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
superior from the standpoint of place and use in inquiry. It states
the nature of water in a way which connects it with knowledge of other
things, indicating to one who understands it how the knowledge is
arrived at and its bearings upon other portions of knowledge of the
structure of things. Strictly speaking, it does not indicate the
objective relations of water any more than does a statement that water
is transparent, fluid, without taste or odor, satisfying to thirst,
etc. It is just as true that water has these relations as that it is
constituted by two molecules of hydrogen in combination with one of
oxygen. But for the particular purpose of conducting discovery with a
view to ascertainment of fact, the latter relations are fundamental. The
more one emphasizes organization as a mark of science, then, the more he
is committed to a recognition of the primacy of method in the definition
of science. For method defines the kind of organization in virtue of
which science is science.
4. Subject Matter as Social. Our next chapters will take up various
school activities and studies and discuss them as successive stages
in that evolution of knowledge which we have just been discussing. It
remains to say a few words upon subject matter as social, since our
prior remarks have been mainly concerned with its intellectual aspect. A
difference in breadth and depth exists even in vital knowledge; even
in the data and ideas which are relevant to real problems and which are
motivated by purposes. For there is a difference in the social scope of
purposes and the social importance of problems. With the wide range
of possible material to select from, it is important that education
(especially in all its phases short of the most specialized) should use
a criterion of social worth. All information and systematized scientific
subject matter have been worked out under the conditions of social life
and have been transmitted by social means. But this does not prove that
all is of equal value for the purposes of forming the disposition and
supplying the equipment of members of present society. The scheme of a
curriculum must take account of the adaptation of studies to the needs
of the existing community life; it must select with the intention of
improving the life we live in common so that the future shall be better
than the past. Moreover, the curriculum must be planned with reference
to placing essentials first, and refinements second. The things which
are socially most fundamental, that is, which have to do with the
experiences in which the widest groups share, are the essentials. The
things which represent the needs of specialized groups and technical
pursuits are secondary. There is truth in the saying that education must
first be human and only after that professional. But those who utter
the saying frequently have in mind in the term human only a highly
specialized class: the class of learned men who preserve the classic
traditions of the past.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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