In the midst of heavy criticism of the American educational system Antonio de Nicolas injects an amazingly simple theory Higher education in a free society must foster the habits of mind that enable individuals to perform free mental acts Plato first identified these habits of the free mind in The Republic as the abstraction of images from external objects the formation of opinion and the diverse operations of both cognition and imagination In other words we must hold education responsible for training inner mental technologies or skills instead of transferring accumulations of facts data and information Habits of Mind surveys all the major philosophies of education and evaluates historical significance educational relevance and for the first time effectiveness in producing those mental skills which define an educated person Professor de Nicolas traces the actual history of our habits of mind through our Greek heritage the Protestant Reformation the universities of the Counter Reformation and the English schools of Luis Vives Substantial selections in the second part of the book show that the classic philosophers propagated our contemporary intellectual habits Rousseau Locke Descartes Dewey Ortega y Gassett and many others compose the corpus of all educational philosophies Finally de Nicolas reenvisions our cultural origins and demonstrates that the best of Plato s educational philosophy has yet to enter modern educational practice Antonio T de Nicolas is a professor of philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook He is the author of Avatara The Humanization of Philosophy Through the Bhagavad Gita and the translator of Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius de Loyola retitled Powers of Imagining