Dogmatic Wisdom - Hardcover

Jacoby, Russell

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385425163 ISBN 13: 9780385425162

Publisher: Doubleday, 1994

Synopsis

Jacoby ( The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe ) charges that the education and culture wars have misled America, diverting public attention from the real ailments that beset education and society. Upbraiding conservatives for hypocrisy, academic radicals for cynicism, and liberals for nanvetT, he recalls the realities of teaching and learning that the ideologues ignore. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

About this title

From the Publisher

Since the late 1980s, few issues have sparked more heated debate than the state of American education and the definition of its cultural underpinnings. Indeed interest in the controversy has made books ranging from The Closing Of The American Mind and Illiberal Education to The Culture Of Complaint into national bestsellers. Yet, in the torrent of words about political correctness, multiculturalism, relativism, speech codes, the Western canon, and campus racism, are we missing the fundamentals? In Dogmatic Wisdom, noted critic and intellectual historian Russell Jacoby charges that the education and culture wars have misled America, diverting public attention from the real ailments that beset education and society. With rare historical insight, Jacoby chronicles how conservatives, liberals, and radicals engage in narrow disscussion and disputes over which books should be taught, which words violate the rights of which groups, and which cultures should be studied. Meanwhile few books are read, violence increases daily, and an ineluctable commercialism undermines both liberal education and genuine multiculturalism. Upbraiding conservatives for hypocrisy, academic radicals for cynicism, and liberals for naivete and incoherence, Jacoby recalls the essential realities of teaching and learning that ideologues of all stripes ignore-and charts an indispensable path through the cultural crises of our time.

"Witheringly funny... Dogmatic Wisdom can hardly be overpraised. It's wit, discrimination, evenhandedness, and erudition set it apart. There is more undogmatic wisdom about contemporary American education and culture in this little book than in the entire shelf of its none-too-distinguished predecessors."--George Scialabba, The Boston Globe.

"Although'political correctness' is in itself too stupid a subject for the brilliance of Russell Jacoby, the fact that this foolishness has begun lately to expand like Silly Putty makes it obligatory for one of our wisest polemicists to make sense of this dangerously diversionary nonsense."--Gore Vidal

About the Author

Russell Jacoby is visiting associate professor of history at UCLA.

About this edition

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0385425163
• ISBN 13: 9780385425162
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 235