The Challenge to Care in Schools

By Nel Noddings

Book Overview

After a decade of educational reforms, The Challenge to Care in Schools is even more relevant now than when it was first published. In her new Introduction, Nel Noddings revisits her seminal book and places care as central to current debates on standardization, accountability, privatization, and the continuous struggle between traditional and progressive methods of education. Rather then forcing one side to yield to the other, this book advocates an alternative "responsive system" that will allow the best ideas to flourish.

In the Second Edition, Noddings once again envisions a school system built on the idea that different people have different strengths, and that these strengths should be cultivated in an environment of caring, not of competition. She suggests that if we make the responsiveness characteristic of caring more basic than accountability, we can accommodate both traditional and progressive preferences in one school system to the benefit of all...especially the children.

Chapters address the practical and theoretical questions involved in organizing traditional and nontraditional areas of study around themes of care. Introductory chapters focus on caring in general and on the problems of liberal education, while the final chapter offers sound advice for implementing a caring curriculum in our schools.

Praise for the First Edition

"A welcome addition to the often fragmented discussion of what children need and what school and education should be."

--Harvard Educational Review

"I recommend this book to all concerned about education, personally and/or professionally."

--Journal of Moral Education

"In the morass of school reform that calls for such changes as national standards, improved assessments, and new ways of organizing schooling, Noddings provides lucid thinking about the priorities we ought to consider."

--Teachers College Record

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807746096
• ISBN13: 9780807746097
• Release Date: May 2005
• Publisher: Teachers College Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

The Challenge to Care in Schools

interesting but unrealistic recommendations to change focus of curriculum in education; quotes Dewey quite a bit; easy to read, required for a class

Can caring work in our schools?

Noddings, in this book, addresses some of the issues facing our students in this day and age. She looks at issues of school violence, substance abuse, sexuality, etc. from the perspective of curriculum and provides suggestions on how schools could adress these issues based on the philosophy of caring. Noddings is a reconstructionist in her views but in this book offers concrete examples of how caring could be incorporated into the existing curriculum. Her use of examples helps to clarify her concepts and spheres of caring and why she believes schools need to incorporate care into their curricula. I found her first book difficult to read and did not feel that it made her points as clearly as this book does. I would reccomend this book as an entrance into the discussion of what role alternative views, such as caring, could have in our public schools. For people interested in education, public schools, and how to change our students' experiences for the better, this is a good book to read.