This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction: Education and Controversy Jung on Education and Bloodsucking Ghosts The Educated Soul and Nature: Robert Romanyshyn and Jerome Bernstein Post‐Jungians in the Classroom Jungian Educational Practice in the University Jungian Education in Schools Healing Fiction as Classroom Practice: Visionary and Psychological Reading of Mansfield Park by Jane Austen References.

"Cheng" is a key term in Chinese culture. At the same time, it has been widely viewed as an "elusive," even "the most unintelligible term" by both Chinese and Western scholars, because of its various, sometimes even contradictory usages and definitions. This dissertation points out that cheng possesses a core meaning--consistency. It is shared by all the usages and definitions, and legitimizes their validity as the members of the cheng family. ;The idea of cheng evolves mainly through two traditions, the (...) traditions of influence and of reality. The first one emphasizes the impact of cheng on other people. It claims that cheng is the ultimate source from which comes a series of positive consequences. The second one treats cheng as essential attribute, or reality of a thing. It can explain why a thing exists as itself. Between the two traditions, cheng/influence is more prominent and complicated. ;The tradition of influence in turn divides into two sub-traditions, the sub-traditions of transformation and of change. One stresses that the sage with perfect cheng will effortlessly enlighten people, necessarily draw them to follow him. The goal of social transformation will be automatically realized in the above two-way process. The other emphasizes that cheng in a person's heart/mind can be made actively radiate out, impact on other people, and stimulate, inspire, and persuade them to do what the person treasures and wishes. The first one characterizes cheng in mainstream Confucianism, while the second is often found in various philosophers out of the mainstream. ;The work of Song Confucians signifies the summit of the evolution of the idea of cheng. They construct a system, with the notion of heaven, or the heavenly way as its foundation, and that of the transformation as its framework. In modern times, due to both theoretical rejections and practical challenges, the notion of heaven is decisively damaged. This results in the collapse of the system. The present task is not to rebuild the precious parts of the cheng tradition on the discredited heaven, but to rearrange them around the original core meaning. (shrink)

Maker education mainly involves “hands-on” as the core concept and combines various educational theories to redefine interactions between learners and teachers in a learning environment. Identification of meaningful “hands-on” behaviors is crucial to evaluate students’ learning performance, although an instructor’s observation of every student is not feasible. However, such observation is possible with the aid of the artificial intelligence image processing technique; the AI learning behavior recognition system can serve as the second eyes of teachers, thus accounting for (...) individual differences. However, in previous studies, learning behavior recognition was applied to the traditional or static classroom. A behavior recognition system for identifying “hands-on” actions in the learning context has still not been developed. Therefore, this study designed a human posture evaluation system, obtained human articulation node information from learning field images, and built a learning behavior recognition model suitable for maker education based on the AI convolutional neural network. A learning behavior model was defined, along with a number of student behavior indexes. Subsequently, the effectiveness of the model and behavior indexes was verified through practical learning activities. The model evaluation results indicated that the proposed model achieved a training accuracy of 0.99 and a model accuracy of 0.83. Thus, the model can be applied to dynamic maker activity learning environments. (shrink)

Digitized information and network have made an enormous impact on the music and movie industries. Internet piracy is popular and has greatly threatened the companies in these industries. This study tests Hunt-Vitell’s ethical decision model and attempts to understand why and how people share unauthorized music files with others in the peer-to-peer (P2P) network. The norm of anti-piracy, the ideology of free software, the norm of reciprocity, and the ideology of consumer rights are proposed as four deontological norms related (...) to using P2P systems. The model is tested using a scenario survey with four alternatives; the results indicate that the deontological norm of anti-piracy is not a main factor in affecting P2P users’ ethical considerations regarding sharing files with others. This finding suggests that to protect their property rights, record companies should try to realize the consumer benefits brought via new digital and network technology, instead of simply declaring their intellectual property and resisting the innovations resulting from new technologies. (shrink)

