ABSTRACT This article explores how literary study engages readers’ moral perception and imagination. Although some philosophers discuss reading as a largely solitary activity, this article explores social practices of reading common in English language arts classrooms in secondary schools. The article shows how reading with others can change the quality of moral perception and imagination in literary study. Reading with others, the article contends, can involve an ethic focused on the good of knowing one’s ways of seeing make a difference (...) to others. The article defends social practices of reading by arguing they can broaden and complicate students’ moral perception and imagination by making students accountable to texts, one another, and the wider world. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The jurisdiction of schools has long been contested. Initially, under the sway of loco parentis, parents delegated all authority to educators. With ascendency of the common school movement in the 19th century, however, the doctrine confronted reverses. As the student body increased in size and heterogeneity, families no longer spoke with a single voice. The courts granted parental requests for a more determinative role in their children’s education, prohibited schools from giving religious instruction, and guaranteed students some civil rights. (...) This curtailment of school authority has been countered in recent years by the emphasis on educating the “whole child” with schools taking on responsibilities, such as character development and mental health, arguably a home preserve. While acknowledging the large overlap between school and home, I argue they have differing agendas and capacities. Schools stress the collective, cultivating “we-ness” and agreed upon norms, whereas homes cultivate privacy, individualism, and particularistic values; schools stress equality while homes stress equity; schools are constrained in their use of discipline whereas homes take more liberties. In urging schools to circumscribe and differentiate their role, I nonetheless recognize the problems of doing so. (shrink)

ABSTRACT My aim in this paper is to challenge the neo-Aristotelian tradition, currently dominant in contemporary theories of virtue education, by proposing the Platonic pedagogical methodology for virtue cultivation as a worthy alternative to the Aristotelian theory of education. I highlight that, in contrast to Aristotle’s limited remarks concerning virtue education, Plato conceptualizes and develops a rigorous educational theory in the Republic that considers many different facets of education – i.e. moral character education, intellectual character education, exemplarism and educational corruption. (...) Given Plato’s immense contribution to virtue education theory, I conclude that his educational program merits more attention. It can serve as inspiration both for improving existing theories of character education and for developing new ones. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this paper we discuss the potential of digital games to create meaningful educational experiences that contribute to the learning of ethics in higher education Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics degrees. We describe the design of a new digital ethics game with a focus on the challenges we encountered when applying existing theoretical frameworks for educational games and propose ways to address these challenges. We contend that existing design frameworks fail to account for the ‘wickedness’ of ethical problems – (...) i.e. their inconclusive, complex, and sometimes inherently contradictory nature – as they are centred around consequentiality and consistent game-system feedback to players’ actions. Drawing from a Deweyan account of the ‘educative experience’ we seek to contribute to a domain-adequate theory of transformational experience and transformational play in the context of educational ethics game design. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The politics of lifelong learning and learnification have triggered educational philosophy’s justified indignation and blanket critiques of learning. The market logic of learning has, meanwhile, seized the city and caused a further educational-philosophical reactive response, which I critique in the form that it has taken inter alia in many prominent recent educational-philosophical works. After explaining what I mean by ‘reactive response’ I focus on the educational-philosophical reaction to the shift toward lifelong learning. Then I move to how this shift (...) has been translated into a discourse of city learning and how some educational theory responds to this discourse. My critique concludes with suggestions for an ethic of stereoscopically tackling facets of learning. