Abstract:The examination of racist, normalized ideology within American education is not new. Theoretical and practical conceptions of social justice in education have attempted to attend to educational inequality. Oftentimes, these attempts have reinstated the status quo because they were framed within the same Eurocentric paradigm. To address this, Django Paris proposed culturally sustaining pedagogy as a means of empowering minoritized students by sustaining the cultural competence of their communities and dismantling coloniality within educational practices. He, Michael Domínguez, and (...) others argue that epistemic expansion is imperative for equitizing educational spaces and closing the ontological distance between teachers and students. Drawing from their work as well as scholarship from the fields of educational policy, urban education, Afrocentrism, and Indigenous studies, this paper seeks to expand the discussion about culturally relevant and responsive music education to account for students’ musical epistemologies and the ways in which “epistemic travel” might inform normalized musical practices. (shrink)

This study demonstrates that Dewey did not reject Hegelianism during the 1890s, as scholars maintain, but developed a humanistic/historicist reading that was indebted to an American Hegelian tradition. Scholars have misunderstood the "permanent Hegelian deposit" in Dewey's thought because they have not fully appreciated this American Hegelian tradition and have assumed that his Hegelianism was based primarily on British neo-Hegelianism. ;The study examines the American reception of Hegel in the nineteenth-century by intellectuals as diverse as James Marsh and Frederic Henry (...) Hedge and how it flowered in late nineteenth-century St. Louis. The St. Louis Hegelians read Hegel as a particularly practical and politically liberal philosopher whose social philosophy promoted both social diversity and unity. Led by W. T. Harris, they studied Hegel in German and published their own scholarship, as well as translations of German scholarship, in their Journal of Speculative Philosophy. Their efforts to make "Hegel talk English" and to base the St. Louis public schools on Hegel's philosophy of education won them national, and even, international attention. The St. Louis Hegelians sought to adapt Hegel's thought to their American context by assuaging elitist elements within it; Dewey's intellectual development was profoundly shaped by their appropriation of his philosophy. ;Dewey drew upon Hegel's argument that humans form societies because of their differences, not in spite of them. Hegel's rejection of the self-sufficient, atomistic individual entailed that the individual is dependent upon others for the satisfaction of material needs. Moreover, like Hegel, Dewey rejected the hedonistic basis of the British political tradition by arguing that humans seek recognition from their equals as well as satisfaction of material needs. Dewey believed Hegel's emphasis upon equality and diversity provided a model of society in which there was fertile ground for the individual to conceive and articulate cultural criticism. The study ends by comparing recent Hegel scholarship to Dewey's, demonstrating that American Hegelianism has returned, in important ways, to a Deweyan reading of Hegel. (shrink)

Sociologists of education often emphasize goods that result from a practice (external goods) rather than goods intrinsic to a practice (internal goods). The authors draw from John Dewey and Alasdair MacIntyre to describe how the same practice can be understood as producing “skills” that center external goods or as producing habits (Dewey) or virtues (MacIntyre), both of which center internal goods. The authors situate these concepts within sociology of education’s stratification paradigm and a (...) renewed interest in the concept of alienation, contrasting the concepts of skills, habits, and virtues to capital, credentials, and habitus. They close by connecting the argument to broader critiques of procedural liberalism and the ideology of meritocracy, then giving suggestions for an expanded sociology of education beyond the stratification paradigm. (shrink)

BackgroundYouth are increasingly aware of the negative effects of climate change on the planet and human health, but this knowledge can often come with significant affective responses, such as psychological distress, anger, or despair. Experiencing major “negative” emotions, like worry, guilt, and hopelessness in anticipation of climate change has been identified with the term eco-anxiety. Emerging literature focuses on adults' experience; however, little is known about the ways in which children and youth experience eco-anxiety.ObjectivesThe aim of this review was to: (...) identify the available evidence on the topic of eco-anxiety in children, clarify the mental health consequences brought by the awareness of climate change in this population, and identify knowledge gaps in the literature and considerations for future research.MethodsGiven that the research on the topic of eco-anxiety in children is limited, that there are very few randomized controlled trials, and that the goal is not to analyze individual studies in-depth, a scoping review was used. Keywords pertaining to the themes of eco-anxiety, climate change and children were used as search terms in five databases. Journal articles using qualitative and quantitative methods, as well as gray literature were examined by two independent reviewers. A descriptive-analytical method was used to chart the data that emerged from the literature. Eighteen articles were considered in the final analysis.ResultsEvidence confirms that children experience affective responses and eco-anxiety in reaction to then awareness of climate change. Mental health outcomes include depression, anxiety, and extreme emotions like sadness, anger, and fear. Youth from vulnerable communities, like indigenous communities, or those who have strong ties to the land are often identified as being emotionally impacted by climate change. The literature analyzed also describes how children and youth are coping with eco-anxiety, including maladaptive and adaptive responses. Preliminary considerations for parents, teachers and educators, mental health care providers, school systems, adults and people of power include adding age-appropriate climate education to the school curriculum, considering youth's emotions, and promoting healthy coping through empowerment. Important gaps exist in the definition of eco-anxiety in youth, as various characterizations of this emerging concept are found across articles. (shrink)

