Democracy and Education (1916)

Their wordsWhat nutrition and reproduction are to physiological life, education is to social life.

Their wordsAs formal teaching and training grow in extent, there is the danger of creating an undesirable split between the experience gained in more direct associations and what is acquired in school. This danger was never greater than at the present time, on account of the rapid growth in the last few centuries of knowledge and technical modes of skill.

Their wordsThe development within the young of the attitudes and dispositions necessary to the continuous and progressive life of a society cannot take place by direct conveyance of beliefs, emotions, and knowledge. It takes place through the intermediary of the environment.

Their wordsSince growth is the characteristic of life, education is all one with growing; it has no end beyond itself. The criterion of the value of school education is the extent in which it creates a desire for continued growth and supplies means for making the desire effective in fact.

Their wordsWe thus reach a technical definition of education: It is that reconstruction or reorganization of experience which adds to the meaning of experience, and which increases ability to direct the course of subsequent experience.

Their wordsA democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience.

Their wordsAn undesirable society, in other words, is one which internally and externally sets up barriers to free intercourse and communication of experience.

Their wordsIn education, the currency of these externally imposed aims is responsible for the emphasis put upon the notion of preparation for a remote future and for rendering the work of both teacher and pupil mechanical and slavish.

Their wordsAnd there is perhaps no better definition of culture than that it is the capacity for constantly expanding the range and accuracy of one's perception of meanings.

Their wordsInterest and discipline are correlative aspects of activity having an aim.

Their wordsAn ounce of experience is better than a ton of theory simply because it is only in experience that any theory has vital and verifiable significance.

Their wordsWork which remains permeated with the play attitude is art—in quality if not in conventional designation.

Their wordsThus ultimately and philosophically science is the organ of general social progress.

Their wordsThe problem of education in a democratic society is to do away with the dualism and to construct a course of studies which makes thought a guide of free practice for all and which makes leisure a reward of accepting responsibility for service, rather than a state of exemption from it.

Their wordsA progressive society counts individual variations as precious since it finds in them the means of its own growth. Hence a democratic society must, in consistency with its ideal, allow for intellectual freedom and the play of diverse gifts and interests in its educational measures.

Their wordsIf we are willing to conceive education as the process of forming fundamental dispositions, intellectual and emotional, toward nature and fellow men, philosophy may even be defined as the general theory of education.

Their wordsAll education which develops power to share effectively in social life is moral.