Aims and hypothesesIn an environment of absolute silence, researchers have found many of their participants to perceive phantom sounds. With this between-subject experiment, we aimed to elaborate on these research findings, and specifically investigated whether–in line with the fear-avoidance model of tinnitus perception and reactivity–fear or level of perceived threat influences the incidence and perceptual qualities of phantom sound percepts in an anechoic room. We investigated the potential role of individual differences in anxiety, negative affect, noise sensitivity and subclinical hearing (...) loss. We hypothesized that participants who experience a higher level of threat would direct their attention more to the auditory system, leading to the perception of tinnitus-like sounds, which would otherwise be subaudible, and that under conditions of increased threat, narrowing of attention would lead to perceptual distortions.MethodsIn total, N = 78 normal-hearing volunteers participated in this study. In general, the study sample consisted of young, mostly female, university students. Their hearing was evaluated using gold-standard pure tone audiometry and a speech-in-noise self-test, which is a sensitive screening test to identify subclinical hearing loss. Prior to a four-minute stay in an anechoic room, we randomized participants block design-wise in a threat and no-threat condition. Participants in the threat condition were deceived about their hearing and were led to believe that staying in the room would potentially harm their hearing temporarily. Participants were asked whether they perceived sounds during their stay in the room and rated the perceptual qualities of sound percepts. They were also asked to fill-out standardized questionnaires measuring anxiety, affect and noise sensitivity. The internal consistency of the questionnaires used was verified in our study sample and ranged between α = 0.61 and α = 0.90.ResultsIn line with incidence rates reported in the literature, 74% of our participants reported having heard tinnitus-like sounds in the anechoic room. Speech-in-noise identification ability was comparable for both groups of participants. The experimental manipulation of threat was proven to be effective, as indicated by significantly higher scores on a Threat Manipulation Checklist among participants in the threat condition as compared to those in the no-threat condition. Nevertheless, participants in the threat condition were as likely to report tinnitus percepts as participants in the no-threat condition, and tinnitus percepts were not rated as being louder or more unpleasant as a function of level of threat. For participants who did experience tinnitus percepts, a higher level of threat was associated with a higher degree of experienced unpleasantness. These associations were absent in those who did not experience tinnitus. Higher negative affect was only slightly associated with higher ratings of tinnitus unpleasantness.ConclusionWhereas our threat manipulation was successful in elevating the level of fear, it did not contribute to a higher percentage of participants perceiving tinnitus-like sounds in the threat condition. However, higher levels of perceived threat were related to a higher degree of perceived tinnitus unpleasantness. The findings of our study are drawn from a rather homogenous participant pool in terms of age, gender, and educational background, challenging conclusions that are applicable for the general population. Participants generally obtained normophoric scores on independent variables of interest: they were low anxious, low noise-sensitive, and there was little evidence for the presence of subclinical hearing loss. Possibly, there was insufficient variation in scores to find effects. (shrink)

Philosophy is an important relation with education as it gives theoretical ground for its development. Principles and values of life learnt through education and experience gives birth to philosophy. Philosophy lays the foundation of leading one’s life based on principles. Education is the source of learning and philosophy it’s applications in human life. While discussing about the real nature of philosophy in present time, we should have a single criteria as if it to be acceptable to all (...) reasonable people of the world. In defining Positive Philosophy it may be said, The Positive Philosophy is an attempt to achieve an intellectual detachment from all philosophical systems, and not to solve specific philosophical problems, but to become sensitively aware of what it is we do when we philosophize. It is an attitude as well as a methodology for both academician and common person. It make education process positive so that it can make something useful for societal growth and in working process it also make the person sensitive about the societal problems and make them ready to be a part of social change. I am not negating something, here “positive” word is not an antonym but it is an adjective. Where there are merely religious, metaphysical and passive ideologies in our education system, we are not able to have a good and creative education. Positive Philosophy is working on that issues which have some worth for human. It is a process to do something creative. We are using innovative method. An innovator could be rebellion because he breaks the established method, norms and redefines the layer of thought. Innovation not simply implies questioning, reshaping, restricting but also developing through transformation. A teacher can play an important role in promoting this discussion because a teacher has the capacity to influence students with their thoughts and personality and engages them to creative activities. Innovativeness needs to be included in the curriculum. Once one becomes habitual to this attitude he/she will be ready to do some positive or creative. In this paper it is an attempt being made to apply positive philosophy though innovative method in our present education system. -/- . (shrink)

