Education and Experience

The belief that all genuine education comes from experience does not mean that all experiences are genuinely or equally educative. Experience and education cannot be directly equated with each other. From some experiences are mis-educative. Any experience is mis-educative that has the effect of arresting or distorting the growth of further experience. An experience may be such as to engender callousness; it may produce lack of sensitivity and of responsiveness... a given experience may increase a person's automatic skill in a particular direction and yet tend to land him in a grove or rut... An experience may be immediately enjoyable and yet promote the formation of a slack and careless attitude...Each experience may be lively, vivid and "interesting", and their disconnectedness may artificially generate dispersive, disintegrated, centrifugal habits. The consequence of formation of such habits is inability to control future experiences. They are then taken, either by way of enjoyment or of discontent and revolt, just as they come.
---Dewey 1938:13-14