George S. Counts : Educator for a New Age

The responsibility, character, and training of the American teacher is but one of the fivethemes to emerge from this new Counts reader, which summarizes the philosophy of one of the most vital forces in education for more than half a century. Other areas of con­stant concern for Counts were American history and the national character; education and social forces; technology and industrial­ism; and the challenge of totalitarianism as opposed to the promise of democracy.

Editors Dennis and Eaton have traced Counts’s professional career from his entry into the University of Chicago Graduate School in 1913to his retirement from South­ern Illinois University, Carbondale, in 1971.They balance Counts and his work against national events and moods. As men who knew him, they provide personal insights. But essentially they let Counts speak for himself through generous excerpts from eight of his most important and characteristic books.

Counts saw the teacher as a bearer of cul­ture, a creator of social values. He wanted to raise teachers to the level of educational statesmen. To that end he wrote: “The time has come for us to consign to the waste­basket of history the idea that teaching re­quires less severe selection and training than the practice of medicine, law, engineering or theology. Indeed, from the standpoint of val­ues and responsibilities involved, teaching is probably the most difficult and important of all professions.”

Lawrence J. Dennis is Professor of Educa­tion, and William Edward Eaton is Assistant to the Vice-President for Academic Affairs and Associate Professor of Education at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.