Reimagining Liberal Education: Affiliation and Inquiry in Democratic Schooling

This challenging and provocative book reimagines the justification, substance, process, and study of education in open, pluralistic, liberal democratic societies.

Hanan Alexander argues that educators need to enable students to embark on a quest for intelligent spirituality, while paying heed to a pedagogy of difference. Through close analysis of the work of such thinkers as William James, Charles Taylor, Elliot Eisner, Michael Oakeshott, Isaiah Berlin, Martin Buber, Michael Apple and Terrence McLaughlin, Reimagining Liberal Education offers an account of school curriculum and moral and religious instruction that throws new light on the possibilities of a nuanced, rounded education for citizenship.

Divided into three parts - Transcendental Pragmatism in Educational Research, Pedagogy of Difference and the Other Face of Liberalism, and Intelligent Spirituality in the Curriculum, this is a thrilling work of philosophy that builds upon the author's award-winning text Reclaiming Goodness: Education and the Spiritual Quest.

A passionate and provocative work of educational philosophy, arguing for an intelligent spirituality and building on the work of several key thinkers.

Hanan Alexander is Professor of Philosophy of Education at the University of Haifa, Israel. He has been Visiting Professor and Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge, UK, and the University of California, Berkeley, USA, and his book Reclaiming Goodness: Education and the Spiritual Quest won the National Jewish Book Award in 2001.

Acknowledgements
Preface
Introduction
Part I: Prologue
1. Schools Without Faith
Part II: Transcendental Pragmatism in Educational Research
2. A View from Somewhere
3. Aesthetics Inquiry in Education
4. Traditions of Inquiry in Education
Part III: Pedagogy of Difference and the Other Face of Liberalism
5. Education in Ideology
6. Literacy and the Education of Citizens
7. What is Common about Common Schooling?
Part IV: Intelligent Spirituality in the Curriculum
8. Human Agency and the Curriculum
9. Moral Education in Liberal Democracy
10. Religious Initiation in Liberal Democracy
Part V: Epilogue
11. To the Truth, Roughly Speaking
12. Spirituality, Morality, and Criticism in Education
Notes
Bibliography
Index