Background
Nel Noddings was born on January 29, 1929, in Irvington, New Jersey, United States. She is a daughter of Edward A. Rieth and Nellie A. (Connors) Walter.
2010
Nel Noddings at a Suter Science Seminar.
2011
Nel Noddings lecturing
1 Normal Ave, Montclair, NJ 07043, United States
Montclair State University where Nel Noddings received a Bachelor of Arts degree.
New Brunswick, NJ, United States
Rutgers University in New Jersey where Nel Noddings received a Master of Arts degree.
450 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305, United States
Stanford University where Nel Noddings received a Doctor of Philosophy degree.
(What is at the basis of moral action? An altruism acquire...)
What is at the basis of moral action? An altruism acquired by the application of rule and principle? Or, as Noddings asserts, caring and the memory of being cared for? With numerous examples to supplement her rich theoretical discussion, Noddings builds a compelling philosophical argument for an ethics based on natural caring, as in the care of a mother for her child. The ethical behavior that grows out of natural caring, and has as its core care-filled receptivity to those involved in any moral situation, leaves behind the rigidity of rule and principle to focus on what is particular and unique in human relations.
https://www.amazon.com/Caring-Feminine-Approach-Education-Preface/dp/0520238648/?tag=2022091-20
1984
(Human beings love to fictionalize evil – to terrorize eac...)
Human beings love to fictionalize evil – to terrorize each other with stories of defilement, horror, excruciating pain, and divine retribution. Beneath the surface of bewitchment and half-sick amusement, however, lies the realization that evil is real and that people must find a way to face and overcome it. What we require, Carl Jung suggested, is a morality of evil – a carefully thought out plan by which to manage the evil in ourselves, in others, and in whatever deities we posit. This book is not written from a Jungian perspective, but it is nonetheless an attempt to describe a morality of evil.
https://www.amazon.com/Women-Evil-Nel-Noddings/dp/0520074130/?tag=2022091-20
1989
(After a decade of educational reforms, The Challenge to C...)
After a decade of educational reforms, The Challenge to Care in Schools is even more relevant now than when it was first published. In her new Introduction, Nel Noddings revisits her seminal book and places care as central to current debates on standardization, accountability, privatization, and the continuous struggle between traditional and progressive methods of education. Rather then forcing one side to yield to the other, this book advocates an alternative “responsive system” that will allow the best ideas to flourish.
https://www.amazon.com/Challenge-Care-Schools-Alternative-Contemporary/dp/0807746096/?tag=2022091-20
1992
(The need for caregiving is enormous. Thanks to extraordin...)
The need for caregiving is enormous. Thanks to extraordinary advances in medical technology, Americans are surviving illnesses and injuries that would have killed them a generation ago, and more of us are living into our eighties and nineties than ever before. Yet most people over sixty-five live with the burden of one or more chronic illness. The problems created by the caregiving needs of these and other groups are at the center of several of the most explosive political issues of our time: health care, welfare, child care, and family leave. These issues can be resolved, the editors of this volume contend, only when we as a society understand and value the work of caregiving and provide support for professional and family caregivers.
https://www.amazon.com/Caregiving-Readings-Knowledge-Practice-Politics/dp/0812215826/?tag=2022091-20
1996
(In this collection of essential essays, Nel Noddings exam...)
In this collection of essential essays, Nel Noddings examines alternatives to prevailing models of character education – a sympathetic approach based on an ethic of care. Covering both stories in the classroom and controversial issues in education, Noddings describes the similarities and differences between character education and care ethics examines how moral education might be infused throughout the curriculum and calls for greater cooperation across fields and more attention to the practical problems of everyday teaching.
https://www.amazon.com/Educating-Moral-People-Alternative-Character/dp/080774168X/?tag=2022091-20
2002
(This book explores what we might teach if we were to take...)
This book explores what we might teach if we were to take happiness seriously as a goal of education. It asks, first, what it means to be happy and, second, how we can help children to understand it. It notes that we have to develop a capacity for unhappiness and a willingness to alleviate the suffering of others to be truly happy. Criticizing our current almost exclusive emphasis on economic well-being and pleasure, Nel Noddings discusses the contributions of making a home, parenting, cherishing a place, the development of character, interpersonal growth, finding work that one loves, and participating in a democratic way of life. Finally, she explores ways in which to make schools and classrooms cheerful places.
https://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Education-Nel-Noddings-dp-0521807638/dp/0521807638/?tag=2022091-20
2003
(How can schools prepare students for real life? What shou...)
