Charles Taylor’s conception of the relationship between democracy and social creativity developed through a critical synthesis of various traditions, including the Romantic Movement and liberal political philosophy. However, it is argued that Taylor’s understanding of the implications of religion and revolution significantly differentiates his standpoint from that of pragmatism and theories of democratic creativity. Taylor’s defence of religious transcendence is shown to give rise to tensions with the latter perspective. The theorists of democratic creativity suggest that democracy originates in the (...) rupturing of religious significations and their closure of meaning. Taylor essentially inverts these arguments and perceives that the loss of transcendence may lead to a closed world structure. Taylor claims that the dilemmas of the modern immanent frame were prefigured in the French Revolution’s inability to generate an institutional form consistent with its understanding of democracy and that social creativity should be qualified in light of this historical experience. (shrink)

This paper does not present an advocacy of a passive education as opposed to an active education nor does it propose that passive education is in any way ‘better’ or more important than active education. Through readings of Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida and B.S. Johnson, and gentle critiques of Jacques Rancière and John Dewey, passive education is instead described and outlined as an education which occurs whether we attempt it or not. As such, the object of critique for this essay (...) are forms of educational thought which, through fate or design, exclude the passive dimension, either within or outside of formal educational settings. An underlying component of this argument is therefore also that education does occur outside of formal educational settings and that, contra Gert Biesta and his critique of ‘learnification’, we may gain rather than lose something by attending to it as education. (shrink)

The relationship between adults and children in liberal democracies is based on two flawed assumptions that are widespread: first, that childhood is an impediment, a passing phase of impaired maturity; and second, that children benefit from the proliferation of rights ascribed to them. Social institutions, and particularly the education system, are correspondingly misconstrued. This article focuses on the combined effect of vulnerability and autonomy as they construct contemporary childhood. I conclude that adults’ obligations rather than children’s rights are the appropriate (...) social, political and educational basis for adult society’s relations with children. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the problems of cultivating a critical attitude in pedagogy given problems with accounts grounded in critical social theory, rational liberalism and pragmatic esthetic theory. I offer instead an alternative account of criticism for education in open, pluralistic, liberal, democratic societies called 'pedagogy of difference' that is grounded in the diversity liberalism of Isaiah Berlin and the dialogical philosophy of Martin Buber. In our current condition in which there is no agreement as to the proper criteria (...) for assessing attitudes and actions, for a critical attitude to gain a foothold one must learn to evaluate proposed beliefs and behaviour-based standards within a particular tradition as well as those drawn from another viewpoint. To know oneself, one must engage others who are different. But to engage others in a meaningful way one must be immersed in a tradition to which one is heir or with which one chooses to affiliate. (shrink)

At the turn of the Millennium, the issue of education, especially higher education, its role in state formation and impact on the life of society acquired particular relevance and became a subject of research of not only teachers and historians but also economists, political analysts, psychologists, social scientists and, above all, philosophers (which gave rise to a variety of models and trends in the philosophy of education). In the meantime, there is some lack of fundamental integrative studies into comprehensive educational-managerial (...) and socio-historical, socio-economic and state-political experiences of some developed countries in the implementation of these philosophical and educational paradigms, trends, models and reforming/modernization concepts of higher education and science, to be examined with consideration for similar challenges faced by education and science in Ukraine. Nearly every developed country has wide experience in building up a system of higher education. Results of reviewing such experience may contribute to the development and enrichment of the domestic educational system, afford an opportunity to avoid repeating mistakes and offer new approaches to solving a range of problems in this field. Based on the above, we also believe that it is impossible to pretend to develop a strategy for educational and scientific modernization reforms that deal with challenges of educational and scientific institution of society in management of scientific and educational space (which applies to both a social component of the philosophy of education and the field of educational management) without analyzing the existing models, schools, trends and their classification in the modern philosophy of education. (shrink)

This paper sets out to reimagine education through a cultural perspective and explores education as a performative practice that establishes certain borders of ‘public’ belonging. Wide-spread debates about the public dimension of schools and universities have focused on how economic rationales need to be replaced with alternative visions of education. This paper seeks to contribute to this revisioning of the public in education by reclaiming education as a specifically cultural endeavour, one tied to practices that are at once both performative (...) and aesthetic. To this end, I draw on theoretical notions of publicity that highlight its performative character. I then offer a reading of a socially engaged art project in order to suggest ways in which this performative character of publicity can be seen to be educational. This paper argues that education itself emerges through various cultural enactments that delineate the contours of who counts as a public and who does not. (shrink)

