{"id":871,"date":"2014-08-28T18:53:52","date_gmt":"2014-08-28T23:53:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.education4site.org\/blog\/?p=871"},"modified":"2014-10-14T04:12:49","modified_gmt":"2014-10-14T09:12:49","slug":"who-said-if-we-teach-todays-students-as-we-taught-yesterdays-we-rob-them-of-tomorrow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.education4site.org\/blog\/2014\/who-said-if-we-teach-todays-students-as-we-taught-yesterdays-we-rob-them-of-tomorrow\/","title":{"rendered":"Who said, \u201cIf we teach today\u2019s students as we taught yesterday\u2019s, we rob them of tomorrow.\u201d?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"JohnDeweyStamp\"

Dude makes a lot of cents!<\/p><\/div>\n

This is arguably one of the most referenced Dewey quotes about education on the Internet, as well as in various other places. It\u2019s an interesting and thought provoking statement that seems relevant to contemporary discourse. Remarkable that Dewey would have had the prescience to put it in writing almost a century ago. But, to tell the truth, I don’t think he did.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve read a lot of Dewey and I can tell you two things. First, it doesn\u2019t sound like something that Dewey would say in his writings; neither the sentiment nor diction. Dewey\u2019s writing is as pragmatic as his philosophy. Practically every sentence is carefully thought out to convey a thought as precisely and unambiguously as possible. The vagueness expressed in the quote is simply not characteristic of Dewey. Second, the quote is not to be found in any of his published works that I am familiar with. In particular, it\u2019s certainly not on pg. 167 in Dewey\u2019s Democracy and Education: an introduction to the philosophy of education<\/a>\"\", where the few people that provide a precise citation say it is<\/a>. If I\u2019m mistaken about this, please let me know and show me where Dewey says this. (Note: the pagination is different in the Kindle version of Dewey that I’ve linked to but I’ve checked a hardcopy with the original pagination too.)<\/em><\/p>\n

What it sounds like to me, is that the quote originated as someone\u2019s attempt to eloquently summarize their understanding of what Dewey said. At some point, someone mistook it for Dewey\u2019s actual words and it stuck (this would be only one of many such examples that propagate through the Internet). While it might be argued that the quote gets close to some of Dewey\u2019s thoughts, what Dewey actually said is much deeper and more nuanced. He gave a lot of thought to the purpose of education and the relevant role of the future, present and past. He shows us that these are not simple issues and there are a lot of tricky questions there that need to be addressed.<\/p>\n

Ironically, Dewey does say something on pg. 156 in Democracy and Education: an introduction to the philosophy of education<\/a>\"\" that I think is appropriate here:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe get so thoroughly used to a kind of pseudo-idea, a half perception, that we are not aware how half-dead our mental action is, and how much keener and more extensive our observations and ideas would be if we formed them under conditions of a vital experience which required us to use judgement: to hunt for the connections of the thing dealt with.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He makes a good point. No matter how adamantly the Internet claims that Dewey said something, it doesn\u2019t mean that he did.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is arguably one of the most referenced Dewey quotes about education on the Internet, as well as in various other places. It\u2019s an interesting and thought provoking statement that seems relevant to contemporary discourse. Remarkable that Dewey would have … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-future"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p22Btc-e3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.education4site.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.education4site.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.education4site.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.education4site.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.education4site.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=871"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.education4site.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":887,"href":"https:\/\/www.education4site.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871\/revisions\/887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.education4site.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.education4site.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.education4site.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}