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Should educators encourage students to learn moral outrage in teaching about social justice? If moral outrage is a catalyst for social change, to what extent can educators nurture this moral and political emotion in the classroom? These questions are at the heart of this essay. The aim is not to take sides for or against using moral outrage in education to motivate students towards change for the better, but rather to engage in an analysis and sorting through of various (...) discourses about moral outrage as a moral and political emotion, and to figure out how those discourses operate to create particular meanings for moral outrage that are circulated through educational research and practice. The author argues for a broader theorization of the relationship between moral outrage, political emotion, and education, tentatively suggesting a renewed attention to the productive possibilities as well as risks of encouraging moral outrage in education. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In response to the abundance of parenting literature and a contemporary emphasis on expertise, recent scholars have suggested that how we parent should be determined by values and a family’s particular needs, a combination often referred to as practical wisdom. In this article, I build on previous calls for an ethical approach to being a parent. I argue that being able to share and cultivate one’s unique personality and have one’s aptitudes and interests recognized is a key condition of (...) living well and that parents play an important role in helping their children know and realize their gifts. I put forth an exercise for attending to children, the descriptive review of the child. In doing so, I first describe this practice, illustrate it, and then explain how it can help one live well as a parent. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Co-parents who differ in their ideal child rearing policies should compromise, argues Marcus William Hunt. Josh Milburn and Carlo Alvaro dispute this when it comes to veganism. Milburn argues that veganism is a matter of justice and that to compromise over justice is impermissible. I suggest that compromise over justice is often permissible, and that compromise over justice may be required by justice itself. Alvaro offers aesthetic, gustatory, and virtue-based arguments for ethical veganism, showing that veganism involves sensibilities and (...) virtues, and argues that veganism involves a belief. Alvaro takes this to show that parental compromise is impermissible. I suggest that Alvaro’s arguments are implausible and that the shaping of a child’s sensibilities and virtues is an apt matter for parental compromise. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to analyze the moral dimensions of teachers’ experiences of working with unaccompanied refugee students in language introduction in Swedish upper secondary school. Theoretically, the analysis uses Bauman’s postmodern ethics, focusing on the tension between the social and the moral space in teachers’ encounters with unaccompanied students. The empirical material is derived from interviews with three teachers, and a reflexive interview approach was used. The outcome of the analysis shows that balancing professional and moral (...) responsibilities is a challenge, and also that while teachers strive to see their students as Other in a moral sense, the demands of the profession might get in the way. This aporia of proximity – the insoluble conflict between the social and the moral space – is faced by the teacher as a moral subject, adding complex moral dimensions to teachers’ work with unaccompanied students. (shrink)

ABSTRACT What is to be done when parents disagree about whether to raise their children as vegans? Three positions have recently emerged. Marcus William Hunt has argued that parents should seek a compromise. I have argued that there should be no compromise on animal rights, but there may be room for compromise over some ‘unusual’ sources of non-vegan, but animal-rights-respecting, food. Carlo Alvaro has argued that both Hunt and I are wrong; veganism is like religion, and there should be no (...) compromise on religion, meaning there should be no compromise on veganism. This means that even my minimal-compromise approach should be rejected. This paper critiques Alvaro’s zero-compromise veganism, demonstrating that his case against Hunt’s position is undermotivated, and his case against my position rests upon misunderstandings. If vegans wish to reject Hunt’s pro-compromise position, they should favour a rightist approach, not Alvaro’s zero-compromise approach. (shrink)

ABSTRACT At the heart of our current environmental predicament lies the issue of our relationship with nature. Michael Bonnett’s educational rehabilitation of nature, which might be called a ‘metaphysical’ turn in nature-related issues, brings us back to the core question of educational-philosophical thinking: how we are to understand ourselves and our relation to the world. In this paper, by confronting his environmental philosophy of education with what John McDowell, in his debate with Hubert Dreyfus, terms the ‘pervasiveness thesis’ – that (...) conceptual rationality in a relevant sense pervades human lives – I try to offer an analytical supplement to the notion Bonnett entertains: that a phenomenological project to ‘retrieve’ nature and ‘ecologise’ education can have massive implications for the character of philosophy of education and the whole enterprise of education. I also argue a confluence of their nature-related ideas adds an educational nuance to the traditional picture of human beings as rational animals. