Reviews for The History and Philosophy of Education: Voices of Educational Pioneers

The average rating for The History and Philosophy of Education: Voices of Educational Pioneers based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-11-21 00:00:00 Joe Kuhn Eh, not as great a book as I was hoping it might be. To sum it up, the author tells us what a lot of us already know - America is getting dumber, inequality between rich and poor continues to grow, we all exist only to serve as consumers of what the corporations sell us, etc. The problem is I don't think that most people who are going to read Twilight would dispute any of these ideas before having read the book. Is America in relative cultural, intellectual, and societal decline? Absolutely. That being the case, what more does the author have to say beyond this fact? Nothing much. Not to say the book is a complete waste. There is admittedly a certain kind of morbid pleasure in reading about how absolutely ignorant some Americans are, not excluding those who are post-secondarily edumacated. (The author helps confirm my own view that the value of an advanced degree has become so overinflated in the last 50 years so as to make it virtually meaningless. That is to say there is no reason to assume someone with an advanced degree is necessarily better educated or learned than someone without one.) But again,the question is, so what? What disappoints me is that some of Berman's ideas seem to be kind of simplistic and out-of-date. (And I don't mean the way he complains about the popularity of New Age thinking.) Berman seems to have this faith in Enlightenment rationalism as the answer and ultimate good. "If only people were better educated, more scientific, more knowledgeable, things would be better." But this philosophical idea has been in question since Kant's critiques at the tail end of the so-called Age of Enlightenment (and long before that, even). The value of Enlightenment rationalism has been shown to be wanting by thinkers over the last couple of centuries. One cannot just assume that a better-educated people will be a better people. (The machine gun, world wars, poison gas, atomic bombs, colonialism, etc. are all products of the modern, scientific, post-Enlightenment world.) One can no longer just take it for granted that knowledge and reason have value in and of themselves or that their acquisition will provide satisfying answers to life's questions. These larger philosophical issues seem to have eluded Berman.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-12-31 00:00:00 Scott Horst Morris Berman's alarming book of 183 pages was written in 2001, and I read it a year or two later. I was curious to reread the book and see its relevance 10 years later. Closing the book, I think that its analysis of the decline of American culture is as true now as a decade ago. In fact, the situation is much worse. Berman looked at the cult of money and consumerism that permeates U.S. life, the dominance of hype and propaganda, the squeezing of the middle class, and the redistribution of wealth upward (sound familiar?). He described the widespread solipsism and resentment of so much of the residents of this country. He saw colleges and universities becoming no more than providers of job training. He also examined the corporate oligarchy that devalues our democracy and the anti-intellectualism (and indeed anti-science attitude of one of our major political parties) that coarsens public discussion. He wrote that the U.S. has reached the stage depicted by Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451." However, unlike the situation in that 1953 book, now the government doesn't have to ban books; people these days are ceasing to read books, magazines, and newspapers - and are abandoning critical thinking and the pursuit of knowledge - quite on their own. "It may even be the case that the number of genuinely literate adults in the United States amounts to fewer than 5 million people - that is, less than 3 percent of the total population." Little of this is new, but Berman was one of the earlier people to sound the alarm. Berman thinks we are in a Dark Age and it is getting darker all the time. As was the case in medieval Europe where monasteries preserved the wisdom of ancient Greece and Rome until the flowering of the Renaissance, Berman proposes the "monastic option" in the 21st century. "We can include in it traditions of craftsmanship, care, and integrity; preservation of canons of scholarship, critical thinking, and the Enlightenment tradition; combatting the forces of environmental degradation and social inequality; valuing individual achievement and independent thought; and so on. But central to all these examples is the rejection of a life based on kitsch, consumerism, and profit, or on power, fame, and self-promotion." Anyone who reads this review and wants to study my manuscripts and discuss literature, music, philosophy, movies, politics, language, or the meaning of life is always welcomed to my monastery -- in person or my e-mail. I will even share my red wine.