num_pages: 176
description: In this critical biography Howard V. Davis takes us to the genesis of a major educational challenge—a challenge that has an extraordinary currency for the present. In a striking degree, his analysis of the “relationship between the mind of the times and the innovators” contains clues to many vexing problems that beset educators and sociologists today. Setting the stage for his study of Parsons, Mr. Davis vividly recreates the economic and social conditions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Mr. Davis shows Parsons as one of a group of independent economists and social theorists who gave voice to an emerging ethics and morality for the changing times. Parsons saw social progress as a gradual thing which should not be subject to the vagaries of business and economic conditions. Parsons and his group called their program “organized common sense.” But it was more than that. In an age when the country with its great capacity for growth was seeking new directions, Parsons saw clearly the need for the kind of school­ing that would open up fresh opportunities to every child and to adults as well. It is a testimony to his far-sightedness that his pleas for bringing the school and the child and the employer and the learner closer together has become a task of high priority in educational planning today. 
language: English
title: Frank Parsons: Prophet, Innovator, Counselor
titlecomplete: Frank Parsons: Prophet, Innovator, Counselor
publisher: Southern Illinois University Press