Learning & Self-Governing.
Questions on the Future of Democracy in America- (1994)
George Beecher

In this unassuming book longtime Goddard faculty member and educational innovator George Beecher turns American society on its ear. Making few statements, mainly asking questions, he prepares his readers to move into their next stages of thought. His aim is not to tell people things, but to challenge them to think. The conclusions they reach are their own concern. Generations of Goddard students remember the impact of his educational style. So may his readers now.

Uncut Leaves. The Poems and Prose of Sylvia H. Bliss.
Volume I. The "Prose-Poems":
Quests (1920), and Sea Level (1933), (1989).
Sylvia H. Bliss

Moving to her ancestral home in Vermont in 1885 at the age of 15, Sylvia Bliss spent the rest of her long life as musician, naturalist, writer and reflective thinker, becoming known as a Vermont poet and essayist. Vol. I presents her two small books of "poems in prose", "Quests" (1920) and "Sea Level" (1933), representing successive stages in her self-development as a writer.

Uncut Leaves. - The Poems and Prose of Sylvia H. Bliss
Volume II. Prose Writings. (1990).
Sylvia H. Bliss

Stages in a writer's life: selected early pieces prior to 1900, post-1900 experiments with fiction, the three academic articles, and a selection of essays and reflective articles from the years of her maturity; the inconclusive autobiographical document; the Nature Notes and sketches brought forward from earlier periods to be published in "Driftwind" in her eighth decade: a perspective on the self-education of a writer, an instance of accomplishment by a hard-working, solitary figure. Writers in formation could well study her development as writer and artist.

The Bird of Utica.
Life, Thought and Art of Sylvia H. Bliss- (1986)
Forest K. Davis

Sylvia Bliss, author of the works in "Uncut Leaves", was a distinctive figure in the Vermont of her time, quiet, forceful, self-disciplined, playing a curious small role in the introduction of Freudian thought in America, showing how an isolated figure could develop her talents, grow as an artist and thinker, and come to a position of respect and accomplishment at the end of a long life. This biographical study centers on life experience as ground for emerging reflective positions.

Farewell to Earth. - Collected Writings.
Volume I. (1991)
Arthur K. Davis

The major mid-life papers of the distinguished Canadian- American social scientist, combining the fields of sociology, anthropology, economics and history. Dr. Davis is known throughout Canada as a radical and iconoclastic analyst and interpreter of social history on a global scale. Sharp of style, unsparing of static contentment, these essays range across cultures and ages, always returning to the present time and the solutions, if any, of the massive socio-cultural problems of the waning 20th century. In the line of the great social analysts, Hegel, Marx, Veblen, Toynbee, Whitehead, Sorokin, and Mao Tse-tung, the process dialectic presented here broods from the high plains of Canada, in an emergent and unpredictable mixture of despair and stubborn hope.

Farewell to Earth. - Selected Writings.
Volume II. (1993)
Arthur K. Davis

The earlier and later papers developing into and from the major themes of Volume I. This formidable volume strikes sparks from the corpus of social writing in the late 20th century. The author's relentless perspective constantly returns to the facts of social history, calling into sharpest question the conventions of our time. From Western Canada between 1974 and 1988 Dr. Davis made 15 visits to the socialist nations, 4 to China, one to Eastern Europe, 4 to the Soviet Union, 6 to Cuba. In Vol. II appear his notes from those visits. Here are the moving sculptures of an age, formed from the standing waves and currents of social process.

Farewell to Earth.- Edging into Mainstream.
Volume III. (2000-2001)
Arthur K. Davis, with James Patrick Brady, and many others.

Why Native Saskatchewan Metis-Indians Failed to Edge Into White Mainstream. 1960-65.

In this classic sociological study of 155 Metis and Indian households in three small Saskatchewan centres, Prince Albert, North Battleford and Meadow Lake the author and numerous associates apply social science methods to data on a wide range of topics. Methodology, origins, social characteristics of persons, families and households, labour, income, levels of living, social participation, problems and aspirations, conclusions and interpretations, contribute to detailed analysis of the living situations of Metis-Indian participants in the study. In the end the author makes sweeping recommendations of a "combined operations" approach enabling cultural minorities to improve their standing and their abilities to manage their lives, through economic improvement, further education, and intensified socialization. He advises a national program leading toward greater individual, social and cultural achievement, based on economic and social realities.

