Northrop Frye The order of words What is the order of words meaning? Frye argues, as an order of words, providing criticism with a conceptual framework and a body of knowledge derived not from an ideological system but rooted in the imagination itself. Was his work praised? I don't know. What contribution did his work make to the literary world? The recurring primitive formulas Frye noticed in his survey of the "greatest classics" provide literature with an order of words, a "skeleton" What is the skeleton to him? a "skeleton" which allows the reader "to respond imaginatively to any literary work by seeing it in the larger perspective provided by its literary and social contexts" ( Why are they helpful to understand? Frye identifies these formulas as the "conventional myths and metaphors" which he calls "archetypes" ( Why are there archetypes? The archetypes of literature exist, Frye argues, as an order of words, providing criticism with a conceptual framework and a body of knowledge What did people think of Frye's concepts? Thus, rather than interpreting literary works from some ideological 'position' -- what Frye calls the "superimposed critical attitude
What other ways should we interpret literature according to the order of words?
Aside from the superimposed critical attitude what other ways should we interpret literature according to the order of words?
The recurring primitive formulas Frye noticed in his survey of the "greatest classics" provide literature with an order of words, a "skeleton" which allows the reader "to respond imaginatively to any literary work by seeing it in the larger perspective provided by its literary and social contexts" (Hamilton 20). Frye identifies these formulas as the "conventional myths and metaphors" which he calls "archetypes" (Spiritus Mundi 118). The archetypes of literature exist, Frye argues, as an order of words, providing criticism with a conceptual framework and a body of knowledge derived not from an ideological system but rooted in the imagination itself. Thus, rather than interpreting literary works from some ideological 'position' -- what Frye calls the "superimposed critical attitude" (Anatomy 7) -- criticism instead finds integrity within the literary field itself. Criticism for Frye, then, is not a task of evaluation -- that is, of rejecting or accepting a literary work -- but rather simply of recognizing it for what it is and understanding it in relation to other works within the 'order of words'  (Cotrupi 4). Imposing value judgments on literature belongs, according to Frye, "only to the history of taste, and therefore follows the vacillations of fashionable prejudice" (Anatomy 9). Genuine criticism "progresses toward making the whole of literature intelligible" (Anatomy 9) so that its goal is ultimately knowledge and not evaluation. For the critic in Frye's mode, then, . . . a literary work should be contemplated as a pattern of knowledge, an act that must be distinguished, at least initially, from any direct experience of the work, . . . [Thus] criticism begins when reading ends: no longer imaginatively subjected to a literary work, the critic tries to make sense out of it, not by going to some historical context or by commenting on the immediate experience of reading but by seeing its structure within literature and literature within culture (Hamilton 27). CANNOTANSWER
to respond imaginatively
Herman Northrop Frye  (July 14, 1912 – January 23, 1991) was a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20th century.

Frye gained international fame with his first book, Fearful Symmetry (1947), which led to the reinterpretation of the poetry of William Blake. His lasting reputation rests principally on the theory of literary criticism that he developed in Anatomy of Criticism (1957), one of the most important works of literary theory published in the twentieth century. The American critic Harold Bloom commented at the time of its publication that Anatomy established Frye as "the foremost living student of Western literature." Frye's contributions to cultural and social criticism spanned a long career during which he earned widespread recognition and received many honours.

Biography

Early life and education
Born in Sherbrooke, Quebec, but raised in Moncton, New Brunswick, Frye was the third child of Herman Edward Frye and of Catherine Maud Howard. His much older brother, Howard, died in World War I; he also had a sister, Vera.  His first cousin was the scientist Alma Howard. Frye went to Toronto to compete in a national typing contest in 1929.  He studied for his undergraduate degree in philosophy at Victoria College in the University of Toronto, where he edited the college literary journal, Acta Victoriana.  He then studied theology at Emmanuel College (like Victoria College, a constituent part of the University of Toronto). After a brief stint as a student minister in Saskatchewan, he was ordained to the ministry of the United Church of Canada. He then studied at Merton College, Oxford, where he was a member and Secretary of the Bodley Club before returning to Victoria College, where he spent the remainder of his professional career.

