TEXTS I CARRY
Aptitude & Occupation · John Dewey
A passage I keep close about the quiet work that shapes us long before we name it.
There are passages that arrive before we know what they’re for.
I met this one from John Dewey years ago, back when I was still trying to understand what education would mean beyond school. I didn’t carry it because I had it all figured out — I carried it because something in it felt steady and precise.
Lately it has come back to me again, not louder, just clearer.
So I’m placing it here as it is.
An occupation is a continuous activity having a purpose. Education through occupations consequently combines within itself more of the factors conducive to learning than any other method.
It calls instincts and habits into play; it is a foe to passive receptivity. It has an end in view; results are to be accomplished.
Hence it appeals to thought; it demands that an idea of an end be steadily maintained, so that activity must be progressive, leading from one stage to another; observation and ingenuity are required at each stage to overcome obstacles and to discover and readjust means of execution.
In short, an occupation, pursued under conditions where realization of the activity rather than merely the external product is the aim, fulfils the requirements which were laid down earlier in connection with the discussion of aims, interest and thinking.
— JOHN DEWEY, DEMOCARCY AND EDUCATION (1916)
I offer it here as it is — unchanged, unadorned — for whoever may need it next.
Some words stay with us until we are ready to hear them.
— Jo-Anne
This text sits alongside a Notes essay on the work that fits.