In this paper we explore the concept of dialogicity, taking a workshop offered to in-service indigenous teachers as a reference. This concept has been explored for decades in the academic literature. In recent years, it has gained greater importance, as official curricula in several countries have emphasized the importance of developing education that is more centered on the needs of learners. Although the general guidelines of these curricula are defined, the exercise of dialogue in classrooms involves the challenge of (...) balancing the formal requirements of the various fields of knowledge with the students' own interests. Thus, in most cases, researchers examine dialogues in the classroom, verifying the extent to which teachers allow students to express themselves on issues specific to school knowledge. In this sense, it is still not the students’ existential questions that prevail, since the most valued results of the dialogues are already defined in advance. Such results will be related to the domain of school contents. Would it be possible to approach formal education in other ways? Would it be possible to prioritize questions raised by students? These are present challenges for educators who propose to approach teaching from a socially centered perspective. The workshop described in this paper constitutes an example of dialogicity exercised from an existential questioning formulated by the participating teachers. Such questioning was related to the creation of a numbering system that would suit their mother tongue. In that context, it can be inferred that there has been progress in the sense of understanding school practice as a possibility of broadening perceptions of the world through serious consideration of the needs formulated by the learners. (shrink)

In most cases, discussions on the right to education focus on the way access to education can be warranted for all and which aims should be pursued in rather abstract terms. This article approaches the topic starting from the case of Roma people. The particularity of their living circumstances raises the question what it is that we are aiming at when trying to realize a universal right to education for them. After confronting their social practices (...) with the education system, three suggestions are made how to make sense of a right to education. First, the need for a holistic approach towards human rights is expressed. Second, the right to education is thought of in terms of a right to qualification. Finally, an open dialogue of social practices is proposed, as a fixed idea of what the school should look like is not desirable in a multicultural society. (shrink)

Pope Francis calls for a “synodal church”. Synodality is not just a way of participating in decisions, but a way of being in community. Today we face different difficulties for the synodal practice, arising from the Christian tradition itself and from the way we live under a radically individualistic economic system and little used to social and community ties. However, such articulation leads to a catastrophic social and climate crisis and favors fascist alternatives. Faced with this, an (...) educational process is needed for a new way of living together, in social friendship. Such learning, in the conception that derives from Pope Francis' documents, is based on the process of discernment that takes place in the community. It will only be possible to prepare a new world, with justice and peace, if at the same time we form different men and women. It is not a matter of a purely intellectual formation, in the transmission of truths, but in the modification of images of humanity and models of desire, today colonized by mercantile logic. Discernment as an educational process is constant, like a journey, and stems from the decision to incarnate oneself to reality, demanding a social place for all today's outcasts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 12.2 (2004) 102-125 [Access article in PDF] Towards an Ecology of Music Education June Boyce-Tillman King Alfred's College, England Western culture has developed a concept of knowledge as divided into discrete categories, which are reflected in the disconnected subjects of our school curricula and the titles of our university faculties. However, music should be intimately bound up with the wider curriculum, particularly (...) in the areas of personal, social, cultural, moral, and spiritual education. From an examination of the values that are implicit in the musical traditions that dominate music education in Western culture, in this paper I will set out some pointers towards a more ecological understanding of music education, drawing on experiences I have had with music and music education in a variety of settings. I will examine how musicology has concentrated only on certain aspects of the musical experience, ignoring areas such as expressive character, value systems, and spirituality, which are the areas that link the musical experience to the fabric of life as lived beyond the confines of the classroom and academe. This paper seeks to re-establish a notion of connectedness both within the musical experience and also beyond it and through it to other areas of knowledge and understanding. For this I have adopted the term "ecology." To explicate this notion of ecology, I have developed a model which incorporates the values that are both usually associated with Western culture and are subjugated by it, drawing on the experience of music itself. [End Page 102] Ways of Knowing The first of these models deals with the social construction of knowledge. Stan Gooch defines two systems of thought embodied in various cultures in the world. He identifies the favored characteristics of one system (Type A) as activity leading to products; objectivity; impersonal logic; thinking and thought; detachment; and discrete categories of knowledge that are based on proof and scientific evidence. The other system (Type B) favors being; subjectivity; personal feeling; emotion; magic; involvement; associative ways of knowing; and belief and non-causal knowledge.1Gooch suggests that the Western world has chosen to value the first of these systems and neglect the other. This is done by a process of devaluation that can be carried out in various ways. In the Western media this devaluation can be manifested as public ridicule or by simply ignoring those events that reflect Type B values. Community-building activities based on associative ways of knowing and acknowledgement of people's feelings and sensibilities are not reported, while a considerable amount of space is given to the essentially dehumanizing practices of warfare and the dissociative practices of violence and crime. For example, reports and articles on holistic, associative approaches to health based on belief systems that defy rational explanation often end with throw-away comments like "If you believe that, then you will believe anything!" Public figures sometimes indulge in similar practices in their pronouncements by initiating policies to outlaw health practices that cannot be supported by scientific methodologies and appealing to the grounds of public safety. People who wish to embrace the values of Type B can easily be pathologized or criminalized as the dominant culture seeks to reinforce the validity of its Type A values. Academic, medical, psychological, and even sociological research concentrates on so-called objective methodologies associated with scientific ways of knowing and the use of numbers in some shape or form. Qualitative methodologies that collect people's stories are often regarded with suspicion because of the alleged subjectivity of the approach.So the values of Type B have become hidden or repressed by Western culture. I have therefore called the ways of knowing that characterize Type B "subjugated ways of knowing,"2 following the work of Michel Foucault and his notion of subjugated knowledges.3 This paper will concentrate on how the ideas of the subjugated ways of knowing can be used to understand where we are in music education, drawing on my experience in the UK. I shall look at ways of bringing the two ways of knowing-Type A and... (shrink)

