Böcker utgivna av SUNY Press

Playing Favorites examines the ways in which gifted education disrupts the classroom community, deskills regular classroom teachers, limits their ability and willingness to meet individual needs, and impairs the creation of a climate of inclusion and acceptance of difference. Sapon-Shevin shows here that current models of gifted education are elitist and meritocratic, treating some children, not just differently than others, but better; and that in large urban districts, gifted education programs are often racist as well. By creating and funding gifted programs, the author contends, schools engage in a form of "educational triage," serving those children for whom inadequate programming and educational failure would not be acceptable while maintaining the status quo for the majority of the school population.This book provides support for teachers, parents, and administrators who have found themselves caught in the struggle of insuring an appropriate education for some children without sacrificing the good of all. Incorporating the words of teachers, parents, and students, as well as related research and theory, this book analyzes the relationship between diversity, community, and social justice. Sapon-Shevin challenges the reader to reconsider ways in which schools can meet individual educational needs while preserving communities of learners as well as the commitment to the education of all children. Finally, the book extends the challenge and assurance that we need not choose between quality education for some and mediocre education for all.

A groundbreaking study of the political philosophy of Maimonides and his Islamic predecessors.

A rich and detailed autobiography of one Japanese woman's journey through life.

Here is an account of the enlightenment experience and its consequences written by a trained philosopher and mathematician who is also a master of English prose. Merrell-Wolff experienced enlightenment, became established in the state, and wrote clearly about the value and nature of the knowledge he attained. This is a record of transformation in consciousness written during the actual process itself, supplying an unusually intimate view.The author faces the epistemological problem directly-the problem of demonstrating the reality and value of knowledge springing from mystical roots. He gives serious attention to the philosophical and psychological criticism, writing with an eye to the pitfalls indicated by such criticism. He did not write only for those who believe easily.

This book systematically analyzes the evidence on four key issues that have divided commentators on the community college: The community college's impact on students, business, and the universities; the factors behind its rise since 1900; the causes of its swift vocationalization after 1960; and what direction the community college should take in the future.

In this book, Michael Washburn provides a psychoanalytic foundation for transpersonal psychology. Using psychoanalytic theory, Washburn explains how ego development both prepares for and creates obstacles to ego transcendence. Spiritual development, he proposes, can be properly understood only in terms of the ego development that precedes it. For example, many difficulties encountered in spiritual development can be traced to repressive underpinnings of ego development, and significant gender differences in spiritual development can be traced to corresponding gender differences that emerge during ego development.Washburn draws on a wide range of psychoanalytic perspectives in discussing ego development and uses both Eastern and Western sources in discussing spiritual development. In rethinking transpersonal psychology in psychoanalytic terms, he explains how essential elements of Jungian thought can be grounded in psychoanalytic theory.

This book introduces multiculturalism and its relationship to education and schooling, while also highlighting current approaches to multicultural education and placing them in a broad comparative and international context.Through a comparative view that is both domestic and international, the book explores ethnicity, race, class, and education (kindergarten through higher education) as they interact to integrate populations, while also serving vested interests and enhancing group identity and status. The authors position multiculturalism as a political and social phenomena that affects and interacts with education and its institutions. To do this, they draw upon international cases as well as the history of segmentation and integration in the United States.

Play has been presented as the ideal intervention for almost every conceivable kind of problem experienced by children: emotional problems, attention disorders, learning difficulties, and social isolation. In this ground-breaking book, leading play theorists, researchers, and practitioners present their opinions and research results about the influence of play and of special play programs on different aspects of child development.The first section explores why play therapy is used and what play's specific role is in the classical play therapy approach. The second part is devoted to experimental play programs for different types of children with special needs. In the last section, the effects of modern play approaches in primary schools are discussed as well as the influence of these play interventions on cognitive and social skills. This is a book for practitioners and theorists in the field of play, who are not just uncritical consumers or idealizers of play, but who are concerned in searching for the real value of play in various therapeutic and educational settings.

Sanford Kessler offers a provocative and timely analysis of Alexis de Tocqueville's views on the relationship between Christianity and American democracy. These views are central to Tocqueville's discussions of the moral requirements of freedom and the tasks of democratic statesmanship.Tocqueville's thinking about American religion is highly relevant to contemporary debates regarding America's origins, the current strength of American Christianity, and the proper role of religion in American public life. Kessler skillfully demonstrates how Tocqueville incorporates his ideas into an analysis of the American character, a factor in American politics that he considered more important than the Constitution. This book will challenge the thinking of all Americans concerned with religious-political issues and with the prospects for freedom.

This book provides middle level teachers and administrators with a rich resource on restructuring schools to help young adolescents achieve intellectual, social, and emotional success. It is a comprehensive volume that describes the leadership knowledge bases, skills, processes, and attitudes necessary for successful middle level school restructuring. Major themes in the book include: trends and issues in middle level schools; characteristics of young adolescents; middle level curriculum; instruction and assessment; successful middle level school programs; leadership skills and collaborative decision-making; school restructuring; staff development; program evaluation; and maintaining a climate for change.