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The concept of human dignity arguably has great relevance to education as it is mentioned in several human rights and education policy documents on the national and international level, providing their moral justification. However, when the concept is discussed within philosophical research, it is often seen as consisting of two different conceptions – intrinsic dignity and attributed dignity. The paper seeks to challenge this binary through a reconstructive interpretation of Martha Nussbaum’s conception of dignity, proposing inflorescent dignity, as a (...) more fully fledged way of understanding dignity and how it relates to education. Through use of a fictional example, I argue that inflorescent dignity, grounded in intrinsic dignity, has relevance to education because it gives rise to moral, relational, and thus pedagogical, demands on education to be primarily focused on human flourishing as well as the acknowledgement of human actuality and potential, and for this to permeate all levels of education. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In reference to the article by Hanan Alexander ‘Education in nonviolence’, the text takes up the issue of reading Emmanuel Levinas’s Talmudic texts for the philosophy of education. It intends to positively answer the question about the value and potential of such inspiration, focusing on concepts from two of Levinas’s Talmudic readings. The first part of the text is devoted to the characteristics of the intellectual output of the thinker. The second part analyses and discusses Alexander’s commentary on one (...) of Levinas’s Talmudic readings, ‘Toward the Other’. Alexander aims to show the specificity of the idea of education in nonviolence, heavily indebted to the Jewish tradition and thought. The third part of the text is an extension of Alexander’s comment, focuses on another Talmudic reading by Levinas, ‘Cities of Refuge’, and aims to outline the philosophical underpinnings of the idea of the pedagogy of asylum. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article invites us to consider the task of education as we face the end of the world as we have known it. The first part of the article gives an overview of global and educational challenges, drawing attention to how formal education has been complicit in the reproduction of historical and systemic violence, as well as unsustainability. This section also offers a distinction between educational approaches that focus on personal empowerment and the mastery of knowledge and skills, and (...) educational approaches that see the role of education in association with the non-coercive re-arrangement of desires and with responsibility before will. The second part of the paper presents a psychoanalytic experiment that attempts to create a space and the dispositions necessary for difficult conversations about the role of education in preparing us all to confront the potential for social and ecological collapse in our lifetime. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Could public education as a cultural institution promote the commonwealth? This paper argues proper education enfranchises the young through proper relationships to place, past and present, culture and creation, life, and work. Wendell Berry is the principal guide and standard in describing and considering proper relationships in the commonwealth and their consequences. Other major authors include Wes Jackson, Gustavo Esteva, Vine Deloria, Alan Watts, Matthew Crawford, Roger Scruton, Nablan and Trimble, Alison Gopnik. Proper relationships, defined essentially in terms of (...) proper scale, play, and learning, preserve the means of co-creation between human culture and creation. They are measured by health, durability, beauty, harmony, resilience, fecundity, and wellbeing. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article proposes that Dorothy Dinnerstein’s philosophy can help us understand the problem of miseducation that places male-dominated and ‘masculine’ rapacity at the center of so many human endeavors, including capitalist economic exploitation and environmental exploitation. Dinnerstein argues that early childhood experiences of female domination lead to reactive and immature adult preferences for excessive, triumphing, rapacious, male rule. In Dinnerstein’s theory, the solution to this psychologically deep-rooted problem is for men to do half of the childcare work. This article (...) acknowledges and refutes arguments against Dinnerstein’s theory, and expounds its soundness and benefits. Dinnerstein’s thought can help us put a brake on the capitalist rapacity that threatens our very survival while increasing possibilities for human self-actualization. