Alexander Meiklejohn – författare

Written in the midst of World War II, this book makes a strong argument for the crucial importance of education as the solution to the dilemmas with which our Anglo-Saxon culture was nurtured, with particular emphasis on the work of John Dewey and Jean-Jacques Rousseau."The schools with which this argument is concerned are those of the Anglo-Saxon democracies of the last three centuries. In the life of England and America as we now know them, three hundred years of cultural change have moved on to a culminating and desperate crisis. That culture, in its religious and moral aspects, we have called Protestantism. On the economic and political side it has appeared as Capitalism. And these two together have established and maintained a way of life which we describe as Democratic. This book is devoted to an attempt to understand the education which is given by Anglo-Saxon democracies, to study the learning and teaching which have been done by a Protestant-capitalist civilization." ufrom the Preface.As the original foreword by Reginald Archambault indicates, "Fundamentally this is a book about education written by an educator who was anything but conservative and never merely theoretical. He is interested not only in educational theory but also in educational policy, and indeed, in pedagogy. The volume is invaluable, then, for the student of education, for it sheds critical light on the classic conceptions of education for the poor, and provides a heuristic statement of direction for the future." Stringfellow Barr, writing for the New Republic, indicates that this is "A wise and courageous book. I do not know how anybody concerned with education can ignore it." Mark van Doren in the Nation said, "As many readers as are interested in human happiness should go through this bookafor it is concerned with as important a theme as any I can imagine."

A classic in the history of American higher education The Experimental College is the record of a radical experiment in university education. Established at the University of Wisconsin in Madison in 1927 by innovative educational theorist Alexander Meiklejohn, the ""Experimental College"" itself was to be a small, residence-based program within the larger university that provided a core curriculum of liberal education for the first two years of college. Aimed at finding a method of teaching whereby students would gain ""intelligence in the conduct of their own lives,"" the Experimental College gave students unprecedented freedom. Discarding major requirements, exams, lectures, and mandatory attendance, the program reshaped the student-professor relationship, abolished conventional subject divisions, and attempted to broadly connect the democratic ideals and thinking of classical Athens with the dilemmas of daily life in modern industrial America. Meiklejohn's program closed its doors after only five years, but this book, his final report on the experiment, examines both its failures and its triumphs. This edition brings back into print Meiklejohn's original, unabridged text.

America’s passion for “liberty,” writes Alexander Meiklejohn, has blinded her to the real meaning of “freedom.” It is freedom, not liberty, that lies at the heart of democracy, and we may be in danger of losing both. Our fetish of independence has permitted us to condone slavery, the betrayal of Indians and Blacks, and “the humiliation of the spirit of women . . . the crowning insult which a society has offered to the personalities of its own members.” In this challenging essay, sensitively and scrupulously argued, one of America’s most original social philosophers sums up the fallacies that have confused our purpose and recalls us to the methods of inquiry that led Socrates and Jesus to their supreme insights, “Know yourself” and “Love your neighbor.”

Written in the midst of World War II, this book makes a strong argument for the crucial importance of education as the solution to the dilemmas with which our Anglo-Saxon culture was nurtured, with particular emphasis on the work of John Dewey and Jean-Jacques Rousseau."The schools with which this argument is concerned are those of the Anglo-Saxon democracies of the last three centuries. In the life of England and America as we now know them, three hundred years of cultural change have moved on to a culminating and desperate crisis. That culture, in its religious and moral aspects, we have called Protestantism. On the economic and political side it has appeared as Capitalism. And these two together have established and maintained a way of life which we describe as Democratic. This book is devoted to an attempt to understand the education which is given by Anglo-Saxon democracies, to study the learning and teaching which have been done by a Protestant-capitalist civilization." ufrom the Preface.As the original foreword by Reginald Archambault indicates, "Fundamentally this is a book about education written by an educator who was anything but conservative and never merely theoretical. He is interested not only in educational theory but also in educational policy, and indeed, in pedagogy. The volume is invaluable, then, for the student of education, for it sheds critical light on the classic conceptions of education for the poor, and provides a heuristic statement of direction for the future." Stringfellow Barr, writing for the New Republic, indicates that this is "A wise and courageous book. I do not know how anybody concerned with education can ignore it." Mark van Doren in the Nation said, "As many readers as are interested in human happiness should go through this bookafor it is concerned with as important a theme as any I can imagine."