Education is currently a foremost concern for many Americans. Education, however, is about more than teaching children skills for earning a living and how to function in life. It is really a means of transmitting both a culture and a heritage. William Irwin Thompson, one of today s most innovative interdisciplinary thinkers, talks about how to transform a cultural legacy in the course of transmitting it. His visionary approach takes education far beyond the bland, watered-down curricula so many students face today in public and private schools.
Thompson offers us a mind-rattling tour of our potential as human beings, from the Gilgamesh epic of 2000 B.C.E. to Disney, popular music, current politics and social crises, and beyond. He not only presents a far-reaching system of knowledge and teaching, but also suggests how we can stimulate the best and healthiest patterns of development in our children and teenagers.
"Transforming History" will enlighten today s educators and anyone concerned with improving our legacy and our children s place in it.
CONTENTS: Foreword
One: Cultural History and Complex Dynamical Systems
Two: Transforming History
Notes
Appendix: An Outline of the Curriculum
Index"