*yeah.. i don’t know.. huge to someone (me) grasping for any way out of the cage

this makes the subject mechanical and thus restrictive to intellectual power..

click links below to read sections of Dewey on the following specifics.

for detox: 649 662 674      686 -detox  698 – detox
for ratemyprof (includes teacher friendly): 722  734  761 – friendly
for math: 773

tuesday, july 26, 2011

john dewey

Maria Popova (@brainpicker) tweeted at 5:45 AM – 20 Oct 2016 :

John Dewey,born on this day in 1859,on how to find your calling—radiant wisdom from one of humanity’s greatest minds https://t.co/nrVAwHnFE4 https://t.co/LhSMwN7qx3 (http://twitter.com/brainpicker/status/789069919740628992?s=17)

Plato, who believed that it was the role of education to uncover each person’s talent, train its mastery, and apply it toward the flourishing of society.

[..]

Such organization of knowledge is vital, because it has reference to needs; it is so expressed and readjusted in action that it never becomes stagnant.

[..]

A person must have experience, he must live, if his artistry is to be more than a technical accomplishment. He cannot find the subject matter of his artistic activity within his art; this must be an expression of what he suffers and enjoys in other relationships — a thing which depends in turn upon the alertness and sympathy of his interests.

[…]

The only adequate training for occupations is training through occupations… The only sufficient preparation for later responsibilities comes by making the most of immediately present life… The dominant vocation of all human beings at all times is living — *intellectual and moral growth.

reading it yrs later.. oi.. what a mess this book is

loc 67

the primary ineluctable facts of the birth and death of each one of the constituent members in a social group determine *the necessity of education..in contrast between..immaturity of the new-born members… its future sole reps.. and the *maturity of the adult members who possess the *knowledge and customs of the group..

esp in beginning of his ed and democracy – see kids as messed up.. sub human.. rather than not yet scrambled

 loc 83

beings who are born not only unaware of , but quite indifferent to, the aims and habits of the social group have to be rendered cognizant of them and actively interested. education, and education alone spans the gap.

loc 97

the death of each of its constituent members is as certain as if an epidemic took them all at once .. but the graded diff in age, the fact that some are born as some die, makes possible thru transmission of ideas/practices the constant reweaving of the social fabric.. yet this renewal is not automatic.. unless pains are taken to see that genuine and through transmissions takes place, the most civilized group will relapse into barbarism and then into savagery..

this page where he says – school not only means

loc 111

there is more than a verbal tie between the words common, community, and communication… men live in a community in virtue of the things which they have in common; and communication is the way in which they come to possess things in common…. what they must have in common in order to form a community or society are aims, beliefs, aspirations, knowledge – a common understanding – *like-mindedness as the sociologist say. such things cannot be passed physically from one another, like bricks; they cannot be shared as persons would share a pie… the communication which insures participation in a common understanding is one in which secures similar emotional and intellection dispositions – like ways of responding to expectations and requirements..

supposed to’s of school/work – killing us

persons do not become a society by living in physical proximity, any more than a man ceases to be socially influenced by being so many feet/miles removed from others. …. a book or a letter may institute a more intimate association between human beings separated thousands of miles from each other than exists between dwellers under the same roof.

individuals do not even compose a social group because they all work for a common end.

the parts of a machine work with a maximum of cooperativeness for a common result, but they do not form a community… if, however, they were all cognizant of the common end and all interested in it so that they regulated their specific activity in view of it, then they would form a community.. but his would involve communication..

otherwise language as control/enclosure et al

loc 125

each would have to know what the other was about and would have to have some way of keeping the other informed as to his own purpose and progress. *consensus demands communication..

what we need is to get back to an undisturbed ecosystem

a large number of human relationships in any social group are still upon the machine-like plane.. individuals use one another so as to get desired results, w/o reference to the emotional and intellectual disposition and consent of those used…. so far… parent/child, teacher/pupil, employer/employe, governor/governed.. remain upon this level.. they form no true social group, no matter how closely their respective activities touch one another. giving and taking of orders modifies action and results, but does not of itself effect a sharing of purposes, a communication of interests.

