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The Decline of the Secular University
The American university has embraced a thorough secularism that makes it increasingly marginal in a society that is characterized by high levels of religious belief. The very secularization that was supposed to be a liberating influence has resulted in the university's failure to provide leadership in political, cultural, social, and even scientific arenas. In The Decline of the Secular University, C. John Sommerville explores several different ways in which the secular university fails in its mission through its trivialization of religion. He notes how little attention is being given to defining the human, so crucial in all aspects of professional education. He alerts us to problems associa...
The Rise and Fall of Childhood
Like Philippe Aries's Centuries of Childhood, this history of child rearing shows how the treatment of children holds the key to a society's success or failure and draws implications
The Rise and Fall of Childhood
'There is much to admire in John Sommerville's synoptic survey, not least the energy with which he sweeps in 250 pages from Classical Antiquity to the present, synthesizing modern research and taking in such topics as education, the family, infant mortality, and child psychology...it is an enterprising and stimulating volume.' -- Medical History, April 1983 'With a touch of dry wit and an aversion to sentimentality, his attractive writing style draws the reader into his subject. Viewing history through the lens of the changing place of children in society can yield fresh and startling perspectives and interpretations for our own times. A stimulating book.' -- Child Welfare, Vol 62 No 4, July/August 1983 'Th
How the News Makes Us Dumb
We who live at the end of the twentieth century are better informed--and more quickly informed--than any people in history. So why do we also seem more confused, divided and foolish than ever before? Some pundits criticize the news media for political bias. Other analysts worry that up-to-the-minute news reports on radio and television oversimplify complex realities. Still more critics point out that today's reporters can't possibly be experts on the wide variety of subjects they cover. Historian C. John Sommerville thinks the problem with news is more basic. Focusing his critique on the news at its best, he concludes that even at its best it is beyond repair. Sommerville argues that news be...
The News Revolution in England
The News Revolution in England: Cultural Dynamics of Daily Information is the first book to analyze the essential feature of periodical media, which is their periodicity. Having to sell the next issue as well as the present one changes the relation between authors and readers--or customers--and subtly shapes the way that everything is reported, whether politics, the arts and science, or social issues. So there are certain biases that are implicit in the dynamics of news production or commodified information, quite apart from the intentions of journalists. With the birth of the commercial periodical in late seventeenth century England, news became a commodity. What constituted news, how it wa...
The Secularization of Early Modern England
This study overcomes the ambiguity and daunting scale of the subject of secularization by using the insights of anthropology and sociology, and by examining an earlier period than usually considered. Concentrating not only on a decline of religious belief, which is the last aspect of secularization, this study shows that a transformation of England's cultural grammar had to precede that loosening of belief, and that this was largely accomplished between 1500 and 1700. Only when definitions of space and time changed and language and technology were transformed (as well as art and play) could a secular world-view be sustained. As aspects of daily life became divorced from religious values and controls, religious culture was supplanted by religious faith, a reasoned, rather than an unquestioned, belief in the supernatural. Sommerville shows that this process was more political and theological than economic or social.
The Discovery of Childhood in Puritan England
The English Puritans produced an unprecedented quantity and variety of writings on children. Despite this suggestion of a deep and many-sided interest in childhood, scholars have focused on only the most damning attitudes and practices of Puritan culture. The Puritans are generally regarded as a baseline for measuring progress toward a greater understanding of children. This study by C. John Sommerville is the first to confirm that Puritans were indeed preoccupied with children. In addition, it challenges long-held assumptions about the Puritans by proposing that their interest in children was unrelated to their economic situation, theological proclivities, or a shared psychological patholog...
Religion in the National Agenda
In this highly provocative investigation, C. John Sommerville examines common linguistic uses of the terms "religion," "religious," "spiritual," and "secular" in order to discern understandings of these words in contemporary American culture. For example, he finds that, in English, "religion" is our word for a certain kind of response to a certain kind of power (the power and the response both being beyond anything else in our experience). Sommerville then uses these definitions to examine the ways that institutions in the fields of education, science, law, politics and religion are affected--often in unexpected ways--by a shared set of assumptions about what these words mean.
Religious Ideas for Secular Universities
During the last century American students and scholars have found it increasingly difficult to discuss the relation of religion to the mission of self-consciously secular colleges and universities. Respected scholar C. John Sommerville here offers thought-provoking reflections on this subject in a conversational style. / Sommerville explores the crisis of the secular university, argues that religion and secular universities need each other, and examines how Christianity shows up on both sides of our culture wars. The astute reflections in Religious Ideas for Secular Universities point the way to a dialogue that would do justice both to religious insights and to truly neutral secular education.
