Hunter provides some important balance for excesses in contemporary amorality, but he won't be able to roll back the tide...
A too-strongly argued case for modifying moral education and rescuing character from the self-esteem Nazis and feel-good shrinks.
Sociologist Hunter (Before the Shooting Begins, 1994) echoes Neitzsche at the start by declaring that `Character is dead.` He goes on to describe how the humanistic and Bible-based moral education of the past has been replaced by subjective values and vapid advice (on the order of `Just say no`). Having adopted the optimistic premises of secular psychology, teachers believe that morality is innate and will flourish if left alone. Traditional family values, where children bowed to parents and didn't speak until spoken to, have become `offensive to our cosmopolitan sensibilities.` Hunter's third source of moral guidelines—besides the psychological strategy (if it feels good, it must be right) favored by liberals and the neo-classical strategy (to err is sinful) maintained by conservatives—may be found in the values of social consensus, based on shared experience. Rather than suggesting this synthesis between the extremes, Hunter is mostly concerned with accusing liberals of crucifying character. A history of the reformers who led up to Dewey (such as Horace Mann, the progressive Unitarian who robbed schoolroom Bible-reading of its Calvinist interpretations) is mapped out. Hunter also provides survey questions on character issues, such as cheating on exams and premarital sex. The charted results show that children with the contemporary, psychological-based sense of character are five times more likely than religious children to condone suicide. Hunter strongly makes his point, but he fails to address the question of what negative effects theist concepts and upbringing can inculcate in children.
Hunter provides some important balance for excesses in contemporary amorality, but he won't be able to roll back the tide that has long since washed over us.Pub Date: May 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-465-04730-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A nifty case study of the tangled trail—from policy idea to law—of the bill that established the National and Community Service Trust Act of 1993, the program known as AmeriCorps. Waldman, a national correspondent for Newsweek, decided to adapt the magazine's ``inside story'' approach to presidential races and apply it to an examination of one campaign promise. He chose national service because he thought it typified Clinton's vision and tested his ``expansive idealism and aggressive pragmatism.'' Waldman's thorough narrative of the un-pretty process profiles policy aides, lobbyists, and bureaucrats to show how pressure and politics, more than logic, shaped the final bill. The centrist Democratic Leadership Council (which Clinton helped found) had long advocated a required national service that would be a civilian analogue of the military draft. But candidate Clinton sugared the plan by proposing a service corps made up of volunteers who would receive college-tuition aid. The mix of service and reward, of community obligation and governmental activism, stirred campaign audiences, but the proposal got little scrutiny. Clinton wanted a $9.4 billion program over five years, but he ended up with a $1.5 billion program over three years after the bill went through a Mixmaster of interests, including banks, students, unions, and veterans. Congressional debate, the author notes, focused on whether loans should be directed through universities rather than on the more complex issue of how long students should make percentage-of-income repayments. Nor was another vital Clinton interest—the role of national service in fostering diversity- -debated. Waldman deplores the follies involved but still finds the proposal a rare, even noble, federal endeavor. A more lively tale of early Clintonism than some of the recent overviews.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-670-85300-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A searing response to the pseudo-science on the connection between race and intelligence put forth in the best-selling The Bell Curve by Charles Murray and Richard J. Herrnstein (not reviewed). An impressive array of intellectuals address different aspects of the fiery debates that have taken place around the book. In an essay entitled ``Curveball,'' Stephen Jay Gould argues that the social Darwinism theory that Herrnstein and Murray construct lacks scientific documentation and fails because of its shaky premises. Gould also points out that any theory about racial differences in IQ will always be fallacious until there is truly equal opportunity. Howard Gardner makes the point that the theories to which Herrnstein and Murray give so much weight have been used as a justification of racial oppression for hundreds of years. This leads to a powerful discussion that goes beyond the question of why The Bell Curve to the question, Why now? Gardner links the weak scientific argument of the book to its powerful policy analysis of programs such as welfare that are often cloaked in racial issues. Not all of the essays here come down against the book. Thomas Sowell calls it ``a very sober, very thorough and very honest book.'' Sowell posits that too often discussions about race are so overtaken by passion that reason cannot enter the debate. He takes the science of The Bell Curve seriously and says the problem is not in the book itself, but in an environment that cannot sustain intellectual discussions about ``touchy social issues.'' The theories of The Bell Curve are really so flat, so weak that they are easy to dispute. What the writers in this book do is take the ideas and flesh them out with history, science, and rigorous questioning. It seems that the true meat of thought is here and not in the book they are responding to.
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-465-00693-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