Academic and writing career
Frye rose to international prominence as a result of his first book, Fearful Symmetry, published in 1947. Until then, the prophetic poetry of William Blake had long been poorly understood, and considered by some to be delusional ramblings. Frye found in it a system of metaphor derived from Paradise Lost and the Bible. His study of Blake's poetry was a major contribution to the subject. Moreover, Frye outlined an innovative manner of studying literature that was to deeply influence the study of literature in general. He was a major influence on Harold Bloom, Margaret Atwood, and others.

In 1974–1975 Frye was the Norton professor at Harvard University. But his primary position was as a professor at the University of Toronto, and then chancellor of Victoria College in the University of Toronto.

Northrop Frye did not have a PhD.

The intelligence service of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police spied on Frye, watching his participation in the anti–Vietnam War movement, an academic forum about China, and activism to end South African apartheid.

Family life
Frye married Helen Kemp, an educator, editor and artist, in 1937. She died in Australia while accompanying Frye on a lecture tour. Two years after her death in 1986, he married Elizabeth Brown. He died in 1991 and was interred in Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto, Ontario.

Contribution to literary criticism
The insights gained from his study of Blake set Frye on his critical path and shaped his contributions to literary criticism and theory. He was the first critic to postulate a systematic theory of criticism, "to work out," in his own words, "a unified commentary on the theory of literary criticism" (Stubborn Structure 160). In so doing, he shaped the discipline of criticism. Inspired by his work on Blake, Frye developed and articulated his unified theory ten years after Fearful Symmetry, in the Anatomy of Criticism (1957). He described this as an attempt at a "synoptic view of the scope, theory, principles, and techniques of literary criticism" (Anatomy 3). He asked, "what if criticism is a science as well as an art?" (7), Thus, Frye launched the pursuit which was to occupy the rest of his career—that of establishing criticism as a "coherent field of study which trains the imagination quite as systematically and efficiently as the sciences train the reason" (Hamilton 34).

Criticism as a science
As A. C. Hamilton outlines in Northrop Frye: Anatomy of his Criticism, Frye's assumption of coherence for literary 
criticism carries important implications. Firstly and most fundamentally, it presupposes that literary criticism is a discipline in its own right, independent of literature. Claiming with John Stuart Mill that "the artist… is not heard but overheard," Frye insists that

This "declaration of independence" (Hart xv) is necessarily a measured one for Frye. For coherence requires that the autonomy of criticism, the need to eradicate its conception as "a parasitic form of literary expression,… a second-hand imitation of creative power" (Anatomy 3), sits in dynamic tension with the need to establish integrity for it as a discipline. For Frye, this kind of coherent, critical integrity involves claiming a body of knowledge for criticism that, while independent of literature, is yet constrained by it: "If criticism exists," he declares, "it must be an examination of literature in terms of a conceptual framework derivable from an inductive survey of the literary field" itself (Anatomy 7).

Frye's conceptual framework for literature
In seeking integrity for criticism, Frye rejects what he termed the deterministic fallacy.  He defines this as the movement of "a scholar with a special interest in geography or economics [to] express . . . that interest by the rhetorical device of putting his favorite study into a causal relationship with whatever interests him less" (Anatomy 6). By attaching criticism to an external framework rather than locating the framework for criticism within literature, this kind of critic essentially "substitute[s] a critical attitude for criticism." For Frye critical integrity means that "the axioms and postulates of criticism . . . have to grow out of the art it deals with" (Anatomy 6).

Taking his cue from Aristotle, Frye's methodology in defining a conceptual framework begins inductively, "follow[ing] the natural order and begin[ning] with the primary facts" (Anatomy 15). The primary facts, in this case, are the works of literature themselves. And what did Frye's inductive survey of these facts reveal? Significantly, they revealed "a general tendency on the part of great classics to revert to [primitive formulas]" (Anatomy 17). This revelation prompted his next move, or rather, 'inductive leap':
I suggest that it is time for criticism to leap to a new ground from which it can discover what the organizing or containing forms of its conceptual framework are. Criticism seems to be badly in need of a coordinating
principle, a central hypothesis which, like the theory of evolution in biology, will see the phenomena it deals with as parts of a whole (Anatomy 16).

