Childhood, Philosophy, and Dialogical Education: (R)Evolutionary Essays

Offers both theoretical and practical insights into the dialogue between adults and children as a democratic model for schooling.

Childhood, Philosophy, and Dialogical Educationn explores the history and prospects of democratic, dialogical education, and its promise as an engine of social and cultural evolution, especially in the context of the cultural and social site dedicated to the adult-child encounter: the school. Drawing on three historical narratives-of childhood, of subjectivity (psychohistory), and of education-the author offers the possibility of a form of schooling that fosters democratic sensibilities and teaches direct democracy through actual practice.

David Kennedy is Professor Emeritus of Educational Foundations at Montclair State University. He is the coeditor (with Brock Bahler) of Philosophy of Childhood Today: Exploring the Boundaries and the author of The Well of Being: Childhood, Subjectivity, and Education, also published by SUNY Press, among many other books.