How can schools prepare students for real life? What should students learn in high school that is rarely addressed today? Critical Lessons recommends sharing highly controversial issues with high school students, including "hot" questions on war, gender, advertising, and religion.
https://www.amazon.com/Critical-Lessons-Schools-Should-Teach/dp/0521710006/?tag=2022091-20
2006
(Noddings argues that we must find ways to preserve our co...)
Noddings argues that we must find ways to preserve our commitment to democratic values while adapting to the societal changes that have occurred since Dewey wrote Democracy and Education almost a century ago. She urges not only a critical appraisal of current practice but also a cooperative and imaginative exploration of the future.
https://www.amazon.com/Education-Democracy-21st-Century-Noddings/dp/0807753963/?tag=2022091-20
2013
(A Richer, Brighter Vision for American High Schools advoc...)
A Richer, Brighter Vision for American High Schools advocates instead a unifying educational aim of producing better adults, which would encompass all aspects of students' lives: intellectual, physical, moral, spiritual, social, vocational, aesthetic, and civic. Nel Noddings offers suggestions to improve high schools by increasing collegiality among students and faculty, enriching curricula with interdisciplinary themes, renewing vocational education programs, addressing parenting and homemaking, and professionalizing the teaching force. This thought-provoking book will act as an important guide for teachers, teacher educators, administrators, and policymakers.
https://www.amazon.com/Richer-Brighter-Vision-American-Schools-ebook/dp/B00Y37ZJNY/?tag=2022091-20
2015
(In this book, eminent educational philosopher Nel Nodding...)
In this book, eminent educational philosopher Nel Noddings and daughter Laurie Brooks explain how teachers can foster critical thinking through the exploration of controversial issues. The emphasis is on the use of critical thinking to understand and collaborate, not simply to win arguments. The authors describe how critical thinking that encourages dialogue across the school disciplines and across social/economic classes prepares students for participation in democracy. They offer specific, concrete strategies for addressing a variety of issues related to authority, religion, gender, race, media, sports, entertainment, class and poverty, capitalism and socialism, and equality and justice. The goal is to develop individuals who can examine their own beliefs, those of their own and other groups, and those of their nation, and can do so with respect and understanding for others' values.
https://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Controversial-Issues-Commitment-Classroom/dp/0807757802/?tag=2022091-20
2017
Nel Noddings was born on January 29, 1929, in Irvington, New Jersey, United States. She is a daughter of Edward A. Rieth and Nellie A. (Connors) Walter.
Nel Noddings attended Montclair State College (now Montclair State University) where she received a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics and Physical Science in 1949. She studied at Rutgers University and received a Master of Arts degree in Mathematics in 1964. Noddings received a Doctor of Philosophy in Education from Stanford University in 1973.
Nel Noddings received an Honorary Doctor of Philosophy from Columbia College in 1995. She also received an Honorary Doctor of Letters from Montclair State University and an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws from Queen’s University in 2006. In 2007, she received an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Lewis and Clark College.
Nel Noddings started her career as a teacher at Public Schools in Woodbury, New Jersey. She served as a teacher from 1949 to 1952. In 1958 she became a teacher in the Mathematics Department at Matawan Regional High School and held this post until 1962. Noddings then served as a teacher and Assistant Principal at Matawan Regional High School from 1964 to 1969. She also was the Director of Pre-Collegiate Education at the University of Chicago.
In 1977, Noddings took up a post of an Acting Assistant Professor of Education at Stanford University. In 1979, she was appointed an Assistant Professor of Education and in 1983 she became an Associate Professor and Director of Teacher Education. Noddings became a Professor of Education in 1986 and in 1994 she took up a post of a Lee L. Jacks Professor of Education and held this post until her retirement in 1998. She also worked as a John W. Porter Chair in Urban Education at Eastern Michigan University from 2002 to 2003. Now she is the Jacks Professor Emeriti of Child Education at Stanford University.
