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Dewey: Education is the function of society (5)
? When a person's activities are linked with those of others, he has a social environment. What he does and what he can do depends on the expectations, demands, approval and condemnation of others. A person who associates with others can't complete his own activities without considering others' activities. Because these activities are indispensable conditions for realizing his various trends. When he is active, he causes other people's activities; When others are active, it also causes his activities.

? So, how does the social environment cultivate immature members? It is not difficult to understand how the social environment shapes their external behavior habits. Even dogs and horses change their actions when they come into contact with people. They form different habits because people care about what they do. Humans control animals by controlling natural stimuli that affect them. In other words, by creating an environment.

? People's actions also change in this way. Burned children are afraid of fire. If parents arrange some conditions so that children will be burned every time they touch toys, they will automatically avoid toys, just like not touching fire. This is the so-called "training". In this process, more consideration is given to the change of external behavior, rather than the change of psychological and emotional tendency of behavior. A person is trained to avoid threatening blows, and he will automatically avoid them without corresponding thoughts or feelings. In this case, we must find the difference between training and education.

? Many times, the activities of immature people are only used to acquire useful habits. He is trained like an animal, not educated like a man. His instinct is still attached to their initial pain or happiness. In order to be happy or avoid the pain of failure, he must act in a way that others agree with.

? In other cases, he really shared or participated in the same party, and his original impulse was changed. He not only agreed with other people's actions, but also aroused thoughts and feelings that inspired others in his own actions.

? The social environment neither directly instills some wishes and concepts into people, nor just develops some pure muscle action habits. The first step is to create an environment to stimulate some tangible actions. The second step is to let the individual become a participant or partner in a common activity, and let him feel that the success of the activity is his success and the failure of the activity is his failure. Once he is dominated by the emotional attitude of the group, his beliefs and concepts will adopt similar beliefs and concepts of others in the group. He will also get the same wealth of knowledge, because this knowledge is an integral part of the occupation he is used to.

? The importance of language in acquiring knowledge is undoubtedly the main reason why people generally believe that knowledge can be directly transmitted from one person to another. The fact that language is composed of sounds that can understand each other shows that the meaning of language depends on and is related to experience. Mutual understanding means that things, including sound, have the same value to people who do the same job. After sound gains meaning by connecting with other things used in joint work, it can be connected with other similar sounds to develop new meaning, just as the contents they represent are combined.

? Therefore, the conclusion is that the use of language to convey and acquire ideas is the expansion and purification of the principle that things gain meaning by using them in the same experience or common action; It never violates that principle: the environment neither directly instills some wishes and concepts into people, nor just develops some pure muscle action habits.