The reactionaries are in possession of force, in not only the army and police, but in the press and the schools
Interpretation
Dewey highlights how reactionary forces control various societal institutions, including the military, media, and education.
John Dewey's quote reflects on the significant influence that reactionary forces hold over vital societal institutions like the military, police, media, and educational systems. It suggests that these forces use their control not just to maintain order but to shape public perception and opinion, which can hinder progressive change and critical thinking in society. Dewey calls attention to the need for awareness about these dynamics to encourage a more informed and equitable public discourse.
In practice
In a panel discussion on media influence, this quote serves as a reminder of who shapes public narratives.
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 βism becomes so involved in reaction against other βisms 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.
Communication of science as subject-matter has so far outrun in education the construction of a scientific habit of mind that to some extent the natural common sense of mankind has been interfered with to its detriment.
My best teachers were not the ones who knew all the answers, but those who were deeply excited by questions they couldn't answer.
It is in books, poems, paintings which often give us the confidence to take seriously feelings in ourselves that we might otherwise never have thought to acknowledge.
Long live teachers of children, because they can show children how they can save the world.
I long for the time when all human history is taught as one history, because it really is.
We are quite rich enough to defend ourselves, whatever the cost. We must now learn that we are quite rich enough to educate ourselves as we need to be educated.
Teach him to think for himself? Oh, my God, teach him rather to think like other people!
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