This book examines the joint effort of twentieth-century public school administrators and private philanthropy to initiate reforms to provide for children with learning difficulties. The author explores the development of these reforms from the establishment of special classes for backward children at the beginning of the century to the creation of programs for learning disabled children. He considers what this history tells us about current efforts to provide for at-risk students. He looks at both the way school administrators conceptualized childhood learning difficulties and the institutional arrangements which they introduced to accommodate these students, and pays particular attention to the preference of school administrators throughout this century for accommodating low achieving children in segregated classes and programs.

Taking language as its general theme, this book explores how the tradition of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist philosophical speculation exemplifies the character of scholasticism.Scholasticism, as an abstract and general category, is developed as a valuable theoretical tool for understanding a variety of intellectual movements in the history of philosophy of religion. The book investigates the Buddhist Scholastic theory and use of scripture, the nature of doctrine and its transcendence in experience, Mahayana Buddhist hermeneutics, the theory and practice of exegesis, and questions concerning the authority of sacred texts. It also deals with the Buddhist Scholastic theory of conceptual thought as the mirror of language, the Scholastic defense of logic and rationality as a method, as well as the role of language in the idealist and nominalist ontologies of the Mahayana. Finally, the author treats the question of ineffability and the silence of the Buddha from a new perspective.

Theories of criminality and theories of victimization have traditionally been discussed as though they bore no relationship to one another. Yet, a complete explanation for crime must examine both the decision to engage in crime by an offender and the everyday actions of ordinary citizens that increase vulnerability to criminals. The integration of these approaches yields testable models that have greater predictive power than could be obtained by looking only at models of offenders or models of victim behavior. A more general perspective that accounts for both the decision to engage in crime and the selection of particular crime targets is developed and tested.

Immigrant Women combines memoirs, diaries, oral history, and fiction to present an authentic and emotionally compelling record of women's struggles to build new lives in a new land. This new edition has been expanded to include additional material on recent Asian and Hispanic immigration and an updated bibliography.

A provocative ethnography of the lived experiences of infants and toddlers in day care centers.

An inquiry into the religious environment of the person Muslims hail as the "Envoy of God" and an attempt to trace his progress along the path from paganism to that distinctive form of monotheism called Islam.

Inquiry and Reflection shows how stories of schooling can elucidate difficult, and unexamined problems facing teachers. While professional texts tend to raise issues of power and its distribution and questions of culture and ideology, often the manner of presentation is abstract, and pre-service teachers have difficulty making connections. Yet literary, film, and video materials illuminate problems and suggest ideas to which teachers can actively respond.This book offers teacher educators a variety of resources for articulating a critical pedagogy and suggests an alternative to the technical, job training approach to teacher education by providing a unique educational curricula that illuminates issues of power, ideology, and culture.

Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction Prologue: The Problem of the Philosophy of Science and Nietzsche's Question of Ground The Plan of the Text Chapter 1 Nietzsche's Musical Stylistics: Writing a Philosophy of Science The Hermeneutic Challenge of Nietzsche's Elitism: Style and Interpretive Affinity Philosophic Concinnity: The Spirit of Music and Nietzschean Style The Project of Communication: Self-Deconstruction and Nietzschean Selectivity Nietzsche's Style: A Mechanical Model Chapter 2 Science as Interpretation: The Light of Philology The Question of a Nietzsche-Styled Philosophy of Science Towards a Nietzschean Critique of Science Nietzsche's Perspectivalism: The Spectre ofRelativism and the Spirit of DifferenceTruth, Pragmatism, and Relativism: Realism a nd theReal The Meaning of Critique: Nietzschean Possibilitiesfor Philosophy Nietzsche and Science: The Question of Validity Chapter 3 On the Ecophysiological Ground of Knowledge: Nietzsche's Epistemology The Question of Nietzsche's Epistemology: Critique and Ground The Knower and the Known The Problem of Knowledge in its Ecophysiological Ground The Empirical Basis of Transcendent Knowledge Perspectivalism as Epistemology Multiplicity as Interpretational Truth: The Metaphysical Fiction of an Absolute A Note on the Typology of Science and Philosophy: The will to Power Beyond Truth and Lie Chapter 4 Under the Optics of Art and Life: Nietzsche and Science Resumé: The Ecophysiological Ground of Knowledge Science and Nihilism Reality and Truth: The Domination of Truth Science: Reality and Illusion The Meaning of Nature and Chaos: A Note on Nietzsche's "Chaos sive natura" Reality and Illusion: The Interpretive Dynamic Chapter 5 Nietzsche's Genealogy of Science: Morality and the Values of Modernity The Genealogy of Morals and the Value of Science The Ascetic Ideal: The Cost of Perpetuation Ressentiment : Science and Culture Without Price: The Will to Truth as the Will toLife Science and Inadequacy Duplicity: Science and the Ascetic Ideal The Ascetic Ideal: The Cost of Perpetuation Science as an Aesthetic Achievement: Méconnaissance Vesuvius: "Gefährdete Menschen, fruchtbarer Menschen" Chapter 6 Toward a Perspectival Aesthetics of Truth A Perspectivalist Philosophy of Science A Perspectival Aesthetics of Truth Truth as Illusion The Illusion of Truth and the Question of the Eternal Feminine sContra-Morality?Again The Aesthetics of Illusion Creation and Affirmation Chapter 7 A Dionysian Philosophy: Art in the Light of Life The Eternal Return of the Same: Interpretation and Will Ressentiment and Amor Fati The Perspectival Dominance of Decadence Dionysian Aesthetic Pessimism The Troping of the Eternal Return: An Aposematic Aposiopesis Bibliography Name Index Subject Index

