Character Education in America's Blue Ribbon Schools is based upon descriptive, documentary, and qualitative research conducted on the award winning school applications in the United Stated Department of Education's Elementary School Recognition Program, i.e. the Blue Ribbon Schools. The purpose of the program is to focus national attention on schools that are doing an exceptional job with all of their students. Areas studied are developing a solid foundation of basic skills and knowledge of subject matter and fostering the development of (...) character, values, and ethical judgement. The first edition of this book reported on the first decade of this program, from 1985 to 1994. The second edition adds the schools that have won the award from 1996-2001. Included are the Blue Ribbon schools that applied for Special Honors in Character Education and five that actually won that recognition in 1998-1999. This edition finds character education much stronger in American schools in recent years and is full of many promising practices. It is a practical book that will guide school administrators, teachers, parents, board members, and concerned citizens interested in starting or strengthening the character education focus of their school. (shrink)

Scholars who debate the cause of and solutions for the decline in civic engagement have suggested that Americans have increasingly withdrawn from community organizations, reducing their political activity such as voting and interest in the political world, and generally failing to place the common good over individual self-interest. Their analyses are steeped in a tradition that is largely gender blind and consequently ignores care work. We infuse feminist analyses of paid labor and citizenship, which emphasize the merits and burdens of (...) care work, into the civic engagement debate. We argue that care work, predominantly performed by women, paradoxically limits, enhances, and even constitutes a vital form of civic activity. We call for a fuller slate of social policies that will both redistribute the burden of care work and reinvigorate civic engagement. (shrink)

Recent changes in access to contraceptive and infertility treatments in the state of Illinois, and across the United States more generally, have heightened class cleavages in access to reproductive health care benefits in the United States. Using data gleaned from government testimonies, public documents, and telephone interviews, the authors found that poor women have broad access to contraceptive coverage but very little access to infertility treatments, while working-and middle-class women have increasingly broad coverage of infertility treatments but spare coverage of (...) contraceptives. These findings suggest that while the extreme measures of the eugenics movement are less frequently in evidence, class differences in access to reproductive services lead to an equally dualistic, albeit unstated, fertility policy in the United States: encouraging births among working- and middle-class families and discouraging births among the poor, particularly those on Medicaid. (shrink)

Surprising as it may appear, the philosophical writings of political economist Karl Marx (1818–1883), and those of philosopher, educator Maria Montessori(1870–1952), show thematic resemblances that invite further exploration. These resemblances reflect both keen awareness of the historical period they shared, but also important common threads in their philosophical anthropology, ethical and political values, and goals. In this paper, I examine one central thread which both take as fundamental, namely, the centrality of work in achieving the harmonious development of humankind. I (...) critique Marx’s description of the dynamic process leading to his classless society, because he fails to supply the proximate, efficient cause or middle term that effects this goal. My thesis is that Montessori supplies this missing causal link through her scientific demonstration of the work and function of the child and her holistic understanding of the human person in its full historical dimension, and human and cosmic telos. (shrink)

Surprising as it may appear, the philosophical writings of political economist Karl Marx (1818–1883), and those of philosopher, educator Maria Montessori(1870–1952), show thematic resemblances that invite further exploration. These resemblances reflect both keen awareness of the historical period they shared, but also important common threads in their philosophical anthropology, ethical and political values, and goals. In this paper, I examine one central thread which both take as fundamental, namely, the centrality of work in achieving the harmonious development of humankind. I (...) critique Marx’s description of the dynamic process leading to his classless society, because he fails to supply the proximate, efficient cause or middle term that effects this goal. My thesis is that Montessori supplies this missing causal link through her scientific demonstration of the work and function of the child and her holistic understanding of the human person in its full historical dimension, and human and cosmic telos. (shrink)

Class-based theories of the welfare state suggest that welfare states stratify by social class, thus universal benefits are praised for fostering social equality and class solidarity whereas poverty-based benefits are criticized for fostering greater inequality and class conflict. Feminist theorists suggest that, in addition to social class, universal and poverty-based benefits are organized around dimensions of gender and race. I examine these arguments in conjunction with old-age reliance on Medicaid—the poverty-based long-term care system in the United States. Compared to white (...) men, older Blacks, Hispanics, and women of all races have greater long-term care needs and fewer economic resources with which to meet those needs. Even when differences in income, education, age, marital status, and nursing home use are taken into account, gender and race are significantly related to Medicaid use. As Medicaid recipients, Blacks, Hispanics, and women of all races disproportionately face persistent poverty and discrimination. Even when they are not Medicaid beneficiaries, these groups are particularly likely to suffer other consequences of a poverty-based long-term care system related to state variations in coverage, informal care giving, and spousal impoverishment. (shrink)

In this paper we compare the strategies applied by two successful biological components of the ecosystem, the viruses and the human beings, to interact with the environment. Viruses have had and still exert deep and vast actions on the ecosystem especially at the genome level of most of its biotic components. We discuss on the importance of the human being as contraptions maker in particular of robots, hence of machines capable of automatically carrying out complex series of actions. Beside the (...) relevance of designing and assembling these contraptions, it is of basic importance the goal for which they are assembled and future scenarios of their possible impact on the ecosystem. We can’t procrastinate the development and implementation of a highly inspired and stringent “ethical code” for human beings and humanoid robots because it will be a crucial aspect for the wellbeing of the mankind and of the entire ecosystem. (shrink)

