 Hook followed Dewey in considering the philosophy of education to be a central focus of concern for any social and political philosophy. Hook argued that American educational institutions, in their bureaucratic structure and organization, were too authoritarian and were not sufficiently responsive to the needs of the individual student. As for the content of the curriculum and the methods of teaching, Hook argued that they were too rigidly bound by the traditional disciplines and was insufficiently concerned with the classroom as a community of inquiry or a forum for the development of critical and independent thinking. Under Dewey’s banner, a legion of advocates and supporters of progressive education had carried out a thoroughgoing reform of American educational institutions. These reforms included the development of alternative schools that defined themselves as “child-centered” and the development of curricula that abolished traditional requirements in favor of the rights of students to have a greater role in the determination of the course of their own of studies. Like Dewey, Hook came to the conclusion that the developments within progressive education that had been fostered in Dewey’s name had gone too far in their rejection of the need for authority and the importance of liberal education as an education in fundamental knowledge, including the knowledge of traditional subject matter. As a result, Hook tried to formulate a measured criticism that would balance the strengths of the American educational system and tradition while at the same time seeking to reform aspects of that system and that tradition. In his Education for Modern Man of 1946, Hook sought to develop a direction for American education that would conform to the ideals of pragmatic liberalism. For Hook, this required that the classroom should become a community of inquiry in which students would develop their potentiality for critical inquiry as a method which is analogous to scientific method. One of the strongest claims in Education for Modern Man was the primacy of method for education. To a degree, Hook’s belief in the primacy of scientific method presupposed the pragmatist account of a generalized methodology for all the sciences. Criticism of the pragmatic thesis of a single generalized scientific method as opposed to the recognition of the difference in the methods used in the writing of history, the study of literature and research on social problems as distinct from the methods of the natural sciences had an impact on Hook’s philosophy of education. Hook’s subsequent recognition of the ways in which the teaching of science involved the learning of substantive subject matter and experimental techniques rather than a generalized method for the criticism and testing of hypotheses marked a nuanced shift in his educational philosophy.