Democracy+and+Education+Chapter+Outlines

Democracy and Education Chapter Outlines


 * Chapter 1:**

1. Life renews itself by transforming environment for its advantage. 2. Eventually a being is exhausted, so its offspring will be better suited, the continuity of life means continual readaptation of environment to the needs of the organism. 3. ‘Life’ (as in the ‘life’ of Lincoln, etc.) suggests social antecedents, not merely physical. 4. When newborns come they must be initiated into beliefs, experiences, etc. of the mature members, this is education. 5. Society and biology survive through transmission. 6. In society, transmission of habits of doing, thinking feeling from older to younger (if the older don’t die, there is no need for transmission). 7. Renewal does not happen automatically, unless pains are taken to ensure it, relapse is inevitable. 8. He has focused on the necessity of teaching and learning for continued existence of society to help us not take conventional notions of ‘school’ and ‘education ‘ for granted. 9. Society exists by communication, which has close ties to common and community. 10. Community is more than proximity and common end. It is like-mindedness and adaptation to others, it involves communication 11. All communication is educative, it changes the giver and the receiver. 12. The necessity of teaching young gives stimulus to simplify communications 13. Informal education is not the reason for the association, for formal education, it is (the education is the reason for the association) 14. In less civilized, education is like apprenticeship, but as society becomes more complex, this becomes difficult. 15. Formal education is necessary to transmit resources and achievements, but the danger is that it becomes bookish, informal is personal and vital. 16. The balance between formal and informal education is thus vital.

1. Beliefs can’t be extracted or inserted, but they must be communicated 2. The young may become like-minded with the mature through the influence of the environment 3. Environment is the things with which a man varies 4. It consits of all the factors that promote or hinder characteristic activities 5. One whose activities are associated with others has a social environment 6. Training vs. education: education involves copartners, they share in interest, ideas, emotion 7. Violent societies reward violent acts. 8. Children learn concepts like ‘hat’ nto by having someone tell them, but by participating in mutually intelligible dialogye, 1st used in joint activity 9. The social enviromnet forms dispositions 10. If you don’t follow suit in social environment, you are out of it. 11. Uncounscious infoluence of environment noticeable in language, manners, and taste. 12. Our conscious estimates based on habits formed through environment 13. The way adults can consciously control the kind of education is by controlling the environment 14. Schols appear when social traditions are too complex and relies on remote info. 15. School providees a simplified environment (a gradual intro to the world). It eliminates undesirable aspects of the world, and provides an arena for social progress. School helps steady the individual so he is integrated, not schizophrenic. 16. Genuine social control means formation of certain mental dispositions. 17. ‘Mind’ is an effect of social institutions, the difference between savage and civilized is not mind capacity but difference in stimuli. 18. The use of things furnishes educative conditions. 19. Languages condenses meanings that record social outcomes and presage social outlooks. 20. The education is not pouring in and absorbing but rather active and constructive has been taught by ‘pouring in’ methods, that is why it hasn’t changed. 21. When schools depart from educational conditions effective in and out of school, the substitute bookish for the social spirit.
 * Chapter 2:**

1. Education has the task to direct, control or guid. 2. Some may think this is coercive, but its not, individuals want to participate with others. 3. Every stimulus directs activity, i.e. a response is an answer. Stimulus asn response adapt to each other. (Light does not force the eye to see.) 4. There are 2 qualifications to this adaptation: 1. there is always superfluous energy aroused and 2. the response may not fit sequence and continuity. 5. Focusing and ordering are the 2 aspects of direction, one spatial, the other temporal. 6. No direction can be forced on humans. 7. Adults direct the conduct of others in different ways, the more permanent and influential are moment to moment and not deliberate. 8. We must discriminate between phycial and moral results 9. When we confuse the physical result with the educative, we don’t enlist the person’s disposition. Physical things don’t influence the mind. 10. The the more important and permanent mode of control is by way of using things with others. (image: a mother and daughter preparing food, the mother asks the daughter to bring a particular ingredient or utensil, and the daughter appropriately responds) 11. The chief way of forming disposition is by participating in jo9int activities using things. 12. Uses of things supplies meaing. 13. Until an act is performed for the sake of its meaning, it is meaningless (image: the habit of bowing) 14. To be like-minded is to share meanings. 15. Mind is the power to understand things in terms of their use. 16. Immature don’t really imitate, rather they participate in conjoint activities. 17. In playing rolling a ball with a child, the adult isn’t the model, it is the whole situation 18. The pressure for like-mindedness is central, ‘imitation’ is superfluous.
 * Chapter 3:**