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The rapid increase in human population is one of the underlying factors driving the ecological crisis. Despite efforts on the part of educators to raise awareness of environmental issues, the ecological impact of a burgeoning population – and the ethical implications of having children – remains an unbroachable topic. Nevertheless, the increase in human numbers is central to questions of sustainability: How can a species expect to survive in a finite terrestrial environment without limits to its population? Since most (...) of the world’s ecological impact can be traced to capitalist-industrial- consumer societies in over-developed nations, the middle and upper classes in rich countries must weigh the ecological consequences of their family-planning decisions. In this paper, I argue that educational programs that are concerned with environmental ethics should have students examine the assumptions and implications of having children. I consider the risks associated with this proposal and respond to a series of possible objections. This paper does not advocate coercive measures for population control, but rather enjoins a pedagogical responsibility to view having children as an act with ecological consequences, an act that must be subject to careful examination. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Philosophers of education have written about the moral, ethical, racial, and gendered dimensions of the hidden curriculum of what we eat, who we eat with, and the significance afforded this moment of the school day. To this body of literature, we add the observation that female bodies were positioned by Jean Jacques Rousseau as necessary food for the stuff of society. We trace the ways in which Rousseau’s rendering of the natural female body have followed us into our modern (...) educational systems such that any hopes for gender equality in our educational and social structures must attend to the pervasive naturalization of the bodies – human and nonhuman – that we are taught to milk for all that they are worth. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper reflects on how the issue of climate change and the general state of our planet is, among other causes, a main factor in the paralyzing divisions ailing Western societies. This situation, while unsettling to democracies, is promoting a kind of education in and through fear and I question if education can succeed under these circumstances without becoming indoctrination. This paper does not try to diminish the urgency and the importance of current environmental problems but rather expands today´s (...) perspectives and incorporates research in more constructive ways of thinking and doing. I use scientific contributions in climatology, evolution, environmental conservation, economics, and neuroscience to bring new light to today’s investigations about the human and the non-human world. Finally, I propose Deep Ecology’s principles of deep questioning, deep experience and deep commitment, as a guide for new educational and ecological practices. (shrink)

ABSTRACT ‘Facts remain robust only when … supported by a common culture,’ observes Bruno Latour. Current debates over the veracity of climate change are, in actuality, crises of facts. Questions of facticity have, moreover, precipitated a deeper issue – the prospects of unshared, ‘alternative’ worlds. Climate science believers have one world, climate change deniers another, creating what Latour calls ‘epistemological delirium.’ Following Latour, the paper turns to Pierre Hadot’s description of Stoic physics and understanding of philosophy as spiritual exercise. Finally, (...) taking up both Latour’s claims of ‘alternative worlds’ and Hadot’s notion of spiritual exercise, this paper explores the possibilities of shared practices in light of unshared realities. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Black, Indigenous and otherwise minoritized communities of color are amongst the most vulnerable to the adverse consequences of environmental crises and the solutions proposed to remedy them. The participation and subsequent erasure of non-White youth activists and organizers within environmental sustainability struggles, and their subsequent erasure in global media coverage on climate activism has complicated any neat hierarchy of single concerns facing humanity. How is it that White and Western climate activists come to be the faces of the global (...) youth climate movement? This essay examines the salience of race to the education and framing of environmental and sustainability efforts. It suggests that the separation of environmental concerns from the socio-political contexts that produce them not only further marginalizes the contributions of non-White activists and the communities that they represent, but also engenders a violently White, and thus narrow, vision of a global, Green future. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Helena Pedersen’s powerful keynote address poses the question: What prevents education from becoming a transformative force in times of ‘omnicide’, that is, ‘the annihilation of everything’? She locates at least part of the response in ‘institutional anxiety’, which constitutes a psychological barrier to radical change. In particular, she discusses anxiety related to the moral standing of non-human animals as a threat to human exceptionalism in educational practice and research. Institutional anxiety, as I show in my discussion of a recent (...) manifestation at a university in South Africa, also occurs in post-liberation societies, when ‘university teachers confront’ or consider confronting ‘their own colleagues with requests for deconstruction of the anthropocentric infrastructure of their own workplace’, colleagues they know to have been historically marginalised or disenfranchised. However, as I hope to make clear in my response, there are some ways of confrontation that are less divisive than others. