Download or read book The Elusive Ideal written by Adam R. Nelson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2005-05-10 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, federal mandates in education have become the subject of increasing debate. Adam R. Nelson's The Elusive Ideal—a postwar history of federal involvement in the Boston public schools—provides lessons from the past that shed light on the continuing struggles of urban public schools today. This far-reaching analysis examines the persistent failure of educational policy at local, state, and federal levels to equalize educational opportunity for all. Exploring deep-seated tensions between the educational ideals of integration, inclusion, and academic achievement over time, Nelson considers the development and implementation of policies targeted at diverse groups of urban students, including policies related to racial desegregation, bilingual education, special education, school funding, and standardized testing. An ambitious study that spans more than thirty years and covers all facets of educational policy, from legal battles to tax strategies, The Elusive Ideal provides a model from which future inquiries will proceed. A probing and provocative work of urban history with deep relevance for urban public schools today, Nelson's book reveals why equal educational opportunity remains such an elusive ideal.
Download or read book Elusive Equality written by Melissa Feinberg and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 2006-04-30 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Czechoslovakia became independent in 1918, Czechs embraced democracy, which they saw as particularly suited to their national interests. Politicians enthusiastically supported a constitution that proclaimed all citizens, women as well as men, legally equal. But they soon found themselves split over how to implement this pledge. Some believed democracy required extensive egalitarian legislation. Others contended that any commitment to equality had to bow before other social interests, such as preserving the traditional family. On the eve of World War II, Czech leaders jettisoned the young republic for an "authoritarian democracy" that firmly placed their nation, and not the individual citizen, at the center of politics. In 1948, they turned to a Communist-led "people's democracy," which also devalued individual rights. By examining specific policy issues, including marriage and family law, civil service regulations, citizenship law, and abortion statutes, Elusive Equality demonstrates the relationship between Czechs' ideas about gender roles and their attitudes toward democracy. Gradually, many Czechs became convinced that protecting a traditionally gendered family ideal was more important to their national survival than adhering to constitutionally prescribed standards of equal citizenship. Through extensive original research, Melissa Feinberg assembles a compelling account of how early Czech progress in women's rights, tied to democratic reforms, eventually lost momentum in the face of political transformations and the separation of state and domestic issues. Moreover, Feinberg presents a prism through which our understanding of twentieth-century democracy is deepened, and a cautionary tale for all those who want to make democratic governments work.
Download or read book The Quest for Sexual Health written by Steven Epstein and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-03-23 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Since the 1970s, health professionals, researchers, governments, advocacy groups, and commercial interests have invested in the pursuit of something called 'sexual health'. Programs were launched, organizations founded, initiatives funded, products sold-and yet, no book before this one asks: What does it mean to be sexually healthy? When did people conceive of a form of health called sexual health? And how did it become the gateway to addressing a host of social harms and the reimagining of private desires and public dreams? Offering an entryway into the distinctive worlds of sexual health, this book traverses the distance from the research and treatment domains where sexual health is assessed, measured, and improved to the "sex expos" that invite attendees to "leave their inhibitions at the door and explore today's top intimacy products" and beyond. Sexual health encompasses wildly disparate agendas and speaks to innumerable concerns-from sexual dysfunction to sexual violence, from HIV prevention to reproductive freedom, to the practicalities of sexual contact during a global pandemic. Rather than a thing apart, sexual health is intertwined with nearly every conceivable topical debate-and more of them every day. Through his wide-ranging exploration, Steven Epstein provides the critical tools needed to bring into focus the different faces of sexual health and parse the debates that swirl around it"--
Download or read book The Tyranny of the Ideal written by Gerald Gaus and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his provocative new book, The Tyranny of the Ideal, Gerald Gaus lays out a vision for how we should theorize about justice in a diverse society. Gaus shows how free and equal people, faced with intractable struggles and irreconcilable conflicts, might share a common moral life shaped by a just framework. He argues that if we are to take diversity seriously and if moral inquiry is sincere about shaping the world, then the pursuit of idealized and perfect theories of justice—essentially, the entire production of theories of justice that has dominated political philosophy for the past forty years—needs to change. Drawing on recent work in social science and philosophy, Gaus points to an important paradox: only those in a heterogeneous society—with its various religious, moral, and political perspectives—have a reasonable hope of understanding what an ideally just society would be like. However, due to its very nature, this world could never be collectively devoted to any single ideal. Gaus defends the moral constitution of this pluralistic, open society, where the very clash and disagreement of ideals spurs all to better understand what their personal ideals of justice happen to be. Presenting an original framework for how we should think about morality, The Tyranny of the Ideal rigorously analyzes a theory of ideal justice more suitable for contemporary times.
