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Education and Democracy: The Meaning of Alexander Meiklejohn

Education and Democracy: The Meaning of Alexander Meiklejohn
Education and Democracy The Meaning of Alexander Meiklejohn, 1872–1964.jpg
Author Adam R. Nelson
Country United States
Language English
Subject History of education, biography
Published 2001 (University of Wisconsin Press)
Pages 440
ISBN
370
LC Class LB875.M332N45

Education and Democracy: The Meaning of Alexander Meiklejohn, 1872–1964 is the first full biography of Alexander Meiklejohn written by Adam R. Nelson and published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 2001. The title is not a complete biography but draws from five archives to show Meiklejohn through his own words. A popular figure in the early 20th century who has since faded, Meiklejohn was a philosopher and university president who championed unified knowledge, idealism, and Great Books curricula. The book is split into five sections based on the locations in which Meiklejohn lived: his undergrad, faculty, and administrative years at Brown University, his presidency of Amherst College, his time with the University of Wisconsin Experimental College, and his experience with adult education and free speech advocacy at Berkeley. Nelson portrays Meiklejohn as "contradictory, paradoxical, and quixotic" as he grapples with how to encourage students to pursue freedom and how a teacher can teach this while respecting student freedom.

Reviewers noted the clarity of Nelson's intellectual contextualization of Meiklejohn's work, but wanted additional information about what Meiklejohn thought about comparable programs, educational precedents, and luminaries in the field. Other reviewers marked the book's balance, completeness, and importance in resurfacing Meiklejohn as a major figure in the history of American education.

Education and Democracy: The Meaning of Alexander Meiklejohn, 1872–1964 is a biography of Alexander Meiklejohn written by Adam R. Nelson and published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 2001. In lieu of writing a definitive account of Meiklejohn's life, Nelson portrayed Meiklejohn through the subject's own language to let him "speak for himself". Nelson draws on five archives detailed in copious quotations and a 65-page notes and annotated bibliography appendix. While Meiklejohn was popular in the early 20th century and best known for his stance on academic freedom, he had become a marginal figure by the time this book was published. The book was the first full biography written on Meiklejohn, preceded only by dissertations and a 1981 "short 'biographical study'" that introduced Meiklejohn's written work. Nelson's title is a response to John Dewey's Democracy and Education. It intends to show the contrast of Meiklejohn's idealism opposite Dewey's pragmatism.


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