Starting from the observation that small children can count more objects than numbers—a phenomenon that I am calling the “lifeworld dependency of cognition”—and an analysis of finger calculation, the paper shows how learning can be explained as the development of cognitive systems. Parts of those systems are not only an individual’s different forms of knowledge and cognitive abilities, but also other people, things, and signs. The paper argues that cognitive systems are first of all semiotic systems since they (...) are dependent on signs and representations as mediators. The two main questions discussed here are how the external world constrains and promotes the development of cognitive abilities, and how we can move from cognitive abilities that are necessarily connected with concrete situations to abstract knowledge. (shrink)

The article considers modern tendencies prevailing in the higher education system while training technical specialists nowadays. According to the authors, excluding the humanitarian courses from curriculum results in the complete dissolution of subjectivity in the impersonal world, which is deprived of “living” knowledge, that is, definite knowledge of a definite person. The application of such an approach is illustrated by the actor–network theory (ANT). While studying several works by ANT founders, it turned out to be clear that (...) such an approach eliminates any differences between natural and humanitarian, engineering, and philosophical knowledge. As a result, the net emerges consisting of numerous actants and which requires from every participant his “building‐in” a model with the functions being delegated to him in advance. The article concludes that an “alive” component is disappearing from the higher education nowadays when the main stress is being made on the knowledge acquired a priori, not a posteriori. (shrink)

ABSTRACTSome people might argue that there are already too many different documents, guidelines, and regulations in bioethics. Some overlap with one another, some are advisory and lack legal force, others are legally binding in countries, and still others are directed at narrow topics within bioethics, such as HIV/AIDS and human genetics. As the latest document to enter the fray, the UNESCO Declaration has the widest scope of any previous document. It embraces not only research involving human beings, but addresses (...) broader concerns in medicine and healthcare. The UNESCO draft declaration has some minor weaknesses, but on the whole, the strengths outweigh the weaknesses. One weakness is that some items in the draft are stated in a way that is too restrictive, thereby appearing to rule out legitimate activities. A strength of the Declaration is that it is relatively brief, yet at the same time contains sufficient detail to make it something more than a rehearsal of mere pieties. As the most recent of the numerous bioethics and human rights documents, the UNESCO draft draws on many of the earlier documents and also includes some of the most recent thinking about ethical norms and obligations. Perhaps its greatest strength lies not in details of the principles or their implementation, but rather in its stature as an international declaration issued by a United Nations organization. (shrink)

