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THE CHALLENGE TO CARE IN SCHOOLS: AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH TO EDUCATION
by Nel Noddings.
New York: Teachers College Press, 1992. 208 pp. $38.00, 16.95 (paper).
In this far-reaching analysis, Nel Noddings, professor of education at Stanford University, provides a detailed critique of educational theory and practice, and suggests a new way of conceiving education. Building upon her earlier work (Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics & Moral Education, 1984), in The Challenge to Care in Schools, Noddings conveys a rich vision of the central purposes of education in human life and gives substantive descriptions of educational philosophy and practices supportive of and congruent with those purposes.
Noddings posits the relational ability of caring -- used in a broad sense to include caring for self, for intimate others, for associates and distant others, for nonhuman life, for the human-made environment of objects and instruments, and for ideas -- as a useful central concept with which to reconceptualize our educational purpose. She says "we need a scheme that speaks to the existential heart of life -- one that draws attention to our passions, attitudes, connections, concerns, and experienced responsibilities" (p. 47):
At the present time, it is obvious that our main purpose is not the moral one of producing caring people but, instead, a relentless -- and, as it turns out, hapless drive for academic adequacy. I am certainly not going to argue for academic inadequacy, but I will try to persuade readers that a reordering of priorities is essential. All children must learn to care for other human beings, and all...