Moral Principles in Education (Arcturus Books, Ab128)

Rating:
Summary: Great ideas in a stagnant text.
Review: First off, that's a 3.5, not a 3, but whatever. Perhaps I am just not one for reading philosophy, or as I like to think, many philosophers simply do not understand how to write in a clear fasion. At the bottom of it, Dewey's ideas for ethics in education are as vital now as they were when he wrote it back 1909, but perhaps if he could have made his points in some way more coherent (at a little over 50 pages, this still feels bloated, I imagine it could be clearly stated in about 10 pages), the entire US educational system would have been where it is now by the 20's--and that truly would have been something revolutionary. Dewey goes so far as essentially voicing his own primitive theory of constructivism, along with revolutionary concepts such as 'those who do the doing do the learning'--namely that teaching should be more student oriented and should first and foremost engage the student. There even seems to be a bit of the 'content versus process' debate here, and yet I think there must be more modern writers who have stated this with greater clarity. For people who enjoy reading terse philosophical monologues (and this certainly is still quite readable--I've seen much worse), then certainly pick up this book both for its historical value and a relatively interesting exploration of the ethics in teaching. If your a busy grad student like me though, this may not seem like it is worth the frustration--especially when you can open up almost any teaching journal and see the same ideas. Sure, they didn't say if first, but I don't fall asleep reading it.