From a Gadfly to a Hornet

<p>A volume in Readings in Educational Thought</p><p>We examine Hart’s peripatetic career as teacher editor journalist lecturer and public philosopher. It is biographical as well as an<br />intellectual history of a fascinating character and prolific author.<br />Our goal is to resurrect Hart’s intellectual life in order to more deeply understand the significant issues he not only confronted but<br />endured. These issues primarily include academic freedom and humanizing education with their direct links to community organizing and Danish folk schools—themes<br />that run throughout the book. Instead of seeing Hart’s intellectual life as a cautionary tale against forceful criticism we offer a view consistent with Hart: we should<br />embrace the “full and frank” sense of academic freedom in order to demonstrate a truly democratic mode of associated living in universities and civic<br />communities. Respecting different views should not mean mollifying critique. The opposite in fact is in keeping with our view of the open exchange of ideas<br />characteristic of free societies and legitimate institutions of higher education.<br />Other themes of significance in this book include the status of the social foundations in teacher education social welfare pacifism community organizing the<br />broader purposes of schools and universities in the U.S. and Hart’s commitment to adult education via Danish folk schools and rural community living. The politics of<br />teacher education are legion and this was no less so when Hart began his career in the early twentieth century. Debates were had about the degree to which normal<br />schools as two?year teacher training sites should broaden their technical scope to include the liberal arts. This is the distinction between teacher training and teacher<br />education. Those in favor of classroom management and efficient controls or methods for dispensing curriculum faced criticism from those who thought schools should<br />be embryotic spaces for individual and democratic growth. Hart was clearly on the side of individual and democratic growth and this meant in part less order less<br />routine and less bureaucratic imposition of standards from bureaucratic hierarchies. Positively it meant engaging in debates that challenge students to think differently<br />than they have ever thought before. As we show in the following pages Hart was enormously successful at challenging<br />ideas…and many people would rather not be challenged. As we noted above this position results in demonstrating a<br />“full and frank” enactment of academic freedom.</p>