Nel Noddings published her first book Awakening the Inner Eye in 1984. Later she wrote such books as Women and Evil, Constructivist Views on the Teaching and Learning of Mathematics, The Challenge to Care in Schools and Educating Moral People. She also wrote more than 200 articles and book chapters on various topics ranging from the ethics of care to mathematical problem-solving. Her latest book Teaching Controversial Issues was published in 2017. She is currently on the Editorial Board of Greater Good Magazine, published by the Greater Good Science Center of the University of California, Berkeley.
(What is at the basis of moral action? An altruism acquire...)
1984(How can schools prepare students for real life? What shou...)
2006(A Richer, Brighter Vision for American High Schools advoc...)
2015(Noddings argues that we must find ways to preserve our co...)
2013(In this book, eminent educational philosopher Nel Nodding...)
2017(In this collection of essential essays, Nel Noddings exam...)
2002(Human beings love to fictionalize evil – to terrorize eac...)
1989(After a decade of educational reforms, The Challenge to C...)
1992(This book explores what we might teach if we were to take...)
2003(The need for caregiving is enormous. Thanks to extraordin...)
1996Nel Noddings said that she is not a member of traditional faith, but she was brought up in one and gave it up some time ago. She is not ready to declare herself an atheist. Noddings said that she is an agnostic.
Nel Noddings believes that it is important to study religion at school as it is part of our cultural heritage. Children need to examine religions from historical and philosophical perspectives. She said that if one is going to be a believer, one ought to be an intelligent believer. We ought to know what it is we've accepted, and, if possible, why we've accepted it.
Nel Noddings draws an important distinction between natural caring and ethical caring. Ethical caring occurs when a person acts caringly out of a belief that caring is the appropriate way of relating to people. When someone acts in a caring way because that person naturally cares for another, caring is not ethical caring. Noddings' said that ethical caring is based on, and so dependent on, natural caring. It is through experiencing others caring for them and naturally caring for others that people build what is called an "ethical ideal", an image of the kind of person they want to be.
Nel Noddings' ethics of care has been criticised by both feminists and those who favored more traditional, and allegedly masculine, approaches to ethics. Feminists object that the one caring is, in effect, carrying out the traditional female role in life of giving while receiving little in return. Those who accept more traditional approaches to ethics argue that the partiality shown to those closest to us in Noddings' theory is inappropriate.
Noddings agrees with Socrates who said that knowledge is "justified true belief." She said that knowledge is a source of power that allows people opportunities, but a lack of what Noddings calls "privileged knowledge" can also leave people with less freedom and choice. She also believes that a human being is an active participant in the world and that the ability to think rationally and to reflect is an important characteristic that makes humans human. She stated that the main aim of education should be to produce competent, caring, loving and lovable people.
Quotations:
"I do not need to establish a deep, lasting, time-consuming personal relationship with every student. What I must do is to be totally and nonselectively present to the student-to each student-as he addresses me. The time interval may be brief but the encounter is total."
"We will not find the solution to problems of violence, alienation, ignorance, and unhappiness in increasing our security, imposing more tests, punishing schools for their failure to produce 100 percent proficiency, or demanding that teachers be knowledgeable in the subjects they teach. Instead, we must allow teachers and students to interact as whole persons, and we must develop policies that treat the school as a whole community."
"My contention is, first, that we should want more from our educational efforts than adequate academic achievement and, second, that we will not achieve even that meager success unless our children believe that they themselves are cared for and learn to care for others."
"A sense of responsibility in teaching pushes us constantly to think about and promote the best interests of our students. In contrast, the demand for accountability often induces mere compliance."
"If the well-being of my loved place depends on the well-being of Earth, I have a good reason for supporting the well-being of your loved place. I have selfish as well as cosmopolitan reasons for preserving the home-places of all human beings. Cosmopolitanism becomes thicker and more potent with this realization."
Nel Noddings is a member of the Center for Social and Emotional Learning, Center for Development of Peace and Well-Being, Center for Partnership Studies, Horace Mann School Center for Community Values, American Philosophical Association and Action and Center for Critical Mathematics.
Nel Noddings describes herself as "incurably domestic". Not only because she has raised 10 children and stayed married to the same man for 48 years. Nel Noddings knows it because she likes "order in the kitchen, a fresh tablecloth, flowers on the table and food waiting for guests". She added that she likes to see pets and kids around her.
Nel Noddings married James A. Noddings on August 20, 1949. The marriage produced ten children. James died in 2012. Nel Noddings has 39 grandchildren and over 20 great-grandchildren.