[WT Sharpe]

Just finished Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education by John Dewey while I was outside trimming the crepe myrtles. A fascinating book by this influential pragmatist philosopher. This is one that I plan to re-read as an e-book, perhaps before the year is out. This is one of the books for which one reading won't suffice. There is much material here that needs to be "chewed and digested" to borrow a phrase from Francis Bacon.

.....The experimental method is new as a scientific resource—as a systematized means of making knowledge—though as old as life as a practical device. Hence it is not surprising that men have not recognized its full scope. For the most part, its significance is regarded as belonging to certain technical and merely physical matters. It will doubtless take a long time to secure the perception that it holds equally as to the forming and testing of ideas in social and moral matters. Men still want the crutch of dogma, of beliefs fixed by authority, to relieve them of the trouble of thinking and the responsibility of directing their activity by thought. They tend to confine their own thinking to a consideration of which one among the rival systems of dogma they will accept. Hence the schools are better adapted, as John Stuart Mill said, to make disciples than inquirers.
..........— John Dewey (1859–1952); Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education (1916), Chapter Twenty-five: "Theories of Knowledge."

But for now it's back to discovering what's so wise about Father Brown. It's too bad Librivox has only the first two books in Chesterton's Father Brown series, but on the plus side, HEY EVERYBODY! LIBRIVOX HAS THE FIRST TWO BOOKS IN THE FATHER BROWN SERIES!!! (Sorry for shouting. I get excited sometimes. )