This paper examines interwoven ethical and epistemological issues raised by attempts to promote responsive childcare practices based on neuroscience evidence on the developmental effects of early stress. The first section presents this neuroscience argument for responsive early childcare . The second section introduces some evidential challenges posed by the use of evidence from developmental neuroscience as grounds for parental practice recommendations and then advances a set of observations about the limitations of the evidence typically cited. Section three highlights the ethical (...) implications of the neuroscience argument for responsive early childcare. It argues that the neuroscience argument, first, fuels unwarranted parental anxiety by unduly raising the stakes of families’ early childcare choices and, second, threatens public confidence in developmental science’s potential to inform childcare practices and policy that enhance children’s health and well being. (shrink)
The Ethics of Neuroeducation: Research, Practice and Policy Content Type Journal Article Category Editorial Note Pages 1-3 DOI 10.1007/s12152-012-9156-6 Authors Bruce Maxwell, Department of Education, University of Québec, Trois-Rivières, Ringuet building, room 2061, 3351 boul. des Forges, Trois-Rivières, QC, Canada G9A 5H7 Eric Racine, Neuroethics Research Unit, Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal (IRCM), 110 avenue des Pins Ouest, Montréal, QC, Canada H2W lR7 Journal Neuroethics Online ISSN 1874-5504 Print ISSN 1874-5490.
In this essay, Bruce Maxwell, David Waddington, Kevin McDonough, Andrée-Anne Cormier, and Marina Schwimmer compare two competing approaches to social integration policy, Multiculturalism and Interculturalism, from the perspective of the issue of the state funding and regulation of conservative religious schools. After identifying the key differences between Interculturalism and Multiculturalism, as well as their many similarities, the authors present an explanatory analysis of this intractable policy challenge. Conservative religious schooling, they argue, tests a conceptual tension inherent in Multiculturalism between respect (...) for group diversity and autonomy, on the one hand, and the ideal of intercultural citizenship, on the other. Taking as a case study Québec's education system and, in particular, recent curricular innovations aimed at helping young people acquire the capabilities of intercultural citizenship, the authors illustrate how Interculturalism signals a compelling way forward in the effort to overcome the political dilemma of conservative religious schooling. (shrink)
Empirical assessments of Cognitive Behavioral Theory and theoretical considerations raise questions about the fundamental theoretical tenet that psychological disturbances are mediated by consciously accessible cognitive structures. This paper considers this situation in light of emotion theory in philosophy. We argue that the “perceptual theory” of emotions, which underlines the parallels between emotions and sensory perceptions, suggests a conception of cognitive mediation that can accommodate the observed empirical anomalies and one that is consistent with the dual-processing models dominant in cognitive psychology.
This paper challenges a pervasive curricular justification for educationally acquainting young people with stories of genocide and other moral horrors from history. According to this justification, doing so favours the development of psycho-social soft skills connected with interpersonal awareness and the establishment and maintenance of positive relationships. It is argued that this justification not only renders the specific historical content incidental to the development of these skills. The educational intention of promoting such psycho-social soft skills by way of studying moral (...) horrors in history constitutes an ethically problematic instrumentalisation of the historical material itself. (shrink)
No observer of research currents in the human sciences can fail to detect a new appreciation for the contribution of emotions to descriptions of such wide?ranging psychological phenomena as moral judgement, personal and social development and learning. Despite this, we claim that educating the emotions as a dimension of moral education remains something of a taboo subject. As evidence for this, we present three categories of interventions that fit unmistakably into the category of the education of the emotions, but which (...) go generally unrecognized. In the light of the fact that emotional education is held not just to be possible, but is in fact commonplace, we present an error theory to explain its general occlusion. Next, we argue that the taboo surrounding the education of the emotions helps to explain the lack of recognition that relevant kinds of emotional reactions, especially guilt and shame, seem indeed to be a better measure of successful moral education than moral acts. This, we take it, is one of the suppositions of the old classroom management device called the ?shame corner?. In the last section we propose a comparative analysis of the shame corner and its pedagogical descendant, the ?time?out corner?, in terms of their assumptions about the structure of moral judgement and the significance of moral emotions. Without recommending the reinstitution of the shame corner, we conclude that, far from constituting progress in moral education, the time?out corner is, from this perspective, apparently wrong?headed and confusing. (shrink)
