The author characterizes pop intellectuals as shallow, undisciplined, and anti-intellectual, with little knowledge of western civilization and great indifference to systematic, reasoned, and analytical learning. He says they must shape up if they are to be a constructive rather than destructive force. (JB)

Critical thinking is not only the basis of philosophy, it is also the essence of education, the salient feature that distinguishes education from training. (CJ)

Eight papers addressing issues in the philosophy of education are featured in this document. These include: (1) "The Relation of 'The Paideia Proposal' and Ortega's Philsosphy of Education" (A. Donoso); (2) "Adler: Ideological Imperialist" (G. W. Stickel); (3) "Anti-Intellectualism and 'The Paideia Proposal'" (D. G. Smith); (4) "Intellectual…

The great challenge for rural education scholars is explaining what relevance the rural circumstance might have to schooling, a task especially difficult in the case of mathematics education. This paper argues that the rural lifeworld makes math education rural and suggests implications for research based on that statement. The lifeworld is the…

The two biggest educational issues facing China are critical and related--how to provide for equality of educational opportunity and how to maintain an intellectual community that is both "red" and expert. (Author/IRT)

A historical review of antidemocratic social thinking since 1885 and its educational consequences: compulsory education managed by a central bureaucracy rather than by individuals in local communities, and a gradual "narrowing" of the definition of democracy through state-regulated mind control by schools. (SAS)

It is argued that negative portrayals of the professoriate in popular culture stem from growing anti-intellectualism in American society. College faculty are often derided as those whose work is primarily or entirely theoretical, too esoteric for practical use. Faculty are also portrayed as foolish or eccentric. Popular culture and public opinion…

A jaded education professor deplores the endless memorization, mindless assignments, and incessant testing going on in high school classrooms, to the exclusion of intellectually and aesthetically challenging pursuits. He refuses to devise another strategic plan, restructuring, or curriculum standard. Schools must strive to enculturate youngsters…

Analysis of the essays of 3,514 Minnesota secondary students indicated that the majority (53.8%) would choose to be the smartest student in their class rather than the best-looking or the most athletic. Content analysis data, however, suggested significant awareness of an anti-intellectual stigma advanced by peers. (Author/CR)

School reformers have not been too radical, but have been unable to sustain their reforming energy and innovative thinking. Reformers are not "tinkering toward Utopia," but are relapsing into habit, meandering back into mediocrity. A remarkably coherent tradition of rethinking schooling is yielding to the forces of inertia,…

Is the idea of the liberal university dead, has the postmodern university any chance of being emancipatory, has the theory-practice divide merely collapsed in an era of "new knowledge work", or has the university just become one aspect of market states and global capitalism? Knowledge-based economies locate universities as central to the…

Beginning with the notion of language as the basis for all thought, this article presents a formal analysis of Unamuno's thought and its relevance to educational aims in modern culture, stressing that the goal of education is to draw the student into the background of meanings and feeling that constitutes his language that he might come to learn…

Concludes that debate research and teaching must avoid the anti-intellectualism and non-logical approaches currently practiced. (CH)

This is a replication of a study designed by Tannenbaum (1962) and repeated by Cramond and Martin (1987) measuring U.S. attitudes toward intelligence by having respondents rate 8 hypothetical students who varied in their combinations of athleticism, effort, and academic ability. This study investigated 132 Korean preservice and in-service…

Evaluates books by H. F. Kearney, R. L. Greaves, I. Berg, and P. Bourdieu and J. C. Passeron as inadequately analyzing the problem of preserving high culture from dilution and eventual decay in the crisis of mass higher education, while opening American society for upward mobility from below. (JM)