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
Pursued in this fashion, history would most naturally become of ethical
value in teaching. Intelligent insight into present forms of associated
life is necessary for a character whose morality is more than colorless
innocence. Historical knowledge helps provide such insight. It is an
organ for analysis of the warp and woof of the present social fabric, of
making known the forces which have woven the pattern. The use of
history for cultivating a socialized intelligence constitutes its moral
significance. It is possible to employ it as a kind of reservoir of
anecdotes to be drawn on to inculcate special moral lessons on this
virtue or that vice. But such teaching is not so much an ethical use of
history as it is an effort to create moral impressions by means of more
or less authentic material. At best, it produces a temporary emotional
glow; at worst, callous indifference to moralizing. The assistance which
may be given by history to a more intelligent sympathetic understanding
of the social situations of the present in which individuals share is a
permanent and constructive moral asset.
Summary. It is the nature of an experience to have implications which
go far beyond what is at first consciously noted in it. Bringing these
connections or implications to consciousness enhances the meaning of the
experience. Any experience, however trivial in its first appearance, is
capable of assuming an indefinite richness of significance by extending
its range of perceived connections. Normal communication with others is
the readiest way of effecting this development, for it links up the
net results of the experience of the group and even the race with the
immediate experience of an individual. By normal communication is meant
that in which there is a joint interest, a common interest, so that one
is eager to give and the other to take. It contrasts with telling or
stating things simply for the sake of impressing them upon another,
merely in order to test him to see how much he has retained and can
literally reproduce.
Geography and history are the two great school resources for bringing
about the enlargement of the significance of a direct personal
experience. The active occupations described in the previous chapter
reach out in space and time with respect to both nature and man. Unless
they are taught for external reasons or as mere modes of skill their
chief educational value is that they provide the most direct and
interesting roads out into the larger world of meanings stated in
history and geography. While history makes human implications explicit
and geography natural connections, these subjects are two phases of
the same living whole, since the life of men in association goes on in
nature, not as an accidental setting, but as the material and medium of
development.
Chapter Seventeen: Science in the Course of Study
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