Beyond the Modern University Toward a Constructive Postmodern University

Subjects:

• Education » Educational Foundations
• Education » Higher Education

Reviews:

• Thoughtful and well-written. Should be on the bookshelf of anyone concerned with serious futures in education.
  —Future Survey April 2003
• In this provocative book, author Marcus Peter Ford warns "the world is on the verge of an ecological and social catastrophe...virtually unimaginable in its scope," and nothing short of a total restructuring of the modern university will rectify the situation. Regardless of the concerns that can be raised about Ford's solution, he has articulately highlighted the need for society to foster a more environmentally conscious and morally defensible worldview as a corrective to the excesses of materialism and individual self-interest. His vision of a better world is powerful-we just need a more practical means of getting there.
  —The NEA Higher Education Journal Winter 2004

• Endorsement From John B. Cobb Jr., Claremont Graduate School.: Higher education is in crisis, but hardly seems to know it. This unawareness is partly due to ignorance of its own history. Ford illuminates that history and thereby the present crisis. He goes beyond this to point the way ahead. If those involved in determining the future of higher education will take his work to heart, there may yet be real hope that education will become part of the solution of the human problem rather than a major contributor to that problem.
• Endorsement From David W. Orr, Oberlin College: It is difficult to imagine a future that is humane, decent, and sustainable without marked changes in the substance and process of education at all levels, beginning with the University. That case is made here with historical depth, philosophical clarity, and an appropriate sense of urgency. Professor Ford has added a significant dimension to the debate about the future of higher education. This book deserves to be at the center of a dialogue on every college and university campus.
• Endorsement From C. A. Bowers, author of Let Them Eat Data: This is one of the few books asking us to question the connections between the modern university and the globalization of the consumer, technologically dependent lifestyle deepening the ecological crisis. Marcus Ford writes with rare courage, insight, and wisdom about the need for universities to break from their pre-ecologically informed traditions. The loss of cultural and biological diversity now requires a new set of priorities if we are to live in an ecologically sustainable world.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• A Social History of the University
• A Brief Overview of Western Thought and its Implications for the Social and the Natural World
• The University of Berlin and the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness
• An Alternative Worldview: The Philosophy of Organism
• Some Aspects of a Postmodern University
• Getting There
• Index