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
The advance of science has already modified men's thoughts of the
purposes and goods of life to a sufficient extent to give some idea of
the nature of this responsibility and the ways of meeting it. Science
taking effect in human activity has broken down physical barriers
which formerly separated men; it has immensely widened the area of
intercourse. It has brought about interdependence of interests on an
enormous scale. It has brought with it an established conviction of the
possibility of control of nature in the interests of mankind and thus
has led men to look to the future, instead of the past. The coincidence
of the ideal of progress with the advance of science is not a mere
coincidence. Before this advance men placed the golden age in remote
antiquity. Now they face the future with a firm belief that intelligence
properly used can do away with evils once thought inevitable. To
subjugate devastating disease is no longer a dream; the hope of
abolishing poverty is not utopian. Science has familiarized men with
the idea of development, taking effect practically in persistent gradual
amelioration of the estate of our common humanity.
The problem of an educational use of science is then to create an
intelligence pregnant with belief in the possibility of the direction
of human affairs by itself. The method of science engrained through
education in habit means emancipation from rule of thumb and from the
routine generated by rule of thumb procedure. The word empirical in its
ordinary use does not mean "connected with experiment," but rather
crude and unrational. Under the influence of conditions created by the
non-existence of experimental science, experience was opposed in all
the ruling philosophies of the past to reason and the truly rational.
Empirical knowledge meant the knowledge accumulated by a multitude of
past instances without intelligent insight into the principles of any
of them. To say that medicine was empirical meant that it was not
scientific, but a mode of practice based upon accumulated observations
of diseases and of remedies used more or less at random. Such a mode of
practice is of necessity happy-go-lucky; success depends upon chance. It
lends itself to deception and quackery. Industry that is "empirically"
controlled forbids constructive applications of intelligence; it depends
upon following in an imitative slavish manner the models set in
the past. Experimental science means the possibility of using past
experiences as the servant, not the master, of mind. It means that
reason operates within experience, not beyond it, to give it an
intelligent or reasonable quality. Science is experience becoming
rational. The effect of science is thus to change men's idea of the
nature and inherent possibilities of experience. By the same token, it
changes the idea and the operation of reason. Instead of being something
beyond experience, remote, aloof, concerned with a sublime region
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