Barometers of change: individual, educational, and social transformation

Abstract

An innovative and engaged scholar, whose works on educational and mental health policy have spanned almost five decades, shares his views on postwar social trends in the US. Sarason not only treats the domains of central concern in his previous work but, with an eye toward comprehending the nature of social change and how best to respond to its effects, opens discussion on such issues as child rearing, abortion, sexual behavior, and artistic expression. Although replete with arresting opinions, Sarason is at his best when replacing simple views of linear and predictable accretion with more sophisticated accounts of multiple, coalescing, and aleatory transformations. Unfortunately, he makes little reference either to contemporary historical writing or to sociological analyses of modernist culture. General; upper-division undergraduates; graduate students.