1. Dependence and plasticity are the conditions of immaturity, immaturity is the condition of growth. 2. Immaturity is the ability to develop. 3. Dependence denotes social capacity, a child can get others to pay attention. 4. Plasticity is the ability to learn from experience. 5. Contrast animal instincts (nearly fully developed at birth) with human (trial and error, multiple combinations) 6. Habits express growth 7. Habits involve adapting to environment and adapting environment to self. 8. Habits become routine or enslaving when detached from intelligence. 9. Education concerns development and growth—growth is the end, it doesn’t have another end (like e.g. adulthood as the end of growth) 10. Education means the enterprise of supplying conditions for growth irrespective of age. 11. Such an approach takes more, not less effort by teachers.
 * Chapter 4:**

1. Education is the continuous process of growth 2. Lets contrast this with other ideas: Education as preparation makes students only candidates for social membership. 3. It has 2 major problems: 1. No impetus from the students. 2. Emphasis on procrastination. 3. Substitutes conventional average expectation for one which addresses the individual. 4. It makes other motives necessary. 4. Growing prepares for future better anyway. 5. Development as the aim aims toward a certain end-at which point development and growth stop. 6. Froebel’s mistake was growth toward CERTAIN END 7. Hegel likened social organisms to an individual’s body and thus sanctioned class distinctions, which means external dictation instead of growth. 8. Acquisition of skills misses the mark when it makes skills the aims instead of the results. 9. Locke posited faculties that need exercise, the faculties are myths, and actual faculties are much more complex. 10. No such thing as faculties (of seeing/hearing etc.) you only see SOMETHING 11. Training must be in context of human activities to be able to transfer to and from disciplines.
 * Chapter 5:**

1. Herbart: subject matter is all important, education is setting up the presentation fo good sequence of good subject matter. 2. This ignores the interaction with the subject matter, it dismisses the essence of education (pg. 72) 3. Recapitulation theory: we recapitulate the past biologically and culturally—look to the past for explanations. 4. Recap theory is fallacious. 5. Heredity has been used as pre-determination—that’s not what it is, consider ‘the ability to learn a language.’ 6. The present is due to past life, not past products. 7. The ideal of growth results in a conception of education as a constant reconstructing experience. 8. By doing certain things, students perceive more. 9. Also student gains power of later direction or control. 10. Much in school consists in setting rules, acting a certain way and supposedly make connections between the method and the answer—students see it as a trick or a miracle. 11. Education as continuous reconstruction identifies the end (result) with the process—growth. 12. This reconstruction may be social as well as personal.
 * Chapter 6:**

1. To judge education, you must understand societies. 2. Societies have common interest and intercourse with other societies (the freer the intercourse the better?) That is how to evaluate a society. 3. These two criteria point to democracy. 4. Plato’s conception misunderstood the individual and made ‘class’ the basic unit.But he was right that education should match the individual with what best fit. 5. 18th century individual of nature was the basis, but that dismissed teaching and instruction. 6. The national interest became the aim and Germany made the 1st public education, this blurred the social interest in education. 7. This re-put the individual as subordinate to the state, democracy should also improve the state.
 * Chapter 7:**

