On the University of Iowa Homepage a paraphrased quote is attributed
to John Dewey (1859 - 1952), Professor of Philosophy, Columbia
University from his 1933 work (originally published in 1910), “How We
Think”.

The reference on that page says that Dewey said:
 
The job of the teacher is to meet the child where he or she is at in
understanding and encourage that child to take the next step.

What I need to know is what is the exact quote, does it appear in "How
We Think" and, if yes, on what page?

If it does not appear in that work of Dewey's in which of his does it
appear?

A correct answer would find the quote by Dewey that is essentially the
same as the above, the work or speach in which it appeared, and the
page on which it appeared if in a book or article.

---

Clarification of Question by dkaplanpa-ga on 10 Nov 2002 09:49 PST

Dear Eloise-ga,

Thank you very much for your comment and for your thoughful remarks. 
You may be correct that Dewey, given his prose style, never did
distill his ideas on this theme into a pithy statement similar to the
one I posted.

I read through most of the 1910 edition of Dewey's "How we think"
yesterday afternoon and found the passages that you have cited.  There
were also some other passages that were on the same track.

I have posted this Google answers search because about 10 years ago I
saw this Dewey quote posted on a bulletin board in the faculty lounge
at our college and it has stuck with me all of these years.  My
discipline is not in the field of Education, but our college is a
teaching college.  I have written, but not yet finalized, a broad
sweep paper that traces some of the thought on the teacher's classroom
role from Dewey to today.  I would like to have the 'pithy' quote, but
may have to settle instead for 'In [xx work or speach]... Dewey said
that ...'.

I don't want to give up on this yet though, because I can still recall
seeing the poster on which the quote was posted -- but unfortunatey
not the exact quote or the particular source.  It may have come from a
speach he made.

---

Request for Question Clarification by nellie_bly-ga on 19 Nov 2002 00:25 PST

The following may well be the source of the paraphrased quote. 
If you agree, I'll add the exact citation and post it as an answer.



... Such teachers never think of making a survey of the
 
things already within the pupil's power and then locating in it the
one factor which is new; they never realize that because it is new,
it needs to be developed by the assistance of what the pupil
already knows. ...

... if he were
trained by the teacher to habits of study in his recitation, he soon
would learn that there is always one thing which is the first to go
at; that there is always a certain amount in the new lesson which
he virtually knows, or which is at least very much like what he
knows, and therefore that it is wasting energy to spend very much
time on that; that the thing on which he centres his attention
is the new thing, the one step in advance beyond what he already
knows.

---

Clarification of Question by dkaplanpa-ga on 20 Nov 2002 20:16 PST

Dear Eloise-ga,

You must have done a good amount of work to find this passage --
thanks.

It is not 'the quote' but it, in combination with the paraphrase on
the University of Iowa homepage, will provide sufficient sources for
the passages I've written on this topic.

So, yes ... post it as an answer!

dkaplanpa-ga

Neither the exact quotation, nor any close paraphrase appears anywhere in
Dewey's Collected Works.  I did not have access to Dewey's collected
Correspondence, and so could not check there.  I located several passages
taking a similar position on the general topic.  None were at all succinct
and pithy.  (Perhaps Dewey was more pithy in his epistles than in his
published works.)

HERE IS ONE EXAMPLE:

    The Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882-1953 The
 Electronic Edition
     The Later Works of John Dewey, 1925-1953
         Volume 17: 1885-1953, Essays
             Educational Lectures before Brigham Young Academy
               5. Attention»»  

Dewey: Page lw.17.276

... Such teachers never think of making a survey of the
 
[Page lw.17.277]
things already within the pupil's power and then locating in it the
one factor which is new; they never realize that because it is new,
it needs to be developed by the assistance of what the pupil
already knows. ...


... if he were
trained by the teacher to habits of study in his recitation, he soon
would learn that there is always one thing which is the first to go
at; that there is always a certain amount in the new lesson which
he virtually knows, or which is at least very much like what he
knows, and therefore that it is wasting energy to spend very much
time on that; that the thing on which he centres his attention
is the new thing, the one step in advance beyond what he already
knows.
Dewey: Page lw.17.277
     Anybody can attain,--I will not say miraculous,--but striking
results in intellectual discipline, who learns this simple mental
trick of seeking the keyhole of the situation; who breaks up his
habit of tackling things at large and wholesale, and learns, when
he has anything new, to go at it carefully and find out how much
is familiar to him, or reasonably like what is familiar. He thereby
discovers wherein lies the difficulty to be mastered and
understood, and can concentrate his whole attention on that point,
and then go on to the next.

