Education After Dewey

by Paul Fairfield

Overview

Do Martin Heidegger's statements on the nature of thinking compel a re-examination of Dewey's view? Does Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophy of experience advance beyond Dewey's experimental model? How does a Deweyan view of moral or political education look in light of Hannah Arendt's theory of judgment, or Paulo Freire's theory of dialogical education?

Part One of this study looks at Dewey's conceptions of experience and thinking in connection with two of the most important figures in twentieth-century phenomenology and hermeneutics: Heidegger and Gadamer. It also returbans to an old distinction in the philosophy of education between progressivism and conservatism, in order to situate and clarify Dewey's position and to frame the argument of this book. Part Two applies this principled framework to the teaching of several disciplines of the human sciences: philosophy, religion, ethics, politics, history and literature. These are discussed with reference to the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, John Caputo, Hannah Arendt, Paulo Freire, Michel Foucault, and Paul Ricoeur.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781441145864
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	12/11/2009
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.30(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Paul Fairfield is Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Queen's University, Canada.

Table of Contents

A Note about References vii

Introduction: An Enigmatic Transition 1

Part 1 The Educative Process

1 Beyond Progressivism and Conservatism 13

2 Dewey's Copernican Revolution 52

3 What Is Called Thinking? 101

Part 2 Education in the Human Sciences

4 Teaching Philosophy: The Scholastic and the Thinker 149

5 Teaching Religion: Spiritual Training or Indoctrination? 183

6 Teaching Ethics: From Moralism to Experimentalism 210

7 Teaching Politics: Training for Democratic Citizenship 233

8 Teaching History: The Past and the Present 257

9 Teaching Literature: Life and Narrative 280

Index 305