I love this! I make such a personal connection to this sentence along with the paragraph that follows it. At my job, I teach lessons to 15-20 children who are under 3 years old. Sometimes (actually most times) things are a bit chaotic and disorderly. Some of the children's parents think its too chaotic, but in my eyes I think those are the situations in which the most learning is happening. When each child is engaged in different activities in different ways, I think that can be an environment in which the most impactful learning is happening. Embrace a little chaos!

Students shouldn't just be passive recipients of knowledge. Although the context in which Dewey wrote this is very different than the way the world is now, I still completely agree with this point. Students should be given opportunities to do hands-on and meaningful work in order to make them active participants in their learning. By doing so, they will become more active members of society in the future.

This is so true! A lot of my work in undergrad has been focused around building meaningful communities to promote engagement in the classroom. Schools/institutions of learning and society should go hand-in-hand, not be separate entities. It's interesting to think that Dewey wrote about this so long ago, yet there still seems to be a disconnect over 100 years later.