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The 17th Biennial INPE Meeting was scheduled to take place from 28 to 31 July 2020 at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Of course, there is something ironic about convening a conference on the environment and sustainability that would require presenters to utilize unsustainable modes of transport in order to participate. As it turned out, because of the outbreak and rapid global spread of a new Corona virus, the conference was cancelled and replaced by an online event held (...) on 7 and 8 November 2020, both premieres in the history of INPE. The essays collected in this Special Issue will hopefully contribute towards the unmasking and undoing of the various kinds of denialism that have held us in its grip and that continues to thwart attempts to establish a sane and morally sustainable set of relationships between us, human beings, and other animals and the animate and inanimate environment. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Deborah Britzman’s remarkable question, ‘What holds education back?’, appears more urgent than ever in a world of accelerating environmental crises, climate change, and what has been described as omnicide – the annihilation of everything. What, then, holds education back from initiating radical change under these urgent conditions? This paper introduces the notion of ‘institutional anxiety’ as a consolidating force and explores how it may condition possibilities for resistance. Bringing examples from ethnographic fieldwork and experiences of course development in conversation (...) with psychoanalytic and schizoanalytic thought, a key catalyst of institutional anxiety is discussed: Anxiety related to ‘the question of the animal’ as a threat to human exceptionalism in educational practice and research. Confronting these anxieties could open new modes of being and acting in academic space and give interspecies ethics, justice and sustainability a chance to develop in omnicidal times. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article explores relationships of youth power in a set of threads leading to the potential of today’s youth activism to combat the climate crisis. Following an introduction featuring Sweden’s Greta Thunberg, the threads are these: First from an American context is history of youth development, with one emphasis on the construction of adolescence. Second is learning experience about the US environment with its own national ‘exceptionalist’ history. Third is the role of inspiring youth movements, from history and contemporary (...) times. Fourth is a turn to climate activism by youth as central to democracy. One general thematic about youth power across the article is that it oftentimes takes on a mythical character. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper responds to Vanessa Andreotti’s keynote address. In it, I draw out some educational implications of facing the everyday denials of the climate emergency. In particular, I mobilise Bruno Latour’s phrase ‘landing on Earth’ to indicate that the very terms through which we understand education, particularly as it relates to the future, require a profound shift.

ABSTRACT With a particular focus on the experience of young people in higher education, this paper turns to the philosophical work of Cora Diamond to open up new ways of conceptualising mental health. We claim that Diamond offers a compelling insight into that experience of human difficulty so often subsumed by a medicalised vocabulary. We propose that she offers philosophically astute perceptions of the related human attempts at deflection. And we situate this reading of Diamond against a broader understanding of (...) the contemporary university as a place of institutional darkness. In developing this general discussion, we place ourselves within a very particular context. We draw on the narratives of a number of third-level students in Ireland, who shared their experiences as part of a hermeneutic phenomenological study into the lived experience of mental health difficulties. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper introduces the special section on Cora Diamond’s significance for education and educators. The introduction is meant to be the beginning of a conversation, and—to that end—the special section editors suggest lines of connections that philosophers of education might draw between their work and the work of Cora Diamond. Their list is not meant to be exhaustive, but it is meant to suggest Diamond’s far-reaching significance for education and educators.

ABSTRACT This paper introduces the special section on Cora Diamond’s significance for education and educators. The introduction is meant to be the beginning of a conversation, and—to that end—the special section editors suggest lines of connections that philosophers of education might draw between their work and the work of Cora Diamond. Their list is not meant to be exhaustive, but it is meant to suggest Diamond’s far-reaching significance for education and educators.

