A Frame for Discussion

Abstract

Introduction: Is there a relationship between how we understand education and how we think about the nature of knowledge and/or the world? The three books under review here, Child Psychology and Child Education, The Closing of the American Mind, and The Trial of Socrates, all argue in their own way that there is a strong relationship between the way we understand the world and our view of education. Yet these three books are also about very different subjects: developmental psychology, how the university has failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today's students (the subtitle of Bloom's book) and the role of Socrates in Athenian democracy. Additionally, the authors present their arguments as psychologist, philosopher and historian/commentator respectively. They are reviewed together because it is felt that these works might provide a new perspective on one of the current debates in education, namely, what should the curriculum of the schools be?