Edgar Z. Friedenberg (1912 - 2001?)
Edgar was an educator, education critic, and sociologist less famous than he
should be, perhaps because he had abandoned the US in 1970 for the relative
obscurity of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Edgar loved smart young people, but his affections had always been platonic.
Friedenberg became professor of education and sociology at State University of
New York, Buffalo. His education theories went against the grain of the emerging
Dewey-inspired view that education's purpose was to prepare students for the
benefit of society. He contributed to understanding of the adolescents of the
sixties, and promoted the already-fading virtues of competency, of facts as
opposed to dogma, and of mastery of subjects - a creed of excellence.
Author of "The Vanishing Adolescent" (1959), "Coming of Age in America: Growth
and Acquiescence" (1965), and other studies of American society. "Screw Your
Courage" is his autobiography - though he said it wasn't really: he preferred to
call it a study in marginality with a sample of one.
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