Arguing that "criticism cannot be a systematic [and thus scientific] study unless there is a quality in literature which enables it to be so," Frye puts forward the hypothesis that "just as there is an order of nature behind the natural sciences, so literature is not a piled aggregate of 'works,' but an order of words" (Anatomy 17). This order of words constitutes criticism's conceptual framework, its coordinating principle.

The order of words
The recurring primitive formulas Frye noticed in his survey of the "greatest classics" provide literature with an order of words, a "skeleton" which allows the reader "to respond imaginatively to any literary work by seeing it in the larger perspective provided by its literary and social contexts" (Hamilton 20). Frye identifies these formulas as the "conventional myths and metaphors" which he calls "archetypes" (Spiritus Mundi 118).  The archetypes of literature exist, Frye argues, as an order of words, providing criticism with a conceptual framework and a body of knowledge derived not from an ideological system but rooted in the imagination itself. Thus, rather than interpreting literary works from some ideological 'position' — what Frye calls the "superimposed critical attitude" (Anatomy 7) — criticism instead finds integrity within the literary field itself.

Criticism for Frye, then, is not a task of evaluation — that is, of rejecting or accepting a literary work — but rather simply of recognizing it for what it is and understanding it in relation to other works within the 'order of words'  (Cotrupi 4). Imposing value judgments on literature belongs, according to Frye, "only to the history of taste, and therefore follows the vacillations of fashionable prejudice" (Anatomy 9). Genuine criticism "progresses toward making the whole of literature intelligible" (Anatomy 9) so that its goal is ultimately knowledge and not evaluation. For the critic in Frye's mode, then,

... a literary work should be contemplated as a pattern of knowledge, an act that must be distinguished, at least initially, from any direct experience of the work, . . . [Thus] criticism begins when reading ends: no longer imaginatively subjected to a literary work, the critic tries to make sense out of it, not by going to some historical context or by commenting on the immediate experience of reading but by seeing its structure within literature and literature within culture (Hamilton 27).

A theory of the imagination
Once asked whether his critical theory was Romantic, Frye responded, "Oh, it's entirely Romantic, yes" (Stingle 1). It is Romantic in the same sense that Frye attributed Romanticism to Blake: that is, "in the expanded sense of giving a primary place to imagination and individual feeling" (Stingle 2). As artifacts of the imagination, literary works, including "the pre-literary categories of ritual, myth, and folk-tale" (Archetypes 1450) form, in Frye's vision, a potentially unified imaginative experience. He reminds us that literature is the "central and most important extension" of mythology: "... every human society possesses a mythology which is inherited, transmitted and diversified by literature" (Words with Power xiii). Mythology and literature thus inhabit and function within the same imaginative world, one that is "governed by conventions, by its own modes, symbols, myths and genres" (Hart 23).  Integrity for criticism requires that it too operates within the sphere of the imagination, and not seek an organizing principle in ideology. To do so, claims Frye,
... leaves out the central structural principles that literature derives from myth, the principles that give literature its communicating power across the centuries through all ideological changes. Such structural principles are certainly conditioned by social and historical factors and do not transcend them, but they retain a continuity of form that points to an identity of the literary organism distinct from all its adaptations to its social environment (Words with Power xiii).

Myth therefore provides structure to literature simply because literature as a whole is "displaced mythology" (Bates 21). Hart makes the point well when he states that "For Frye, the story, and not the argument, is at the centre of literature and society. The base of society is mythical and narrative and not ideological and dialectical" (19). This idea, which is central in Frye's criticism, was first suggested to him by Giambattista Vico.

