Riverside Educational Monographs
EDITED BY HENRY SUZZALLO
SOMETIME PROFESSOR OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATIONTEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, ANDPRESIDENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
MORAL PRINCIPLES IN EDUCATION
BY
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON · NEW YORK · CHICAGO · DALLAS
SAN FRANCISCO
The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY JOHN DEWEY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
The author has drawn freely upon his essay on EthicalPrinciples Underlying Education, published in the ThirdYear-Book of The National Herbart Society for the Study ofEducation. He is indebted to the Society for permission touse this material.
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
Education as a public business
It is one of the complaints of the schoolmasterthat the public does not defer to his professionalopinion as completely as it does to that of practitionersin other professions. At first sight itmight seem as though this indicated a defecteither in the public or in the profession; and yeta wider view of the situation would suggest thatsuch a conclusion is not a necessary one. Therelations of education to the public are differentfrom those of any other professional work. Educationis a public business with us, in a sense thatthe protection and restoration of personal healthor legal rights are not. To an extent characteristicof no other institution, save that of the stateitself, the school has power to modify the socialorder. And under our political system, it is theright of each individual to have a voice in themaking of social policies as, indeed, he has a votein the determination of political affairs. If this be true, education is primarily a public business,and only secondarily a specialized vocation. Thelayman, then, will always