Brian W Dotts
Brian W. Dotts, PhD, is a Professor of Educational Foundations at the University of Georgia. He has published peer-reviewed papers in the history of American education, specifically focusing on education and political theories during the American Revolution and Early National Period, common school politics during the Antebellum Era, John Dewey and Social Reconstructionism during the early twentieth century, the school privatization movement, and Educational Foundations as an academic field. Dotts’s primary theoretical lens is Critical Theory.
Dotts is author of Educational Foundations: Philosophical and Historical Perspectives (Cambridge University Press, 2019), co-editor and contributor of The Elusive Thomas Jefferson: The Man Behind the Myths (McFarland Publishing, 2017), and The Political Education of Democratus: Negotiating Civic Virtue during the Early Republic (Lexington Books, 2012). Dotts has served as an Editorial Board Member for the Journal of Philosophy and History of Education, and he currently serves as a faculty reviewer for the Journal of Educational Foundations and for the Education, Law, and Policy Review. Dotts has published in The Journal of Educational Foundations, Multiculturalism, The Journal of Philosophy and History of Education, Educational Studies, Education and Culture. Dotts teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Educational Foundations related to politics, education policy, constitutional law, history, historical inquiry and research methods, sociology, social and political theories, philosophy, multiculturalism, and the movement to privatize public schooling.
Address: University of Georgia
Athens, GA 30605
Dotts is author of Educational Foundations: Philosophical and Historical Perspectives (Cambridge University Press, 2019), co-editor and contributor of The Elusive Thomas Jefferson: The Man Behind the Myths (McFarland Publishing, 2017), and The Political Education of Democratus: Negotiating Civic Virtue during the Early Republic (Lexington Books, 2012). Dotts has served as an Editorial Board Member for the Journal of Philosophy and History of Education, and he currently serves as a faculty reviewer for the Journal of Educational Foundations and for the Education, Law, and Policy Review. Dotts has published in The Journal of Educational Foundations, Multiculturalism, The Journal of Philosophy and History of Education, Educational Studies, Education and Culture. Dotts teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Educational Foundations related to politics, education policy, constitutional law, history, historical inquiry and research methods, sociology, social and political theories, philosophy, multiculturalism, and the movement to privatize public schooling.
Address: University of Georgia
Athens, GA 30605
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Books by Brian W Dotts
Part I. Selected Philosophers:
1. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle
2. John Locke
3. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
4. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
5. John Dewey
6. Paulo Freire
7. Mary Wollstonecraft, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Jane Addams
Part II. History of American Education:
8. Colonial America
9. Revolutionary era
10. National/Antebellum era
11. Post-Civil War era
12. Progressive era
13. Post World War II era
14. 1980s and beyond
15. The politics of privatization.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
An “Honest Heart” Versus a “Knowing Head”: The Myth of
the Preeminency of Rationality in Jefferson’s Notions of Man and Society (M. Andrew Holowchak) 5
The Apostle of Whig History: Thomas Jefferson’s Reliance on the Ancient Saxon Constitution (Brian W. Dotts) 24
Toward a Jurismythos of Thomas Jefferson: The Supreme Court’s Use and Abuse of America’s Most Controversial Founder (Benjamin Justice) 46
The Myth of Jefferson’s Polysemous Conception of Liberty (Garrett Ward Sheldon) 69
“The spirit of the master is abating”: The Myth of Jefferson’s Racism (M. Andrew Holowchak) 81
The Myth of Jefferson’s Deism (William M. Wilson) 118
James Bryant Conant: Twentieth Century Jeffersonian (Wayne J. Urban) 130
The Moral Foundation of Government: Jefferson, Dewey and Citizenship Education (James J. Carpenter) 147
Have Gun(s), Will Travel: Thomas Jefferson, Gun Ownership and Military Affairs (Arthur Scherr) 163
Myths and Realities of Thomas Jefferson’s Architecture (Richard Guy Wilson) 191
Thomas Jefferson as Collective Memory (Jennifer Hauver James, Bruce VanSledright and Christopher Farr) 205
Bibliography 225
About the Contributors 239
Index 243
The Political Education of Democratus illuminates the emergence of democratic thought from Aristotle and Machiavelli to more contemporary influences from the British Commonwealth tradition. Dotts examines how the radical ideas of Algernon Sidney, James Harrington, John Milton, Joseph Priestley, and Thomas Paine develop a rich tapestry among the democratic society’s correspondence, constitutions, resolutions, and early media. Individual members of the Democratic-Republican Societies, including Philip Freneau, Robert Coram, Benjamin Bache, George Logan, and others energized these radical interpretations of civic republican thought and plunged headlong into party politics, educating early Americans about the practical potentialities of democratic action.
