References
- National Commission on Excellence in Education , A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Education Reform ( Washington D.C. : U.S. Government Printing Office , 1983 ).
- John I. Goodlad , A Place Called School: Prospects for the Future ( New York : McGraw-Hill , 1984 ), p. 1 .
- William J. Bennett , To Reclaim a Legacy: A Report on the Humanities in Higher Education ( Washington D.C. : National Endowment for the Humanities , 1984 ).
- Study Group on the Conditions of Excellence in Higher Education , Involvement in Learning: Realizing the Potential of Higher Education ( Washington , D.C. : Author , 1984 ).
- It is eerie to read over back issues of the Time magazine and find university professors lamenting “the intellectual deadness” of their students. In the November 18, 1957 issue, the Education column quoted one vice-president for academic affairs at the University of Michigan asking a group of one hundred students what they thought of Aldous Huxley. He reported that “only one or two of them had ever heard of him.”
- James D. Koerner , The Miseducation of American Teachers ( Boston : Houghton Mifflin , 1963 ), p. 4 .
- See, especially, Paul Goodman , Compulsory Miseducation ( New York : Random House , 1962 ) and John Holt, The Underachieving School (New York: Pitman Publishing Corp., 1964). At the end of the 60s came Charles Silberman's Crisis in the Classroom (New York: Vintage Books, 1971). Behind them, of course, looms the shadow of John Dewey who, it could be argued, set out the great unfinished agenda of universal education.
- Mark Van Doren , Liberal Education ( New York : Holt , 1943 ), p. 1 .
- Ibid. , p. 4 .
- Ibid. , p. 3 .
- John Edward Sadler , J. A. Comenius and the Concept of Universal Education ( London : George Allen & Unwin , 1966 ), p. 240 .
- Aristotle , Politics (Book VIII), in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKoen (New York: Random House, 1941), p. 1306.
- Otto Frederick , “Five Ways to Wisdom,” Time (September 27, 1982 ): 66 – 72
- Bennett , To Reclaim a Legacy.
- Frederick , “ Five Ways to Wisdom ,” p. 71 .
- Thomas Merton , “Learning to Live,” in Love and Living ( New York : Farrar, Straus & Giroux , 1979 ), p. 3 .
- Van Doren , Liberal Education , p. 67 .
- Alan Watts , This Is It and Other Essays on Zen and Spiritual Experience ( New York : Vintage Books , 1973 ), p. 32 . 1 am using the word “moral” here in a narrower sense than Paul Shaker in a recent article, “Education in the Coming Century: A Vision,” The Educational Forum 49 (Winter 1985): 232–239, where he describes education's task as human moral fulfillment and its role in meeting the need for true moral order. His use of the term is quite similar to my use of the word in regard to the great teachers of humanity (cf., p. 7).
- The most thorough examination of this contemporary phenomenon can be found in Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism ( New York : Warner Books , 1979 ).
- Van Doren , Liberal Education , p. 68 .
- Sadler , J. A. Comenius , p. 291 .
- Merton , “ Learning to Live ,” pp. 3 – 4
- An exception would be Erasmus for whom the purpose of all learning was to enhance spiritual development. John Dolan , in discussing Erasmus' view of the classics, pointed out that “the basic problem in the relation of learning to the spiritual life is solved by Erasmus' belief that the literature of the ancients offered a formative influence” ( The Essential Erasmus , ed. John P. Dolan , New York: Mentor Books, 1964 , p. 26 ).
- Merton , “ Learning to Live ,” p. 11 .
- J. Krishnamurti , Think on These Things , ed. D. Rajagopal ( New York : Harper & Row , 1964 ), pp. 10 – 11
- Merton , “ Learning to Live ,” p. 9 .