grup etkinliklerinin lideri rolünü üstlenir.”
― John Dewey
160. “Durup düşünmek” olarak tabir ettiğimiz davranış aslında çok doğru bir psikolojik yöntemdir. Çünkü düşünmek aynı zamanda, güdünün ilk ortaya çıktığı şeklinin, bu güdünün daha geniş kapsamlı ve daha tutarlı bir faaliyet planı oluşturmak için bulunması muhtemel diğer faaliyete geçme eğilimleri ile ilişki kurmasından önce durdurulması demektir. Bu diğer faaliyete geçme eğilimlerinin bazıları, nesnel koşulları gözlemlemek için gözün, kulağın ve elin kullanılmasına yol açar; bazıları da geçmişte olan şeylerin hatrlanması ile sonuçlanır. Bu nedenle, düşünme, bir yandan gözlem ve hatıranın bütünleştirilmesi ile, ki bu bütünleşme düşünmenin kalbidir, güdünün içten denetimini sağlarken, diğer yandan da alelacele yapılacak bir hareketin geciktirilmesi etkisini yapar.”
― John Dewey
161. “Platon bir defasında köleyi başkalarının amaçlarını gerçekleştiren kişi olarak tanımlamıştır ve daha önce belirttiğimiz üzere kendi arzularının tutsağı olmuş bir kişi de aslında bir köledir.”
― John Dewey
162. “But the live creature adopts its past; it can make friends with even its stupidities, using them as warnings that increase present wariness. Instead of trying to live upon whatever may have been achieved in the past, it uses past successes to inform the present. Every living experience owes its richness to what Santayana well calls “hushed reverberations.”
― John Dewey
163. “The local is the only universal, upon that all art builds.”
― John Dewey
