Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of EducationDewey, John
Philosophy
Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education
Dewey, John
Education -- Philosophy; Education -- Social aspects
(c) On the intellectual side, the separation of "mind" from direct
occupation with things throws emphasis on things at the expense of
relations or connections. It is altogether too common to separate
perceptions and even ideas from judgments. The latter are thought to
come after the former in order to compare them. It is alleged that the
mind perceives things apart from relations; that it forms ideas of them
in isolation from their connections--with what goes before and comes
after. Then judgment or thought is called upon to combine the separated
items of "knowledge" so that their resemblance or causal connection
shall be brought out. As matter of fact, every perception and every idea
is a sense of the bearings, use, and cause, of a thing. We do not really
know a chair or have an idea of it by inventorying and enumerating its
various isolated qualities, but only by bringing these qualities into
connection with something else--the purpose which makes it a chair and
not a table; or its difference from the kind of chair we are accustomed
to, or the "period" which it represents, and so on. A wagon is not
perceived when all its parts are summed up; it is the characteristic
connection of the parts which makes it a wagon. And these connections
are not those of mere physical juxtaposition; they involve connection
with the animals that draw it, the things that are carried on it, and so
on. Judgment is employed in the perception; otherwise the perception is
mere sensory excitation or else a recognition of the result of a prior
judgment, as in the case of familiar objects.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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