not only is social life identical with communication, but all communication (and hence all genuine social life) is educative. to be a recipient of a communication is to have an enlarged and changed experience. one share in what another has thought and felt and in so far, meagerly or amply , has his own attitude modified. nor is the one who communicates left unaffected. try the experiment of communicating, with fullness and accuracy, some experience to another, especially if it be somewhat complicated, and you will find your own attitude toward your experience changing; otherwise you resort to expletives and ejaculations.

loc 141

the experience has to be formulated in order to be communicated. to formulate requires getting outside of it, seeing it as another would see it, considering what points of contact it has with the life of another so that it may be got into such form that he can appreciate its meaning. except in dealing with commonplaces and catch phrases one has to assimilate, imaginatively, something of another’s experience in order to tell him intelligently of one’s own experience. all communication is like art. it may fairly be said, therefore, that any social arrangement that remains vitally social, or vitally shared, is educative to those who participate in it.. only when it *becomes cast in a mold and runs in a routine way does it lose its educative power..

loc 170

the need of training is too evident; the pressure to accomplish a change in their attitude and habits is too urgent to leave these consequences wholly out of account

whoa .. so disagree with this section.. and that he keeps calling people savages

(on reread disagree w whole book)

but yeah.. no train.. it’s actually the opposite.. we’re losing that not yet scrambled ness

loc 184

but as civilization advances, the gap between the capacities of the young and the *concerns of adults widens..

learning by direct sharing in the pursuits of grown-ups becomes increasingly difficult except in the case of the less advanced occupations. much of what adults do is so remote in space and in meaning that playful imitation is less and less adequate to reproduce its spirit. ability to share effectively in adult activities thus depends upon a prior training given with this end in view. intentional agencies-schools-and explicit material-studies-are devised. the task of teaching certain things is delegated to a special group of persons..

ugh. oi oi oi

any form of people telling other people what to do.. any form of m\a\p.. huge red flags

without such formal education, it is not possible to transmit all the resources and achievement of a complex society. it also opens a way to a kind of experience which would not be accessible to  to the young if they were left to pick up their training in informal association with others, since books and the symbols of knowledge are mastered.

oi.. let go.. lit & num as colonialism et al

but there are conspicuous dangers attendant upon the transition from indirect to formal education…… the narrowness of available opps… formal instruction, on the contrary, easily becomes remote and dead – abstract and bookish…

loc 200

but in advance culture much which has to be learned is stored in symbols.. such material is relatively technical and superficial…..we reach the ordinary notion of education: the notion which ignores its social necessity and its id with all human association that affects conscious life, and which id’s it with imparting n=info about remote matters and the conveying of learning thru verbal signs: the acquisition of literacy.

hence, weightiest problems w/which the philosophy of ed has to cope is the method of keeping a proper balance between the informal and the formal, the incidental and the intentional, modes of eduction.

loc 214

summary. it is the very nature of life to strive to continue in being. since this continuance can be secured only by constant renewals, life is  a self-renewing process. what nutrition and reproduction are to physiological life, ed is to social life. this *Ed consists primarily in transmission thru communication..

and we are back to a nother way – via 2 convos..

he’s talking about manufacturing consent thru supposed to’s of school/work

loc 229

given the impossibility of direct contagion or literal inculcation, our problem is to discover the method by which the young assimilate the pov of the old, or the older bring the young into like-mindedness w themselves.

oh my.. rather.. the death of us

brown belonging law: the opposite of belonging.. is fitting in.. true belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are.. it requires you to be who you are.. and that’s vulnerable.. –Brené Brown

fittingness.. et al

loc 296

now in many cases – too many cases – the activity of the immature human being is simply played upon to secure habits which are useful. he is trained like an animal rather than educated like a human being. his instincts remain attached to their original objects of pain or pleasure. but to get happiness or to avoid the pain of failure he has to act in a way agreeable to others. … his original impulse is modified…. a tribe, let us say, is warlike… the successes for which it strives, the achievements upon which it sets store, are connected with fighting and victory….. as he fights he wins approval and advancement; as he refrains, he is disliked, ridiculed, shut out from favorable recognition… …only in this way can he become fully a recognized member of his group..

