The most important factor in the training of good mental habits consists in acquiring the attitude of suspended conclusion, and in mastering the various methods of searching for new materials to corroborate or to refute the first suggestions that occur.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of open-mindedness and critical thinking in developing strong mental habits.
John Dewey highlights that effective learning and the formation of good mental habits require individuals to maintain an open mind and be willing to explore new evidence that may support or contradict initial thoughts. This approach fosters a habit of inquiry that is essential for intellectual growth and sound judgment.
In practice
In a classroom discussion about scientific theories, this quote can remind students to remain open to different perspectives.
Every teacher should realize he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of the proper social order and the securing of the right social growth. In this way, the teacher always is the prophet of the true God and the usherer-in of the true Kingdom of God.
Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.
It science involves an intelligent and persistent endeavor to revise current beliefs so as to weed out what is erroneous, to add to their accuracy, and, above all, to give them such shape that the dependencies of the various facts upon one another may be as obvious as possible.
For in spite of itself any movement that thinks and acts in terms of an ‘ism becomes so involved in reaction against other ‘isms that it is unwittingly controlled by them. For it then forms its principles by reaction against them instead of by a comprehensive, constructive survey of actual needs, problems, and possibilities.
Any genuine teaching will result, if successful, in someone's knowing how to bring about a better condition of things than existed earlier.
The reactionaries are in possession of force, in not only the army and police, but in the press and the schools
The only thing worse than not reading a book in the last ninety days is not reading a book in the last ninety days and thinking that it doesn't matter
Our babies know nothing about hate or racism. But soon they begin to learn - and only from us.
We give people fish. We teach them to fish. We tear down the walls that have been built up around the fish pond. And we figure out who polluted it.
Read a lot. Read broadly... Tell stories to your friends, and pay attention to when they get bored... Write a lot.
To be sure, nothing is more important to the integrity of the universities . . . than a rigorously enforced divorce from war-oriented research and all connected enterprises.
What teachers and the administration in that era never seemed to see was that the mental work of what they called daydreaming often required more effort and concentration than it would have taken simply to listen in class. Laziness is not the issue. It is just not the work dictated by the administration.
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