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
The library is the temple of learning, and learning has liberated more people than all the wars in history.
We prize books, and they prize them most who are themselves wise.
Mathematics is a language. We want scientists to be able to read it, speak it, and write it. But we are are not training them to be grammarians.
There are many great authors of the past who have survived centuries of oblivion and neglect, but it is still an open question whether they will be able to survive an entertaining version of what they have to say.
Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?
I was really aware, even while it was happening, that the discovery of arts education in my life sort of saved my life.
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