- page 63: medium. in midst of disucssion of pestalozzi. Education in a medium where things have social uses is necessary. the remoter from the nearer (so also implications of emerson’s metonymy.)
Education in a medium where things have social uses is necessary for intellectual as well as for moral growth. The more closely and more directly the child learns by entering into social situations, the more genuine and effective is the knowledge he gains. Since power for dealing with remoter things comes from power gained in managing things close to us, “the direct sense of reality is formed only in narrow social circles, like those of family life. True human wisdom has for its bedrock an intimate knowledge of the immediate environment and trained capacity for dealing with it. The quality of mind thus engendered is simple and clear-sighted, formed by having to do with uncompromising realities and hence adapted to future situations. It is firm, sensitive and sure of itself.”
“The opposite education is scattering and confused; it is superficial, hovering lightly over every form of knowledge, without putting any of it to use: a medley, wavering and uncertain.” The moral is plain: Knowledge that is worthy of being called knowledge, training of the intellect that is sure to amount to anything, is obtained only by participating intimately and ac-tively in activities of social life. This is Pestalozzi’s great positive contribution. It represents an insight gained in his own personal experience; for as an abstract thinker he was weak. It not only goes beyond Rousseau, but it puts what is true in Rousseau upon a sound basis. It is not, however, an idea that lends itself readily to formal statement or to methods which can be handed from one to another. Its significance is illustrated in his own early undertaking when he took twenty vagabond children into his own household and proceeded to teach them by means of farm pursuits in summer and cotton spinning and weaving in the winter, connecting, as far as possible, book instruction with these active occupations. It was illustrated, again later in his life, when he was given charge of a Swiss village, where the adults had been practically wiped out for resistance to an army of Napoleon. When a visitor once remarked: “Why, this is not a school; this is a household,” Pestalozzi felt he had received his greatest compliment.
chapter 7: relation of school to community: discussion of Gary, IN schools. One of the schools is named ‘Emerson’ No other reference to the name [disucssion of a school that is industrial, cooking classes, etc. Perhaps to connect with Emerson on work.
The “organic curriuclum”: reference to the fairhope, AL school: education as natural development
same chapter: p. 34. on ‘handwork“
Dewey quoted in Hickman, Reading Dewey. cites Whitman/Emerson: communion, communication: LW 2: 350, 372
Education in Relation to form: Essential Dewey (from how we think)
two schools (versions of the elbow/bartholomae: expressive vs. institutional) make the same error. learning is learning how to think. Use this for SB: his seeming expressiveness (the inner) seems more a matter of mechanical pedagogy.
First chapter of Rorty’s Achieving our country: American national Pride: Whitman and Dewey
