Revisiting Dewey

Revisiting Dewey is an admirable effort to place today's incoherent mess of federal education reform policies that mindlessly test poverty-struck children from the lower social classes with invalid tests, repeatedly failing students, then shoutingthat our excellent system of public education is failing. What nonsense! No mainstream research supports this nihilistic conclusion deliberately encouraged by the failed No Child Left Behind Law (2002). The authors correctly invoke the mind and democratic passion of John Dewey to make sense of the social destruction wrought by NCLB and an appeasing media. Only Dewey's comprehensive democratic theories and practice can cut through the jungle of punitive, unscientific, and teacher-destructive practicesof NCLB, all amazingly supported by President Obama's administration. Although readers may find items of disagreement in a book of this scope, it is clear to me that Revisiting Dewey will bring educators face-to-face with the Business Model ofdeceptive efficiency that uses invalid testing of our most needy citizens to induce a false failure of the world's most democratic public system of schools, the better to displace them with a for-profit-privatized-corporate system run by a trillion dollar -- Richard A. Gibboney, former Vermont commissioner of education and professor emeritus of education, University of Pennsylvania
What Stuckart and Glanz ask us to do is to return to John Dewey, to his ideas about children, pedagogy, and schooling in this American democracy. While this involves engaging with the past in order to understand Dewey's thinking in context, it also calls us to deepen our critical apprehension of the present accountability movements. Moreover, this book asks us to progress in Deweyan fashion forward into the future, moving with ambitious steps, a finely balanced sense of practicality, and a hopeful awareness of what frail human knowledge might contribute to professional action. -- Scot Danforth, San Diego State University
The authors offer all educators bold ideas and practices inspired by Dewey's conception of progressive education, which are timely and meaningful as the national debate about the process and ends of education persist today. I for one find the contents quite relevant as I contemplate the "whole" education of the "whole child." The book deals with a range of themes pertaining to education of the whole child and its relevance is steeped in a critical reflection on contemporary perspectives on what constitutes good education. The book is both a resource on contempoary education and Deweyian theory and I thank the authors for setting forth an agenda on educational policy and educational practice with focus, perspective, and insight. -- David P. Moxley, Ph.D., Oklahoma Health Care Authority Professor, Anne and Henry Zarrow School of Social Work, University of Oklahoma, Norman
Stuckart and Glanz offer a detailed discussion of how what educational researchers now consider best practices for schools embody Dewey's ideas. They follow with a study in which Dewey scholars hold forth on new directions and possibilities. Enjoyable! -- Greg Seals, associate professor of education, College of Staten Island, City University of New York
This book is just right to help us bring John Dewey back to life in America's public schools. In this impressive tribute, Stuckart and Glanz sharply reexamine and clearly illuminate the depth of Deweyan thought and incite readers to revisit his intellectual contributions and what it means to educate the whole child. One must believe that now, after coping for nearly one decade with the ruinous consequences of No Child Left Behind and its stronger accountability tenet, we might take back some control over what is happening in our schools, in Dewey's honor and for the betterment of all, above all the students on whom the future of our nation lies. -- Audrey Amrein-Beardsley, PhD, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University
Revisiting Dewey is an admirable effort to place today's incoherent mess of federal education "reform" policies that mindlessly test poverty-struck children from the lower social classes with invalid tests, repeatedly failing students, then shouting that our excellent system of public education is failing. What nonsense! No mainstream research supports this nihilistic conclusion deliberately encouraged by the failed No Child Left Behind Law (2002). The authors correctly invoke the mind and democratic passion of John Dewey to make sense of the social destruction wrought by NCLB and an appeasing media. Only Dewey's comprehensive democratic theories and practice can cut through the jungle of punitive, unscientific, and teacher-destructive practices of NCLB, all amazingly supported by President Obama's administration. Although readers may find items of disagreement in a book of this scope, it is clear to me that Revisiting Dewey will bring educators face-to-face with the Business Model of deceptive efficiency that uses invalid testing of our most needy citizens to induce a false failure of the world's most democratic public system of schools, the better to displace them with a for-profit-privatized-corporate system run by a trillion dollar hedge fund, or by a worker-friendly company like Wal-Mart. -- Richard A. Gibboney, former Vermont commissioner of education and professor emeritus of education, University of Pennsylvania
Stuckart (Wagner College) and Glanz (Yeshiva Univ.) advocate for a return to John Dewey's philosophy of education, especially as related to the complexity of addressing the needs of the whole child in the context of current contemporary issues in education today. Dewey advocated education for the whole child that treated teaching and learning as ethical practices necessary to a democratic society. Stuckart and Glanz are particularly concerned this broader focus on the role of education is being replaced by a narrow focus on testing. Many of the issues the authors discuss refer to the negative consequences of practices associated with No Child Left Behind. Specifically, Stuckart and Glanz assert that the focus on high-stakes testing has led to the negative consequences tied to the narrowing of the public school curriculum in the US. For example, key skills for the 21st century—effective collaboration, communication, and critical problem-solving skills—are neglected aspects of this curriculum. Finally, the book is an excellent overview and response to the popular accountability movements today. Recommended. Lower-division undergraduate collections and above. -- July 2011 * CHOICE *