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Chapter Ten: Interest and Discipline
Summary. Interest and discipline are correlative aspects of activity
Chapter Eleven: Experience and Thinking
Summary. In determining the place of thinking in experience we first
Chapter Twelve: Thinking in Education
Summary. Processes of instruction are unified in the degree in which
Chapter Thirteen: The Nature of Method
Summary. Method is a statement of the way the subject matter of an
Chapter Fourteen: The Nature of Subject Matter
Summary. The subject matter of education consists primarily of the
Chapter Fifteen: Play and Work in the Curriculum
Summary. In the previous chapter we found that the primary subject
Chapter Sixteen: The Significance of Geography and History
Summary. It is the nature of an experience to have implications which
Chapter Seventeen: Science in the Course of Study
Summary. Science represents the fruition of the cognitive factors in
Chapter Eighteen: Educational Values
Summary. Fundamentally, the elements involved in a discussion of value
Chapter Nineteen: Labor and Leisure
Summary. Of the segregations of educational values discussed in the
Chapter Twenty: Intellectual and Practical Studies
Summary. The Greeks were induced to philosophize by the increasing
Chapter Twenty-one: Physical and Social Studies: Naturalism and Humanism
Summary. The philosophic dualism between man and nature is reflected in
Chapter Twenty-two: The Individual and the World
Summary. True individualism is a product of the relaxation of the grip
Chapter Twenty-Three: Vocational Aspects of Education
Summary. A vocation signifies any form of continuous activity which
Chapter Twenty-four: Philosophy of Education
Summary. After a review designed to bring out the philosophic issues
Chapter Twenty-five: Theories of Knowledge
Summary. Such social divisions as interfere with free and full
Chapter Twenty-six: Theories of Morals
Summary. The most important problem of moral education in the school
Chapter One:
Education as a Necessity of Life
1. Renewal of Life by Transmission. The most notable distinction between living and inanimate things is that the former maintain themselves by renewal. A stone when struck resists. If its resistance is greater than the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise, it is shattered into smaller bits. Never does the stone attempt to react in such a way that it may maintain itself against the blow, much less so as to render the blow a contributing factor to its own continued action. While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does not just split into smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), but loses its identity as a living thing.
As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by the return it gets: it grows. Understanding the word "control" in this sense, it may be said that a living being is one that subjugates and controls for its own continued activity the energies that would otherwise use it up. Life is a self-renewing process through action upon the environment.
In all the higher forms this process cannot be kept up indefinitely. After a while they succumb; they die. The creature is not equal to the task of indefinite self-renewal. But continuity of the life process is not dependent upon