oi.. domesticate.. pleasing people.. validation.. all red flags

loc368 (p 22)

the way our group or class does things tends to determine the proper objects of attention, and thus to prescribe the directions and limits of observation and memory..

loc 397

we rarely recognize he extent in which our conscious estimates of what is worth while and what is not, are due to standards of which we are not conscious at all…but in general it may be said that the things which we take for granted w/o inquiry or reflection are just the things which determine our conscious thinking and decide our conclusions… and these habitudes which lie below the level of reflection are just those which have been formed in the constant give and take of relationship with others

h  u  g  e

but i don’t think he’s saying all that.. how could he be if thinking some (most) humans are sub human

then right into.. 4. the school as a special environment…. way in which adults consciously control the kind of ed which the immature get is by controlling the environment.. we never educate directly, but indirectly by means of the environment..

aka: rat cage, sea world, perpetuating tragedy of the non common

loc 410

when social traditions are so complex that a considerable part of the social store is committed to wringing and transmitted through written symbols. written symbols are even more artificial or conventional than spoken; they cannot be picked up in accidental intercourse with others… in addition, the written form tends to select and record matters which are comparatively foreign to everyday life..

loc 438

as a society becomes more enlightened, it realizes that it is responsible not to transmit and conserve the whole of its existing achievements, but only such as make for a better future society.

the school is its chief agency for the accomplishment of this end..

whoa.. so missing it..

imagine we just focus on 2 needs.. deep enough for all of us.. today.. everyday..

office of school environment to balance the various elements in social environment and to see to it that each individual gets an opp to escape from the limitations of the social group in which he was born.. and to come into living contact with a broader environment..

all this matters little (assuming it is even happening) if people in these spaces aren’t really living.. aren’t really alive.. et al.. modeling non-us ness.. aka: whales

loc 483

..creating wider and better balanced environment that that by which the young would be likely , if left to themselves, to be influenced..

‘in undisturbed ecosystems ..the average individual, species, or population, left to its own devices, behaves in ways that serve and stabilize the whole..’ –Dana Meadows

we now pass to one of the special forms which the general function of ed assumes: namely, that of direction, control or guidance…

which he said in first part of book is a must for immature children.. oi

loc 526
while the customs and rules of adults furnish stimuli which direct as well as evoke the activities of the young, the young, after all, participate in the direction which their actions finally take. in the strict sense, nothing can be forced upon them or into them..

rather.. we ongoingly force/coerce/kill/suffocate/oppress..

loc 541

adults are naturally most conscious of directing the conduct of others when they are immediately aiming so to do. as a rule, they have such aim consciously when they find themselves resisted; when others are doing things they do now with them to do. but *the more permanent and influential modes of control are those which operate from moment to moment continuously w/o such deliberate intention on our part...

not sure what he’s getting at here.. sounds like *structural violence

loc 556

when others are not doing what we would like them to or are threatening disobedience, we are most conscious of the need of controlling them and of the influences by which they are controlled. in such cases, our control becomes most direct, and at this point we are most likely to make the mistakes just spoken of. we are even likely to take the influence of superior force for control, forgetting that while we may lead a horse to water we cannot make him drink; and that while we can shut a man up in a penitentiary we cannot make him penitent in all such cases of immediate *action upon others, we need to discriminate between physical results and moral results..

not sure i’m interested in reading the rest.. after all..

(relief to read this yrs later.. i thought i was buying it all back then)

John Dewey judged the human belief in intrinsic value to be a futile and failed search for a community moral compass. He saw no need for intrinsic value because instrumental value enables human groups to coordinate beliefs and behaviors that both work and are right. Every social transaction has good or bad consequences depending on prevailing conditions that are satisfied or not. Continuous reasoning adjusts patterns to keep them working on the right track as conditions change.

intrinsic value futile?

what we need is a means to listen to the itch-in-8b-souls .. first thing .. everyday

imagine if we

Dewey thought that belief in intrinsic value contaminates instrumental value by isolating judgments of what is right from judgments of what works. For him, “restoring integration and cooperation between man’s beliefs about the world in which he lives and his beliefs about the values [valuations] and purposes that should direct his conduct is the deepest problem of modern life.

oi.. people telling other people what to do