The article deals with some implications of radical uncertainty for participatory democracy, and more precisely for Participatory Technology Assessment. Two main forms of PTA are discussed. One is aimed at involving lay citizens and highlighting public opinion. The other is addressed to stakeholder groups and organisations, not only in terms of interest mediation but also of inclusion of their insight into a problem. Radical uncertainty makes 'intractable' many environmental and technological issues and brings into question traditional and new approaches to (...) policymaking. Its consequences are explored from the viewpoint of new science, deliberative democracy, and network governance. Radical uncertainty calls for a rethinking of the aims of public deliberation, and a reinterpretation of the divide between opinion- and position-oriented PTA. To look for a public opinion, understood as a shared principled view, can prove misleading, as can thinking of stakeholder participatory arrangements in the usual way. When facts and values overlap, and are deeply controversial, the only opportunity for mutual understanding may be to look for practical, 'local' answers, based on different positional insights. Moreover, radical uncertainty also affects interest determination and pursuit, and may enhance the opportunity of joint, inclusive, non-strategic issue definition and solution-devising. This vision of public deliberation is consistent with the idea of network governance. However, fragmentation can affect the effectiveness and legitimacy of participatory policies. Trying to handle fragmentation from the top, as many suggest, is unlikely to be successful. A more promising endeavour is to foster deliberative settings which, although positioned at the level of 'local' and often contingent networks and commonalities, are open to include 'Otherness' – other contexts, other problem definitions, other concerns. (shrink)

The first part of this paper aims to highlight the analogies between Schutz’s vision of the natural attitude and Wittgenstein’s vision of a phenomenon that concerns the same problematic field, i.e. certainty, the belief of common sense that is free of all doubt, that the world “out there” is as it appears, absolutely real. These certainties form the basis, the foundation of language games and therefore of knowledge in general and in its entirety. This foundation is unfounded and yet indispensable. (...) The second part of the paper examines an important topic analysed by Wittgenstein, related to the aforementioned problem: the language transposition of pre-predicative, pre-reflective and non-propositional certainties, the cornerstones of which are “hinge propositions”, whose hybrid nature can be identified in the shift from empirical propositions to grammatical rules. (shrink)

Simple assumptions represent a decisive reason to prefer one theory to another in everyday scientific praxis. But this praxis has little philosophical justification, since there exist many notions of simplicity, and those that can be defined precisely strongly depend on the language in which the theory is formulated. The language dependence is a natural feature—to some extent—but it is also believed to be a fatal problem, because, according to a common general argument, the simplicity of a theory is always trivial (...) in a suitably chosen language. But, this trivialization argument is typically either applied to toy-models of scientific theories or applied with little regard for the empirical content of the theory. This paper shows that the trivialization argument fails, when one considers realistic theories and requires their empirical content to be preserved . In fact, the concepts that enable a very simple formulation, are not necessarily measurable, in general. Moreover, the inspection of a theory describing a chaotic billiard shows that precisely those concepts that naturally make the theory extremely simple are provably not measurable. This suggests that—whenever a theory possesses sufficiently complex consequences—the constraint of measurability prevents too simple formulations in any language. This explains why the scientists often regard their assessments of simplicity as largely unambiguous. In order to reveal a cultural bias in the scientists’ assessment, one should explicitly identify different characterizations of simplicity of the assumptions that lead to different theory selections. General arguments are not sufficient. (shrink)

The relentless exploitation of the earth's resources and technologys boundless growth are a matter of urgent concern. When did this race towards the limitless begin? The Greeks, who shaped the basis of Western thinking, lived in mortal fear of humanity's hidden hunger for the infinite and referred to it as hubris, the one true sin in their moral code. Whoever desired or possessed too much was implacably punished by nemesis, yet the Greeks themselves were to pioneer an unprecedented level of (...) ambition that began to reverse that tabu. If it is true that no culture can truly repudiate its origins, and that gods who are no longer potent can vanish but still leave behind a body of myth which coninues to live and assert itself in modernized garb, then our concern with the limits of growth reflects something more than an awareness of new technological problems - it also brings to light a psychic wound a a feeling of guilt which are infinitely more ancient. (shrink)

Game-based approaches are emerging in many fields, such as education, social sciences, marketing and government. Most studies debate its role in consolidating learning, guided by both internal and external rewards. These approaches are also being applied in rehabilitation, where patients must undergo a re-learning process of motor gestures after an injury to a body structure. In physiotherapy, much importance is given to analytical-functional movement aspects, but less to the recovery of the complete experience, including motivation, perception, and emotional experience of (...) the patient during the process. The aim of this narrative review is to investigate the role of subjective experience in the application of gamification in physiotherapy, considering the added value it provides to recovery by involving neural structures, not just motor functions. By analyzing the most investigated aspects in using gamification in rehabilitation, we will outline the primary methods of investigation into the engagement and emotions involved in the process. Through a selection of scientific articles found on main databases, we identified articles investigating the patient’s experience. The analysis of these articles was based on aspects related to the recovery of movement, the technology used, as well as the methods of investigation and collection of qualitative data regarding the emotions and perceptions of patients during the gamification experience. The results are divided into two primary topics. Overall, this review supports the idea that gamification could represent a rehabilitation approach integrating physiotherapy, more suitable for the final stages of recovery, such as returning to work or sports. (shrink)

