Educating for Democracy

Reviews / Votes

Fundamentalist religion, identity politics, and post-modernism would seem to have driven us far from the Enlightenment preoccupation with integrative humanist paradigms of education of the kind the Greeks called Paideia, the Germans called Bildung, and the French called Formation. But as this penetrating collection shows, the aspiration to humanistic knowledge and liberal learning is challenged but not defeated by the post-modernity and its maladies. Indeed, as Olson, Steiner, Tuuli,and their thoughtful colleagues show, the striving for education and knowledge, whether in religion (the intersection with Islam is especially interesting), pedagogy, or economics, can be fortified without resorting to reactionary nostalgia for the ancients by a careful understanding of paideia. Don't let the anthology format fool you-this is an important book with a clear center of gravity that should be of value to scholars, teachers, and students alike.. -- Benjamin R. Barber, University of Maryland Educating for Democracy: Paideia in an Age of Uncertainty is a breath of sorely needed fresh air. Situated in the ivory tower, philosophers must become pertinent to the current state of the world. No other profession manifests so explicitly the gap between theory and praxis, which threatens to make academia insignificant during transitional times. This book is a surprisingly successful attempt to bridge this divide by use of paideia, the calling of committed philosophers. Coming from several cultural contexts, both religious and secular, the contributors to this volume show-teach-the kind of critical work necessary for the politics of education and the education of and to politics. -- Anat Biletzki, Quinnipiac University, USA Paideia: Anachronism or Necessity? is the question that runs as the principal theme throughout this volume. The answer is paideia as a possibility and a potential for democratic education. In an exciting effort to draw on an ancient idea in an historical moment facing new and unheard of problems, the authors explore the meaning of the classical Greek concept of paideia in the fields of philosophy, religion, education, and economics. Bringing together contributions from the United States and Russia, from the Middle East and Europe, this volume engages in an international conversation on some of the most pressing questions of our time. -- Krzysztof Michalski, director, Institut fuer die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (Vienna and Boston) Educating for Democracy marks an important effort by an international group of philosophers...to bring their disciplined insights and classical educational heritage together toward analysis of religious, political, and economic conflicts playing out on the world stage. -- 2008 * Teaching Theology & Religion * This volume, due substantially to the leadership of Alan Olson, continues the work that led to the XXth World Congress of Philosophy, held in Boston in the summer of 1998, whose invited program appeared shortly thereafter in twelve volumes! This new volume contains papers delivered in two subsequent conferences that successfully continued the most welcome and admirable international cooperation of the Congress, on some of the same main themes. -- Ernest Sosa, Brown University Fundamentalist religion, identity politics, and post-modernism would seem to have driven us far from the Enlightenment preoccupation with integrative humanist paradigms of education of the kind the Greeks called Paideia, the Germans called Bildung, and the French called Formation. But as this penetrating collection shows, the aspiration to humanistic knowledge and liberal learning is challenged but not defeated by the post-modernity and its maladies. Indeed, as Olson, Steiner, Tuuli, and their thoughtful colleagues show, the striving for education and knowledge, whether in religion (the intersection with Islam is especially interesting), pedagogy, or economics, can be fortified without resorting to reactionary nostalgia for the ancients by a careful understanding of paideia. Don't let the anthology format fool you-this is an important book with a clear center of gravity that should be of value to scholars, teachers, and students alike. -- Benjamin R. Barber, University of Maryland