Teachers Without Goals, Students Without Purposes

By Henry J. Perkinson

Book Overview

This is a short treatise that challenges the theory of knowledge supporting contemporary educational practice. This prevailing theory of knowledge holds that schools and teachers should be responsible for transmiting to students a fixed body of knowledge (educational goals). Perkinson challenges this theory with another developed by Karl Popper entitled evolutionary epistemology. This view holds that the teacher's job should not be to force predetermined knowledge (learning goals) into students' heads, but to help them expand and correct their existing knowledge.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0070493723
• ISBN13: 9780070493728
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
• Length: 118 Pages
• Weight: 0.38 lbs.

Customer Reviews

My mentor soldiers on

Some 29 years ago, Dr. Perkinson was on my PhD committee and one who took a very personal interest in me while I was at NYU. I took all of his courses that fit my major area and found him to be a startlingly good teacher...the method he espouses in this book is one he has used and has honed; I have seen its efficacy. He was a deep,far-reaching and iconoclastic thinker. This book shows he also knew how to integrate and distill his thoughts into a forceful message. He is a person whom educators should...make that "must".. read

Teachers without goals, students without purposes

This book was an excellent exposition of the author's theories on what's wrong with education as it exists today, and provides challenging and convincing arguments in the presentation of a new model for educators. Perkinson offers an unconventional view of how learning happens,and neatly fits his exciting educational methods to this understanding. I believe this book is a must read for every educator and for anyone interested in promoting the optimal growth of knowledge. The ideas, if taken seriously, could revolutionize education as we know it.