Frye's critical method
Frye uses the terms 'centripetal' and 'centrifugal' to describe his critical method. Criticism, Frye explains, is essentially centripetal when it moves inwardly, towards the structure of a text; it is centrifugal when it moves outwardly, away from the text and towards society and the outer world.  Lyric poetry, for instance, like Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn", is dominantly centripetal, stressing the sound and movement and imagery of the ordered words. Rhetorical novels, like Uncle Tom's Cabin, are dominantly centrifugal, stressing the thematic connection of the stories and characters to the social order. The "Ode" has centrifugal tendencies, relying for its effects on elements of history and pottery and visual aesthetics. Cabin has centripetal tendencies, relying on syntax and lexical choice to delineate characters and establish mood. But the one veers inward, the other pushes outward. Criticism reflects these movements, centripetally focusing on the aesthetic function of literature, centrifugally on the social function of literature.

While some critics or schools of criticism emphasize one movement over the other, for Frye, both movements are essential: "criticism will always have two aspects, one turned toward the structure of literature and one turned toward the other cultural phenomena that form the social environment of literature" (Critical Path 25). He would therefore agree, at least in part, with the New Critics of his day in their centripetal insistence on structural analysis. But for Frye this is only part of the story: "It is right," he declares, "that the first effort of critical apprehension should take the form of a rhetorical or structural analysis of a work of art. But a purely structural approach has the same limitation in criticism that it has in biology." That is, it doesn't develop "any explanation of how the structure came to be what it was and what its nearest relatives are. Structural analysis brings rhetoric back to criticism, but we need a new poetics as well . . ." (Archetypes 1447).

Archetypal criticism as "a new poetics"

For Frye, this "new poetics" is to be found in the principle of the mythological framework, which has come to be known as 'archetypal criticism'. It is through the lens of this framework, which is essentially a centrifugal movement of backing up from the text towards the archetype, that the social function of literary criticism becomes apparent. Essentially, "what criticism can do," according to Frye, "is awaken students to successive levels of awareness of the mythology that lies behind the ideology in which their society indoctrinates them" (Stingle 5). That is, the study of recurring structural patterns grants students an emancipatory distance from their own society, and gives them a vision of a higher human state — the Longinian sublime — that is not accessible directly through their own experience, but ultimately transforms and expands their experience, so that the poetic model becomes a model to live by. In what he terms a "kerygmatic mode," myths become "myths to live by" and metaphors "metaphors to live in," which ". . . not only work for us but constantly expand our horizons, [so that] we may enter the world of [kerygma or transformative power] and pass on to others what we have found to be true for ourselves" (Double Vision 18).

Because of its important social function, Frye felt that literary criticism was an essential part of a liberal education, and worked tirelessly to communicate his ideas to a wider audience. "For many years now," he wrote in 1987, "I have been addressing myself primarily, not to other critics, but to students and a nonspecialist public, realizing that whatever new directions can come to my discipline will come from their needs and their intense if unfocused vision" (Auguries 7). It is therefore fitting that his last book, published posthumously, should be one that he describes as being "something of a shorter and more accessible version of the longer books, The Great Code and Words with Power," which he asks his readers to read sympathetically, not "as proceeding from a judgment seat of final conviction, but from a rest stop on a pilgrimage, however near the pilgrimage may now be to its close" (Double Vision Preface).

Influences: Vico and Blake
Vico, in The New Science, posited a view of language as fundamentally figurative, and introduced into Enlightenment discourse the notion of the role of the imagination in creating meaning. For Vico, poetic discourse is prior to philosophical discourse; philosophy is in fact derivative of poetry. Frye readily acknowledged the debt he owed to Vico in developing his literary theory, describing him as "the first modern thinker to understand that all major verbal structures have descended historically from poetic and mythological ones" (Words with Power xii).

However, it was Blake, Frye's "Virgilian guide" (Stingle 1), who first awakened Frye to the "mythological frame of our culture"  (Cotrupi 14). In fact, Frye claims that his "second book [Anatomy] was contained in embryo in the first [Fearful Symmetry]" (Stubborn Structure 160). For it was in reflecting on the similarity between Blake and Milton that Frye first stumbled upon the "principle of the mythological framework," the recognition that "the Bible was a mythological framework, cosmos or body of stories, and that societies live within a mythology" (Hart 18). Blake thus led Frye to the conviction that the Bible provided Western societies with the mythology which informed all of Western literature. As Hamilton asserts, "Blake's claim that 'the Old and New Testaments are the Great Code of Art' became the central doctrine of all [Frye's] criticism" (39).  This 'doctrine' found its fullest expression in Frye's appropriately named The Great Code, which he described as "a preliminary investigation of Biblical structure and typology" whose purpose was ultimately to suggest "how the structure of the Bible, as revealed by its narrative and imagery, was related to the conventions and genres of Western literature" (Words with Power xi).

