Democracy and Education · Chapter
Educational Values explained
This chapter examines the concept of educational values, arguing against the tendency to assign separate, fixed values to individual subjects in the curriculum.
What happens
This chapter examines the concept of educational values, arguing against the tendency to assign separate, fixed values to individual subjects in the curriculum. Dewey emphasizes that genuine appreciation and direct experience are foundational for meaningful learning, and that the worth of any study lies in its contribution to the immediate significance of experience. He critiques the fragmentation of values as a result of social class isolation and advocates for an education in a democratic society that integrates diverse interests.
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Narrative arc
Story tension across the book — this chapter sits in Rising action.
- Setup
- Escalation
- Breaking point
- Aftermath
- Closing
This passage marks the dramatic climax because it identifies the psychological peak of the conflict: the momen…
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Follow the arc while readingThemes in this chapter
- Critique of Traditional Curriculum
Dewey criticizes the traditional view that different studies possess separate, inherent values, arguing that such a scheme is an unconscious justification of the existing curriculum and leads to educational disintegration.
- Experience and Learning by Doing
The chapter emphasizes the importance of direct, immediate experience over indirect, symbolic learning, warning against the danger of bookishness and advocating for genuine situations that bring home the import of material.
- Social Function of Education
Dewey connects the fragmentation of educational values to the isolation of social groups and classes, asserting that education in a democratic society must struggle against this isolation to integrate various interests.
Key passages
“It is one thing to have been engaged in war, to have shared its dangers and hardships; it is another thing to hear or read about it.”
Direct participation in an event is fundamentally different from learning about it through secondhand accounts.
Illustrates the distinction between immediate experience and mediated, symbolic experience.
“Contribution to immediate intrinsic values in all their variety in experience is the only criterion for determining the worth of instrumental and derived values in studies.”
The true measure of a subject's value is its ability to enrich the learner's direct, lived experience, not any external or separate end.
Summarizes Dewey's central argument about the criterion for educational value.
