Schools should take part in the great work of construction and organization that will have to be done.
Interpretation
Schools play a crucial role in shaping society by facilitating important organizational and constructive efforts.
John Dewey emphasizes the vital role that educational institutions have in the development and organization of society. He believes that schools should not merely be places for rote learning but should actively participate in the broader tasks of building and organizing the societal framework, thus preparing students to contribute meaningfully to their communities.
In practice
During a school board meeting, a member could use this quote to highlight the importance of educational reform.
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.
The reactionaries are in possession of force, in not only the army and police, but in the press and the schools
If we commit ourselves to reading thus increasing our knowledge, only God limits how far we can go in this world.
"It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever" he said. "Have you thought of going into teaching?"
A nation that does not read much does not know much. And a nation that does not know much is more likely to make poor choices in the home, the marketplace, the jury box, and the voting booth. And those decisions ultimately affect the entire nation...the literate and illiterate.
I am a passionate traveler, and from the time I was a child, travel formed me as much as my formal education. In order to appreciate cultures of another nation, one needs to go there, know the people and mingle with the culture of that country. One way to do that, if one is lucky enough, is to buy things from those cultures.
Adult helplessness destroys children. Or it forces them to become tiny adults of their own.
If it were customary to send daughters to school like sons, and if they were then taught the natural sciences, they would learn as thoroughly and understand the subtleties of all the arts and sciences as well as sons.
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