The Abolition of Man: Or Reflections on Education With Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools (C.S. Lewis Classics)

Lewis, C. S.

ISBN 10: 0684823713 / ISBN 13: 9780684823713

Published by Touchstone Books, 1996

Seller Inventory # mon0000031285

Synopsis:

A restrained critical evaluation of the effects of modern education on the formation of moral values and individual perceptions

Review: C.S. Lewis's The Abolition of Man purports to be a book specifically about public education, but its central concerns are broadly political, religious, and philosophical. In the best of the book's three essays, "Men Without Chests," Lewis trains his laser-sharp wit on a mid- century English high school text, considering the ramifications of teaching British students to believe in idle relativism, and to reject "the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kinds of things we are." Lewis calls this doctrine the "Tao," and he spends much of the book explaining why society needs a sense of objective values. The Abolition of Man speaks with astonishing freshness to contemporary debates about morality; and even if Lewis seems a bit too cranky and privileged for his arguments to be swallowed whole, at least his articulation of values seems less ego-driven, and therefore is more useful, than that of current writers such as Bill Bennett and James Dobson. --Michael Joseph Gross

Bibliographic Details

Title: The Abolition of Man: Or Reflections on ...
Publisher: Touchstone Books
Publication Date: 1996
Binding: paperback
Condition: Good