John Dewey and the Paradox of Liberal Reform

William Andrew Paringer teaches Philosophy and Educational Theory at the CUNY College of Staten Island and at Montclair State College.

• Acknowledgments ForewordBetty Reardon Preface Introduction: Problem and Crisis Reform and SchoolingNuclearizationIdeologyTowards Social JusticeEducational Praxis Part I. The Scientific and the Transformational DemocracyPragmatismIndividualismDemocracy and EducationScientificIdeology Critique or Educative MethodSocial Justice Part II: The Natural and the Historical Nature and the NaturalThe FunctionalDevelopmentProgressivismHistory Part III: The Personal and the Political ExperiencePraxis Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index

"Paringer's critique of Dewey's key concepts of democracy, science, nature, and experience are genuinely fresh and insightful. There is power in his call for a radical structural analysis to show the limitations of Dewey's theory of democracy, and the need to supplement or replace it with the concept of social justice." — Arthur G. Wirth, Washington University"This work makes Dewey accessible to a new generation. Dewey finally gets demystified here when his central conceptions are explored against a set of 1980s social theory concerns." — William D. Taylor, The Ohio State University