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I dreamed I saw Hilda Neatby last night: So little for the mind after 50 years
Citation
Corbett, M, I dreamed I saw Hilda Neatby last night: So little for the mind after 50 years, McGill journal of education, 39, (2) pp. 159-181. ISSN 0024-9033 (2004) [Refereed Article]
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Copyright Statement
Copyright 2004 McGill Journal of Education
Official URL: http://mje.mcgill.ca/article/view/8744
Abstract
It has been nearly fifty years since the publication of "So Little for the Mind," Hilda Neatby's controversial conservative attack on what she understood as "progressive education." This paper argues that Neatby's book remains important reading despite its limitations and its context. Neatby's work represents what I call a "big dream" in educational thought. It is an educational text that is passionately anti-scientific in its structure and argument; it represents a fundamental liberal humanist critique of educational theory and research. Neatby's work is important for the way in which it initiates contemporary conservative educational critique in Canada, but also because it anticipates post-structural arguments about the radical intrusiveness of a focus on the "whole child" in the context of the modern educational apparatus. Finally, I critique some of Neatby's key assumptions and relate these to an autobiographical account of the educational experience of one small-town Nova Scotian family from the 1920s.
Item Details
Item Type: | Refereed Article |
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Keywords: | history of education, Canada, Hilda Neatby, John Dewey |
Research Division: | Education |
Research Group: | Education systems |
Research Field: | Continuing and community education |
Objective Division: | Expanding Knowledge |
Objective Group: | Expanding knowledge |
Objective Field: | Expanding knowledge in education |
UTAS Author: | Corbett, M (Professor Michael Corbett) |
ID Code: | 100571 |
Year Published: | 2004 |
Deposited By: | Education |
Deposited On: | 2015-05-20 |
Last Modified: | 2015-09-03 |
Downloads: | 264 View Download Statistics |
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