We present a general relativistic model of a spherical shell of matter with a perfect fluid on its surface coupled to an internal oscillator, which generalizes a model recently introduced by the authors to construct a self-gravitating interferometer. The internal oscillator evolution is defined with respect to the local proper time of the shell, allowing the oscillator to serve as a local clock that ticks differently depending on the shell’s position and momentum. A Hamiltonian reduction is performed on the system, (...) and an approximate quantum description is given to the reduced phase space. If we focus only on the external dynamics, we must trace out the clock degree of freedom, and this results in a form of intrinsic decoherence that shares some features with a proposed “universal” decoherence mechanism attributed to gravitational time dilation. We note that the proposed decoherence remains present in the limit of flat spacetime, emphasizing that the effect can be attributed entirely to proper time differences, and thus is not necessarily related to gravity. Whereas the effect described in vanishes in the absence of an external gravitational field, our approach bootstraps the gravitational contribution to the time dilation decoherence by including self-interaction, yielding a fundamentally gravitational intrinsic decoherence effect. (shrink)

Political correctness in Canada: the McEwen report on the political science department at UBC -- The new sectarianism: gender, race, sexual orientation -- Theory 1: Marx, Freud, Nietzsche -- Theory 2: Constructionism, ideology, textuality -- Presentism: postmodernism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism -- The carceral vision: Geertz, Greenblatt, Foucault, and culture as constraint -- The liberal humanist vision: Northrup Frye and culture as freedom -- Conclusion: the hegemony of theory and the managerial university.

Over the past 50 years, postmodernism has been a progressively growing and influential intellectual movement inside and outside the academy. Postmodernism is characterised by rejection of parts or the whole of the Enlightenment project that had its roots in the birth and embrace of early modern science. While Enlightenment and ‘modernist’ ideas of universalism, of intellectual and cultural progress, of the possibility of finding truths about the natural and social world and of rejection of absolutism and authoritarianism in politics, philosophy (...) and religion were first opposed at their birth in the eighteenth century, contemporary postmodernism sometimes appeals to (and sometimes disdains) philosophy of science in support of its rejection of modernism and the enlightenment programme. (shrink)

This article deals with nurses’ ethical concerns raised by the consequences of changes in governmental and institutional policies on nursing practice and patient care. The aims of this project were to explore perspectives of registered nurses who provide or manage direct patient care on policies that affect nursing and patient care, and to provide input to policy makers for the development of more patient-centred policies. Four focus groups were conducted with a total of 36 registered nurse participants. The project team (...) identified major themes that emerged in the analysis of transcripts of the focus group discussions. The four major themes were: effects of policy focused on cost containment, effects on quality of care, effects on patient education and access to needed services, and effects on nurses and nursing. The participants identified primarily negative effects of changes in national health policy and legislation that influence institutional policies on patient care and nursing practice. The effects of identified policy changes raised concerns about meeting nurses’ ethical obligations to patients and families. Participants specified key points for consideration by legislators and other policy makers. They viewed nurses who are involved in direct patient care as a critical resource for legislators and other policy makers in the development of public and institutional policies that affect nursing and patient care. (shrink)