AND HERE IS ANOTHER
The Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882-1953 The Electronic Edition
     The Later Works of John Dewey, 1925-1953
         Volume 13: 1938-1939, Essays, Experience and Education, Freedom
and Culture,
 and Theory of Valuation
             Experience and Education»»
                 7. Progressive Organization of Subject-Matter



Dewey: Page lw.13.48
     But finding the material for learning within experience is only
the first step. The next step is the progressive development of
what is already experienced into a fuller and richer and also
more organized form, a form that gradually approximates that in
which subject-matter is presented to the skilled, mature person.
That this change is possible without departing from the organic
connection of education with experience is shown by the fact
that this change takes place outside of the school and apart from
formal education. The infant, for example, begins with an
environment of objects that is very restricted in space and time.
 
[Page lw.13.49]
That environment steadily expands by the momentum inherent
in experience itself without aid from scholastic instruction. As
the infant learns to reach, creep, walk, and talk, the intrinsic
subject-matter of its experience widens and deepens. It comes
into connection with new objects and events which call out new
powers, while the exercise of these powers refines and enlarges
the content of its experience. Life-space and life-durations are
expanded. The environment, the world of experience, constantly
grows larger and, so to speak, thicker. The educator who receives
the child at the end of this period has to find ways for doing
consciously and deliberately what "nature" accomplishes in the
earlier years.

The Mead Project, Department of Sociology, Brock University, St.
Catharines, Ontario, Canada L2S 3A1 has published several of Dewey’s
works online, full-text. In them, I found several quotes that mean the
same thing, but I’m wondering if Dewey was so succinct as to put it in
a single, short statement.  Here are some good ones, although not the
pithy, sound bite I suspect you need.

from John Dewey. "The Recitation and the Training of Thought" Chapter
15 in How We Think. Lexington, Mass: D.C. Heath, (1910): 201-213:

 “The method in which the recitation is carried on is a crucial test
of a teacher's skill in diagnosing the intellectual state of his
pupils and in supplying the conditions that will arouse serviceable
mental responses: in short, of his art as a teacher. (page 201).”
http://spartan.ac.brocku.ca/~lward/dewey/Dewey_1910a/Dewey_1910_o.html

“(bottom of page 204) But the teacher's problem-as a teacher-does not
reside in mastering a subject-matter, but in adjusting a
subject-matter to the nurture of thought. Now the
 (top of page 205) formal steps indicate excellently well the
questions a teacher should ask in working out the problem of teaching
a topic. What preparation have my pupils for attacking this subject?
What familiar experiences of theirs are available? What have they
already learned that will come to their assistance?”
http://spartan.ac.brocku.ca/~lward/dewey/Dewey_1910a/Dewey_1910_o.html

from John Dewey. "Froebel's Educational Principles.” Chapter 5 in The
School and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago. (1915): 111-127:

(page 112) “That the primary root of all educative activity is in the
instinctive, impulsive attitudes and activities of the child, and not
in the presentation and application of external material, whether
through the ideas of others or through the senses; and that,
accordingly, numberless spontaneous activities of children, plays,
games, mimic efforts, even the apparently meaningless motions of
infants —exhibitions previously ignored as trivial, futile, or even
condemned as positively evil— are capable of educational use; nay, are
the foundation-stones of educational method.”
http://spartan.ac.brocku.ca/~lward/dewey/Dewey_1907/Dewey_1915b.html

(page 125) 
There is no ground for holding that the teacher should not suggest
anything to the child until he has consciously expressed a want in
that direction. A sympathetic teacher is quite likely to know more
clearly than the child himself what his own instincts are and mean.
But the suggestion must fit in with the dominant mode of growth in the
child; it must serve simply as stimulus to bring forth more adequately
what the child is already blindly striving to do. Only by watching the
child and seeing the attitude that he assumes toward suggestions can
we tell whether they are operating as factors in furthering the
child's growth, or whether they are external, arbitrary impositions
interfering with normal growth.
http://spartan.ac.brocku.ca/~lward/dewey/Dewey_1907/Dewey_1915b.html

Things seem to have changed on the Web since this question was posted.
 I don't see the quote on the University of Iowa homepage and I don't
get any answer from the server with the full text of "How We Think."

I did find the exact quote in a 1996 post in a University of Iowa
forum, which may be what dkaplanpa-ga is referring to:

http://www.uiowa.edu/~idt/courses/7W120/forums/topic3/messages/17.htm

My guess is that the sentence is Scott Johnson's interpretation of
Dewey and not a paraphrase of any specific passage Dewey wrote.