This book focuses on how and why various cultures have appropriated the story of King Arthur. It is about re-vision, how cultures alter inherited texts and are, in turn, changed by them, and it deals with the ways in which various cultures have empowered the Arthurian legend so that power might be derived from it. The authors suggest that the vitality of the Arthurian legend resides in its ability to be transformed and to transform, in its potential for appropriation and use.Culture and the King deals with issues of literature, history, art, politics, economics, gender study, and popular culture. It crosses the boundaries traditionally erected around these disciplines and addresses emerging critical methodologies concerned with the "poetics of culture."

This book examines the linkage between literacy and linguistic diversity, embedding them in their social and cultural contexts. It illustrates that a more complete understanding of literacy among diverse populations and in multicultural societies requires attention to issues of literacy per se as well as to improving an educational process that has relevance beyond members of majority cultures and linguistic groups.The focus of the book is on the social and cultural contexts in which literacy develops and is enacted, with an emphasis on the North American situation. Educators and researchers are discovering that cognitive approaches, while very valuable, are insufficient by themselves to answer important questions about literacy in heterogeneous societies. By considering the implications of family, school, culture, society, and nation for literary processes, the book answers the following questions. In a multi-ethnic context, what does it mean to be literate? What are the processes involved in becoming and being literate in a second language? In what ways is literacy in a second language similar and in what ways is it different from mother-tongue literacy? What factors must be understood to better describe and facilitate literacy acquisition among members of ethnic and linguistic minorities? What are some current approaches that are being used to accomplish this? These are vital questions for researchers and educators in a world that has a large number of immigrants, a variety of multi-ethnic and multi-lingual societies, and an increasing degree of multinational activity. Beyond addressing applied concerns, attending to these questions can provide new insights into basic aspects of literacy.

This book illuminates play as a universal and culture-specific activity. It provides needed information about the behavior of children in diverse cultural contexts as well as about the play of children in unassimilated cultural or subcultural contexts. It offers readers the opportunity to develop greater sensitivity to and better understanding of the important cultural differences that confront early childhood teachers and teacher educators.

This book provides current information about the many recent contributions of social systems theory. While some sociologists feel that the systems age ended with functionalism, in reality a number of recent developments have occurred within the field. The author makes these developments accessible to sociologists and other non-systems scholars, and begins a synthesis of the burgeoning systems field and mainstream sociological theory. The analysis shows not only that important points of rapprochement exist between systems theory and sociological theory, but also that systems theory has in some cases anticipated developments needed in mainstream theory.

This interdisciplinary study of the religious dimensions of dreams shows how modern dream research supports and enriches our understanding of religiously meaningful dreams.The Wilderness of Dreams does four things that no other work on dreams has done. First, it surveys the whole range of modern dream research-not just the work of depth psychologists and neuroscientists, but also the findings of anthropologists, content analysts, cognitive psychologists, creative artists, and lucid dreaming researchers. Second, it draws upon new advances in hermeneutic philosophy in order to clarify basic questions about how to interpret dreams. Third, it develops a careful, well-grounded notion of religious meaning-the "root metaphor" concept-to show that seeking religious meanings in dreams is not mere superstition. And fourth, the book reflects on the question of why modern Westerners are so interested in affirming, or debunking, the idea that dreams have religious meanings.

Approaches Hasidism as an important stage in Jewish mysticism, rather than as a mere reaction to or result of historical and social forces.

This book is a sequel to Self as Body in Asian Theory and Practice (SUNY, 1992) and anticipates a third book, Self as Image in Asian Theory and Practice. In order to address issues as diverse as the promotion of human rights or the resolution of sexism in ways that avoid inadvertent lapses into cultural chauvinism, alternative cultural perspectives that begin from differing conceptions of self and self-realization must be articulated and respected. This book explores the articulation of personal character within the disparate cultural experiences of Japan, China, and South Asia.