The teacher loses the position of external boss or dictator but takes on that of leader of group activities.
There is no discipline in the world so severe as the discipline of experience subjected to the tests of intelligent development and direction.
Teaching may be compared to selling commodities. No one can sell unless somebody buys.
Language fails not because thought fails, but because no verbal symbols can do justice to the fullness and richness of thought. Ifwe are to continue talking about “data” in any other sense than as reflective distinctions, the original datum is always such a qualitative whole.
It is merely a linguistic peculiarity, not a logical fact, that we say “that is red” instead of “that reddens,” either in the sense of growing, becoming, red, or in the sense of making something else red.
Since there is no single set of abilities running throughout human nature, there is no single curriculum which all should undergo. Rather, the schools should teach everything that anyone is interested in learning.
It is obvious to any observer that in every western country the increase of importance of public schools has been at least coincident with the relaxation of older family ties.
That which distinguishes the Soviet system both from other national systems and from the progressive schools of other countries is the conscious control of every educational procedure by reference to a single and comprehensive social purpose.
Expertness of taste is at once the result and reward of constant exercise of thinking.
Cease conceiving of education as mere preparation for later life, and make it the full meaning of the present life.
Of all affairs, communication is the most wonderful.
Social engaged intellectuals must accept reality as they found it and shape it toward positive social goals, not stand aside in self-righteous isolation.
If there is one conclusion to which human experience unmistakably points it is that democratic ends demand democratic methods for their realization.
Since a democratic society repudiates the principle of external authority, it must find a substitute in voluntary disposition and interest; these can be created only by education.
I believe that in the ideal school we have the reconciliation of the individualistic and the institutional ideals.
I believe that the school must represent present life – life as real and vital to the child as that which he carries on in the home, in the neighborhood, or on the play-ground.
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.
The development occurs through reciprocal give-and-take, the teacher taking but not being afraid also to give.
Language exists only when it is listened to as well as spoken. The hearer is an indispensable partner.
Education as growth or maturity should be an ever-present process.