... Isolation in the SchoolUniversity of Chicago Press, 1901 - 111 pages |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
abstrac activity adult altruism Aristotle arrested development attention attitude cause character child child-study Colonel Parker conception consciousness coöperation course of study culture curriculum definite direction discussion ditions duction educa EDUCATION NUMBER egoism elementary school empiricism ence environment ethical experience expression external fact factor freedom function fundamental growth habits Herbert Spencer high school human idea ideal imitation impulses individual influence institutions intel intellectual interac interest isolation JOHN DEWEY kindergarten knowledge life-process logical material matter means mechanism ment mental method metic mind mode modern moral movement nature necessity organization original philosophy philosophy of education physical practical principle problem psychology pupils question realize recognized regard relation result rience School discipline scientific social society soul spirit stimuli subject-matter teacher teaching corps tendency theory things thought tical tion truth unity UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO vidual vital whole
Popular passages
Page 7 - The child's life is an integral, a total one. He passes quickly and readily from one topic to another, as from one spot to another, but is not conscious of transition or break. There is no conscious isolation, hardly conscious distinction. The things that occupy him...
Page 61 - It is a transformer of the world of our impressions into a totally different world, the world of our conception ; and the transformation is effected in the interests of our volitional nature, and for no other purpose whatsoever.
Page 23 - ... relation to the child. A psychological statement of experience follows its actual growth; it is historic; it notes steps actually taken, the uncertain and tortuous, as well as the efficient and successful. The logical point of view, on the other hand, assumes that the development has reached a certain positive stage of fulfilment. It neglects the process and considers the outcome. It summarizes and arranges, and thus separates the achieved results from the actual steps by which they were forthcoming...
Page 48 - In a somewhat more limited and precise view than I have previously taken of the situation, I believe we are now nearing the close of the time of tentative, blind, empirical experimentation; that we are close to the opportunity of planning our work on the basis of a coherent philosophy of experience and of the relation of school studies to that experience...
Page 14 - Abandon the notion of subject-matter as something fixed and ready-made in itself, outside the child's experience ; cease thinking of the child's experience as also something hard and fast ; see it as something fluent, embryonic, vital ; and we realize that the child and the curriculum are simply two limits which define a single process.
Page 21 - ... may be repeated here with slightly altered phrase. There are those who see no alternative between forcing the child from without, or leaving him entirely alone. Seeing no alternative, some choose one mode, some another. Both fall into the same fundamental error. Both fail to see that development is a definite process, having its own law which can be fulfilled only when adequate and normal conditions are provided. Really to interpret the child's present crude impulses in counting, measuring, and...
Page 6 - But here comes the effort of thought. It is easier to see the conditions in their separateness, to insist upon one at the expense of the other, to make antagonists of them, than to discover a reality to which each belongs.
Page 34 - Now the school, for psychological purposes, stands in many respects midway between the extreme simplifications of the laboratory and the confused complexities of ordinary life. Its conditions are those of life at large; they are social and practical. But it approaches the laboratory in so far as the ends aimed at are reduced in number, are definite, and thus simplify the conditions ; and their psychological phase is uppermost — the formation of habits of attention, observation, memory, etc. —...
Page 52 - All this is vague to the last degree, and amounts to little more than saying that a new path may be formed by the sort of chances that in nervous material are likely to occur. But, vague as it is, it is really the last word of our wisdom in the matter...
Page 30 - It is not a reality, but just the sign of a reality which might be experienced if certain conditions were fulfilled. But the abrupt presentation of the fact as something known by others, and requiring only to be studied and learned by the child, rules out such conditions of fulfilment. It condemns the fact to be a hieroglyph : it would mean something if one only had the key. The clue being lacking, it remains an idle curiosity, to fret and obstruct the mind, a dead weight to burden it. The second...