Overview

Critical Lessons concentrates on the critical, reflective thinking that should be taught in high schools. Taking seriously the Socratic advice, 'know thyself', it focuses on topics that will help students to understand the forces - good and bad - that work to socialize them. This book argues why critical thinking is necessary in schools because it requires the discussion of critical issues: how we learn, the psychology of war, what it means to make a home, advertising and propaganda, choosing an occupation, gender, and religion.

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9780511804625

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Reviews

Drawing on historical and pedagogical studies, literary analysis, and primary-source materials, Noddings provides a wide-ranging argument for the discussion of race, class, gender, consumerism, mass communications, the family, and the workplace in the curriculum.[...] This volume is likely to become an important resource for future scholarship. --Library Journal Most readers of education-policy books like this expect the author to tell them what to think. But Noddings rarely advocates for any controversial position; instead, she gives teachers suggestions on how to begin provocative conversations, and offers ideas to keep these conversations safe, civil, and engaging. Most public-school graduates will find Critical Lessons a provocative course in their post- secondary education. --Greater Good Magazine This book engages the reader from the introduction to the final pages[...]The author, past president of the John Dewey Society, moves through each of the chapters discussing key topics such as war, people, parenting, nature, propaganda, gender, and religion, relating them all to critical thinking and self-understanding. She weaves a complex book that is superbly written and combines literature, psychology, theology, philosophy, and liberal education. --H.B. Arnold, University of the Pacific, Choice It is refreshing to read a volume written by an individual who has the understanding and experience to offer a well-reasoned, if radical, plan for curricular reform in public secondary schools[...]Critical Lessons should be required reading for every student in teacher education programs. --Jean Shepherd Hamm, Feminist Teacher

Author Information

Nel Noddings is Lee L. Jacks Professor of Education, Emerita, at Stanford University. She is past president of the Philosophy of Education Society and of the John Dewey Society. In addition to fourteen books - among them are Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education, Women and Evil, The Challenge to Care in Schools, Educating for Intelligent Belief or Unbelief, and Philosophy of Education - she is the author of some 200 articles and chapters on various topics ranging from the ethics of care to mathematical problem solving. Her latest books are Starting at Home: Caring and Social Policy, Educating Moral People: A Caring Alternative to Character Education and Happiness and Education (Cambridge University Press, 2003). Noddings spent 15 years as a teacher, administrator, and curriculum developer in public schools. She served as a mathematics department chairperson in New Jersey and as Director of the Laboratory Schools at the University of Chicago. At Stanford, she received the Award for Teaching Excellence three times, most recently in 1997. She also served as Associate Dean and as Acting Dean at Stanford University for four years.

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