American educational reformer and Vermonter John Dewey was keenly sensitive to education as a living process, and he called the concept of preparation a treacherous idea: When preparation is made the controlling end, then the potentialities of the present are sacrificed to a suppositions future. When this happens, the real preparation for the future is missed or distorted. The ideal of using the present simply to get ready for the future contradicts itself. It o its, or even shuts out, the very conditions by which a person can be prepared for his future. We always live at the time we live and not at some other time, and only by extracting at each present time the full meaning of each present experience are we prepared for doing the same in the future. This is the only preparation which in the long run amounts to anything. Quoted by Craig Holdridge, Thinking Like a Plant, p. 178. What courage it takes in our times to give this gift to our children.
Posted on: Thu, 16 Jan 2014 14:00:01 +0000
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