The book ends with an original essay by the late James P. Brady, chief field interviewer in the social study which is detailed here, whose reflective mind and careful writing make a significant contribution to this and other studies in the field.

Friendly Rebel.
A Personal and Social History of Eduard C. Lindeman. (1991)
Elizabeth Lindeman Leonard

Biographical study of the well-known social work educator and public figure in the first half of the 20th century, written by his daughter from the School of Social Work, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. A volume eagerly awaited by social workers, educators and social historians, two generations after Dr. Lindeman's death in 1953. Their judgment has been that he was a key figure in defining the earlier stages in the development of the professions of social work and continuing education. Introduction by Dr. Clarke A. Chambers, Director of the Social Work History Archive, University of Minnesota/Twin Cities.

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Things Were Different in Royce's Day. (1996)
Royce S. Pitkin As Progressive Educator:
A Perspective From Goddard College, 1950 - 1967
Forest K. Davis

When Royce Pitkin retired as President of Goddard College in 1969, after 31 years in that office, he left a remarkable institution for succeeding generations. Goddard was new and experimental, different in its ideas, its methods, and its educational philosophy. How did he do it? What precisely were his ideas, methods, and philosophy? What was life like for him in his own time? Who was "Tim"?

This study makes a beginning on these complex questions, reaching for understandings made harder by social and ideological developments since his day. We need to know what he did and what he thought - parts, at least, of what brought about his great achievement in the face of enormous difficulties. Then perhaps, we can ask - what happened to it?

One-third of this study comprises an interpretation of five major problem-areas in the development of the College, - societal communications, financial support, admissions, the Roycean dialectic, and educational outreach. Two-thirds derive from documents written by President Pitkin during his long professional life, certain significant pieces, and principally, selected presidential reports to the Board of Trustees of the College, where some of his best writings are found.

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earth.goddard.edu:
The College Since Royce's Day. 1969-1989.- (2003)
Forest K. Davis

Goddard has had major shake-ups at least every ten years. In a number of them the College and its Trustees undertook great changes. In April 1970 these changes, without a trace of the discussional dialectic which was the fundamental College mode of communication, were profoundly damaging to the institution. In another, in October, 1980, the discussional dialectic was present and in full command: the Trustees went an enormous distance to redeem themselves, and with Board Chair Richard Sontag as leader, gave new institutional life to the College. In 1988, a student upheaval took place which has not been sufficiently studied to enable people to know what it really meant. In still another, in 2002 and 2003, a strange institutional tension appeared which even now has no good or complete explanation. In it, again the discussional dialectic was for a time fragmentary or missing. Closing the Residential Undergraduate College was harmful. But the College now understands that the Trustees mean well for its survival and restoration through fund-raising and renewed institutional commitment to its progressive educational philosophy and practice, and has moved to join the Trustees in its doubly restorative efforts. The dialectic is running satisfactorily among the Board, the College staff and students, the Renaissance Committee, and the Trustee Committee of Four. In Josiah Friedberg's great iron statue, the College recovers its very life.

"In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly. But westward look, the land is bright!" -- Arthur Hugh Clough

Return From Enlightenment. (1971)
Forest K. Davis

Fourteen essays, centering on five recurrent themes: operational thought and systematics; the ecology of thought behaviors and patterns; the philosophy of conflict and the nature of conflict conceived of as configuration of communication and dependency; education as dimension of the real, and as an instance of social metaphysics; and knowing in relation to the real, the polarities of which are still open to new understandings. Formative papers expressive of what Pepper might have called root-metaphors, those shadowy yet reliable building blocks of a fundamental philosophy.

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Journey Among Mountains. (1974)
Forest K. Davis

Fifteen essays centering around themes in the nature of religion, the processes of education, liberal thought, the fundamental questions in philosophy, church and university, ecumenism, and two papers on consortial thought and practice in higher education. Aspects of large reflective issues as these appear in particular instances. As before, formative papers indicative of and resultants from "root-metaphors", in Pepper's term, toward an emerging general philosophy.

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Goddard Themes, From the Seminary into Recent Times. 1863-2005, and counting. (2006)
Forest K. Davis

Reflective account of contrasting liberalisms at the Seminary in the 1870-1938 period of the Seminary, and what happened to them principally in the 1970s , at the College, and later. And what one ought to do about it all.

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