This essay explores the existential difficulties involved in being a non-indigenous scholar of philosophy and early childhood education in an indigenous context. It begins by recalling an encounter with young Sámi children that happened while doing research at an early childhood centre in northern Scandinavia. This is read alongside the poetry of the Sámi writer Nils Aslak Valkeapää, a personal documentary text by Sámi author Elin Anna Labba, and Wittgensteinian philosophy. These texts are read as a philosophical exercise of the (...) imagination through which the scholar‘s words, thoughts, and assumptions are reworked in a decolonising process. This process involves the scholar in a lived philosophy of avoiding deflection of what Cora Diamond has called “difficulties of reality” and considerations of the role of imagination in ethics. In doing so the essay reimagines the notion of hybrid cultures and identities through Wittgenstein‘s invitation to imagine forms of life. The essay concludes by suggesting that by thinking of scholarship in this way hope and meaning can emerge out of the silences in the encounters between the non-indigenous scholars and the indigenous children. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Attentiveness is a crucial aspect in the practice of teaching. As teaching always is teaching about something, ideas, values, events, or objects, it both draws and forms the attention of the students. When contemplating on and looking into the term “attention”, it is apparent that it is not at all, a clear and well-defined concept. Acknowledging the relational aspects of teaching and its role in the formation of attention, the article seeks to turn away from psychologically, behaviorally, and cognitively (...) based perspectives that frame attention as either an individual capacity of the student or an expected student behavior in the classroom. It also seeks to contribute to discussions of philosophy of education, where questions about uniqueness, otherness and subjectivity are seen as aspects of attention. In the article is suggested that a phenomenological account of attention adds nuances to an educational understanding of attention, as it comes to life in the lived practice of teaching. The main purpose is to show how teaching as attention formation, is a relational activity that builds on thing-centered and formative activities that take place in a domain that is both ethical and political but, first and foremost, educational. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The world is confronted with wicked environmental problems that cannot be well understood or acted upon without addressing their ethical dimensions. Research shows that official science curricula on environmental science and ecology topics are shaped by the scientific discourse and environmental discourses of ecological modernization and green governmentality. These discourses carry tacit ethical stances that need to be acknowledged and assessed for their suitability in helping us understand and tackle wicked environmental problems. This paper explores the ethical alignments of (...) ecology and environmental science related science content standards in the United States. Our analysis suggests that the intended science curricula in this country appears to support an embedded ethical stance marked by neoliberal utilitarianism and virtue ethics. Further, we highlight the possibility that neoliberal ethical orientations run the risk of frustrating students’ hopes for a sustainable and socioecologically just world. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper considers the recent growth in different kinds of learning outside the classroom, especially Forest Schools. It shows how the activities associated with Forest Schools often involve mainstream curriculum content delivered in outdoor settings, with a focus on developing skills and attitudes that can be utilised when back in the classroom. Drawing on the works of Henry David Thoreau and Anna Shepherd, we suggest that there is an important distinction to be made between an education in the outdoors, (...) and an education of the outdoors. Through a close reading of ‘Walden’ and ‘The Living Mountain’, we argue that both works provide perspectives on being in the outdoors that offer rich educative possibilities. The paper suggests that an education of the outdoors is characterised by a form of attention that opens pupils to a different way of encountering and engaging with the world that is transformative. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The expression that professionals should be led by their moral or ethical compass is increasingly used by academics, policy makers, professionals, and educational institutes. Dutch universities of applied sciences, for example, explicitly aim to educate their students to become professionals equipped with a moral compass. This moral or ethical compass is a metaphor of which people intuitively grasp its meaning, but our literature review also shows that various interpretations are possible. We found three clusters of proposed ethical compasses expressing (...) its a) content, b) form, or c) use, which we present in this article. Thereafter, we evaluate which compass can meaningfully assist professionals and, therefore, should be part of the aims and content of education provided by UAS. Based on this evaluation, we describe the possibilities and boundaries of UAS’ contribution to the development of their students’ ethical compass. (shrink)

Co-parents who differ in their ideal child rearing policies should compromise, argues Marcus William Hunt. Josh Milburn and Carlo Alvaro dispute this when it comes to veganism. Milburn argues that veganism is a matter of justice and that to compromise over justice is (typically) impermissible. I suggest that compromise over justice is often permissible, and that compromise over justice may be required by justice itself. Alvaro offers aesthetic, gustatory, and virtue-based arguments for ethical veganism, showing that veganism involves sensibilities and (...) virtues, and argues that veganism involves a belief. Alvaro takes this to show that parental compromise is impermissible. I suggest that Alvaro’s arguments are implausible and that the shaping of a child’s sensibilities and virtues is an apt matter for parental compromise. (shrink)