Mingzu University is a common name for educational institutions for ethnic minorities established in China in 1950. By establishing such kind of higher education institutions, PR China as a state pursued several goals. In one hand, they started the opportunity for minor ethnic groups` representatives enter a higher education institution and thereby enlist their support for the state government. In the other hand, China saves the originality and the identity of small nationalities` cultures at the state level by (...) studying and promoting it. Today such educational institutions also serve to train leading cadres from ethnic minorities’ representatives, loyal to the state system and the political and social course of modern China as they are brought up in the spirit of modern Chinese social and pedagogical guidelines. The article aims to represent different social functions of Minzu Universities as a social phenomena common for China as well as cultural and social strategy of the PR China state in the field of ethnic minorities, an important part of which is implemented through them. Using the research methods typical for scientific studies of this kind the article proves the idea that Mingzu Universities in China play a great not only the educational, but also social role in the country to form an ideologically homogeneous society and respect for human rights in the country. (shrink)

At a time of pedagogical exhaustion, this article wants to imagine ways to redeem education, to spare education from its unaccomplished promises, reinvent and renew its vows, and make it somehow work towards possible futures. But how can this be done when there is no longer the old inherited faith in a direction of history with an end, no ‘telos’ nor faith that educational institutions will inevitably move societies forwards? Is there any ‘after’ if the arrow of (...) history points in no direction? What can we collectively expect from education if we have no assurance that schooling can lead to anything better than what we are now, or that caring for truth will make people freer? In place of the modernist idea of progress, the alternative narrative that is being offered to school systems and teachers is what I will describe as the ‘innovation paradigm’. Within this framework what we are, what we have, and what is in place are presented as declining, inadequate, and unsatisfactory. This narrative has become so powerful that from a ‘pedagogical popular culture’ perspective it has turned into the mainstream way of thinking about our educational institutions, practices, and hopes. Would it not, however, be more pedagogically productive to speak of ‘variation’ instead of ‘innovation’? Might this be the potential path for redeeming education after progress? [Editorial note: this paper forms part of the suite of papers entitled ‘Education After Progress’.]. (shrink)

