Rediscovering the spirit of education after scientific management / Jim Neyland.

The author is a member of staff at Victoria University of Wellington.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Carefree education -- 2. The cult of experience -- 3. The scientific management of education -- 4. The hidden injuries -- 5. Human motivation -- 6. The spirit of education -- 7. Education, at best, is enchanting -- 8. Education, at best, is ecstatic -- 9. Education, at best, is autotelic -- 10. Education, at best, is comical -- 11. Sovereign and primordial expressions of human life -- 12. The twins that must not be separated -- 13. Critical thinking -- 14. Propositions and reasoning -- 15. Thinking scientifically -- 16. Blind spots -- 17. Full-bodied knowledge -- 18. The creative unconscious -- 19. Oneself as another -- 20. The roots of responsibility.

Education is being eroded. Otherwise put, education is more and more being brought under the yoke of a mode of thought that reduces it to something mechanical, narrowly characterized by codes, predefined outcomes, protocols and rules. The cause, it is argued is the growing dominance of a new fashion in education called 'scientific management'. Scientific management has become the new and unquestionable orthodoxy in education. As a consequence, it has become increasingly difficult to imagine, let along articulate, an alternative. This book explores the origins and fundamental assumptions of scientific management, and suggests how the spirit of education might be rediscovered by turning instead to a more 'ethical', 'socially interpersonal', and 'full bodied' orientation. The approach taken avoids the difficulties usually associated with such ethically oriented treatments of education by drawing on recent findings in neurophysiology, psychology, primate and language studies.

Machine converted from AACR2 source record.