This book is about the tumultuous and even passionate relationship between New Education and Educational Sciences, which are regarded as an inseparable «couple», intrinsically linked and surprisingly fruitful. Yet they remain irreconcilable and are mutually contradictory in a number of their elements and characteristics. Do Educational Sciences offer a scientific base or ideological support for New Education? Do the numerous new educational initiatives and reforms provide a «laboratory» for Educational Sciences or alternatives to the new scientific paradigms? Is this at the risk of their merging? And what is the price of these tensions? Specialists in the history of Educational Sciences and New Education from various geographical, cultural and disciplinary horizons explore the complex links between this powerful reforming movement and the nascent disciplinary field that emerged during the first half of the 20th century. Cet ouvrage analyse les relations tumultueuses - passionnelles même - de l'Education nouvelle et des Sciences de l'éducation: un couple indissociable - intrinsèquement lié et d'une étonnante fécondité - autant qu'inconciliable, nombre de leurs présupposés et caractéristiques se contredisant mutuellement. Les Sciences de l'éducation offrent-elles la base scientifique ou l'appui idéologique de l'Education nouvelle ? Les nombreuses expériences et réformes éducatives constituent-elles des laboratoires des Sciences de l'éducation ou des alternatives aux nouveaux paradigmes scientifiques ? Au risque de leur fusion ? Au prix de quelles tensions ? Des spécialistes de l'histoire des Sciences de l'éducation et de l'Education nouvelle d'horizons géographiques, culturels et disciplinaires divers explorent les rapports complexes entre ce puissant mouvement réformiste et le champ disciplinaire naissant durant la première moitié du 20e siècle.

Natasha Gill offers the first comprehensive analysis of French educational thought before Rousseau. She situates Emile in the context of a pedagogical debate that had been under way for a century before its publication, reveals the importance of key transitional figures such as Étienne-Gabriel Morelly, and shows how French theorists came to see education as a vehicle through which individual liberation, social harmony and political unity could be achieved.

It would seem that modern humanity has unthroned the human spirit, undercutting the very foundation of the validity of truth, moral values and principles. There appears to be no attempt to discern what is beautiful and true: it is functional and pragmatic usefulness that seem to dominate human evaluations and transactions with other humans and, indeed, animals. Humanity is becoming detached from the `higher' aesthetic, moral and intellectual works of the human spirit and thus the life of the spirit is often situated on the other side of a gulf, opposed to science with its rationality. Culture is in danger of becoming reduced to science. In other words, the great metaphysical questions - those of telos, of sense - often are answered in terms of scientific conceptions. But these are at least incomplete, if not fragmentary, and in principle hypothetical, which still leaves the questions unanswered. But it is culture that is the manifestation of the human spirit, being the historical process of human self-interpretation-in-existence. All manifestations of the creative forge of the human being find a role in the fabric of culture, which involves progressively widening circles of the human community, demanding an integration and attunement with others in their changing conditions of life. This consideration of culture involves all areas of philosophical reflection: moral, aesthetic, metaphysical, epistemological, semiological, cognitive, and more.

ICOM Education is the annual journal issued by CECA, the international Committee for Education and Cultural Action of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) network. The journal publishes papers written by museum professionals as well as academic researchers around the world in order to foster the reflection on the themes which are the committee's raison d'être: museum education, cultural action and audience research. This issue is dedicated to museum education, looking into the different meanings and understandings of the words as well as the various implementations in the museums all over the world.