The focus of this study is to explore the impact of transformation from living as a community and perceiving cooperation as a responsibility to meet each other’s needs to individualized society of the modern life due to the capitalist market system on religious obligations with economic implications through emerging institution in the modern period. This study will first analyze how the proxy-embeddedness has led to a transformation in the society from the perspective of Islamic economics under four (...) categories: (1) the weakening of Muslims’ relations with their relatives and neighbours; (2) Equalization of worship for different purposes on a common denominator; (3) Lack of social awareness due to deprivation of the experience of performing worship personally; and (4) the prioritization of those capable of being productive over unproductive people in terms of being beneficiaries of zakat or other types of benefits. Worships such as zakāt and sacrifice are among the acts of worshipping that enable wealthy Muslims to help those in need financially. Although the transfer of material resources to the needy people through modern institutions ensures the fulfilment of worship, through which principles and objectives this transfer is carried out are also important. Significant transformations are observed in the way these worships are performed compared to the pre-modern period, as institutions that carry out zakāt and sacrificial meat collection and distribution activities in line with capitalist principles such as low transaction costs and efficiency. First, it is expected from a Muslim to be aware of the social environment he/she is in, be aware of the needy, and maintain social relations within this awareness. All kinds of charity and financial aid at the level of individual relations, especially zakāt and sacrifice, ensure the continuation of this awareness. If Muslims perform these worships and charity activities through institutions, the awareness of one’s environment will weaken. A second transformation is to make these worships indistinguishable from each other by equating them to the common denominator of paying money. This situation leads to the equalization of worship at the material level and causes the differences to be invisible for Muslims who perform the worship. A third transformation is that the realization of worship by institutions through the proxy system causes Muslims to be deprived of the experience of performing worship individually. While these prayers are performed through institutions in an efficient and low-cost way, the only thing expected from Muslims is to make the necessary payment through the bank. In this case, the spiritual contributions expected to be realized during the fulfilment of the worship decrease. Finally, we see that some institutions utilize capitalist principles and goals to decide who should receive financial aid. For this reason, people who can become a productive factor due to the help they receive are prioritized over others. There is a rational choice behind this decision mechanism: It is aimed to reduce the number of needy people in society by transforming zakat recipients into zakāt payers. On the other hand, Islamic sources do not consider such a priority among those who deserve to receive zakāt. Moreover, this situation will lead to the permanent postponement of people who are not included as a productive factor in the capitalist system but in need. In the second part of the study, an analysis of the agency (vekalet) system, which allows individuals to transfer some of their responsibilities to private institutions to spend time more efficiently, is conducted through the example of nursing houses. Another example of the fulfilment of zakat and sacrifice through the proxies given to institutions is that Muslims fulfil their responsibilities towards their relatives through institutions such as nursing houses. The reason for such a need arises from the fact that people, who take place as human capital in the capitalist system, are required to spend their time to improve themselves, get new education and gain more experience, instead of spending their time taking care of their relatives so that the production process can continue to grow. Although this type of service contract is formally valid in terms of Islamic law when evaluated in terms of the bond that Islamic morality envisages to be established between Muslims and their relatives and the protection of this bond, institutions such as nursing houses can lead to the commodification of family ties due to the transfer of responsibilities to relatives in return for a service fee. (shrink)

Ethical research practice requires inclusionary approaches that enable people to contribute as fully as possible. Not enough is yet known about the impacts of dementia on daily life, however, people with dementia may find inclusion in research challenging, as the ‘cognitive load’ required may be overwhelming. When responding is difficult, others may contribute and the voice of people with dementia may be diminished. In this paper, the method of walking interviews is reflected on following a study that (...) examined the acceptability and usefulness of Global Positions Systems (GPS). Attention is drawn to an observation of the contributions people with dementia made whilst out walking with the researchers. When out walking, people with dementia used the environment as sensory prompts to start conversations, and these discussions shaped research data, and enabled people with dementia to raise concerns about the impacts of dementia, their futures and what they feared for themselves and their families. The challenges that people with dementia faced in negotiating everyday practices were visible. The person with dementia showed the researcher around their neighbourhood, and this significantly changed the interview dynamic and positioned people with dementia as leading the interaction. (shrink)

The number of people with dementia is increasing worldwide. At the same time, family and professional caregivers’ resources are limited. A promising approach to relieve these carers’ burden and assist people with dementia is assistive technology. In order to be useful and accepted, such technologies need to respect the values and needs of their intended users. We applied the value sensitive design approach to identify values and needs of patients with dementia and family and professional caregivers in respect (...) to assistive technologies to assist people with dementia in institutionalized care. Based on semi-structured interviews of residents/patients with cognitive impairment, relatives, and healthcare professionals (10 each), we identified 44 values summarized by 18 core values. From these values, we created a values’ network to demonstrate the interplay between the values. The core of this network was caring and empathy as most strongly interacting value. Furthermore, we found 36 needs for assistance belonging to the four action fields of activity, care, management/administration, and nursing. Based on these values and needs for assistance, we created possible use cases for assistive technologies in each of the identified four action fields. All these use cases already are technologically feasible today but are not currently being used in healthcare facilities. This underlines the need for development of value-based technologies to ensure not only technological feasibility but also acceptance and implementation of assistive technologies. Our results help balance conflicting values and provide concrete suggestions for how engineers and designers can incorporate values into assistive technologies. (shrink)

