Many of the obstacles for change which have been attributed to human nature are in fact due to the inertia of institutions and to the voluntary desire of powerful classes to maintain the existing status.
It is commonplace that a problem stated is well on its way to solution, for statement of the nature of a problem signifies that the underlying quality is being transformed into determinate distinctions of terms and relations or has become an object of articulate thought.
I should venture to assert that the most pervasive fallacy of philosophic thinking goes back to neglect of context.
The only thing that is unqualifiedly given is the total pervasive quality; and the objection to calling it “given” is that the word suggests something to which it is given, mind or thought or consciousness or whatever, as well possibly as something that gives.
Experiences in order to be educative must lead out into an expanding world of subject matter, a subject matter of facts or information and of ideas. This condition is satisfied only as the educator views teaching and learning as a continuous process of reconstruction of experience.
When “reality” is sought for at large, it is without intellectual import; at most the term carries the connotation of an agreeableemotional state.
I know that there are many persons to whom it seems derogatory to link a body of philosophic ideas to the social life and cultureof their epoch. They seem to accept a dogma of immaculate conception of philosophical systems.
The intimation never wholly deserts us that there is, in the unformed activities of childhood and youth, the possibilities of a better life for the community as well as for individuals here and there. This dim sense is the ground of our abiding idealization of childhood.
The struggle for democracy has to be maintained on as many fronts as culture has aspects: political, economic, international, educational, scientific and artistic, religious.
We cannot set up, out of our heads, something we regard as an ideal society.
Experience alone cannot deliver to us necessary truths; truths completely demonstrated by reason. Its conclusions are particular, not universal.
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.