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  TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Minor inconsistencies in hyphenated words have
  been adjusted to correspond with the author's most frequent usage.

  On page 60 a printer error from the original text was corrected: the
  word "drawings" has been changed to "drawing" in the phrase, "...
  drawing has been taught...."




  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