Higher Education in the Making, livre ebook

Argues for a pragmatic canon always in need of renovation.

Argues for a pragmatic canon always in need of renovation.

George Allan argues that the so-called "culture wars" in higher education are the result of the dogmatic and unyielding certainty that both canonists and anti-canonists bring to any discussion of how best to organize an undergraduate curriculum. He then proposes a middle way. Drawing from William James, John Dewey, and Alfred North Whitehead, he contrasts the absolutist claims of both canonists and anti-canonists with a fallibilist approach and argues for a more pragmatic canon that is normative and always in need of renovation.

A wide variety of voices are heard in Allan's conversation about the nature and meaning of an education canon, including philosophers Aristotle, Descartes, Arthur Lovejoy, Hannah Arendt, Spengler, Emerson, Lyotard, and Rorty. Contemporary voices include Eva Brann, Charles Anderson, Francis Oakley, Martha Nussbaum, Gerald Graff, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Bill Readings.

Acknowledgments
Series Introduction
1. Crumbling Cathedrals
2. Content Canonists
3. Procedural Canonists
4. Anti-Canonists
5. Relative Canonists
6. Canonical Dynamics
7. Canonical Dialectics
8. Pragmatic Canonists
9. Education for a Democracy
10. Religious Education
11. Education for Our Common Good
12. Cathedral Ruins
13. Constructive Pragmatics
Works Cited
Note on Supporting Center
Index
SUNY Series in Constructive Postmodern Thought