First off, that's a 3.5, not a 3, but whatever. Perhaps I am just not one for reading philosophy, or as I like to think, many philosophers simply do not understand how to write in a clear fasion. At the bottom of it, Dewey's ideas for ethics in education are as vital now as they were when he wrote it back 1909, but perhaps if he could have made his points in some way more coherent (at a little over 50 pages, this still feels bloated, I imagine it could be clearly stated in about 10 pages), the entire US educational system would have been where it is now by the 20's--and that truly would have been something revolutionary. Dewey goes so far as essentially voicing his own primitive theory of constructivism, along with revolutionary concepts such as 'those who do the doing do the learning'--namely that teaching should be more student oriented and should first and foremost engage the student. There even seems to be a bit of the 'content versus process' debate here, and yet I think there must be more modern writers who have stated this with greater clarity. For people who enjoy reading terse philosophical monologues (and this certainly is still quite readable--I've seen much worse), then certainly pick up this book both for its historical value and a relatively interesting exploration of the ethics in teaching. If your a busy grad student like me though, this may not seem like it is worth the frustration--especially when you can open up almost any teaching journal and see the same ideas. Sure, they didn't say if first, but I don't fall asleep reading it.

Sidney Hook, like many pragmatic theoriests, wrote on many subjects. One of his favorite, though, was naturalism and how it stacked against religious faith. This book, almost exclusively, is on that.

First, I have to say that the first three essays, none of them dedicated to naturalism as discussed above, are maybe the best three here. "Philosophy and Human Conduct" asks the question of whether a particular philosophy of epistemology, metaphysics or what have us has connection to particular political beliefs. Hook answers that there may be small tendencies (idealism tends, not always, leads to a leftist; realism, to a rightward stance) but this should only be taken as a tendency. "Moral Freedom in a Determined World" writes of the paradox of determinism. Honestly, you've doubtless read these ideas before. "The Ethical Theory of John Dewey" is a great summary (Hook was a better writer than Dewey anyhow) on Dewey's theory of values and their link to the sciences. These three essays, the best ones, take seventy-three pages.

The next section is devoted to rebutting theism. While this is fun for us naturalists, it gets tiresome and Hook rehashes many of the same arguments that both he and others have used before. Honestly, I think his conceptions of religion are also a bit off. Especially in an essay titled "Naturalism and First Principles" he goes a bit overboard in the difference between science and religion - the former, he says, solves mystery; the latter, revels in it. To an extent, this is true but for a counter-view, the reader should check out Popper's "Conjecture and Refutation". Popper believes that both aim at explaining mystery. Belief in Divine something and belief in science both try to make sense of things; the difference? Science does so in ways falsifiable; religion, generally not. Most of Hooks essays from here out, unfortunately, make similar assumptions. I got the impression that he was attacking straw-men.

From here, the only other essay I really found exciting was "Scientific Knowledge and Philosophical Knowledge" which asks whether there is any common ground, whether one can get by without the other and whether each are seperate, or mutually supporting. Hook is not the first, nor the last to broach these questions and his answers, like most whove attempted the questions, are inconclusive but the ride is fun anyway. In short, read it. Some essays are fun; some not. Especially good for those sick of Putnamian and Rortyan "vulgar pragmatism".