1. An aim is a foreseen end that gives direction to present activities. 2. This foresight involves consideration for present conditions, suggests a proper order, and makes alternatives possible. 3. To act with an aim is to act intelligently 4. Good aims must grow out of existing conditions. 5. They must be flexible—a farmer can’t make goals irrespective of soil, water, seasons, etc. 6. And they must free activities 7. In contrast with fulfilling a process so that an activity may go on is static, imposed end. 8. Educational aims are the same. Adults aren’t the end of education, they msut be seen in context by which to survey children 9. Aim must be translatable into a method of working with student’s activities. 10. Rigid aims don’t lead to careful observation of concrete phenomena. 11. No study is educative unless its worthwhile in its own immediate having. 12. General or comprehensive aims about today, and he will examine some.
 * Chapter 8:**

1. Nature as the supplier of aims was the theory of Rousseau 2. This is ridiculous if you consider language 3. Rousseau was right that nature provides the conditions, but not the ends. 4. Rousseau was reacting to the idea that nurture was the sole answer. 5. Social efficiency as aim is good because people must be able to earn a living. 6. Broadly social efficiency is concerned with making experience more communicable. 7. When social efficiency is rendered as overt acts of service, it dismisses the chief constituent: sympathy. 8. Culture as aim must equate personal culture and social efficiency or it is flawed.
 * Chapter 9:**

1. Spectator and participant differ in interest. 2. Interest has been misunderstood 3. Interest is to be absorbed in activity. To understand this remedies the problems of making school fun. 4. Interest implies a go between, or intervening phases. 5. Discipline has also been misunderstood as formal or as quiet. 6. Mind, knowledge, and subject matter have been misunderstood as objective, each complete on its own. 7. These have thwarted discipline. 8. Discipline involves power at resources and persistence toward aim. 9. These misunderstandings have social ramifications that are best addressed by fixing our conceptions.
 * Chapter 10:**

1. Experience has a passive and active element: try and undergo 2. Measure of value of experience lies in perception of relationship or continuities to which it leads up. 3. mind/body dichotomy is awful, and results in mechanical behavior 4. On the intellectual side, it throws emphasis on things rather than relations. 5. Relations become perceptible in experience 6. Thinking is discerning relation between trying and consequences (or undergoing?) 7. Contrast 2 types of experience according to proportion of reflection: trial and error, observe for cause and effect. 8. Thinking is endeavor to discover connections 9. Thinking is condition for having aims 10. Army general analogy: thinking is not based on absolute certainty or ignorance 11. Thinking occurs when things are uncertain 12. General features of reflective experience: a. Confusion because situation is undetermined b. Tentative interpretations—attributing tendency to consequences. c. Careful survey of all attainable to define and clarify problem. d. Consequent elaboration of hypothesis to make more precise and consistent and square with wider range of facts. e. Taking stand on projected hypothesis—acting. 13. Extent and accuracy of c and d mark off reflective experience from trial and error.
 * Chapter 11:**

1. Fostering thinking is the task of education 2. Information severed from thoughtful action is dead. 3. Experience is initial phase of thinking 4. Educational situations should present new but familiar 5. To inquire into the learning in experience is to ask about the quality of the problem. 6. Schools should supply context of experience in which problems naturally suggest themselves. 7. Since schools don’t have this, students don’t genuinely experience problems. 8. School should seek ideas (unfinished) not facts (finished) 9. Thought is creative, operation is new, material not. 10. Ideas can’t be conveyed, they are anticipations. 11. Application tests them and confers full meaning. 12. Subject matter different for students than others. 13. Mind/body dichotomy responsible for bad school designs. 14. Best teachers desire to affect making interconnections with world other disciplines, etc.
 * Chapter 12**

