edited by Michael D. Waggoner & Nathan C. Walker ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 29, 2018
A comprehensive and probing guide to the meeting of schools and faith in the American experience.
A collection of essays on religion and education in the United States.
Religion and education have been linked since the founding of America, one informing the other in a near-endless loop. Education has often been the place where religious and secular forces have met and, occasionally, locked horns. Even so, no single narrative characterizes religious education in America, just as no single religion characterizes Americans. “Whether informed or not, sophisticated or otherwise, adult Americans find good reason to use the schools, public and religious alike, as arenas where valuable experiments will and should occur,” writes the religious scholar Martin E. Marty in the foreword. “This is true in no small measure because of the presence of pluralism with its many faces.” Edited by Waggoner (Postsecondary Education/Univ. of Northern Iowa; editor: Religion in the Public Schools, 2013) and Walker (Religion and Law/Rutgers Univ., Camden; The First Amendment and State Bans on Teachers’ Religious Garb, 2019, etc.), this book explores the various facets of religion and education in America, both historically and in the present day, from issues of secularism, pluralism, and religious liberty in the past to questions of home schooling, religious charter schools, and the status of religion in public school curriculums. Additionally, the book goes beyond primary and secondary education to look at higher ed topics like Catholic and Evangelical universities, the field of religious studies, and the role of campus ministries. In addition to Marty, who won a National Book Award for Righteous Empire (1970), contributors include 40-odd scholars and educators from a variety of institutions both secular and religious. The work is firmly an academic one, and the prose speaks to a scholarly audience. “When the Constitution was enacted,” writes contributor Walter Feinberg, “the question of state support for education was moot since most people were unschooled, laws requiring compulsory public education did not yet exist, and most of the schools that did exist were sponsored by religious denominations.” While the book will surely interest those who study education in America, it is difficult to imagine a general audience feeling particularly compelled by the sometimes-dry arguments contained in these essays. That said, the curious will be rewarded with a better understanding of the complex forces that have shaped the current status of religion in American schools.
A comprehensive and probing guide to the meeting of schools and faith in the American experience.Pub Date: Aug. 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-19-938681-9
Page Count: 520
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 24, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Share your opinion of this book
by Albert Camus ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 26, 1955
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
Share your opinion of this book
More by Albert Camus
BOOK REVIEW
by Albert Camus ; translated by Justin O'Brien & Sandra Smith
BOOK REVIEW
by Albert Camus ; translated by Ellen Conroy Kennedy & Justin O'Brien
BOOK REVIEW
by Albert Camus translated by Arthur Goldhammer edited by Alice Kaplan
by Stephen Batchelor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 18, 2020
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
Share your opinion of this book
More by Stephen Batchelor
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
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.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.