Current interdisciplinary research points to a connection between the emotional relationship with nature and factors resulting from modern lifestyles, such as insufficient exercise and time spent in nature, and excessive use of information and communication technologies. These factors are often associated with the healthy development of school-age children. In the literature, ‘connectedness to nature’ is usually described as a term that measures the emotional and positive relationship between people and nature. The research was conducted on a sample of (...) respondents consisting of primary school pupils, their parents and teachers in primary schools in Croatia and Slovenia (N=1345). In the research, the adapted scale of the Connectedness to Nature Index (Chang and Monroe, 2012) was used as a measurement tool. It was found that connection with nature is rated with high scores, but also that there is no statistically significant correlation of the rating of connectedness to nature among pupils, parents and teachers in Croatia, but only among Slovenian respondents. The implications of the research results are reflected in the consideration of this topic for further research in the field of education. (shrink)

In Ethiopia, the history of the use of modern philosophical categories in education is short. This is because the country’s modern education itself is barely 100 years old. What is not so short, however, is the history of the use of indigenous metaphysics in temehert (traditional education), which goes back as far as the introduction of Christianity to Ethiopia—to the fourth century A.D. Since its inception, education has had a close, if ambivalent, relationship with different philosophical (...) tenets, with the advocates of each tenet trying to formulate educational philosophy around its own unique metaphysical narrative. While some narratives arose from indigenous legends, others were imported (and domesticated in some cases) from abroad. The recent tendency of educational philosophy in Ethiopia has a slightly ‘(post)modernist’ philosophical flavor to it, even though it might not be self-consciously postmodernist in nature. In this essay, I intend to show how a deliberate, or unwitting, de-link with indigenous metaphysics could affect the trajectory, and also the success, of the educational system in Ethiopia. After a brief paradigmatic characterization of two metaphysical categories and their underlying narratives, I critically unravel the ethno-federalist metaphysics of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). I focus on the ethno-federalist system because it is an incumbent philosophy. After discussing a nascent remedy proposed by Maimire Mennasemay, viz., the notion of ‘nostalgic memory,’ best known as tezeta, I argue for the primacy of the notion of ‘covenant thinking,’ also known as qal-kidan, as a better alternative. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Why music? The Foundations of Music Education from Plato until Today by Øivind VarkøyDaniela BartelsØivind Varkøy, Warum Musik? Zur Begründung des Musikunterrichts von Platon bis heute [Why music? The Foundations of Music Education from Plato until Today], Stefan Gies, trans. with the assistance of Hanne Fossum (Innsbruck, Esslingen, Bern-Belp: Helbling, 2016)Øivind Varkøy's book Why music? was first published in Norway in 1993 and translated (...) into Swedish three years later. In 2016, a newly revised edition was published in German. This review refers to the German edition and a special focus will be on the third chapter, because Varkøy's convincing interpretation of Kant's theory of aesthetic judgement presents a counter narrative to other interpretations of this theory that have been in circulation in North America for quite some time.In the introduction, Varkøy explains that it is his intention to present a diverse array of reasons for teaching music. He also explains why (future) music teachers should reflect on these reasons and the possible values of their professional actions: "A clear stance on the value of one's own work will have a positive effect on one's professional identity and the psychological and physical well-being."1 In the first chapter, he takes the readers back to the world of "the old Greeks"—an [End Page 224] expression that is often used in Europe—and he specifically addresses the values Plato and Aristotle have ascribed to music. The chapter starts with the mythos about mousiké as a gift from the gods and Varkøy explains that this term used to stand for much more than music. It included diverse forms of art such as language, poetry, and dance which were seen as means that can express order and beauty as well as a realization of harmonia which "holds the world together."2 As far as philosophies of music education are concerned, both Plato and Aristotle stress that music education serves the character formation of young people and both are quite strict concerning the way music should be taught to the young. To give an example, Plato rejects that the aulos is used in schools, because it is a woodwind instrument that served as a means of intoxication in rituals. Plato's point was that it would make the youth soft and therefore unable to contribute to the establishment of a 'good' state system. Varkøy stresses that Plato did not differentiate between the aesthetic and the ethical dimension of music, since the term kalokagathia stands for both 'the beautiful' and 'the good.' It almost seems as if Varkøy had the North American debate between