Fear is not the first feature of educational experience associated with the best-known progressive educational theorists--Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Dewey, and Paolo Freire. But each of these important thinkers did, in fact, have something substantive to say about how fear functions in the processes of learning and growth. Andrea English and…

In this essay, Robert Davis argues that much of the moral anxiety currently surrounding children in Europe and North America emerges at ages and stages curiously familiar from traditional Western constructions of childhood. The symbolism of infancy has proven enduringly effective over the last two centuries in associating the earliest years of…

In order to understand fully his educational prescriptions, we need to grasp the relationship between Rousseau's political and educational philosophies. This paper reexamines selected educational ideas from the perspective of Rousseau's social thought, with particular emphasis on his theory of human nature and his views regarding freedom and…

Respect for individuality did not penetrate deeply into John Dewey's thought, and, consequently, mass solidarity, based on group cooperation and sharing of interests, is emphasized at the expense of individuality. Examples of Dewey's theories about art and science are used to illustrate the point. (PP)

This essay examines how themes emerging in the writing of New Left thinkers resemble those espoused by traditional American cultural conservatives. The views of Donald Davidson, a representative of the Southern Agrarian movement, concerning industrialization in the United States and the role of progressive education in socialization are discussed.…