Quotation
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“Education, in its broadest sense, is the means of this social continuity of life.”
John Dewey · Pragmatism · Modern · 1916
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the sentence as a definition of education at its widest. A social group continues only if beliefs, skills, and practices are renewed in people who were not born knowing them, and education is the means of that continuity. A competing reading hears a slogan that schools exist to copy the past, which drops the chapter's next moves. He has just said that every member is born immature, without the group's language or standards, and that the life of the group goes on only if those members are initiated into its interests. Continuity is not a command to leave everything as it is. It is the fact that a society dies unless communication carries its life across. The sentence is chapter 1 of Democracy and Education, his own English. It is not the Pedagogic Creed, and it is not the later claim that democracy is a mode of associated living.
Did John Dewey really say this?
The library’s label is Well attested. Dewey's own English, in the first chapter of Democracy and Education (1916). The sentence before it says that the continuity of any experience, through renewing of the social group, is a literal fact. This is not the 1897 creed, and it is not the chapter 7 sentence on democracy as a mode of associated living.
Where it comes from
Democracy and Education (1916), chapter 1, Education as a Necessity of Life
Approximate date: 1916.
How to use it
A youth club in Liverpool that treats each new cohort as if the club's ways will survive by the building alone has skipped the means he names. Someone has to communicate the practice, and the communication can revise it. The sentence does not say the old members own the future. It says there is no future of that group without an education, formal or not, that carries a life across. A school is one means. It is not the only one the chapter has in view.
A mindset reading
Broadest sense is doing the work. If education means only a classroom, the sentence shrinks into a defence of schooling and loses the claim about social life. If it means only preservation, it loses the fact that renewal is done by people who can change what they receive. Keep both the inheritance and the living group.
Understand the philosophy
Democracy and Education, 1916, chapter 1, Education as a Necessity of Life. The key phrase is social continuity of life. The sentence is Dewey's English, following his claim that continuity through renewal of the group is a literal fact. The 1897 creed, already in this library, says education is a process of living and not a preparation for future living. Chapter 7, also already here, says a democracy is a mode of associated living. This card is the opening claim those later sentences assume.
- society
- knowledge
- change
FAQ
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the sentence as a definition of education at its widest. A social group continues only if beliefs, skills, and practices are renewed in people who were not born knowing them, and education is the means of that continuity. A competing reading hears a slogan that schools exist to copy the past, which drops the chapter's next moves. He has just said that every member is born immature, without the group's language or standards, and that the life of the group goes on only if those members are initiated into its interests. Continuity is not a command to leave everything as it is. It is the fact that a society dies unless communication carries its life across. The sentence is chapter 1 of Democracy and Education, his own English. It is not the Pedagogic Creed, and it is not the later claim that democracy is a mode of associated living.
Did John Dewey really say this?
Well attested. Dewey's own English, in the first chapter of Democracy and Education (1916). The sentence before it says that the continuity of any experience, through renewing of the social group, is a literal fact. This is not the 1897 creed, and it is not the chapter 7 sentence on democracy as a mode of associated living.
Which work is it in?
Democracy and Education (1916), chapter 1, Education as a Necessity of Life Approximate date: 1916.