The Parochialism of the Present

Book excerpt: In this controversial and challenging book, first published in 1981, the author calls for a restoration of the humanistic literary and historical balance in our educational thinking. He argues that the philosophy of education, seeking to emulate the precisions of science, concerns itself more with the analysis of words than with the real problems encountered in the educational world. Social science itself, he argues, would benefit by the promptings of literary insights. These essays constitute a systematic indictment of the narrowness of contemporary thinking about education, and will be of interest to students of education, philosophy and sociology.