Democracy and Education · Chapter
Aims in Education explained
This chapter examines the nature of educational aims, arguing that true aims arise from within the educative process rather than being externally imposed.
What happens
This chapter examines the nature of educational aims, arguing that true aims arise from within the educative process rather than being externally imposed. Dewey contrasts mere results with genuine ends, using the example of bees to illustrate intrinsic continuity. He emphasizes that education has no abstract aims; only persons—parents and teachers—have aims, which must be based on the individual's activities and needs, and must be translatable into methods that cooperate with the learner's development. Externally imposed aims are criticized for being rigid, remote, and mechanical, hindering intelligent growth.
Themes in this chapter
Education as Life and Growth
The chapter asserts that the aim of education is to enable continued capacity for growth, emphasizing that aims must be intrinsic to the process of living and learning.
Critique of Traditional Curriculum
Dewey critiques externally imposed aims, such as preparation for a remote future, which render teaching and learning mechanical and slavish, opposing the natural growth of experience.
Democracy and Education
The chapter links the idea of democratic society to the possibility of mutual intercourse and equitable distribution of interests, which are necessary for education to enable continued growth for all members.
Key passages
“The account of education given in our earlier chapters virtually anticipated the results reached in a discussion of the purport of education in a democratic community. For it assumed that the aim of education is to enable individuals to continue their education—or that the object and reward of learning is continued capacity for growth.”
Dewey states that the purpose of education is to empower individuals to keep learning, with the ultimate goal being ongoing personal development.
This introduces the central thesis that education's aim is intrinsic growth, not an external end.
“It is as absurd for the latter to set up his 'own' aims as the proper objects of the growth of the children as it would be for the farmer to set up an ideal of farming irrespective of conditions.”
Just as a farmer must adapt to actual conditions, a teacher cannot impose fixed aims on children without considering their specific needs and contexts.
Dewey emphasizes that educational aims must be flexible and grounded in the realities of the learner's situation.
“And it is well to remind ourselves that education as such has no aims. Only persons, parents, and teachers, etc., have aims, not an abstract idea like education.”
Education itself does not have goals; rather, the individuals involved in the process—parents and teachers—hold purposes that guide their actions.
This clarifies that aims are concrete and personal, not abstract or universal.