Download or read book The Pursuit of Unhappiness written by Daniel M. Haybron and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2008-09-25 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The pursuit of happiness is a defining theme of the modern era. But what if people aren't very good at it? This and related questions are explored in this book, the first comprehensive philosophical treatment of happiness in the contemporary psychological sense. In these pages, Dan Haybron argues that people are probably less effective at judging, and promoting, their own welfare than common belief has it. As a result, we may need to rethink traditional assumptions about human nature, the good life, and the good society. Thoroughly engaged with both philosophical and scientific work on happiness and well-being, this book will be a definitive resource for philosophers, social scientists, policymakers, and other students of human well-being."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Education and Democracy written by Adam R. Nelson and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 2009-01-09 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This definitive biography of the charismatic Alexander Meiklejohn tracks his turbulent career as an educational innovator at Brown University, Amherst College, and Wisconsin’s “Experimental College” in the early twentieth century and his later work as a civil libertarian in the Joe McCarthy era. The central question Meiklejohn asked throughout his life’s work remains essential today: How can education teach citizens to be free?
Download or read book Chasing Gideon written by Karen Houppert and published by New Press, The. This book was released on 2013-03-19 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On March 18, 1963, in one of its most significant legal decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Gideon v. Wainwright that all defendants facing significant jail time have the constitutional right to a free attorney if they cannot afford their own. Fifty years later, 80 percent of criminal defendants are served by public defenders. In a book that combines the sweep of history with the intimate details of individual lives and legal cases, veteran reporter Karen Houppert movingly chronicles the stories of people in all parts of the country who have relied on Gideon’s promise. There is the harrowing saga of a young man who is charged with involuntary vehicular homicide in Washington State, where overextended public defenders juggle impossible caseloads, forcing his defender to go to court to protect her own right to provide an adequate defense. In Florida, Houppert describes a public defender’s office, loaded with upward of seven hundred cases per attorney, and discovers the degree to which Clarence Earl Gideon’s promise is still unrealized. In New Orleans, she follows the case of a man imprisoned for twenty-seven years for a crime he didn’t commit, finding a public defense system already near collapse before Katrina and chronicling the harrowing months after the storm, during which overworked volunteers and students struggled to get the system working again. In Georgia, Houppert finds a mentally disabled man who is to be executed for murder, despite the best efforts of a dedicated but severely overworked and underfunded capital defender. Half a century after Anthony Lewis’s award-winning Gideon’s Trumpet brought us the story of the court case that changed the American justice system, Chasing Gideon is a crucial book that provides essential reckoning of our attempts to implement this fundamental constitutional right.
Download or read book The Embattled Northeast written by Kenneth M. Morrison and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1984-01-01 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Embattled Northeast breaks with established wisdom concerning the dynamics of Indian-white relations. It shows that Euramericans' technological superiority did not undermine the Abenaki's self-confidence, but that trade pushed the tribes toward reaching an alliance among themselves as the first step in dealing with colonials. The study also tells how the Abenaki adapted to the post-contact world in order to secure their lives in religious terms, combining their own religious beliefs with compatible French Jesuit teachings"--Jacket.
Download or read book The Elusive Synthesis Aesthetics and Science written by A.I. Tauber and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The tension between art and science may be traced back to the Greeks. What became "natural philosophy" and later "science" has traditionally been posed as a fundamental alternative to poetry and art. It is a theme that has commanded central attention in Western thought, as it captures the ancient conflict of Apollo and Dionysus over what deserves to order our thought and serve as the aspiration of our cultural efforts. The modern schi sm between art and science was again clearly articulated in the Romantic period and seemingly grew to a crescendo fifty years aga as a result of the debate concerning atomic power. The discussion has not abated in the physical sciences, and in fact has dramatically expanded most prominently into the domains of ecology and medicine. Issues concerning the role of science in modern society, although heavily political, must be regarded at heart as deeply embedded in our cultural values. Although each generation addresses them anew, the philosophical problems which lay at the foundation of these fundamental concerns always appear fresh and difficult. This anthology of original essays considers how science might have a greater commonality with art than was perhaps realized in a more positivist era. The contributors are concerned with how the aesthetic participates in science, both as a factor in constructing theory and influencing practice. The collec tion is thus no less than a spectrum of how Beauty and Science might be regarded through the same prism.
Download or read book Civil Passions written by Sharon R. Krause and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-12-08 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book Sharon Krause argues that moral and political deliberation must incorporate passions, even as she insists on the value of impartiality. Her work provides a systematic account of how passions can generate an impartial standpoint that yields binding and compelling conclusions in politics.
Download or read book Democratic Ideals and Reality written by Halford John Mackinder and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1962 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Journal written by Royal Sanitary Institute (Great Britain) and published by . This book was released on 1923 with total page 568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Elusive Ideal of Community written by Geoff Beech and published by ISBN Services. This book was released on 2020-09-04 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What if, perhaps, creating 'community' were not a #1 goal in Christian organizations? What does the word 'community' even mean? Aren't we all individuals? Doesn't the Bible encourage us to aim for living in 'communion' with each other? What do these concepts mean for leadership? For instance, is it even possible to lead a 'community'? This book is not so much a 'feel good', cozy, approach to the idea of community. Rather, it aims to answer these questions and more with regard to human beings living in relationship with each other and with God. In doing so, it explores aspects of individualism and what it might really mean to live in a society, a community, a collective, or to live communally. Understanding these categories will help us to see more clearly what is happening in the relationships within our groups, and why we behave in various groups as we do. Comparisons are made with other cultures so that we may better understand our own, and some reasons are given for why 'Christian community' may be so difficult to truly achieve and maintain.It is hoped that as you read and think on the many deep, yet subtle, implications of the distinctions between types of relationship groups, you will be challenged to reconsider the implications for you as a member or leader of your own!