_John Dewey and Continental Philosophy_ provides a rich sampling of exchanges that could have taken place long ago between the traditions of American pragmatism and continental philosophy had the lines of communication been more open between Dewey and his European contemporaries. Since they were not, Paul Fairfield and thirteen of his colleagues seek to remedy the situation by bringing the philosophy of Dewey into conversation with several currents in continental philosophical thought, from post-Kantian idealism and the work of Friedrich Nietzsche (...) to twentieth-century phenomenology, hermeneutics, and poststructuralism. This unique volume includes discussions comparing and contrasting Dewey with the German philosophers G. W. F. Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, and Hans-Georg Gadamer on such topics as phenomenology, naturalism, organicism, contextualism, and poetry. Others investigate a series of connections between Dewey and contemporary French philosophy, including the notions of subjectivity, education, and the critique of modernity in Michel Foucault; language and politics in Jacques Derrida; and the concept of experience in Gilles Deleuze. Also discussed is the question of whether we can identify traces of _Bildung_ in Dewey’s writings on education, and pragmatism’s complex relation to twentieth-century phenomenology and hermeneutics, including the problematic question of whether Heidegger was a pragmatist in any meaningful sense. Presented in intriguing pairings, these thirteen essays offer different approaches to the material that will leave readers with much to deliberate. _ John Dewey and Continental Philosophy_ demonstrates some of the many connections and opportunities for cross-traditional thinking that have long existed between Dewey and continental thought, but have been under-explored. The intersection presented here between Dewey’s pragmatism and the European traditions makes a significant contribution to continental and American philosophy and will spur new and important developments in the American philosophical debate. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Environmental Goodness and the Challenge of American CultureSandra Jane Fairbanks (bio)Until recently, Western virtue ethics has never recognized nature-focused virtues. This is not surprising, since western philosophies and religions have promoted the ideas that humans are superior to nature and that there are no moral principles regulating our relationship to nature. Environmentalists call for a radical change in our attitude towards nature if we are to meet the challenge (...) posed by today’s environmental problems. Thus, recognition of new virtues governing human attitudes and behavior towards nature is highly desirable, both by way of addressing an egregious lacuna in western thought, and as a necessary condition for anything like a viable planet. Unfortunately, a capitalist, consumer culture such as that of the United States presents a variety of serious obstacles to the successful inculcation of any new environmental virtues. Hence, inculcation of environmental virtues should not be the sole focus of environmental education. Such education should also appeal to human self-interest, at least until such time as the very idea of environmental virtue will not seem contrarian relative to prevailing views of the good life.IntroductionWhile there is room for disagreement over details and cases, it is safe to say that traditional Western philosophies and religions have generally [End Page 79] promoted domination and exploitation of the environment. Traditional, predominantly anthropocentric views such as Christianity or Greek philosophy, conjoined with a consumerist model of the good life, have conditioned the attitudes, values, and beliefs of human beings, with disastrous consequences for the environment. As a result, we face a variety of environmental problems—global warming, destruction and depletion of natural resources and wilderness areas, explosive population growth, toxic waste, and so on—that are serious right now, and that may well be catastrophic for future generations. Environmental philosophers, including biocentrists, ecocentrists, and ecofeminists, call for a shift away from anthropocentric theories to theories that emphasize the intrinsic value of nonhuman life, or that of nature in general.All of these environmental philosophies call for a radical change in our attitude towards nature if we are to meet the challenge posed by today’s environmental problems. Since this change in attitude is intended to ground novel and more adequate ways of behaving toward the environment, environmentally-sensitive writers are in the business, implicitly or explicitly, of promoting a new environmental virtue, or a new set of environmental virtues.1 Until recently, Western virtue ethics has never recognized a nature-focused virtue. This is not surprising, since western philosophies and religions have generally promoted the ideas that humans are superior to nature and that there are no moral principles regulating our relationship to nature, except (as, famously, in Kant2) for indirect duties toward humans. The idea that nature, including nonhuman life, natural objects, and ecological wholes has intrinsic value and, hence, moral standing, is a very recent development in Western philosophy.Thus recognition of new virtues governing human attitudes and behavior towards nature is highly desirable, both by way of addressing an egregious lacuna in Western thought, and as (almost certainly) a necessary condition for anything like a viable planet. Unfortunately, as I will argue, a capitalist, consumer culture such as that of the United States—on which I will focus due to its paradigm status—presents a variety of obstacles to the successful inculcation of any new environmental virtues. Thus, inculcation of environmental virtues should not be the sole, and perhaps not even the primary, focus of environmental education, at least in the short term. As I will argue, such education should also appeal, importantly, to human self-interest, at least until such time as the very idea of environmental [End Page 80] virtue will not seem contrarian relative to prevailing views of the good life.The structure of the discussion is as follows: First, I develop a brief sketch of an environmentally good person. I do so by compiling a set of environmental virtues recommended by various prominent biocentrists, ecocentrists and ecofeminists. Second, I address problems posed by American culture for the development of these environmental virtues. Finally, I conclude with practical suggestions for influencing American culture in the direction of environmental awareness and... (shrink)

We spend a lot of time arguing about how schools might be improved. But we rarely take a step back to ask what we as a society should be looking for from education—what exactly should those who make decisions be trying to achieve? In Educational Goods, two philosophers and two social scientists address this very question. They begin by broadening the language for talking about educational policy: “educational goods” are the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that (...) children develop for their own benefit and that of others; “childhood goods” are the valuable experiences and freedoms that make childhood a distinct phase of life. Balancing those, and understanding that not all of them can be measured through traditional methods, is a key first step. From there, they show how to think clearly about how those goods are distributed and propose a method for combining values and evidence to reach decisions. They conclude by showing the method in action, offering detailed accounts of how it might be applied in school finance, accountability, and choice. The result is a reimagining of our decision making about schools, one that will sharpen our thinking on familiar debates and push us toward better outcomes. (shrink)

