ADVANCES IN CONTEMPORARY EDUCATIONAL THOUGHT SERIES Jonas F. Soltis, EDITOR The Challenge to Care in Schools: An Teachers’ Professional Knowledge Alternative Approach to Education, Landscapes Second Edition D. JEAN CLANDININ AND NEL NODDINGS F. MICHAEL CONNELLY Thinking: The Foundation of Critical Ideology, Objectivity, and Education and Creative Learning in the Classroom JOHN WATT ROBERT BOOSTROM Narrative Schooling: Experiential A Natural History of Place in Education Learning and the Transformation of American Education DAVID HUTCHISON RICHARD L. HOPKINS Community, Diversity, and Conflict Among Schoolteachers: The Ties The Logic of Imaginative Education: That Blind Reaching Understanding DICK MCCLEARY BETTY ACHINSTEIN Reading Pragmatism Detachment and Concern: Conversations in the Philosophy of CLEO H. CHERRYHOLMES Teaching and Teacher Education Inheriting Shame: The Story of MARGRET BUCHMANN AND Eugenics and Racism in America ROBERT E. FLODEN STEVEN SELDEN Dialogue in Teaching: Faith, Hype, and Clarity: Teaching Theory and Practice About Religion in American Schools NICHOLAS C. BURBULES and Colleges A Post-Modern Perspective on ROBERT J. NASH Curriculum “Answering the Virtuecrats”: A Moral WILLIAM E. DOLL, JR. Conversation on Character Education Education and the Good Life: Autonomy, ROBERT J. NASH Altruism, and the National Curriculum Understanding Equal Educational JOHN WHITE Opportunity: Social Justice, Democracy, Education as a Human Right: A Theory and Schooling of Curriculum and Pedagogy KENNETH R. HOWE DONALD VANDENBERG Dewey and Eros: Wisdom and Desire in A Critical Theory of Education: the Art of Teaching Habermas and Our Children’s Future JIM GARRISON ROBERT E. YOUNG Dying to Teach: The Educator’s Search Responsive Teaching: An Ecological for Immortality Approach to Classroom Patterns of DAVID J. BLACKER Language, Culture, and Thought Civic Virtues and Public Schooling: C. A. BOWERS AND DAVID J. FLINDERS Educating Citizens for a Democratic The Civic Imperative: Examining the Society Need for Civic Education PATRICIA WHITE RICHARD PRATTE Reframing Educational Policy: Democracy, Community, and the Power and Criticism: Poststructural Individual Investigations in Education JOSEPH KAHNE CLEO H. CHERRYHOLMES NoddingsFirstProofs.indd i 3/9/2005 11:42:28 AM NoddingsFirstProofs.indd ii 3/9/2005 11:43:00 AM THE CHALLENGE TO CARE IN SCHOOLS An Alternative Approach to Education SECOND EDITION Nel Noddings Teachers College, Columbia University New York and London NoddingsFirstProofs.indd iii 3/9/2005 11:43:00 AM Published by Teachers College Press, 1234 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027 Copyright © 2005 by Teachers College, Columbia University All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the pub- lisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Noddings, Nel. The challenge to care in schools : an alternative approach to education / Nel Noddings.—2nd ed. p. cm. — (Advances in contemporary educational thought series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8077-4609-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Moral education—United States. 2. Teacher–student relationships—United States. 3. Parent and child—United States. I. Title. II. Series. LC311.N57 2005 370.11’4—dc22 2005043072 ISBN 0-8077-4609-6 (paper) Printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 NoddingsFirstProofs.indd iv 3/9/2005 11:43:00 AM To all the teachers from elementary school through graduate school who made a difference in my life. NoddingsFirstProofs.indd v 3/9/2005 11:43:00 AM NoddingsFirstProofs.indd vi 3/9/2005 11:43:00 AM Contents Foreword ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction xiii 1. Shallow Educational Response to Deep Social Change 1 2. Caring 15 3. Beyond the Disciplines: A Critique of Liberal Education 28 4. An Alternative Vision 44 5. Caring and Continuity 63 6. Caring for Self 74 7. Caring in the Inner Circle 91 8. Caring for Strangers and Distant Others 110 9. Caring for Animals, Plants, and the Earth 126 10. Caring for the Human-Made World 139 11. Caring for Ideas 150 12. Getting Started in Schools 173 References 181 Index 187 About the Author 193 vii NoddingsFirstProofs.indd vii 3/9/2005 11:43:00 AM NoddingsFirstProofs.indd viii 3/9/2005 11:43:00 AM Foreword In this masterful extension of her work on caring, Nel Noddings asks us to seriously question some of our most deeply entrenched ways of thinking about education. She argues that a general curriculum based on the liberal arts is not the best education for all; that our focus in schools on verbal and mathematical achievement cripples many whose talents and abilities lie elsewhere; and that we need a radical change in both curriculum and teaching to reach all children, not just the few who fi t our conception of the