Midwest Philosophy of Education Society

President’s Introduction

Like all things bound to evolve, so is this triennial volume finally in print. Papers that had been presented as far back as during our 2001 annual conference had not been published for no fault of the presenters themselves, but more likely the lack of not seeking aggressively to continue such publication in a Proceedings by the Society. We did not have presenters’ contact information, but luckily there is now the name hunter’s network of public information otherwise known as the “Internet.” I spent many days tracking down through the Internet our 2001, 2002 and 2003 presenters’ physical and email addresses, which I compiled into a neat year by year list that became the basis for finishing the hunt. We notified presenters promptly, which Prof. Murphy continued reinforcing in her role as collector of the papers. As a result, we ended up with a bounty worthy of our reputation as a long standing scholarly Society, with a respectable (now annual) publication to boot. Thanks to the work of many people, including Professors Olivet Jagusah, who chaired the editorial committee; Madonna Murphy, who collected papers and diskettes; and Donald Smith, who helped review papers, the Proceedings have once again been reborn, this time after checking through the metal detector of an editorial peer review process.

Our editorial committee reviewed all papers that were submitted very carefully, collectively, and fairly. Presenters can now unhesitatingly mention in their resumes or portfolios, or if they choose to wax sentimental, simply know in their hearts, that their papers were peer reviewed, and therefore worthy of some considerable praise. The editorial committee consisted of Drs. Jagusah and Smith. I served as third reader in the event of a tie, or if asked for a third opinion. Following the editorial review process, I was charged with the repetitive task of making necessary “cosmetic” changes prior to sending our Proceedings to the publisher. As it turned out, this process ended up taking as much of my time as a major overhaul, including adding for each paper (where necessary) institutional affiliation and date and place of paper presentation, creating paragraph breaks one paragraph at a time, single-spacing text and references, converting of wordprocessing software from type to another, transferring files from diskettes to the hard drive, converting wordprocessing software from one type to another, and re-organizing papers in a format acceptable to our publisher. Perhaps in the future we should ask authors to employ a standard format, such as, including paragraph breaks, single-spacing their text, and using a pre-established wordprocessing software (such as, either MS Word or Corel WP) to avoid all the time-consuming hassles involved in editing papers for publication. Such guidelines should be published on our web site for easy access by authors. In any event, we expect this process to become much easier for future generations of MPES Proceedings editors, since the overall print format would have been pre-established, and therefore all editorial weeds and other annoying impediments to a professional publication already extricated… Our publisher, AuthorHouse (previously “1^stBooks”) has been very diligent in corresponding frequently and promptly with me, and guiding me through the labyrinthian process of getting the papers published, if not prodding me to continue working on the process when my energy, time, and inner peace were often seemingly in hopeless disarray.

We decided there will be no Purgatory in our Proceedings: Papers presented that were not published in this volume may be re-submitted by their authors for publication in the Appendix of any of our future Proceedings. Papers presented were deemed worth presenting by the Program Committee, and thus have some pre-established merit to their credit, albeit on the basis usually of only a one or two page original proposal. Papers that are still in need of some further editorial review process to make sure the full text of the paper is publication-ready; or those that were not submitted for publication in a timely fashion, may yet see the light of day one day, albeit within the Appendix of a future Proceedings. Since from now on our Proceedings will be published annually, instead of bi-annually or triennially, those who did not submit their papers by the deadline date for editorial review; were asked to revise their papers; or submitted them without an accompanying diskette, may have their papers re-submitted for publication in the future. Like Aristotle’s Potentiality, so are the Proceedings becoming, and may yet become… timeless. Authors of unpublished papers should not be dissuaded from submitting their work during the next annual peer review cycle. Every paper should be highly valued, respected, and sought after. We are in the business of giving people a second (or third, etc.) chance, not punishing them, not to mention the benefit that may accrue to the Society from churning out a quality publication. Our publication will be, from now on, internationally available through the Internet, for example, through Amazon.com and our publisher’s own web site, and therefore the equivalent of hanging our clean laundry in public. For everything else, readers may check our official MPES web site, including the full text of our annual conference programs going back to 1997, at
 http://webs.csu.edu/~big0ama/mpes/mpes.html (the 0 in big0ama is a zero, not a capital O).

We are grateful to our members, who contributed through their intellectual work to this Proceedings; and through their voting during our 2003 Business meeting, to the establishment of an editorial review process. Our sincere thanks also to Mrs. Marge Oliker for her generous contributions and unflagging support to the Society, in whose honor, and the memory of her husband, the late Dr. Michael Oliker, who served as editor and managing editor of the Proceedings for several years, this volume is dedicated.