they are tentative; they are
suggestions, indications. They are standpoints and methods for dealing
with situations of experience. Till they are applied in these situations
they lack full point and reality. Only application tests them, and only
testing confers full meaning and a sense of their reality. Short of use
made of them, they tend to segregate into a peculiar world of their
own. It may be seriously questioned whether the philosophies (to which
reference has been made in section 2 of chapter X) which isolate mind
and set it over against the world did not have their origin in the fact
that the reflective or theoretical class of men elaborated a large stock
of ideas which social conditions did not allow them to act upon and
test. Consequently men were thrown back into their own thoughts as ends
in themselves.

However this may be, there can be no doubt that a peculiar artificiality
attaches to much of what is learned in schools. It can hardly be said
that many students consciously think of the subject matter as unreal;
but it assuredly does not possess for them the kind of reality which the
subject matter of their vital experiences possesses. They learn not to
expect that sort of reality of it; they become habituated to treating
it as having reality for the purposes of recitations, lessons, and
examinations. That it should remain inert for the experiences of daily
life is more or less a matter of course. The bad effects are twofold.
Ordinary experience does not receive the enrichment which it should;
it is not fertilized by school learning. And the attitudes which spring
from getting used to and accepting half-understood and ill-digested
material weaken vigor and efficiency of thought.

If we have dwelt especially on the negative side, it is for the sake
of suggesting positive measures adapted to the effectual development
of thought. Where schools are equipped with laboratories, shops,
and gardens, where dramatizations, plays, and games are freely used,
opportunities exist for reproducing situations of life, and for
acquiring and applying information and ideas in the carrying forward of
progressive experiences. Ideas are not segregated, they do not form an
isolated island. They animate and enrich the ordinary course of life.
Information is vitalized by its function; by the place it occupies in
direction of action. The phrase "opportunities exist" is used purposely.
They may not be taken advantage of; it is possibl