Kant says that moral values are ‘good without qualification.’ This assertion and similar remarks of Plato can be understood in terms of a return to moral data themselves in the following ways: 1. Moral values are objectively good and not relative to our judgments; 2. Moral goodness is intrinsic goodness grounded in the nature of acts and independent of our subjective satisfaction; 3. Moral goodness expresses in an essentially new and higher sense of the idea of value as such; (...) 4. Moral Goodness cannot be abused like intellectual, aesthetic, temperamental and other values; 5. Moral values are good in that they never must be sacrificed for any other value, because they are incomparably higher and should absolutely and ‘first’ be sought for; 6. Moral goodness makes the person as such good; 7. All three different modes of participation in moral values are linked to the absolute, most ‘necessary’ and highest good for the person; 8. Moral Values are goods "in the unrestricted sense" by being pure perfections in the sense that "neither in this world nor outside it" can we find anything that could be called good unqualifiedly except moral goodness which is absolutely better to possess than not to possess. 9. Moral Values are unconditionally good because they are never just ‘means’ towards ends. 10. Moral values imply a new type of ought which elucidates the ‘absolute sense’ in which they are good. Conclusion: These distinctions allow a better grasp of Kant and Plato as well as of a central ethical truth decisive for the moral education of humankind. (shrink)

Various authors see human flourishing as the overarching aim to which education should contribute. We ask whether fostering _wonder_ can help education attain this aim. We discuss two possibilities: firstly, it may be that having a sense of wonder as adults (possibly fostered by and/or refined due to education) contributes to flourishing itself. Secondly, it may be that fostering wonder in education increases the likelihood that education promotes flourishing, which it might do simply by increasing children’s intrinsic interest in (...) what they learn. We argue that there are many plausible connections between wonder and human flourishing (relating to its epistemic and aesthetic dimensions, among others), and that we have reason to believe that early experiences can influence adults’ capacity for wonder. Furthermore, wonder increases the likelihood that education ‘succeeds’; and it supports people’s ability to live well by heightening their appreciation for the world, helping to uncover baseless beliefs, and increasing their awareness of possible goods. In sum, while having a sense of wonder may not be a constitutive element of human flourishing, it is hard to imagine education for human flourishing that is not also wonder-full education. (shrink)

We report an experiment on two treatments of an ultimatum minigame. In one treatment, responders’ reactions are hidden to proposers. We observe high rejection rates reflecting responders’ intrinsic resistance to unfairness. In the second treatment, proposers are informed, allowing for dynamic effects over eight rounds of play. The higher rejection rates can be attributed to responders’ provision of a public good: Punishment creates a group reputation for being “tough” and effectively “educate” proposers. Since rejection rates with informed proposers drop (...) to the level of the treatment with non-informed proposers, the hypothesis of responder’s enjoyment of overt punishment is not supported. (shrink)

There is an underappreciated disconnect between the ultimate values that lie at the heart of contemporary theories of distributive justice, and the practice of state institutions. State institutions deliver “intermediate goods” – goods such as health-care, education, housing, transportation, and the like – that are instrumental to a society being distributively just, but that do not in an of themselves constitute criteria of justice. Researchers who have emphasized the “social determinants of health” provide an insight that, when generalized, (...) point us in a direction that theorists of distributive justice should follow, that of attending not just to the instrinsic value of intermediate goods, but also to their causal contributions to realizing the values that theories of distributive justice make central. “Platforms”, which represent principle-driven attempts at designing compossible policies that attend both to the causal and to the intrinsic value of intermediate goods, should be given more importance within theories of distributive justice if such theories are to be policy-relevant, for they connect the ultimate values of these theories to the practices of state institutions. (shrink)

When schools react to contemporary events and focus on complex moral problems they commonly fail to make basic distinctions between the morally serious and trivial, the moral and the non-moral, and problems and dilemmas. We need to teach the distinction between moral and other values, and between what is intrinsically good, what is right in practice and what is justifiable. Moral theory seeks to delineate an ideal situation. Different circumstances give rise to different particular practices; but the principles of freedom, (...) fairness, respect for persons, truth and felicity constitute a widely recognized view of the essence of morality. These principles, and the nature of education itself, are often ignored in programs of moral education, which should proceed by providing an understanding of the nature and limits of the moral sphere. (shrink)