Contribution to the theorizing of Canada
During the 1950s, Frye wrote annual surveys of Canadian poetry for the University of Toronto Quarterly, which led him to observe recurrent themes and preoccupations in Canadian poetry. Subsequently, Frye elaborated on these observations, especially in his conclusion to Carl F. Klinck's Literary History of Canada (1965). In this work, Frye presented the idea of the "garrison mentality" as the attitude from which Canadian literature has been written. The garrison mentality is the attitude of a member of a community that feels isolated from cultural centres and besieged by a hostile landscape. Frye maintained that such communities were peculiarly Canadian, and fostered a literature that was formally immature, that displayed deep moral discomfort with "uncivilized" nature, and whose narratives reinforced social norms and values.

Frye also aided James Polk in compiling Divisions on a Ground: Essays on Canadian Culture (1982). In the posthumous Collected Works of Northrop Frye, his writings on Canada occupy the thick 12th volume.

Garrison mentality

Frye collected his disparate writings on Canadian writing and painting in The Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination (1971). He coined phrases like the Garrison Mentality, a theme that summarizes Canadian literature. Margaret Atwood adopted his approach and elaborated on this in her book Survival (1972).

Canadian identity in literature

Based on his observations of Canadian literature, Frye concluded that, by extension, Canadian identity was defined by a fear of nature, by the history of settlement and by unquestioned adherence to the community. However, Frye perceived the ability and advisability of Canadian (literary) identity to move beyond these characteristics. Frye proposed the possibility of movement beyond the literary constraints of the garrison mentality: growing urbanization, interpreted as greater control over the environment, would produce a society with sufficient confidence for its writers to compose more formally advanced detached literature.

Study of literary productions 
Frye's international reputation allowed him to champion Canadian literature at a time when to do so was considered provincial. Frye argued that regardless of the formal quality of the writing, it was imperative to study Canadian literary productions in order to understand the Canadian imagination and its reaction to the Canadian environment.

Awards and honours

Frye was elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 1951 and awarded the Royal Society's Lorne Pierce Medal (1958) and its Pierre Chauveau Medal (1970). He was named University Professor by the University of Toronto in 1967. He won the Canada Council Molson Prize in 1971, and the Royal Bank Award in 1978. In 1987 he received the Governor General's Literary Award and the Toronto Arts Lifetime Achievement Award. He was an Honorary Fellow or Member of the following:
 American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1969)
 Merton College, Oxford (1974)
 British Academy (1975)
 American Philosophical Society (1976), and
 American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters (1981).

Northrop Frye was made a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1972. In 2000, he was honoured by the government of Canada with his image on a postage stamp. An international literary festival The Frye Festival, named in Frye's honour, takes place every April in Moncton, New Brunswick.

The Northrop Frye Centre, part of Victoria College at the University of Toronto, was named in his honour, as was the Humanities Stream of the Vic One Program at Victoria College and the Northrop Frye Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto.

Northrop Frye School in Moncton was named in his honour. A statue shows Frye sitting on a park bench outside the entrance to the Moncton Public Library.  Another casting of the statue and bench by artists Darren Byers and Fred Harrison sits at Victoria College at the University of Toronto.

Frye was named a National Historic Person in 2018.

Works by Northrop Frye
The following is a list of his books, including the volumes in the Collected Works of Northrop Frye, an ongoing project under the editorship of Alvin A. Lee.

Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake
Anatomy of Criticism
The Educated Imagination
Fables of Identity
T. S. Eliot
The Well-Tempered Critic
A Natural Perspective: The Development of Shakespearean Comedy and Romance
The Return of Eden: Five Essays on Milton's Epics
Fools of Time: Studies in Shakespearean Tragedy
The Modern Century
A Study of English Romanticism
The Stubborn Structure: Essays on Criticism and Society
The Bush Garden: Essays on the Canadian Imagination
The Critical Path: An Essay on the Social Context of Literary Criticism
The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance
Spiritus Mundi: Essays on Literature, Myth, and Society
Northrop Frye on Culture and Literature: A Collection of Review Essays
Creation and Recreation
The Great Code: The Bible and Literature
Divisions on a Ground: Essays on Canadian Culture
The Myth of Deliverance: Reflections on Shakespeare's Problem Comedies
Harper Handbook to Literature (with Sheridan Baker and George W. Perkins)
On Education
No Uncertain Sounds
Myth and Metaphor: Selected Essays
Words with Power: Being a Second Study of The Bible and Literature
Reading the World: Selected Writings
The Double Vision of Language, Nature, Time, and God
A World in a Grain of Sand: Twenty-Two Interviews with Northrop Frye
Reflections on the Canadian Literary Imagination: A Selection of Essays by Northrop Frye
Mythologizing Canada: Essays on the Canadian Literary Imagination
Northrop Frye on Shakespeare
Northrop Frye in Conversation (an interview with David Cayley)
The Eternal Act of Creation
Collected Works of Northrop Frye
Northrop Frye on Religion
Beyond these publications, Frye edited fifteen books, composed essays and chapters that appear in over sixty books, and wrote over one hundred articles and reviews in academic journals. From 1950 to 1960 he wrote the annual critical and bibliographical survey of Canadian poetry for Letters in Canada, University of Toronto Quarterly.

References

Sources

External links 

 The Northrop Frye Collection at the Victoria University Library at the University of Toronto A comprehensive collection of Northrop Frye's published work, literary manuscripts, correspondence, personal and professional writings, photographs and audiovisual materials.
Herman Northrop Frye oral history interview sound recording held at the University of Toronto Archives and Records Management Services
 Northrop Frye @ 100: an exhibition celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of Northrop Frye's birth.  Selected collection of childhood books and photographs to correspondence, addresses, published works, and awards.
 
 An essay on Northrop Frye's life and ideas
 "Questioning Northrop Frye's Adaptation of Vico".  An article in Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy, Spring 2010, Vol. 37:3.
 The Frye Festival. An international literary festival in Moncton, New Brunswick.
 The Educated Imagination. A blog dedicated to Northrop Frye.
The Bible and English Literature by Northrop Frye: Full Lectures. Between 1980 and 1981, Prof. Northrop Frye held 25 lectures under the title ‘The Bible and Literature’.

1912 births
1991 deaths
Alumni of Merton College, Oxford
Canadian clergy
Canadian literary critics
Companions of the Order of Canada
Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada
Governor General's Award-winning non-fiction writers
Harvard University faculty
Literary critics of English
Literary theorists
School of Letters faculty
Members of the United Church of Canada
Ministers of the United Church of Canada
People from Moncton
Writers from New Brunswick
Writers from Sherbrooke
University of Toronto alumni
University of Toronto faculty
William Blake scholars
Shakespearean scholars
20th-century Canadian poets
Persons of National Historic Significance (Canada)
Burials at Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto
20th-century Canadian philosophers
Corresponding Fellows of the British Academy
"My Pedagogic Creed" is an article written by John Dewey and published in School Journal in 1897. The article is broken into 5 sections, with each paragraph beginning "I believe." It has been referenced over 4100 times and continues to be referenced in recent publications as a testament to the lasting impact of the article's ideas.

Summary of John Dewey's My Pedagogic Creed

What education is
According to John Dewey's article "My Pedagogic Creed" (1897), education is only as individual as our society allows it to be. We (people) are unconsciously trained from birth. Our social consciousness, our cultural ways and what we value are a mock up of a collective social being, according to Dewey. We are all a product of our social surroundings from birth through adulthood and death. Eventually we "become an inheritor of the funded capital of civilization." Dewey exerts that individual best is achieved in the spirit of and for the greater good. "Through these demands he is stimulated to act as a member of a unity, to emerge from his original narrowness of action and feeling and to conceive of himself from the standpoint of the welfare of the group to which he belongs." As a member of society, we are confined to language and its meanings, but also empowered by it.