Chapter 1. Introduction: Ploughshares, Politics, and Pedagogy: The Negotiation of Democratic-Republicanism and the Loss of Civic Sentiment
Chapter 2. Recovering Civic Republicanism: Ancient and Modern
Chapter 3. The New Arcadia: “Set Our Cold Northern Island Burning”
Chapter 4. Trans-Atlantic Ties: Radical Whig Political Ideals and American Practice
Chapter 5. “Who are These, Poor, Groveling, Insignificant Democrats Who Dare
Libel Us?”
Chapters by Brian W Dotts
Journal Articles by Brian W Dotts
Whig intentions as democratic, and I conclude to the contrary that the
purposes of Whig schooling were driven considerably by a fear of
democracy and democratization of the republic. Democratic
interpretations of the Revolution had been contested since the
separation from Britain, and nineteenth-century Whigs continued to
resist democratic reforms. For the Whigs, republican and democratic
forms of government remained separate and distinct, and as a response
to the democratization of the electorate during the early nineteenth
century, they regarded common schooling largely as a remedial
institution, intended to correct the problems they were witnessing in a
rapidly changing society or as preventative in nature by maintaining
order and stability through the teaching of dominant cultural and
religious values.
Book Reviews by Brian W Dotts
Part I. Selected Philosophers:
1. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle
2. John Locke
3. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
4. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
5. John Dewey
6. Paulo Freire
7. Mary Wollstonecraft, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Jane Addams
Part II. History of American Education:
8. Colonial America
9. Revolutionary era
10. National/Antebellum era
11. Post-Civil War era
12. Progressive era
13. Post World War II era
14. 1980s and beyond
15. The politics of privatization.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
An “Honest Heart” Versus a “Knowing Head”: The Myth of
the Preeminency of Rationality in Jefferson’s Notions of Man and Society (M. Andrew Holowchak) 5
The Apostle of Whig History: Thomas Jefferson’s Reliance on the Ancient Saxon Constitution (Brian W. Dotts) 24
Toward a Jurismythos of Thomas Jefferson: The Supreme Court’s Use and Abuse of America’s Most Controversial Founder (Benjamin Justice) 46
The Myth of Jefferson’s Polysemous Conception of Liberty (Garrett Ward Sheldon) 69
“The spirit of the master is abating”: The Myth of Jefferson’s Racism (M. Andrew Holowchak) 81
The Myth of Jefferson’s Deism (William M. Wilson) 118
James Bryant Conant: Twentieth Century Jeffersonian (Wayne J. Urban) 130
The Moral Foundation of Government: Jefferson, Dewey and Citizenship Education (James J. Carpenter) 147
Have Gun(s), Will Travel: Thomas Jefferson, Gun Ownership and Military Affairs (Arthur Scherr) 163
Myths and Realities of Thomas Jefferson’s Architecture (Richard Guy Wilson) 191
Thomas Jefferson as Collective Memory (Jennifer Hauver James, Bruce VanSledright and Christopher Farr) 205
Bibliography 225
About the Contributors 239
Index 243
The Political Education of Democratus illuminates the emergence of democratic thought from Aristotle and Machiavelli to more contemporary influences from the British Commonwealth tradition. Dotts examines how the radical ideas of Algernon Sidney, James Harrington, John Milton, Joseph Priestley, and Thomas Paine develop a rich tapestry among the democratic society’s correspondence, constitutions, resolutions, and early media. Individual members of the Democratic-Republican Societies, including Philip Freneau, Robert Coram, Benjamin Bache, George Logan, and others energized these radical interpretations of civic republican thought and plunged headlong into party politics, educating early Americans about the practical potentialities of democratic action.
Chapter 1. Introduction: Ploughshares, Politics, and Pedagogy: The Negotiation of Democratic-Republicanism and the Loss of Civic Sentiment
Chapter 2. Recovering Civic Republicanism: Ancient and Modern
Chapter 3. The New Arcadia: “Set Our Cold Northern Island Burning”
Chapter 4. Trans-Atlantic Ties: Radical Whig Political Ideals and American Practice
Chapter 5. “Who are These, Poor, Groveling, Insignificant Democrats Who Dare
Libel Us?”
Whig intentions as democratic, and I conclude to the contrary that the
purposes of Whig schooling were driven considerably by a fear of
democracy and democratization of the republic. Democratic
interpretations of the Revolution had been contested since the
separation from Britain, and nineteenth-century Whigs continued to
resist democratic reforms. For the Whigs, republican and democratic
forms of government remained separate and distinct, and as a response
to the democratization of the electorate during the early nineteenth
century, they regarded common schooling largely as a remedial
institution, intended to correct the problems they were witnessing in a
rapidly changing society or as preventative in nature by maintaining
order and stability through the teaching of dominant cultural and
religious values.