Reviews for A History of American Education

The average rating for A History of American Education based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-10-21 00:00:00 Michael D Roderick A fundamental contribution to the understanding of late medieval society in Europe. I disagree with Victoria's review below. Stock doesn't establish a hard line between literate and illiterate culture, as in higher and lower. He demonstrates the penetration of texts and literacy in a fundamentally oral culture and the workings of a rather long and gradual change. The eleventh and tweltfh centuries are the starting point of a historical change that, as he shows in a footnote mentioning Carlo Ginzburg's The cheese and the worms in the conclusion, will still be taking place in the sixteenth century. This book is one in a long list of contributions to understand the transformation that took place in western systems of thought: from Michael Clanchy's From memory to written record, through Paul Zumthor's La lettre and la voix, and finally reaching Mary Carruthers' The book of memory, and, why not, Ginzburg's already mentioned The cheese and the worms and Historia noturna.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-08-17 00:00:00 Jeremy Cook Interesting history of the implications or (rising) literacy in Europe during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and the consequences in religious practice (including heresies). Shows that many so-caled heretics nearly a thousand years ago already had very 'modern' ideas about the foundations (or lack of) of christianity.