In "Moderating the Debate: Rationality and the Promise of American Education," Michael Feuer raises concerns about the consequences of basing educational policy on the model of rational choice drawn from economics. Policy making would be better and more realistic, he suggests, if it were based on a newer procedural model drawn from cognitive…

The book, "Plato, Utilitarianism and Education," by Robin Barrow is reviewed in this article. (JD)

Recently, Bakhtinian philologists have charged scholars of education with misapplying Bakhtin's scholarship in their field. In this critical essay, Eugene Matusov reviews two recent edited collections relevant to this issue: Arnetha F. Ball and Sarah Warshauer Freedman's Bakhtinian Perspectives on Language, Literacy, and Learning and Bonny Norton…

This article offers an interpretation of the social philosophy of Hegel which differs from that expressed in an article in the summer 1975 issue of Educational Theory. (JD)

In this review essay, Jeanne Connell examines the influence of pragmatic philosophy on the scholarly works of twentieth-century literary theorist and English educator Louise Rosenblatt through the lens of a recent collection of her essays originally published between 1936 and 1999. Rosenblatt grounded her transactional theory of literature in…

This rejoinder is based on comments appearing in Spring 1971 issue of Educational Theory which in turn commented on author's article in the Summer 1969 issue. (MB)

Theorists often take a condescending stance when speaking about the educationalization of social problems. Given their confidence with postmodern and poststructuralist perspectives, the educationalization of social problems is easily perceived as a set of questionable interventions by governments into educational practices. In this essay, Bert…

In this essay, Randall Curren identifies a type of liberalism that incorporates empirical claims about the development of agency and rationality, and responds to the criticism that liberalism rests on an incoherent conception of "autonomous agency." He argues that moral agents did indeed "become ghosts" somewhere en route from Aristotle to Kant,…

Response to criticism made of author's The Confrontation Between Experimentalism and Existentialism: From Dewey Through Heidegger and Beyond." (MB)

In this essay, Alexander Sidorkin offers a conceptual critique of the human capital theory that makes erroneous assumptions about the nature of student work and the private cost of schooling. Specifically, human capital theorists underestimate the private cost of schooling by taking low-level manual labor as the basis for estimating students'…

Author's response concerns Leroy F. Troutner's paper What Can the Educator Learn from the Existential Philosopher?" written in 1966 for The Philosophy of Education Society. (MB)

Vico's conception of sublime poetry is used as the context for examining Plato's criticisms of poets and his quest of knowledge for the good (as found in the "Republic"). (CB)

A contrast of two types of literary and theory criticism, negative and generative, points out how criticism can lead to productive work and what kind of criticism is most likely to evoke it. (CB)

The relevance of postmodernism for formulating educational policy is discussed, emphasizing the postmodern critique of computerization. Postmodernists suggest that the computer in education may not be as productive as was originally thought because it will bring to fruition the theories of modernism that separate truth from context. (JL)

A book titled "The Processes of Thinking" by Marc Belth is reviewed. (JD)