George S. Counts and American Civilization: The Educator as Social Theorist
George S. Counts and American Civilization describes the efforts of Counts (1889–1975), the social reformist educator, to create a “civilizational” philosophy of education based upon his analysis of American life and institutions. Firmly believing that education was particular to a given societal context, Counts analyzed American civilization’s social, political, economic, and cultural institutions. Counts’s analysis of American civilization caused him to become a social critic. Not content with theory, Counts became an ideologist of a “new social order” and a political activist at crucial periods in his long and productive career.
Contents:
“Counts: The Man and Scholar”
“The Crisis of the Depression”
“A Frame of Reference”
“The Crisis Between Two Civilizations”
“The Democratic Heritage in a Technological Age”
“Economic Individualism and the American Experience”
“Counts’s Program of Action”
“A Civilizational Philosophy of Education”
“Counts and American Reform”
Gerald Lee Gutek is Dean of the School of the Education, Loyola University of Chicago. His earlier books include A History of the Western Educational Experience (1972), and Philosophical Alternatives in Education (1974).