My Education Credo EnglishMy Pedagogic Creed by John Dewey School Journal vol 54 January 1897 pp 77-80 ARTICLE ONE WHAT EDUCATION IS I believe that all education proceeds by the participation of the i

sformed into articulate speech. In the same way, through the response which is made to his constructive acts, his destructive tendencies are turned into constructive ones. The social demand that he shall measure up to the standards of the group in which he lives, is the chief factor in developing his intellect and his moral sense. ARTICLE TWO. THE SCHOOL AND SOCIAL PROGRESS I believe that the school is primarily a social institution. Education being a social process, the school is simply that form of community life in which all those agencies are concentrated that will be most effective in bringing the child to share in the inherited resources of the race, and to use his own powers for social ends. I believe that education is a regulation of the process of coming to share in the social consciousness; and that the adjustment of individual activity on the basis of this social consciousness is the only sure method of social reconstruction. I believe that this conception has due regard for both the individualistic and socialistic ideals. It is duly individualistic because it recognizes the formation of a certain character as the only genuine basis of right living. It is emphatically socialistic because it recognizes that this right character is not to be formed by merely individual precept, example, or exhortation, but rather by the influence of a certain form of institutional or community life upon the individual, and that the social organism through the school, as its organ, may determine ethical results. I believe that knowledge of social conditions, of the present state of civilization, is necessary in order properly to interpret the child's powers. The child has a practical relation to the present, as well as to the future. He is not only a being in process of formation, but he is already a being environed by social conditions to which he must adjust himself. The school, being a social institution, must be an embryonic community life, active with types of occupations that reflect the life of the larger society and permeated throughout with the spirit of art, history, and science. When the school introduces and trains each child of society into membership within such a little community, saturating him with the spirit of service, and providing him with the instruments of effective self-direction, we shall have the deepest and best guaranty of a larger society which is worthy, lovely, and harmonious. ARTICLE THREE. THE SCHOOL AND THE LIFE OF THE CHILD I believe that much of present education fails because it neglects this fundamental principle of the school as a form of community life. It conceives the school as a place where certain information is to be given, where certain lessons are to be learned, or where certain habits are to be formed. The value of these is conceived as lying largely in the remote future; the child must do these things for the sake of something else he is to do; they are mere preparation. As a result they do not become a part of the life experience of the child and so are not truly educative. On the contrary, the individual is educated only when he is actually engaged in the activities of his group, when he has to face real problems and to use ingenuity in solving them, when the results of his efforts are directly felt by him. Hence, the principles which I have set forth are not theoretical principles, but are the outgrowth of extensive experience in the development of social settlements, with which I have been closely identified for a number of years. They represent the conviction that the nature of the child and the social needs of the modern life are points of contact which must be given increasing emphasis in the development of the American school