ratic community was then
explicitly taken as the criterion of the further, more detailed analysis
of education.

II. This analysis, based upon the democratic criterion, was seen to
imply the ideal of a continuous reconstruction or reorganizing of
experience, of such a nature as to increase its recognized meaning or
social content, and as to increase the capacity of individuals to act as
directive guardians of this reorganization. (See Chapters VI-VII.)
This distinction was then used to outline the respective characters of
subject matter and method. It also defined their unity, since method
in study and learning upon this basis is just the consciously directed
movement of reorganization of the subject matter of experience. From
this point of view the main principles of method and subject matter of
learning were developed (Chapters XIII-XIV.)

III. Save for incidental criticisms designed to illustrate principles
by force of contrast, this phase of the discussion took for granted the
democratic criterion and its application in present social life. In the
subsequent chapters (XVIII-XXII) we considered the present limitation of
its actual realization. They were found to spring from the notion that
experience consists of a variety of segregated domains, or interests,
each having its own independent value, material, and method, each
checking every other, and, when each is kept properly bounded by the
others, forming a kind of "balance of powers" in education. We then
proceeded to an analysis of the various assumptions underlying this
segregation. On the practical side, they were found to have their cause
in the divisions of society into more or less rigidly marked-off classes
and groups--in other words, in obstruction to full and flexible social
interaction and intercourse. These social ruptures of continuity were
seen to have their intellectual formulation in various dualisms
or antitheses--such as that of labor and leisure, practical and
intellectual activity, man and nature, individuality and association,
culture and vocation. In this discussion, we found that these different
issues have their counterparts in formulations which have been made in
classic philosophic systems; and that they involve the chief problems of
philosophy--such as mind (or spirit) and matter, body and mind, the
mind and the world, the individual and his relationships to others, etc.
Underlying these various separations we found the fundamental assump