Customer Reviews

Grappling With the Good: Talking About Religion And Morality in Public Schools (S U N Y Series in Philosophy of Education)

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I do my research by shadowing high school students through their academic experiences. In my work, I am interested in how youth engage with each other and with ideas. Sadly, when it comes to engagement around ethical or moral issues, much of what I witness veers between "shock-radio" confrontation or systematic avoidance of any issue tinged with conflict or moral weight. In other words, bare-knuckle polemics or silence holds sway.

Writing with the acuity of a philosopher and the on-the-ground savvy of a veteran high school teacher-Kunzman offers a framework for understanding why the public school classroom must be a place for our diverse students to tangle and grapple with moral disagreement and combustible issues-particularly around our religious beliefs. Kunzman moves between sophisticated but accessible philosophical claims and providing detailed and authentic examples of "real" students and teachers "grappling with the good," the ambiguous, and the uncertain. As I finished this gem of a book, I jotted in the margin: "This is the kind of book John Dewey or Richard Rorty would write if they had worked as a high school teacher for a decade before they turned to full-time philosophy."