Dewey believes that "the educational process has two sides." Psychological and sociological impacts are two sides of the education process that go hand-in-hand; "neither can be subordinated to the other or neglected without evil results following." Psychology provides the foundation of education while sociology provides the scenario. Unless what is taught and how we teach relates to students' lives, it can become stressful. Even good grades are not indicative of authentic learning. Students may become disenfranchised. Psychology and social dynamics must exist in conjunction with each other to create a truly internal experience. It is important to know what is happening in the world-at-large, according to Dewey. One must also look at the student's world to ensure success relevant to their own realm of accomplishment. "We must also be able to project them into the future to see what their outcome and end will be." Dewey holds that we must look into the individual future of every student and see what their own outlook is and how we can get there—not a collective outlook defined by blanket societal expectations of success by every person. Dewey states, "To know what a power really is we must know what its end, use, or function is." In sum, a student cannot achieve power over their future until they know what their future can be. Teachers cannot prepare students for a future we cannot foretell as a result of ever-changing technology. People can truly prepare for the future by empowering students. In Dewey's words, "To prepare him for the future life means to give him command of himself." Hands-on learning that utilizes the senses and capacity of the student creates the most success, intrinsically and externally. Dewey believes "that the individual who is to be educated as a social individual and that society is an organic union of individuals." Demonstration of this success shows a psychological process. Utilizing the skills derived from effective psychological learning, social factors can be successfully recognized and addressed.

What the school is
Education is a social process. According to the creed, it should not be used for the purposes of preparation for living in the future. Dewey said, "I believe that education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living." We can build a child's self-esteem in not only the classroom but in all aspects of his or her life. Education must always stay true to children and align with their reality in order to be true. Dewey argues that some children are over labeled and misunderstood because we take away authentic experiences by not relating education to natural human order. More importantly he emphasizes, "Existing life is so complex that the child cannot be brought into contact with it without either confusion or distraction….and he becomes either unduly specialized or else disintegrated."

Dewey believes that education and school ought to be an extension of home. Personal background is psychological and gives way to new ideas. This is summed up in the quote, "It is the business of the school to deepen and extend his sense of the values bound up in his home life." In schools currently, the information is given, lessons are learned and habits are formed, similar to the banking model of education criticised by Paulo Freire in his 1970 book Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Dewey states that this is not effective. Working together is vital to unity and success. He states, "The present educational systems, so far as they destroy or neglect this unity, render it difficult or impossible to get any genuine, regular moral meanings."
We need to see school as a social experience, according to this creed. The teacher is the guide and chooses what relevant experience will guide each child through the education process. When it comes to assessment, Dewey states that grading should be relevant to the child's own progress. Exams are to be used for social ordering rather than individual upkeep.

The subject-matter of education
Following suit with his other theories, Dewey believes that subject matter should reflect students' real lives. Schools focus on too many subjects, which may not reflect the students' actual experiences. The child's own activities should determine curriculum. For example, students are often given literature lessons at the beginning of the learning experience, when it is the sum of events, making the subject relevant for the end of learning; This gives the student time to shape his or her own views before being told how history or some one else has seen something. It should be given at the end as a summative reflection. 

We need to let children be constructive and pave their own paths, according to Dewey. "I believe that the only way to make a child conscious of his social heritage is to enable him to perform those fundamental types of activity which makes civilization what it is." Dewey takes on a constructive point of view. He says that at times vocations may be more relevant and should be main subjects. In order to learn formal subjects, students need to be relaxed. Dewey explains that in order to achieve that, they must be comfortable with what they have learned up to that point. All subjects are relevant to life.

The nature of method
 Dewey asserts that active participation far surpasses passive learning. Action must come before anything else. We create children's negative perceptions of school. Ideas come from movement. Symbols give an inaccurate and incomplete view of the big picture. They impact the student's ability to think authentically.
 Envisioning the message helps with retention. Imagery is so important in generating relevancy to one's life.
 It is the teacher's job to pay attention to student's blooming interests and expand on them for a one of a kind learning experience. Interest is power and we must harbor that interest.
 Welcome emotions in education. They are part of the important aspects of learning.

