John Dewey Quotes

The problem I have with schools is, people are taught, 'This is how you do this.' They're not taught about why you do this.

For any reporter, education is a topic where everything else - money, politics, et cetera - intersects. I have four kids in K through 12, so I'm knee-deep in it. I'm really interested in the philosophy behind it all. Should you just memorize your multiplication tables, or should you understand the concept behind them?

Teachers have told us across the country that what's severely outdated is the teacher at the front of the classroom as the font of knowledge, because as we know, access to knowledge and information is now ubiquitous. So instead, teachers want to help students learn how to think so that they can be lifelong learners.

From fiction, you do not get to learn much because it is only imagination. Whereas, from non-fiction, people can understand and learn from the realities it covers.

I must say I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a good book. ANOTHER VERSION I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book. ANOTHER VERSION I find television very educational. Every time someone turns it on, I go in the other room and read a book.

The fact of knowing how to read is nothing, the whole point is knowing what to read.

Training teaches how. Education teaches why.

More important than the curriculum is the question of the methods of teaching and the spirit in which the teaching is given

...methods are more important than facts. The educational value of a problem given to a student depends mostly on how often the thought processes that are invoked to solve it will be helpful in later situations. It has little to do with how useful the answer to the problem may be. On the other hand, a good problem must also motivate the students; they should be interested in seeing the answer. Since students differ so greatly, I cannot expect everyone to like the problems that please me.

The mere absorption of facts and truths is so exclusively an individual affair that it tends very naturally to pass into selfishness. There is no obvious social motive for the acquirement of mere learning, there is no clear social gain in success thereat.

A writer need not devour a whole sheep in order to know what mutton tastes like, but he must at least eat a chop. Unless he gets his facts right, his imagination will lead him into all kinds of nonsense, and the facts he is most likely to get right are the facts of his own experience.

Teachers who offer you the ultimate answers do not possess the ultimate answers, for if they did, they would know that the ultimate answers cannot be given, they can only be received.

All teaching and all intellectual learning come about from already existing knowledge.

What is really needed to make democracy function is not knowledge of facts, but right education.

I may say it of our preposterous use of books,--He knew not what to do, and so he read.

The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.

I read constantly because there is so much to learn from the writing in the world.

Information is bad for knowledge.

Learning, like money, may be of so base a coin as to be utterly void of use; or, if sterling, may require good management to make it serve the purposes of sense or happiness.

The history of science knows scores of instances where an investigator was in the possession of all the important facts for a new theory but simply failed to ask the right questions.

I had gone to school to work on technique and found it wasn't something that was really worthwhile to me, although it probably was.

To begin with, our knowledge grows in spots. The spots may be large or small, but the knowledge ever grows all over... What you first gain from them is probably a small amount of new information, a few new definitions, or distinctions, or points of view. But while these special ideas are being added, the rest of your knowledge stands still, and only gradually will you 'line up' your previous opinions with the novelties I am trying to instil, and modify to some slight degree their mass.

To modern educated people, it seems obvious that matters of fact are to be ascertained by observation, not by consulting ancient authorities. But this is an entirely modern conception, which hardly existed before the seventeenth century.

Acquiring knowledge is a form of imitation.

Next to the intellectual stimulation of chess, the educational value is of great importance. Chess teaches logic, imagination, self-discipline, and determination.