{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.029155787641427327, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0013054830287206266, 'mean_word_length': 4.849872773536895, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Education reform in New York City: ambitious change in the nation’s most complex school system

(or ‘mind-independent’) truth. While I am far from attributing any such muddle to Sockett – indeed, his overall defence of truth-seeking as the fundamental aim of education is (in my view) on the side of the angels – more critical attention to the hazards of virtue epistemology might have been desirable in this pioneering context. Again, while Sockett’s work engages in some valuable appraisal or currently fashionable educational trends and theories (I particularly appreciated his timely and well-directed critique of care ethics), one could have wished for more critical distance in places. Thus, to my mind, Sockett is a little too philosophically easy on psychology in general and modern so-called ‘positive psychology’ in particular – much of which is conceptually slipshod just where we need it to be precise. (For example, on p. 178, what are supposed to be the precise relations, if any, between knowledge and creativity; or courage and vitality; or temperance and humility?) There is also some rather unguarded generalization towards the end of the work: for example, where the author refers to opinion, simulation, fun and love as ‘enemies’ of intellectual progress. One knows what he means; but one should also be careful. In the same spirit, the present reviewer once made the point to a group of students that becoming a good PE teacher is more than just liking children and loving sport: in subsequent examinations, they all wrote that in order to be a good PE teacher they needed to hate children and sport. Lastly – and again too generally – I would say that, while I considered most of what the author has to say in this work about the epistemic virtues and their educational significance to be both true and important, I found the attempted development of these points in the direction of practical application to pedagogy and teacher education rather less satisfactory, which clearly leaves much more for educational philosophers and theorists to do. But this is inevitably the case with any work and a single book cannot do everything. Certainly, what this well-turned, philosophically informed and timely work does do, it does well – and is to be (highly) commended accordingly.