Social Aesthetics and the School Environment

This book theorizes aesthetic classroom management through a hermeneutical approach with three fields of literature: history and philosophical foundations of chivalry, chivalry’s promulgation through the Victorian Age, and parallel issues of identity in twenty-first century teacher education. The aim of the book is to examine the relationship between chivalric ethos and education. The presented case study addresses more specifically the following question: how can chivalry be re-imagined or theorized in an educational setting? Few studies address the concept of aesthetics and hermeneutical context in American classroom management and classroom life, and Attwood pinpoints and traces the medieval social concept of chivalry through the centuries and argues it has manifested itself in classroom social construction in the twenty-first century.

Adam I. Attwood currently teaches at Whitfield School in Saint Louis, Missouri, USA. His experience in teaching in K-12 and college and coaching chess prompted his interest in studying knighthood and then chivalry more broadly as a social concept.