This paper reconsiders the meaning of political action by way of a dialogue between Dewey, Thoreau, and Cavell. These philosophers demonstrate possibilities of political engagement and participation. Especially in response to the psychological and emotional dimensions of political crisis today, I shall claim that American philosophy can demonstrate something beyond problem-solving as conventionally understood in politics and that it has the potential to re-place philosophy in such a manner that politics itself is changed. First, I shall draw a contrast between (...) the ways of political action demonstrated respectively by Dewey and Thoreau. Some points of divergence are revealed within American philosophy. I shall then explore the partially different sense of political action implied by Cavell’s ordinary language philosophy, identifying this as the politics of acknowledgment. Finally, I shall propose the idea of challenging inclusion as an alternative political education for human transformation, taking this as a key to changing politics. (shrink)

Cette étude vise à trouver comment les futurs enseignants développent la capacité de réflexion par l’auto-évaluation sur leurs portfolios. Bien que le but était d’aider les enseignants en première année de formation à évaluer leurs progrès vers la réalisation des compétences provinciales, plusieurs d’entre eux ont attiré l’attention des chercheurs sur les liens entre leurs artéfacts universitaires et leurs profils personnels. Ce développement a conduit les chercheurs à affiner la finalité du portfolio pour soutenir l’émergence d’une identité professionnelle et au (...) développement des structures pour soutenir cette forme de connaissance de soi. (shrink)

We identify a normative paradox of responsible management education. Business educators aim to promote social values and develop ethical habits and socially responsible mindsets through education, but they attempt to do so with theories that have normative underpinnings and create actual normative effects that counteract their intentions. We identify a limited conceptualization of freedom in economic theorizing as a cause of the paradox. Economic theory emphasizes individual freedom and understands this as the freedom to choose from available options. However, conceptualizing (...) individuals as profit-maximizing actors neglects their freedom to reflect on the purposes and goals of their actions. We build on the work of pragmatist philosopher John Dewey, who distinguishes between habitualized and creative problem-solving behaviors, conceptualizes knowledge construction as a process of interdependent scientific social inquiry, and understands actors as having the freedom to determine what kind of people they wish to be. We apply pragmatist theory to business education and suggest equipping students with a plurality of theories, supplementing neoclassical economics with other economic perspectives and views from other disciplines on economic behavior. Moreover, we suggest putting students into learning situations that require practical problem solution through interdependent social inquiry, encouraging ethical reflection. In doing so, we contribute by linking the problematic conceptions of freedom identified in economic theorizing to the debate on responsible management education. We conceptualize a pragmatist approach to management education that explicitly re-integrates the freedom to discursively reflect on the individual and societal purpose of business activity and thereby makes existing tools and pedagogies useful for bringing potential freedom back into business. (shrink)

This paper presents its author's famous distinction between globalization, as the process or vehicle by which ideas, habits and worldviews travel from one culture to another and are transformed in the process, and mundialization, as the taking in of the outside world into our own lifeworlds, a process by which the ideas and customs of other cultures are transported into our homeworlds. In this process, what was once strange and unfamiliar is transformed into something comfortable and familiar. This is the (...) process that is generally known as cultural assimilation, and by virtue of which the boundaries of our individual homeworlds become constantly widened. Examining this phenomenon, which he calls the 'mundialization of home', leads the author to sketch the main features of a possible transcultural moral world. (shrink)

Some have denied that humility is a virtue in teaching, and others have found the idea problematic especially as concerns the teacher’s authority and the matter of self-esteem. These difficulties have encouraged the emergence of narrow approaches to teaching, or have spawned simplistic solutions which confuse humility with outright scepticism. This discussion links humility with two chief ideals, both requiring careful consideration: deference to reason and evidence and respect for the student’s interpretation; and it suggests a connection with the Socratic (...) conception of wisdom, itself often misunderstood. Some tentative suggestions emerge with respect to humility in the practice of teaching. (shrink)

Morwenna Griffiths; The Teaching of Skills and the Skills of Teaching: a reply to Robin Barrow, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 21, Issue 2, 30 May 2.

Koopman’s book revolves around the notion of transition, which he proposes is one of the central ideas of the pragmatist tradition but one which had not previously been fully articulated yet nevertheless shapes the pragmatist attitude in philosophy. Transition, according to Koopman, denotes “those temporal structures and historical shapes in virtue of which we get from here to there”. One of the consequences of transitionalism is the understanding of critique and inquiry as historical pro...