This research investigates 266 business students' panel data across 4 time periods and tests a theoretical model involving intrinsic religiosity, the love of money, Machiavellianism, and propensity to engage in unethical behaviors. There was a short ethics intervention between Times 3 and 4. We identified good apples and bad apples using the PUB measure collected at Time 4. From Time 3 to Time 4, good apples became more ethical, whereas bad apples became less ethical after the ethics intervention. Moreover, (...) for the whole sample, intrinsic religiosity deterred unethical intentions not only directly but also indirectly through the absence of Machiavellianism. Before the ethics intervention, intrinsic religiosity curbed unethical intention directly for good apples but indirectly for bad apples. After the intervention, only the indirect effect was significant for bad apples. Intrinsic religiosity offers us hope to open the hearts of the lost sheep and bring them home. Research results were discussed in light of this study's theoretical, empirical, and practical contributions; Judeo-Christian ethics and values; challenging roles of educators and executives in educating Gen-Yers; creating a sea change of the ethical social norm in schools, organizations, and society, or ethical community building, and promoting ethical behavior; and future directions for research. (shrink)

R. S. Peters never explicitly talks about wisdom as being an aim of education. He does, however, in numerous places, emphasize that education is of the whole person and that, whatever else it might be about, it involves the development of knowledge and understanding. Being educated, he claims, is incompatible with being narrowly specialized. Moreover, he argues, education enables a person to have a different perspective on things, ‘to travel with a different view’ [Peters, R. S. (1967). What is an (...) educational process? In R. S. Peters (Ed.), The concept of education (pp. 1–23). Routledge and Kegan Paul]. In asserting this about education, Peters has more in common with another great English educator, John Henry, Cardinal Newman, than one might expect, given they are separated by about a century and start from different philosophical perspectives, namely Kant to a significant degree in the former and Aristotle in the latter. Both nevertheless acknowledge the importance of reason and its development in any education worthy of the name. I will argue that in describing the ‘educated person’ Peters is not far from the view of Newman, who saw education as being about the ‘enlargement of mind’. Although Newman hesitates to call ‘enlargement of mind’ wisdom, and Peters does not use either term, there are good grounds for proposing that in distinguishing between education and training, and in asserting education is moral education because it is concerned to improve persons, Peters acknowledges the higher purposes of education and hence, we can add, its connection with wisdom. Significantly, what such a reading of Peters emphasizes is his insistence on the intrinsic value of education, a view seemingly lost in modern market-driven conceptions of education. (shrink)

Prominent ethical and policy issues such as affirmative action and female enrollment in science and engineering revolve around the idea that diversity is good. However, a precise definition is seldom provided. I show that diversity may be construed as a factual description, a craving for symmetry, an intrinsic good, an instrumental good, a symptom, or a side effect. These acceptions differ vastly in their nature and properties. Some are deeply mistaken and some others cannot lead to concrete policies. It (...) is thus necessary to clarify what one means by ‘diversity.’ It may be a neutral description of a given state; but this is insufficient to act. The idea that there should be the same representation in a specific context as in the overall population is both puzzling and arbitrary. Diversity as intrinsic good is a mere opinion, which cannot be concretely applied; moreover, the most commonly invoked forms of diversity are not intrinsically good. On the other hand, diversity as instrumental good can be evaluated empirically and can give rise to policies, but these may be very weak. Finally, symptoms and side effects are not actually about diversity. I consider the example of female enrollment in science and engineering, interpreting the various arguments found in the literature in light of this polysemy. (shrink)

Andrew Reid's essay on the value of education in this journal distinguished the intrinsic features of education from what education is for, the latter being ultimately located in the promotion of personal well-being. At a meta-ethical level, this response accepts Reid's claim about ultimate location, but challenges his view that prudential goods are desire- independent, arguing for a desire-dependent conception based on supra-individual, but not always universal-human, preferences. It also questions his claim that the source of educational (...) value lies in the intrinsic features of education, rejecting the suggestion that epistemological rather ethical considerations should be the starting-point. (shrink)

Richard Peters argued for a general education based largely on the study of truth-seeking subjects for its own sake. His arguments have long been acknowledged as problematic. There are also difficulties with Paul Hirst's arguments for a liberal education, which in part overlap with Peters'. Where justification fails, can historical explanation illuminate? Peters was influenced by the prevailing idea that a secondary education should be based on traditional, largely knowledge-orientated subjects, pursued for intrinsic as well as practical ends. Does (...) history reveal good reasons for this view? The view itself has roots going back to the 16th century and the educational tradition of radical Protestantism. Religious arguments to do with restoring the image of an omniscient God in man made good sense, within their own terms, of an encyclopaedic approach to education. As these faded in prominence after 1800, old curricular patterns persisted in the drive for ‘middle-class schools’, and new, less plausible justifications grew in salience. These were based first on faculty psychology and later on the psychology of individual differences. The essay relates the views of Peters and Hirst to these historical arguments, asking how far their writings show traces of the religious argument mentioned, and how their views on education and the development of mind relate to the psychological arguments. (shrink)

