Teaching in an Age of Ideology [Paperback]

There may be no formula on how to be an outstanding teacher, but this splendid collection, mostly by younger scholars, provide intimations, insights, and reflections on master teachers they have known. Great teaching always contains an element of resistance to the lie, to mere opinion, to deceitand is invariably based on common sense even while it aspires to something more.I opened Teaching in an Age of Ideology to look for stories of great teachers I knew or had read, and quickly I was confronted with unsolved questions of political philosophy and liberal education. The stories are here, but often they are merely the hook to bring the reader virtually into the kind of classroom where he is compelled to upset his settled opinions and to see the world afresh. These essays by master teachers about master teachers are not only enjoyable and illuminating; taken as a whole, they offer a pr?cis of the great crises of the past century and an intimation of how the human spirit can transcend dark days.The largely realized promise of this collection is that the human activity of political-philosophical inquiry is exhibited and helpfully illuminated not merely in what philosophers and scholars write and publish, but in their acts of teaching. These thoughtful reflections on the teaching work of scholars deserve the attention of scholars and students alike.In this collection of essays celebrating 11 scholar-teachers who opposed today's dominant educational and political ideologies, and written by their students and followers, Heyking (Univ. of Lethbridge, Canada) and Trepanier (Saginaw Valley State Univ.) have constructed a biographical narrative of ideas that begins largely among secular Jewish philosophers in early-20th-century Europe and ends with conservative political theorists in US universities. From Edmund Husserl and Hannah Arendt in Germany through Eric Voegelin, Leo Strauss, and Harvey Mansfield in the US, the essays examine how and why their mentors shaped ways lóÇ