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
instructions in action--as a child minds his mother--and taking care
of something--as a nurse minds the baby. To be thoughtful, considerate,
means to heed the claims of others. Apprehension means dread of
undesirable consequences, as well as intellectual grasp. To have
good sense or judgment is to know the conduct a situation calls for;
discernment is not making distinctions for the sake of making them, an
exercise reprobated as hair splitting, but is insight into an affair
with reference to acting. Wisdom has never lost its association with
the proper direction of life. Only in education, never in the life of
farmer, sailor, merchant, physician, or laboratory experimenter, does
knowledge mean primarily a store of information aloof from doing.
Having to do with things in an intelligent way issues in acquaintance
or familiarity. The things we are best acquainted with are the things we
put to frequent use--such things as chairs, tables, pen, paper, clothes,
food, knives and forks on the commonplace level, differentiating into
more special objects according to a person's occupations in life.
Knowledge of things in that intimate and emotional sense suggested by
the word acquaintance is a precipitate from our employing them with a
purpose. We have acted with or upon the thing so frequently that we can
anticipate how it will act and react--such is the meaning of familiar
acquaintance. We are ready for a familiar thing; it does not catch us
napping, or play unexpected tricks with us. This attitude carries with
it a sense of congeniality or friendliness, of ease and illumination;
while the things with which we are not accustomed to deal are strange,
foreign, cold, remote, "abstract."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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