It refines them.
Chapter Twelve: Thinking in Education
1. The Essentials of Method. No one doubts, theoretically, the
importance of fostering in school good habits of thinking. But
apart from the fact that the acknowledgment is not so great in
practice as in theory, there is not adequate theoretical
recognition that all which the school can or need do for pupils,
so far as their minds are concerned (that is, leaving out certain
specialized muscular abilities), is to develop their ability to
think. The parceling out of instruction among various ends such
as acquisition of skill (in reading, spelling, writing, drawing,
reciting); acquiring information (in history and geography), and
training of thinking is a measure of the ineffective way in which
we accomplish all three. Thinking which is not connected with
increase of efficiency in action, and with learning more about
ourselves and the world in which we live, has something the
matter with it just as thought (See ante, p. 147). And skill
obtained apart from thinking is not connected with any sense of
the purposes for which it is to be used. It consequently leaves
a man at the mercy of his routine habits and of the authoritative
control of others, who know what they are about and who are not
especially scrupulous as to their means of achievement. And
information severed from thoughtful action is dead, a
mind-crushing load. Since it simulates knowledge and thereby
develops the poison of conceit, it is a most powerful obstacle to
further growth in the grace of intelligence.
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