According to one historic view of liberal education, such education is incompatible with the express pursuit of civic goods. Call that view ‘pure liberal education’. Students engaged in pure liberal education are set free, temporarily, from utilitarian concerns, for a course of study aimed at intrinsic goods—most notably knowledge but also the formation of a virtuous mind. Proponents claim that a direct pursuit of civic goods would compromise the mode, matter, and/or integrity of pure liberal education—that (...) is, its freedom from utilitarian concern, its wide-ranging and intrinsically valuable subject matter, and its commitment to following the truth wherever it leads. In reply, I offer a pedagogy that requires (almost) no departure from the pure liberal ideal yet which reserves a modest, though important, place for civic formation. That place emerges from the fact that academic and civic life ‘overlap’ in an important respect: both involve a conversation and thus a common set of virtues. The latter consist in those practices and dispositions that enable the conversation to go well, by encouraging mutual understanding and the formation of true beliefs. The existence of this overlap provides a way for pure liberal educators, who already expressly influence their students’ academic formation, to likewise influence their civic formation. It consists in teachers consciously developing those virtues in their students, along with an awareness of the virtues’ relevance for civic life. This pedagogy retains the matter and integrity of pure liberal education, with only brief introductions of the practical mode. (shrink)

How can head teachers live up to expectations? What makes them fail? What keeps the profession in good standing in the taxpayer's eye, and what undermines it? This book sets out a new vision for school leadership, moving beyond leadership styles and best practice to reflect on the intrinsic motivation in becoming a leader within a school setting, and proposing a way for the profession to develop and maintain ethical standards. Chapters explore the 2017-18 Commission on Ethical Leadership in (...) Schools, considering the core principles and behaviours we should expect from our school leaders, and providing a clear, ethical code for thinking about and reinforcing ethical standards in schools. (shrink)

This essay reviews David Halpin's Hope and Education, which aims to bring theories of hope and utopia to bear on the practical processes of schooling in contemporary Britain, and which sees education as an intrinsically hopeful and future-oriented process. It argues that the properly utopian character of Halpin's project is subverted by his espousal of a currently fashionable pragmatism, represented by Richard Rorty and Anthony Giddens, which insists that ‘good’ utopias must be realistic and practical. Utopian hope for a better (...) world, in which a transformed educational process will be central, is ambushed by this pragmatism and reduced to managerialism. (shrink)

A popular justification of education for autonomy is that autonomy possession has intrinsic prudential value. Communitarians have argued, however, that although autonomy may be a core element of a well-lived life in liberal societies, it cannot claim such a prudential pedigree in traditional societies in which the conception of a good life is intimately tied to the acceptance of a pre-established worldview. In this paper I examine a recent attempt made by Ishtiyaque Haji and Stefaan Cuypers to respond to (...) this challenge by reestablishing the intrinsic prudential value of autonomy, and I argue that although their work has merit in some respects, it suffers from a notable theoretical deficiency as well as a practical deficiency. Like Haji and Cuypers, I wish to argue that autonomy has intrinsic prudential value; but my argument is not grounded on the claim that autonomy is a necessary part of well-being. I argue, rather, that it stands to reason—and that liberals and traditionalists alike have reason to accept—that autonomous assent to a conception of the good life is an intrinsically prudentially better state of affairs than nonautonomous assent to the same. My goal in this essay, then, is to clarify the prudential significance of (and to provide a justification for) education for autonomy in a manner that will be appealing to liberals and traditionalists alike. (shrink)

For over forty years, economic inequality and distributive justice have been two of the primary concerns of political philosophers. This volume addresses these issues in a novel way, by focusing on the concepts of solidarity and public goods as both descriptive and normative frameworks. Solidarity links the social, political and moral together, in a distinctively political approach that recognizes the social sources of power on the one hand and sources of moral motivation on the other. Public goods such (...) as education, healthcare, and transport systems are indispensable to the forging of solidarity, but at the same time they may become sources of oppression or injustice, when they fail to respect individual autonomy or when they calcify majoritarian preferences. The essays in this volume explore different features of the political, moral and civic approaches to solidarity. The moral theory of solidarity is advanced in one case as an intrinsically valuable concept of social connectedness and in another as an approach of epistemic deference; a structural account of solidarity theorizes about action against racial oppression, and a power-relations account points at the urgency of the affective, non-rational dimensions of solidarity. The social value of property and its moral implications are articulated through the lens of French 19th Century ‘Solidarism’ and as a complementary theory to left-libertarianism. Public goods are defended as instrumental to solidarity, in one case within a liberal framework and in another within a human-perfectionism framework. By providing a series of thought-provoking debates about social obligations and justice, the volume re-establishes solidarity and public goods as pertinent concepts for theorizing about social justice and inequality. (shrink)