academically able. Writing in a most engaging style—a blend of careful, scholarly argu- ment and intimate, personal voice—she is unafraid to speak her mind as a philosopher, as a former math teacher, as a mother, and as a com- passionate and caring person. She insists that the main aim of educa- tion should be a moral one, that of nurturing the growth of competent, caring, loving, and lovable persons. To that end she describes in great detail a curriculum organized around centers of care: care for one’s self; for intimate others as well as strangers and distant others; for animals, plants, the earth; and for human instruments and ideas. She gives con- crete examples of both math and arts teaching from this perspective. Basic to this design of the curriculum is the assumption of multiple intelligences and the great variety and variability of children. Each child has unique talents, abilities, and interests in need of engagement and development by caring teachers and others in schools. Noddings uses the image of a very large family to convey the caring way to think about the task of schooling a diverse group of students. Imagine them as your own children, she urges, and you will see them each as unique individuals that you care about and want to help become confi dent and competent persons. She puts the human dimension back into an educational system that has become dehumanized. The Challenge to Care in Schools fi rst appeared in 1992. Now, with the publication of this new edition, Noddings has written a new Introduction that recognizes that the 21st century has brought an even heavier emphasis on academic achievement, accountability, standards, and testing that will probably make her pleas for a central place for caring in our schools fall on deaf ears. So, in her new Introduction, she recasts her argument in a traditional versus progressive education framework—one that sees the pendulum of policy and educational ix NoddingsFirstProofs.indd ix 3/9/2005 11:43:00 AM x Foreword philosophy currently swinging heavily toward the traditional side. But she wonders if the pendulum must always swing back and forth and whether it might be possible for caring to have a central place in our schools even in the current traditionalist environment. She ar- gues, contra an either/or view of education, that both traditionalists and progressives could embrace caring as a central aim of educating without needing to give up their basic principles and philosophies. Her new Introduction sketches a way to do this and truly represents an advance in contemporary educational thought. Anyone who reads this book will come away with a feeling that the kind of change in school- ing that Noddings advocates is both desirable and possible. Jonas F. Soltis Series Editor NoddingsFirstProofs.indd x 3/9/2005 11:43:01 AM Acknowledgments Every writer owes a great debt to other writers—often uncited—who have infl uenced his or her thinking. That is certainly true for me, and I gratefully acknowledge many insightful predecessors and colleagues. Special thanks go to Denis Phillips, Jonas Soltis, and two anony- mous reviewers who made helpful comments on various drafts. I also thank the Lilly Endowment for a grant that enabled me to spend the necessary time in research and writing. The Endowment deserves widespread public thanks for its active interest in caring and its sup- port of research on caring. Thanks also to Osmund Stromnes of the Scandinavian Journal for Educational Research, who published an earlier version of chapter 5 on caring and continuity. Several colleagues lightened the load for me on projects I shared with them so that I could put more time to this book. For their gener- osity, I thank Carolyn Maher and Robert Davis of Rutgers and Carol Witherell of Lewis and Clark. My husband, Jim, deserves thanks for doing so many things to make my writing possible. As usual, my secretary, Jane Wassam, has cheerily encouraged me through drafts and revisions even though ev- ery change has meant more work for her. Many thanks. In preparing this second edition, I want to also thank the many stu- dents and instructors who have contacted me with questions and com- ments on the fi rst edition. The many responses from readers have been very helpful. Finally, I thank Carole Saltz, Brian Ellerbeck, and Karl Nyberg at Teachers College Press for their support and friendship. xi NoddingsFirstProofs.indd xi 3/9/2005 11:43:01 AM NoddingsFirstProofs.indd xii 3/9/2005 11:43:01 AM Introduction In the 1992 Introduction to this book, I argued against an education system that puts too much emphasis on academic achievement de- fi ned in terms of test scores and the acquisition of information. Today the case could be made even more strongly. Students spend weeks— even months—preparing for and taking tests.