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Moral Perfectionism and Education in Dewey and Emerson
In the name of efficiency, the practice of education has come to be dominated by neoliberal ideology andprocedures of standardization and quantification. Such attempts to make all aspects of practice transparent and subject to systematic accounting lack sensitivity to the invisible and the silent, to something in the humancondition that cannot readily be expressed in an either-or form. Seeking alternatives to such trends, Saito readsDewey's idea of progressive education through the lens of Emersonian moral perfectionism (to borrow a term coined by Stanley Cavell). She elucidates a spiritual and aesthetic dimension to Dewey's notion of growth, one considerably richer than what Dewey alone presents in his typically scientific terminology.
Classical Education in America
The pragmatic demands of American life have made higher education's sustained study of ancient Greece and Rome an irrelevant luxury, ;and this despite the fact that American democracy depends so heavily on classical language, literature, and political theory. In The Grammar of Our Civility, Lee T. Pearcy chronicles how this came to be. Pearcy argues that classics never developed a distinctly American way of responding to distinctly American social conditions. Instead, American classical education simply imitated European models that were designed to underwrite European culture. The Grammar of Our Civility also offers a concrete proposal for the role of classical education, one that takes into account practical expectations for higher education in twenty-first century America.
Talking about Religion and Morality in Public Schools
Weaving together history, philosophy, and curriculum, Grappling with the Good offers a vision of public education in which students learn to engage respectfully with the diversity of beliefs about how to live together in society. Robert Kunzman argues that we can and should help students learn how to talk about religion and morality, and bring together our differing visions of life. He describes how such an approach might work in the K–12 setting, explores central philosophical principles, and shares his ongoing experiences and insights in helping students to “grapple with the good.”
Writing Beyond the Curriclum in the City of Brotherly Love
In Gravyland, Parks chronicles the history of an urban university writing program and its attempt to develop politically progressive literacy partnerships with the surrounding community while having to work within and against a traditional educational and cultural landscape. He details the experience of the New City Writing program at Temple University from its beginning as a small institute with one program at a local public school to a multi-faceted organization, raising millions of dollars, and establishing partnerships across the diverse neighborhoods of Philadelphia. In doing so, the author describes classrooms where the community takes a seat and becomes part of the conversation—a conversation which is recorded and shared through a selection of writing produced. While Parks celebrates classroom success in generating knowledge through dialog with the larger community, he also highlights many of the obstacles the organizers of the New City Writing program faced. The author shows that writing alliances between universities and communities are possible but they must take into account the institutional, economic, and political pressures that accompany such partnerships. Blending the theoretical and practical lessons learned, Parks details New City Writing’s effort to offer a new model of education, one in which the voice of the professor must share space with the voices of the community, and one in which students come to understand that the right to sit in a classroom is not just the result of war, but of peaceful civil disobedience, of community struggles to gain self-recognition, and of collective efforts to seek social justice.
The hidden curriculum (HC) in health professional education comprises the organizational and institutional contexts and cultural subtexts that shape how and what students learn outside the formal and intended curriculum. HC includes informal social processes such as role modeling, informal conversations and interactions among faculty and students, and more subterranean forces of organizational life such as the structure of power and privilege and the architectural layout of work environments. For better and sometimes for worse, HC functions as a powerful vehicle for learning and requires serious attention from health professions educators.
This volume, of interest to medical and health professionals, educators, and students, brings together twenty-two new essays by experts in various aspects of HC. An introduction and conclusion by the editors contextualizes the essays in the broader history and literature of the field.
Essays on Criticism, Culture, and the University
Over the past decade, Jeffrey J. Williams has been one of the most perceptive observers of contemporary literary and cultural studies. He has also been a shrewd analyst of the state of American higher education. How to Be an Intellectual brings together noted and new essays, and exemplifies Williams’s effort to bring criticism to a wider public. _x000B__x000B_How to Be an Intellectual profiles a number of critics, drawing on a unique series of interviews that give an inside look at their work and careers. The book often looks at critical thought from surprising angles, examining, for instance, the history of modern American criticism in terms of its keywords as they morphed from sound to rigorous to smart. It also puts in plain language the political travesty of higher education policies that produce student debt, which, as Williams demonstrates, all too readily follow the model of colonial indenture, not just as a metaphor but in actual point of fact._x000B__x000B_How to Be an Intellectual tells a story of intellectual life since the culture wars. Shedding academic obscurity and calling for a better critical writing, it reflects on what makes the critic and intellectual—the accidents of careers, the trends in thought, the institutions that shape us, and politics. It also includes personal views of living and working with books. _x000B_
Once intent on being good to people, Jane Addams later dedicated herself to the idea of being good with people, establishing mutually-responsive and reciprocal relationships with those she served at Hull House. The essays in Jane Addams in the Classroom explore how Addams's life, work, and philosophy provide invaluable lessons for teachers seeking connection with their students. Balancing theoretical and practical considerations, the collection examines Addams's emphasis on listening to and learning from those around her and encourages contemporary educators to connect with students through innovative projects and teaching methods. In the first essays, Addams scholars lay out how her narratives drew on experience, history, and story to explicate theories she intended as guides to practice. Six teacher-scholars then establish Addams's ongoing relevance by connecting her principles to exciting events in their own classrooms. An examination of the Jane Addams Children's Book Award and a fictional essay on Addams's work and ideas round out the volume. Accessible and wide-ranging, Jane Addams in the Classroom offers inspiration for educators while adding to the ongoing reconsideration of Addams's contributions to American thought. Contributors are Todd DeStigter, Lanette Grate, Susan Griffith, Lisa Junkin, Jennifer Krikava, Lisa Lee, Petra Munro, Bridget O'Rourke, David Schaafsma, Beth Steffen, Darren Tuggle, Erin Vail, and Ruth Vinz.
A Critical Engagement with Dewey's Democracy and Education
These original essays focus on John Dewey’s Democracy and Education, a book widely regarded as one of the greatest works ever written in the history of educational thought. The contributors address Dewey’s still powerful argument that education is not a preparation for life, but rather constitutes a fundamental aspect of the very experience of living. The authors examine Dewey’s central themes, including the dynamics of human communication, the nature of growth, the relation between democracy and education, and the importance of recognizing student agency. They link their analyses with contemporary educational concerns and problems, offering ideas about what the curriculum for children and youth should be, how to prepare teachers for the profession, what pedagogical approaches make the most sense given societal trends, and how to reconstruct the purposes of school. This first book-length study of Dewey’s extraordinary text attests to the continued power in his work and to the diverse audience of educators to whom he has long appealed.