to notice that social life is regarded as essentially industrial. This is shown by the interesting description given by Dewey of the typical school-building, which is symbolic of the occupations of its inmates. The school-building consists of two stories, each with four rooms and a central hall. On the ground floor we should have a kitchen, a dining-room, a shop, and a room for textile industries, with a library in the central hall. Upstairs would come the physical and chemical laboratory, the biological laboratory, rooms for art and music, and a museum in the centre.[1]
No one, I think, can read Dewey's writings on education without finding them most suggestive, and I am not attempting any statement of his position as a whole. But the doctrine in the extracts I have given is clearly tainted by the sociological heresy. The child's personality is recognised to some extent, but only in so far as he is a member of society. There is no recognition of a personal life aiming at ideals which in their essence are more than social. "We get no moral ideals," Dewey says, "no moral standards for school life excepting as we interpret these in social terms."[2] One with God is a majority would not be written on his school walls. If religion means the realisation of our relations with unseen and absolute realities, Dewey's schoolboy is regarded as having no religion. The implied conception of personality is therefore fatally defective. A boy is more than a member of society: he is also a citizen of
