Last Best Hope

STEPHEN JOHN GOODLAD is a writer and philosopher whose interests center on the relationships between environmentalism, ecology, and democracy and, in turn, the implications of those relationships for education and schooling.

• Source Texts. Introduction (S. Goodlad). Acknowledgements. The Editor WHY DEMOCRACY? Democracy (N. Postman). An Aristocracy of Everyone (B. Barber). CONCEPTS AND COMPLEXITIES. What Makes Democracy Work? (R. Putnam). The Democratic Virtues (C. Lummis). Was Democracy Just a Moment? (R. Kaplan). CITIZENSHIP AND CHARACTER. The Masses in Representative Democracy (M. Oakeshott) Reorientation in Education (B. Bode). The Education of Character (M. Buber). DEMOCRACY AND ITS TROUBLES. Market Democracy in a Neoliberal Order (N. Chomsky). Law and Justice (H. Zinn). Jefferson, Morrill, and the Upper Crust (W. Berry). THE PUBLIC AND THE PERSONAL. Democracy and Human Nature (J. Dewey). Egalitarian Solidarity (P. Green). Moral Imagination (M. Johnson). EDUCATION IN A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY. How Colleges of Education Package the Myth of Modernity (C. Bowers). Democratic Education in Difficult Times (A. Gutmann). What Is Education For? (D. Orr). HUMAN POTENTIAL AND DEMOCRACY'S FUTURE. The Domain of the Future (M. Csikszentmihalyi). Practical Utopianism (M. Midgley). Index.

"These essays will challenge groups of democratic readers to examine their social and political assumptions, and in so doing will enable them to strengthen their commitment to the quality of democratic life. The Last Best Hope is a call to reflective action." (Stanley N. Katz, professor, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, and professor emeritus, American Council of Learned Societies)