To what extent does the common claim that childhood is ‘socially constructed’ affect the ethical debate on the ‘intrinsic’ and ‘special’ goods of childhood? Philosophers have referred to this kind of goods in their critique of overly adult-centred and future-oriented conceptions of childhood. The view that some goods are child-specific, in the sense that they are only good for children, not for adults, seems to presuppose an understanding of what children ‘are’, and how they differ from (...) adults. However, if the social-constructionist view is accepted, it cannot be assumed that childhood is a given. This essay claims that the social-constructionist understanding of childhood does not undermine the debate on the moral status and the goods of childhood, but that nevertheless important lessons can be drawn from the insight that childhood, as we know it, is not a natural and universal phenomenon. (shrink)

In a recent paper in BJES, John Wilson examines the question of the desirability of education and argues that the enterprise can only be justified if it is thought to be necessary 'as a means of salvation'. Here I expose a number of flaws in Wilson's argument and defend a rather more prosaic justificatory strategy.

The relation between sport and a good life presents a fruitful philosophical challenge and it has been discussed extensively within the philosophy sport literature. This paper will investigate the role of sport in a good life in the philosophical conceptions of Aristotle and Suits. Both authors paid attention to sport and its significance in the context of living well. However, their approaches differ, partly because they emerge in a different historical and cultural context. My aim is to analyse relevant texts (...) of these two authors, presenting their major points, commonalities, and differences. The debate, to a certain extent, highlights instrumental (educational) and autotelic (intrinsic) value of sport. In order to conceptualize properly the role of sport in a good life, we need to take into account both of these aspects. The originality of this contribution can be found in presenting relevant implications of the contrasting positions of Suits and Aristotle to our thinking about modern sport. Finally, I point to the complementarity of their positions and demonstrate their impact on the broader debate concerning good sport and its role in a good life. (shrink)

Andrew Reid's essay on the value of education in this journal distinguished the intrinsic features of education from what education is for, the latter being ultimately located in the promotion of personal well-being. At a meta-ethical level, this response accepts Reid's claim about ultimate location, but challenges his view that prudential goods are desire-independent, arguing for a desire-dependent conception based on supra-individual, but not always universal-human, preferences. It also questions his claim that the source of educational value (...) lies in the intrinsic features of education, rejecting the suggestion that epistemological rather ethical considerations should be the starting-point. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Music Education for Social Change–Constructing an Activist Music Education by Juliet HessMartin BergerJuliet Hess, Music Education for Social Change–Constructing an Activist Music Education (New York, Routledge, 2019)Juliet Hess’s book is written with great passion and composed for a very good reason. It is published in troubling times when music educators are looking for new perspectives on old problems and in search of a revived relevance for the subject. (...) Although music educators appear to be better qualified for their jobs than ever before, there is still an underlying concern that we have lost the positive political influence on society we might have had in the past, that our contributions to enhancing tolerance and social justice are at stake again, and that our voices are not being heard. Or, in other words, that we lack relevance if we do not act.Juliet Hess raises her voice, reclaiming this relevance at a time when “[h]ate continually manifests in both new and familiar ways” and “the presence of oppression is consistent across time.”1 According to her, rising-up against oppressive ideologies, injustices, and material violence is imperative and urgent. Hess calls on finding ways for music education to contribute to resistance and hails concepts that allow educators to devise a distinctly anti-oppressive pedagogy. Her purpose is to offer a framework for what she calls an “activist music education,” a pedagogy that “aims to address the sexism, racism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, heterosexism, cisgenderism, classism, ableism, anti-immigrant [End Page 207] sentiments, and other oppressions so prevalent in our society.”2 Inspired by the impact of their musicking, Hess conducts interviews with twenty activist musicians, exploring common themes, perceptions, values, philosophies, and ideas. All individuals interviewed are involved in social change movements across the United States and Canada. Hess positions them as “catalysts for change in music education,”3 providing “a means to conceptualize activist music education for school music.”4 Activism and music, says Hess, are “enmeshed and inextricably connected,”5 since both intrinsically involve exploring historical, political, social, and cultural contexts.Inspired by the relevance of activist music to a society, Hess is in search of a similar meaning for music education. As a result, she sketches a possible K-12 curriculum with three essential goals: fostering connection with Others, honoring and sharing lived experience, and enabling critical reflection on the world.6 In search of a conceptualization for her idea, Hess draws mainly on Freirian and critical pedagogy as a theoretical framework, placing lived experience at the center of education, and with conscientization and praxis being her key terms.7 According to Hess, praxis, defined as “the integration of thoughtful reflection and action,”8 is fundamental to any kind of transformation, while conscientization refers to processes through which learners “become aware and reflect upon the conditions that shape their lives.”9 Although Hess acknowledges the valuable scholarly contribution to critical pedagogy in the past, she remains careful in its application, urging music educators to “avert any dogmatic implementation.”10 As a result, she suggests a “tri-faceted pedagogy for future activism,”11 which is connective, communicative, and critical: “a pedagogy of community, based on activist musicians’ emphasis on connectivity, a pedagogy of expression rooted in honoring lived experiences and sharing them through music, and a pedagogy of noticing that emerges from activist-musicians’ work on critical thinking.”12 This combination will, according to her, set “the conditions for future activism among youth and offers a possible practical enactment of critical pedagogy for music education.”13 A valuable and most inspiring read!Although I strongly agree with the intention of this book, I do have some questions. The dream of a classroom that exercises social criticism both through thinking about music and through musicking itself has always been an aspiration. Scholars have regularly encouraged music educators to be public intellectuals and agents of change, ideally striving for social justice (or at the very least for social awareness), and preparing learners to be global citizens, able to think critically and ready to engage with the world.14 It is widely agreed that “music education deserves to be seen as a serious form of cultural... (shrink)

