Toward a Reconstruction of Social Education

This is the second of two articles dealing with the reconstructionist rational for social education. The first article provided an analysis of reconstruction-ism as expressed in the works of George Counts and Theodore Brameld (Stanley, 1981). These two authors developed a rationale for social education which differed significantly from those of their contemporaries who were often labeled as reconstructionists. The Counts-Bra meld rational will hereafter be referred to as radical reconstructionism. The first article explained the basic tenets of radical reconstructionism and outlined the radical reconstructionist rationale for social education. This article has two basic objectives. First, it examines the extent to which the tenets of radical reconstructionism are reflected in five dominant rationales for modern social education. Second, the basic tenets of radical reconstruction are used as criteria to analyze the adequacy of the five modern rationales.