Too rarely is the individual teacher so free from the dictation of authoritative supervisor, textbook on methods, prescribed course of study, etc., that he can let his mind come to close quarters with the pupil's mind and the subject matter.
Interpretation
Teachers should have the freedom to engage directly with students and subject matter without external constraints.
John Dewey emphasizes the importance of a teacher's autonomy in education. He argues that true learning occurs when teachers can deeply connect with their students and the material they are teaching, rather than being bound by rigid guidelines and external pressures. This approach fosters a more meaningful educational experience that prioritizes genuine understanding and interaction over conformity to prescribed methods.
In practice
In a teacher training seminar, to inspire educators to embrace more innovative teaching methods.
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
One child must never be set above another, even in casual conversation, not to mention in speeches that circle the globe.
And what is a good citizen? Simply one who never says, does or thinks anything that is unusual. Schools are maintained in order to bring this uniformity up to the highest possible point. A school is a hopper into which children are heaved while they are still young and tender; therein they are pressed into certain standard shapes and covered from head to heels with official rubber-stamps.
Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.
Do not be embarrassed by your mistakes. Nothing can teach us better than our understanding of them. This is one of the best ways of self-education.
I asked questions when I was a stripling, and it is not my business to ask questions now, but to teach people what I have discovered.
Teaching is a distraction and a burden, but it's also an incredible stimulus. And a reprieve, in a way. When you're trying to work on something and it's not going anywhere, you can go to school and there's a two-and-a-half-hour block of time in which you can accomplish something.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.