George S. Counts: Educator for a New Age

The responsibility, character, and training of the American teacher is but one of the five themes to emerge from this new Counts reader, which summarizes the philosophy of one of the most vital forces in education for more than half a century. Other areas of constant concern for Counts were American history and the national character; education and social forces; technology and industrialism; and the challenge of totalitarianism as opposed to the promise of democracy. Editors Dennis and Eaton have traced Counts’s professional career from his entry into the University of Chicago Graduate School in 1913 to his retirement from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, in 1971. They balance Counts and his work against national events and moods. As men who knew him, they provide personal insights. But essentially they let Counts speak for himself through generous excerpts from eight of his most important and characteristic books. Counts saw the teacher as a bearer of culture, a creator of social values. He wanted to raise teachers to the level of educational statesmen. To that end he wrote: The time has come for us to consign to the wastebasket of history the idea that teaching requires less severe selection and training than the practice of medicine, law, engineering or theology. Indeed, from the standpoint of values and responsibilities involved, teaching is probably the most difficult and important of all professions.”