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HOW WE THINK
BY
JOHN DEWEY
PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
D. C. HEATH & CO., PUBLISHERS
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO
COPYRIGHT, 1910,
BY D. C. HEATH & CO.
2 F 8
Printed in U. S. A.
PREFACE
Our schools are troubled with a multiplication of studies, each in turn
having its own multiplication of materials and principles. Our teachers
find their tasks made heavier in that they have come to deal with pupils
individually and not merely in mass. Unless these steps in advance are
to end in distraction, some clew of unity, some principle that makes for
simplification, must be found. This book represents the conviction that
the needed steadying and centralizing factor is found in adopting as the
end of endeavor that attitude of mind, that habit of thought, which we
call scientific. This scientific attitude of mind might, conceivably, be
quite irrelevant to teaching children and youth. But this book also
represents the conviction that such is not the case; that the native and
unspoiled attitude of childhood, marked by ardent curiosity, fertile
imagination, and love of experimental inquiry, is near, very near, to
the attitude of the scientific mind. If these pages assist any to
appreciate this kinship and to consider seriously how its recognition in
educational practice would make for individual happiness and the
reduction of social waste, the book will amply have served its purpose.
It is hardly necessary to enumerate the authors to whom I am indebted.
My fundamental indebtedness is to my wife, by whom the ideas of this
book were inspired, and through whose work in connection with the
Laboratory School, existing in Chicago between 1896 and 1903, the ideas
attained such concreteness as comes from embodiment and testing in
practice. It is a pleasure, also, to acknowledge indebtedness to the
intelligence and sympathy of those who cooeperated as teachers and
supervisors in the conduct of that school, and especially to Mrs. Ella
Flagg Young, then a colleague in the University, and now Superintendent
of the Schools of Chicago.
NEW YORK CITY, December, 1909.
CONTENTS
PART I
THE PROBLEM OF TRAINING THOUGHT
CHAPTER PAGE
I. WHAT IS THOUGHT? 1
II. THE NEED FOR TRAINING THOUGHT 14
III. NATURAL RESOURCES IN THE TRAINING OF THOUGHT 29
IV. SCHOOL CONDITIONS AND THE TRAINING OF THOUGHT 45
V. THE MEANS AND END OF MENTAL TRAINING: THE
PSYCHOLOGICAL AND THE LOGICAL 56