Download or read book Utopia written by Alistair Fox and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas More's Utopia remains indisputably the most potent work in the genre of writing that it initiated and in fact named. Since it was published in 1516 - in a Tudor-ruled England responding to the wave of humanist thought sweeping across Europe - this fantasy voyage has inspired centuries of social reformers, who have embraced More's fiction as a realistic blueprint for a new, ideal society. On the literary side, writers from Jonathan Swift to George Orwell have plied the genre More invented, and yet none has arrived at a conclusion more prophetic than the original: that the dogged quest for an imagined ideal generates doubt that this ideal would be as attractive in practice as in theory, and that, given what we know of human nature, such an ideal could ever be implemented. In Utopia: An Elusive Vision Alistair Fox places More's masterwork in the context of the reform aspirations of early-sixteenth-century European humanists, tracing the stages of its composition to show how and why the book came to be inherently paradoxical and showing us why the book in many ways presaged the rise of Martin Luther and the watershed Protestant Reformation. Fox lucidly explores the complex, equivocal nature of More's vision, which, he contends, was conditioned not only by More's recognition that people's desire for ideal social order conflicts with many of their most basic impulses but also by his propensity for seeing most issues simultaneously from contradictory perspectives. This paradox and tension led More to create a fiction that, according to Fox, allows human imperfection to interrogate the validity of the "ideal" society the fiction presents, without confirming or subverting it. With UtopiaMore encourages readers to explore what he reveals to be a perpetual dilemma in utopianism itself. Fox concludes that, by thus encompassing and provoking the full range of reactions that subsequent utopias and "dystopias" would likely elicit, More's Utopia is both the prototype and epitome of the utopian genre itself. Fox's engaging study is the most extensive treatment of Utopia to date, examining the work as one which evolved in response to More's changing emotional perceptions and treating More's text as a vehicle for intellectual exploration rather than a definitive proclamation. Utopia: An Elusive Vision, replete with historical detail and an overview of criticism of More's text through four centuries, allows readers to discern for themselves the features that contribute to Utopia's intellectual and rhetorical complexity.
Download or read book The Ideal of Nature written by Gregory E. Kaebnick and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this provocative anthology, scholars consider the meaning and merits of “nature” in debates about biotechnology and the environment. Drawing on philosophy, religion, and political science, this book asks what the term “nature” means, how it should be considered, and if it is—even in part—a social construct. The contributors question if the quality of being “natural” is intrinsically valuable. They also discuss whether appeals to nature can and should affect public policy and, if so, whether they are moral trump cards or should instead be weighed against other concerns. Though consensus on these questions remains elusive, this should not be an obstacle to moving the debate forward. By bringing together disparate approaches to addressing these concepts, The Ideal of Nature suggests the possibility of intermediate positions that move beyond the usual full-throated defense and blanket dismissal found in much of the debate. Scholars of bioethics, environmental philosophy, religious studies, sociology, public policy, and political theory will find much merit in this book’s lively discussion.
Download or read book The Eyes of the People written by Jeffrey Edward Green and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For centuries it has been assumed that democracy must refer to the empowerment of the People's voice. In this pioneering book, Jeffrey Edward Green makes the case for considering the People as an ocular entity rather than a vocal one. Green argues that it is both possible and desirable to understand democracy in terms of what the People gets to see instead of the traditional focus on what it gets to say.The Eyes of the People examines democracy from the perspective of everyday citizens in their everyday lives. While it is customary to understand the citizen as a decision-maker, in fact most citizens rarely engage in decision-making and do not even have clear views on most political issues. The ordinary citizen is not a decision-maker but a spectator who watches and listens to the select few empowered to decide. Grounded on this everyday phenomenon of spectatorship, The Eyes of the People constructs a democratic theory applicable to the way democracy is actually experienced by most people most of the time.In approaching democracy from the perspective of the People's eyes, Green rediscovers and rehabilitates a forgotten "plebiscitarian" alternative within the history of democratic thought. Building off the contributions of a wide range of thinkers-including Aristotle, Shakespeare, Benjamin Constant, Max Weber, Joseph Schumpeter, and many others-Green outlines a novel democratic paradigm centered on empowering the People's gaze through forcing politicians to appear in public under conditions they do not fully control.The Eyes of the People is at once a sweeping overview of the state of democratic theory and a call to rethink the meaning of democracy within the sociological and technological conditions of the twenty-first century.
Download or read book Standard written by and published by . This book was released on 1925 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