The school and social progress
In Dewey's words, "education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform." Social consciousness shapes individual perceptions. Society also has an obligation to reform education. As a society we are responsible for one another. "I believe it is the business of every one interested in education to insist upon the school as the primary and most effective instrument of social progress and reform in order that society may be awakened to realize what the school stands for, and aroused to the necessity of endowing the educator with sufficient equipment properly to perform his task." Education is the perfect combination of art and science. Dewey sees that we must use individuality for the greater good. Dewey recognizes that teaching is noble and selfless. Teachers show us our way.

References

Pedagogy
Critical pedagogy
Philosophy of education Matthew 6:8 is the eighth verse of the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament and is part of the Sermon on the Mount. This verse continues the discussion on the proper procedure for praying.

Content
In the King James Version of the Bible the text reads:
Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father 
knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.

The World English Bible translates the passage as:
 Therefore don’t be like them, for your Father
 knows what things you need, before you ask him.

The Novum Testamentum Graece text is:
μὴ οὖν ὁμοιωθῆτε αὐτοῖς
οἶδεν γὰρ ὁ Πατὴρ ὑμῶν ὧν χρείαν ἔχετε πρὸ τοῦ ὑμᾶς αἰτῆσαι αὐτόν.

For a collection of other versions see here:

Analysis
Jesus has just condemned the lengthy prayers of the Gentiles, and in this verse states that such prayers are unnecessary as God is aware of a person's desire even before they ask. A similar statement is made at .

This raises the question of why prayer is even necessary at all, and this issue has been much discussed by theologians. The most common view is that while God does not need prayer, humans do. Hendriksen states that while God clearly does not need the actual act of prayer, each person does need such an outlet to bare their soul. Fowler believes this use of the term "your Father" is meant to enhance this fatherly aspect of God.  According to Schweizer prayer is a gift from God for the comfort of humans, not an action performed to seek a reward. Fowler presents an alternate thesis that what Jesus is saying here is that, unlike in pagan prayers, there is no need to persuade or cajole God in prayer, God already knows all one's needs and a simple and sincere prayer would be the most effective.

Commentary from the Church Fathers
Augustine:  For we use many words then when we have to instruct one who is in ignorance, what need of them to Him who is Creator of all things; Your heavenly Father knoweth what ye have need of before you ask Him.

Jerome: On this there starts up a heresy of certain Philosophers who taught the mistaken dogma, that If God knows for what we shall pray, and, before we ask, knows what we need, our prayer is needlessly made to one who has such knowledge.  To such we shortly reply, That in our prayers we do not instruct, but entreat; it is one thing to inform the ignorant, another to beg of the understanding: the first were to teach; the latter is to perform a service of duty.

Chrysostom: You do not then pray in order to teach God your wants, but to move Him, that you may become His friend by the importunity of your applications to Him, that you may be humbled, that you may be reminded of your sins.

Augustine:  Nor ought we to use words in seeking to obtain of God what we would, but to seek with intense and fervent application of mind, with pure love, and suppliant spirit.

Augustine:  But even with words we ought at certain periods to make prayer to God, that by these signs of things we may keep ourselves in mind, and may know what progress we have made in such desire, and may stir up ourselves more actively to increase this desire, that after it have begun to wax warm, it may not be chilled and utterly frozen up by divers cares, without our continual care to keep it alive. Words therefore are needful for us that we should be moved by them, that we should understand clearly what it is we ask, not that we should think that by them the Lord is either instructed or persuaded.

Augustine:  Still it may be asked, what is the use of prayer at all, whether made in words or in meditation of things, if God knows already what is necessary for us. The mental posture of prayer calms and purifies the soul, and makes it of more capacity to receive the divine gifts which are poured into it. For God does not hear us for the prevailing force of our pleadings; He is at all times ready to give us His light, but we are not ready to receive it, but prone to other things. There is then in prayer a turning of the body to God, and a purging of the inward eye, whilst those worldly things which we desired are shut out, that the eye of the mind made single might be able to bear the single light, and in it abide with that joy with which a happy life is perfected.

References

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