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Democracy and Education: an introduction to the philosophy of education by John Dewey
page 8 of 473 (01%)
another so as to get desired results, without reference to the
emotional and intellectual disposition and consent of those used.
Such uses express physical superiority, or superiority of
position, skill, technical ability, and command of tools,
mechanical or fiscal. So far as the relations of parent and
child, teacher and pupil, employer and employee, governor and
governed, remain upon this level, they form no true social group,
no matter how closely their respective activities touch one
another. Giving and taking of orders modifies action and
results, but does not of itself effect a sharing of purposes, a
communication of interests.

Not only is social life identical with communication, but all
communication (and hence all genuine social life) is educative.
To be a recipient of a communication is to have an enlarged and
changed experience. One shares in what another has thought and
felt and in so far, meagerly or amply, has his own attitude
modified. Nor is the one who communicates left unaffected. Try
the experiment of communicating, with fullness and accuracy, some
experience to another, especially if it be somewhat complicated,
and you will find your own attitude toward your experience
changing; otherwise you resort to expletives and ejaculations.
The experience has to be formulated in order to be communicated.
To formulate requires getting outside of it, seeing it as another
would see it, considering what points of contact it has with the
life of another so that it may be got into such form that he can
appreciate its meaning. Except in dealing with commonplaces and
catch phrases one has to assimilate, imaginatively, something of
another's experience in order to tell him intelligently of one's
own experience. All communication is like art. It may fairly be
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