Luigi Giussani, a high school religion teacher throughout the 1950s and 1960s, grounded his teachings in the vast body of experience to be found in Christianity's two-thousand-year history. He told his students, “I'm not here to make you adopt the ideas I will give you as your own, but to teach you a method for judging the things I will say.” Throughout his life, education was one of Giussani's primary intellectual interests. He believed that effective education required an adequate (...) background in the Christian tradition, presented within a lived experience that underscored the capacity of the faith to answer universal questions. What he proposed was a process that allowed one to sift through tradition, critically examining it and comparing it against the ultimate criteria for judgment: the desires of the heart. In Giussani's view, the primary concern was to “educate the human heart as God made it.” In The Risk of Education he states that fear leads students to associate this process of criticism with negativity or doubt. Yet, without an education in criticism, students cannot develop conviction. At a time when young people are abandoning the church and questioning the value of faith, Giussani's method of judging and verifying Christianity as an experience seems a necessary intervention. In The Risk of Education he argues that, ultimately, education and the Christian message reveal themselves through human freedom. (shrink)

The point of view advocated, in the last ten years, by quantum probability about the foundations of quantum mechanics, is based on the investigation of the mathematical consequences of a deep and elementary idea developed by the founding fathers of quantum mechanics and accepted nowadays as a truism by most physicists, namely: one should be careful when applying the rules derived from the experience of macroscopic physics to experiments which are mutually incompatible in the sense of quantum mechanics.

_Emotional Presence in Psychoanalysis_ provides a detailed look at the intricacies of attaining emotional presence in psychoanalytic work. John Madonna and a distinguished group of contributors draw on both the relational and modern psychoanalytic schools of thought to examine a variety of different problems commonly experienced in achieving emotional resonance between analyst and patient, setting out ways in which such difficulties may be overcome in psychoanalytic treatment, practical clinical settings and in training contexts. A focused review of relevant comparative (...) literature is followed by chapters featuring individual clinical case studies, each illustrating particularly challenging aspects. The uniqueness of this book lays not simply in the espousal of the commonly accepted importance of emotional resonance between analyst and patient; rather it is in the way in which emotional presence is registered by both participants, requiring a working through, which at times can be not only difficult but dangerous. Such efforts involve a theory which enables the lens to understanding, an effective methodology which guides intervention. The book also calls for the art of the analyst to construct with patients meanings which heal, and possess the heart to persist in commitment despite the odds. _Emotional Presence in Psychoanalysis_ is about patients who suffer, struggle, resist and prevail. It offers distinctive, transparently told accounts of analysts who engage with patients, navigating through states of confusion, hatred and more controversial feelings of love. Emotional Presence in Psychoanalysis features highly compelling material written in an accessible and easily understood style. It will be a valuable resource for psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists, psychologists and clinical social workers as well as teachers, trainers and students seeking to understand the power and potential of the analytic process and the resistances to it. (shrink)

_Abstract_: In this paper, I will examine the Goldstein-Cassirer approach to neuropathology to determine its current potential for yielding valuable insights. To this end, I will reconstruct the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of such a standpoint in the first four sections. What will emerge is that it entails a definition of pathology as the loss of balance in the adaption of human beings to the environment, leading to a lack of proclivity to categorical behaviour and symbolic performances. Furthermore, we will (...) see that there are behavioural alterations which are not related to the locus of lesions. In the fifth section, I will compare and contrast the holistic stances with current research in neuropsychology. The sixth section is dedicated to conclusive remarks. _Keywords_: Psychopathology; Neuropathology; Ernst Cassirer; Kurt Goldstein; Holism _ La mente ordinatrice. La concezione di Goldstein e Cassirer della neuropatologia e la sua rilevanza oggi _ _Riassunto_: In questo articolo intendo analizzare l’approccio Goldstein-Cassirer alla neuropatologia per comprendere se esso può rivelarsi ancora utile alla luce delle ricerche attuali. A tal fine, ne ricostruirò le basi filosofiche e teoriche nei primi tre paragrafi. Scopriremo che esso implica una definizione di patologia come perdita di equilibrio nell’adattamento degli esseri umani all’ambiente, a seguito della quale viene a mancare la naturale tendenza verso il “comportamento categoriale” e le prestazioni simboliche. Vedremo, inoltre, che vi sono alterazioni del comportamento non collegabili al sito delle lesioni. Nel quinto paragrafo, metterò a confronto le istanze olistiche con le ricerche contemporanee nel campo della neuropsicologia. Il sesto paragrafo contiene le considerazioni conclusive. _Parole chiave_: Psicopatologia; Neuropatologia; Ernst Cassirer; Kurt Goldstein; Olismo. (shrink)