A Richer, Brighter Vision for American High Schools

by Nel Noddings

Overview

In today's high schools, education is often reduced to a means of achieving financial security, leading to an overemphasis on quantifiable measures of performance. This approach encourages academically talented students to focus on test scores and rankings rather than intellectual enrichment, and discourages students with non-academic talents from pursuing them. A Richer, Brighter Vision for American High Schools advocates instead a unifying educational aim of producing better adults, which would encompass all aspects of students' lives: intellectual, physical, moral, spiritual, social, vocational, aesthetic, and civic. Nel Noddings offers suggestions to improve high schools by increasing collegiality among students and faculty, enriching curricula with interdisciplinary themes, renewing vocational education programs, addressing parenting and homemaking, and professionalizing the teaching force. This thought-provoking book will act as an important guide for teachers, teacher educators, administrators, and policy makers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781316415207
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	05/14/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Nel Noddings is Lee L. Jacks Professor of Education, Emerita, at Stanford University, California. She is the author of nineteen books, including Critical Lessons: What our Schools Should Teach (2006), Peace Education: How We Come to Love and Hate War (2011) and Education and Democracy in the 21st Century (2013).

Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. Unity of purpose; 2. Vocational programs; 3. What might have been: women's traditional interests; 4. A better adult: continuing the search; 5. Parenting; 6. The Common Core Standards; 7. Critical thinking; 8. Collegiality, caring, and continuity; 9. The curriculum and its setting; 10. Planning, enacting, evaluating; 11. The professional preparation of teachers; 12. Reflecting on the brighter vision.

Editorial Reviews

"It is no small feat to write about truth, beauty, love, and goodness as aims of education. But Noddings does it with aplomb, making clear how high schools must change through the democratic conversations she envisages. Conversations about invigorating vocational education. About integrating parenting, peace, and poverty into every course. About ensuring that each student can choose a path with pride. Noddings warns us that her recommendations are controversial. Controversial to some, perhaps. But essential for us all."
Rena Upitis, Queen’s University, Ontario

"This book will be greatly valued by aspiring educators who are forming their vision of the aims of education and by those open to re-examining the priorities that dominate policy and practice. Through graceful and compelling prose, Nel Noddings highlights the limits of the common core and of generic mantras like "College and Career", which dominate discussions today. She enables readers to imagine something much richer. This book sparks critically important conversations about ways to pursue meaningful reform."
Joseph E. Kahne, Mills College and Chair of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Youth and Participatory Politics

"… brilliantly written throughout and comprehensive in scope …"
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