RETURN edited 8/31/11	NewFoundations Press P.O. Box 94 Oreland, PA 19075

Educationists and Their Vanities
One Hundred Missives to My Colleagues

Electronic Edition 2010 © NewFoundations
(Original Caddo Gap Press ISBN 1-880192-12-8)

by George F. Kneller
218 pages.

Professor George F. Kneller was a participant in and keen observer of the activities and development of the School of Education (ultimately to become the Graduate School of Education) of the University of California, Los Angeles, over a period of several decades.

From the time of his coming to UCLA in 1953 and on into retirement, Professor Kneller was a keenly-observant critic, often vocal in regard to both shifts in emphasis and the preoccupations of colleagues. Few escaped his sharp words entirely; many were the focal point of his criticisms. He had very little use for the methods of a great deal of the so-called research he decried and less for its potential use in the world of educational affairs.

Professor Kneller began writing these Missives in 1957 to expose what he considered were radical flaws in the study of education and the training of teachers. Throughout, he recalls the university to its true mission -- to seek knowledge and pass it on, to teach as well as to research, each process stimulating the other. In this quest he advocates a balanced, discipline-based undergraduate education as against the mix of fashionable electives offered on most campuses.

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