The authors seek to bring clarity to the concepts of education and teaching. It is assumed throughout that a narrowly intellectualist interpretation of education will provide this conceptual clarity. The opening chapters focus on teaching as a role, an aim-activity and a set of skills. "The intrinsic aim of the teacher is education," which is in turn defined as "the cultivation of the mind, or theoretical reason, and the transmission of culture." Emphasis here falls on the distinction between knowing (...) that and knowing how, and on the educated man’s ability to give a critical account of his beliefs and aesthetic judgments. Succeeding chapters discuss the intrinsic and extrinsic aims of education. The authors give qualified assent to the intuitive claim that education is desirable in itself, and present a "redescription" of this claim in terms of "the realization of the theoretical aspect of the self." Among the extrinsic aims, relevance to moral conduct and the social good are emphasized. The concluding chapters discuss the "role" of the teacher as "a set of rights and duties," and trace the implications of this position for personal relations between teacher and pupil. Among the issues discussed here are the following: the teacher’s responsibilities to his employer, pupils, subject area, and society; a Kantian doctrine of personalism and tolerance; and the limits of friendship between teacher and student. A postscript and index complete the volume. (shrink)

Elective home education has become an international trend characterized by considerable public controversy and much legal fragmentation. Issues related to whether it should be permitted and how it should be monitored are currently being debated in many countries. Homeschooling regulation seems to have become a “wicked problem” with no definitive solution. A case has been made for moving beyond the polarization that tends to label it as either intrinsically good or inherently bad. By drawing its foundations from a UNESCO report (...) published in 2021, this conceptual study is meant to be a contribution to the discussion about the social and legal legitimacy of homeschooling through the delineation of a tenable “social contract for home education”. It has been argued that in light of this social contract, homeschooling should neither be banned nor unregulated. Hence, a shift of perspective is being encouraged to include home educators in a pluralistic dialogue on the future of education towards policy decisions that are sensitive to this complexity. (shrink)

This paper focuses on negative exemplarity-related emotions (NEREs) and on their educational implications. In this paper, we will first argue for the nonexpendability of negative emotions broadly conceived (section 2) by defending their instrumental and intrinsic role in a good and flourishing life. In section 3, we will make the claim more specific by focusing on the narrower domain of NEREs and argue for their moral and educational significance by evaluating whether they fit the arguments provided in (...) the previous section. In section 4, we will propose three educational strategies to foster NEREs’ positive moral role. In conclusion, we will point out that an exemplarist approach to character education would greatly benefit from a more fine-grained account of the emotions involved in the educational process and from a broader perspective on which of these emotions should be taken as valuable for educational purposes. (shrink)

pt. 1. Toward a theory of liberal education. Mixed messages and false starts -- Liberal education and human flourishing -- pt. 2. Paradigms of liberal education. Transmission of culture -- Self-actualization -- Understanding the world -- Engagement with the world -- The skills of learning -- pt. 3. The values and moral aims of liberal education. Core values of liberal education -- Intrinsic value -- Educating a good person -- pt. 4. Obstacles, threats and prospects. Persistent concerns -- Newfound (...) threats -- Promise and prospects. (shrink)

“Intrinsic value” is a perplexing notion in that it purports to establish a relationship with a thing that cannot in fact be established by the valuing subject butcan only be welcomed. An important sense of “good” expresses the non-axiological side of shared flourishing. We do need the concept of intrinsic value to put our different kinds of value in order, but we can also recognize that the positing of intrinsic value is grounded on events of appeal wherein (...) perceived beings promise distinctive forms of benign partnership with their perceivers. The ideal of appeal maximalism can displace the problematic ideal of unrestricted intrinsic value as a basis for expanding the circle of moral consideration. (shrink)