CONCEPT
Growth as Educational End
Dewey's only moral end of education — the <em>continuous expansion</em> of the organism's capacity for further experience. Not knowledge, not skills, not test scores, but the widening of what the person can do next.
For Dewey, growth is the single criterion by which every educational arrangement must be evaluated. Growth is not the accumulation of knowledge or the acquisition of skills, though both may accompany it. Growth is the increase in the organism's ability to engage intelligently with new situations — to perceive connections that were previously invisible, to act with greater sensitivity and judgment, to formulate problems more adequately, to bring more of herself to each subsequent encounter. Growth is prospective, not retrospective: its measure is what the learner is prepared to do next, not what she has accomplished. Growth is the only thing that matters because everything else — knowledge, skill, reputation, productivity — is valuable only insofar as it contributes to the continuous expansion of the capacity for further experience.
In The You On AI Field Guide
This criterion makes Dewey's framework uniquely penetrating for AI-age educational questions. The standard measures — certifications earned, projects completed, productivity achieved — are outputs that