Pedagogic Creed (Dewey Thoughts)

"I believe that all education proceeds by the participation of the individual in the social consciousness of the race."

"I believe that the only true education comes through the stimulation of the child's powers by the demands of the social situations in which he finds himself."

"I believe that under existing conditions far too much of the stimulus and control proceeds from the teacher because of neglect of the idea of the school as a form of social life."

Why are you in the class?

What can you exchange here?

wolfish as gleam

"I believe that we violate the child's nature and render difficult the best ethical results by introducing the child too abruptly to a number of special studies, of reading, writing, geography, etc., out of relation to this social life."

                    not not
                    enigma

    "The law for presenting and treating material is the law within the child's own nature."

"What a child gets out of any subject presented to him is simply the images which he himself forms with regard to it."

googling the wind

"I believe that interests are the signs and symptoms of growing power. I believe that they represent dawning capacities. Accordingly the constant and careful observation of interests is of the utmost importance."

                oh wow
                the nut deed

                good night wind wag

"The interest is always the sign of some power below; the important thing is to discover this power."

                vow lad as flash halo

"I believe that much of present education fails because it neglects this fundamental principle of the school as a form of community life. It conceives the school as a place where certain lessons are to be learned, or where certain habits are to be formed. The value of these is conceived as lying largely in the remote future; the child must do these things for the sake of something else he is to do; they are mere preparation. As a result they do not become a part of the life experience of the child and so are not truly educative."

What do you want to write now?

How will what you write now fit the future?

Can the present hold your interest?

        "I believe that the teacher's place and work in the school is to be interpreted from this same basis. The teacher is not in the school to impose certain ideas or to form certain habits in the child, but is there as a member of the community to select the influences which shall affect the child and to assist him in properly responding to these influences."

            "I believe that literature is the reflex expression and interpretation of social experience; that hence it must follow upon and not precede such experience. It, therefore, cannot be made the basis, although it may be made the summary of unification."

    "Language is the device for communication; it is the tool through which one individual comes to share the ideas and feelings of others. When treated simply as a way of getting individual information, or as a means of showing off what one has learned, it loses its social motive and end."

        "I believe that the image is the great instrument of instruction. What a child gets out of any subject presented to him is simply the images which he himself forms with regard to it."

                the image
                is relevance

In these declarations, he = she & he.
Insist on this completion and embrace.

Also: child = student. Transitions
are continual.

What the student sees, the student learns from;
what the student does not see, the student does not learn from.

        "There is an important distinction between verbal, mechanical memory and what older writers called judicious memory. The latter seizes the bearings of what is retained and recalled; it can, therefore, use the material in new situations where verbal memory would be completely at a loss."--Dewey, "Education in Relation to Form"

        "The school system represents not thinking but the domination of thought by the inertia of immemorial customs.—”Education as Engineering"

    Write a sentence, then write another.
See how the sentences meet together,
forming a process of thought.

Note: All quotes from:
John Dewey. The Essential Dewey, Volume One, (Bloomington and Indianapolis). Larry A. Hickman and Thomas M. Alexander, eds. Indiana University Press. 1998.

Uncited quotes are from "My Pedagogic Creed" by John Dewey.

Boldfaced phrases were discovered by Beth Garrison using an algorithmic anagram program.