| Through a Derridian analysis of the tensions between thought and meaning, theory and practice, this critical enquiry opens an investigation into the relations between the ideals of liberal education and the effects of modern educational discourse on professional development in American public schools. Through a narrative that begins with an ancient Roman metaphor, this historical retrospective illustrates the role of sacrament and authority, once central to the Republic, made impersonal and sacrificial through repetition and convention.; The history of professional development reveals critical thought as old as the Ancients, renewed through challenges to medieval convention in the vernacular and curriculum of Peter Ramus, and made temporal in the Renaissance history of Giambattista Vico. By the 18th century, scholars adopt the tools of their ancestors to legitimize the hierarchical classification of students within the university system. By 1820, the superintendent of West Point, Thayer Sylvanus, contributes to the promotion of elite managers by instilling students with respect for bureaucracy that inadvertently expands the emerging railroad system and redefines the American agricultural worker.; With industry capturing the method and scale of production, attention to the politically marginalized individual becomes central to the humanities. Susan Neiman and James C. Scott recognize society's need for a response. Confined by the metaphysics of individual intention, no author eludes the hypostasis of order without the affirmation of another. In a conservative and structural appeal, these authors each highlight the conditions and language of extreme need. In a challenge to redefine these cultural signs, Jacques Derrida exposes the context of imagination that opens new interpretations to the space between signified and signifier that no writer anticipates in isolation. |
