Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) and Thomas Huxley (1852-1895) had different, but substantial, effects on the history of education. Rousseau's educational theories supplied the intellectual foundation for pedagogical progressivism. Huxley's educational writings helped to enlarge the scope of the British curriculum to include such things as…

In this comparative essay, the author discusses the opposing educational theories of John Dewey and Gregory Bateson. While Dewey believed that the scientific method was the dominant method of solving problems and thereby acquiring knowledge that mattered, Bateson warned that this one-sided approach would lead to actions that could destroy the…

In this essay, the authors propose that there are certain psychoanalytic insights, at the intersection of the clinical and of critical social theory, which become crucial at precisely the point of recognizing the hidden curriculum. They contend that it is at this point that a political actor, and an educator or educational theorist interested in…

In this article, the author addresses a problem that first occurred to him almost 40 years ago. Having finally arrived at a possible solution, he would like to share it with others. The issue was raised by John Dewey and taken up again by Richard Peters and Paulo Freire. It was not their main concern, however; nor has it been a major concern of…

This article focuses on developing a progressive philosophy of praxis that challenges, what the author argues is, a post-racial resistance to teaching about racial injustice. Post-racial resistance to teaching can lead to forms of enlightened racism and sexism in the classroom. In this essay, the author develops and extends the use of the metaphor…

The author's sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Hunter, showed him that adults who held positions of power over children could be duplicitous. After several uneventful months, she started singling him out in hurtful ways for no apparent reason. On top of the established threat of being paddled arbitrarily, Mrs. Hunter started to humiliate him in front of…

The English Enlightenment philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) is one of the most prominent figures in the development of liberal Anglo-American political thought. Locke's writings had a significant influence on the American Revolution and founding principles of the United States in fundamental ways. The author argues that Locke's influence is…

The year was 1909. The United States was in the throes of tremendous social and institutional changes: a rapidly diversifying population, dramatic shifts in political and economic structures, the rise of Progressivism as a paradigm for social reform and social control, and the intense and often grating sounds of a public education system really…

In "Laggards, Morons, Human Clinkers, and Other Peculiar Kids," Robert Osgood takes the readers back to a pivotal moment in the development of American public schools, a time when schools were just starting to be held accountable for seeing to it that children progressed through the system efficiently. As a result of Ayres study, which was…

John Dewey defines democracy as a form of associated living "in which the interests of a group are shared by all its members, and the fullness and freedom with which it interacts with other groups." Few would argue that people with disabilities have been among the most excluded, the least able to share in the fullness and freedom of "associated…

The contradiction between the concept of equality found in the Declaration of Independence and that found in U.S. Constitution led the author to question what the Constitution had to say about education. After all, Montesquieu (1689-1755), a French "philosophe" whose work heavily influenced Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and the U.S.…

In this paper, the author outlines what No Child Left Behind policy might mean first in personal then in philosophical terms. First, the author will trace a bit of Obama's own educational development: how he was first set on a personal educational journey and how, proceeding along with that journey, he eventually came to successfully elicit…

The growing diversity of school populations in the present education milieu raises issues of treating difference along multiple lines of the social, political and economic well being of children. Difference is here defined as politically significant group identities to which the author refers as cultures or identity groups. Political liberal…

In the last decade, educational researchers and scholars have turned new attention to the theory and practice of community organizing as a method for addressing education injustices. While there are diverse traditions of community organizing work, by far the most influential model in US contexts is that of Saul Alinsky, whose "Rules for Radicals"…

Critical scholarship frequently depicts literacy education as an "initiation into passivity." Disconnected from the lives of students and reduced to strategies for scoring points on tests, literacy becomes an exercise in the reproduction of a moral economy of discipline, compliance, and productivity. Yet people also recognize that the modern world…