1. Method is not separate from material. 2. Method is a way of using material for an end. 3. When we reflect on experience we separate ourselves from objects and environment, but in reality, there is no separation. 4. Evils follow from separating method and material. a. Concrete experiences are neglected. b. Aforementioned discipline and interest problems. c. Learning is made a direct conscious activity. d. Method tends toward rigid rules. 5. Teaching is an art (like a physician). 6. General method breeds mediocrity. 7. Method is like scientific method. 8. There are good attitudes to cultivate: straightforwardness, flexible intellectual interest or open-minded will to learn, integrity of purpose, and acceptance of responsibility for the consequences of one’s activity including thought.
 * Chapter 13:**

1. In informal education, subject matter happens as part of life. Formal education covers what is not picked up in everyday life 2. Subject matter is tied to habits and ideals of a social group. 3. Subject matter is different for the teacher and pupil. 4. Subject matter develops through three general phases for the student. 5. Knowledge as know-how is the most deeply ingrained. 6. Remote things in time and space affect the issue of our actions as much as present stuff. Remote is called info. 7. To judge educative value, one can ask these questions: Does it grow naturally out of questions the student is concerned with? Does it fit his direct acquaintance and deepen his experience? 8. There are problems that arise when we consider ‘knowledge’ as facts. 9. Scientific knowledge grows out of questioning, doubting, etc. 10. Criterion for subject matter is the social worth.
 * Chapter 14:**

1. When kids use their natural impulses, school is better. 2. Educational result is by-product of work and play. 3. Educator must use work and play toward intellectual results and socialized disposition 4. Making ready-made models does not help judgment and perception, the creative and constructive attitude is more important. 5. Raw (unformatted) materials help kids gain a more genuine knowledge. 6. Kids should learn how to use tools as they use them. 7. Subject matter belongs to life, not just the classroom, and it has social ends. 8. Active occupation includes work and play—both involve ends and selection of materials and processes to get them. 9. Oddly, today we think work involves subordination an activity to an ulterior motive. 10. Education must provide enjoyment of recreative leisure and for lasting effects on habits of mind, art is the answer: “Work which remains permeated with the play attitude is art—in quality if not in conventional designation.
 * Chapter 15:**

1. Educational values usually coincide with aims that are urged. 2. Subjects have been justified by the contribution they make to life. 3. Discussion of values brings aims and curriculum together. 4. Experience is direct or indirect, mediated or immediate. 5. Schooling must provide genuine 1st-hand experience. 6. 1st hand experience allows appreciation which enlarges and enriches the scope of experience. 7. Rubric of appreciation brings out 3 furtherheads: a. Nature of value standards b. Place of imagination c. Place of fine arts. 8. Habitual disposition furnishes standards. Habits are mechanical unless also tastes. 9. Imagination is medium of appreciation in every field. 10. Unfortunately imagination usually equated to imaginary so we think its about fair tales, etc. are vehicles. Through imagination, symbols are translated to direct meaning. 11. There is no demarcation between the industrial and the fine arts. 12. The function of fine arts is the enhancement of qualities which make any ordinary experience appealing and enjoyable. 13. Value means both to prize and to evaluate 14. Values are situated 15. Without appreciation, utility suffers. Utility can be a means of appreciation. 16. Attempt to distribute values across studies is misguided. 17. Math is said to have value because it helps clarify and be accurate. But it does not do this because it has value. It has value because it does this. 18. The question of values is the organization of school materials, etc. which will achieve breadth and rechness of experience if and only if helps clarify expand and extend the goods of experience.
 * Chapter 18:**

1. He begins by investigating dualisms 2. He investigates the meaning of leisure. 3. Going back to Aristotle, the life of abstract thought was thought to be best. 4. He examines the residue of Aristotle in contemporary thought: (life of labor/leisure) 5. In some ways, Aristotle was right: a life robbed of leisure is not life. 6. Knowing and doing aren’t really opposed though. 7. To reconstruct dualism is to reconstruct social enactment of dualisms. 8. Compromise resulted in tont doing professional or liberal education well. 9. Music is justified by cultural value, but the method used to teach it is mechanical. Consummation of chapter on values. 10. Education should be both liberal and applied.
 * Chapter 19:**