the so-called 'aesthetic' and 'praxial educators' in mind when he wrote this chapter, and it is a pity that he does not go into more detail concerning the terms 'the beautiful' and 'the good.' On the other hand, he gives a clear summary of the different functions Aristotle has ascribed to music. He emphasizes that Aristotle mentions the three functions of music as a source of well-being and enjoyment, as a means of character formation, and as an intellectual activity that can lead to a "higher level" of experience.3 In Aristotle's thinking, all of these functions are of value. Concerning the functions and values of music that are discussed, Varkøy abstains from passing his own judgment which leaves a welcome space for one's own thinking.In the second chapter, Varkøy focuses on the functions of music between the time of early Christianity and the time of Comenius. He puts forward an intriguing argument when he states that the Church Father Augustine, who saw the fact that people can enjoy music just for pleasure as a danger, has already pointed to the notion of music as a phenomenon with its own, intrinsic value. At the end of this chapter, Varkøy asks the readers to reflect on Comenius' distinction between "useful" knowledge and knowledge that serves "the way of making one's living."4 He returns to this distinction later on in his book.In the chapter "Progress and Reason," the focus is on... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to Anthony J. Palmer, “Music Education for the Twenty-First Century: A Philosophical View of the General Education Core”Ana Lcuía FregaI would like to discuss three themes related to Tony Palmer's paper: (1) my agreement with the content of his paper in general, (2) some remarks on elements of what he deals with, including notions about the concept or a vision of what music education should (...) be in the USA and in the rest of the world and an approach to training music teachers at university level in the USA and in the rest of the world, and (3) my personal conclusions.Music is a particular medium of expression, irreplaceable, not interchangeable with any other. It is also a natural medium of human communication. We do not think or propose that schools should create musicians, but that they should aid in the improvement of all humankind.1This quotation of mine allows me to introduce my general agreement with the main content of the first part of Palmer's paper. Neither of us argues against the importance of teaching music within the general system of education. We both promote this and work to make this a fact in our different parts of the world.We both view the tasks known as "music education" as a part of the teaching of the humanities as a way to maintain a certain level of civilization and of a culture; that is, to keep alive the rich tradition in each culture, to develop skills, to listen to, perform, and create music, and to become acquainted with the wealth of masterpieces.Also, as I have said,"I can only give what I have," and "a teacher does not teach what he/she knows but what he/she is."2 I agree with Palmer on the relevance and importance of the task of music educators. There should be a correlation between the school's mission and the quality of the training for prospective teachers for them. This is consistent with Palmer's thinking about the university task when training future music teachers.George Steiner articulated some of the difficulties, limitations, and new possibilities brought into university classrooms by the technology of the global village when he wrote:[Those artifacts] determine a new way to organize human knowledge and to connect contemporary research with previous books. All taxonomies are essentially [End Page 194] philosophical, any library... represents a formalized vision of how the world is structured, and what are the optimum views about both the human mind and the phenomenological whole.3He also adds, "We will not be able to avoid the illusion-and so it is when talking about Humanities-that knowledge is cumulative, that there is an improvement and an unavoidable teleology needed when expressing sentiments and ideas."4By introducing Steiner's ideas, I am opening a line of critical thinking about a kind of "universalization" of both Palmer's concept of whatmusiceducationmeans as well as whether and then how there should be a world-wide dissemination of the training model that he describes for music teachers. I have doubts about the underlying assumptions of these notions and their feasibility.The examples Palmer gives of listening would require an inordinate amount of time and effort. Although this may be a valuable expenditure of resources in some parts of the world, in other parts the focus would be better directed elsewhere. In some places many people do not complete their basic education, do not have access to good nutrition, and have not acquired basic language and communication skills. The big question is, "What should we really teach them?"My point here is that if Michael Murphy's model is indeed an inspiring framework, it may be useful for people belonging to a part of the so-called First World only. Palmer's work should be understood with that consideration in mind. Africa, Latin America, and the Arab world are certainly not looking for these kinds of skills from the music taught at the general level if there happens to be any music taught at all in schools.Multiculturalism is another significant issue in Palmer's paper. I understand the... (shrink)

Whilst social and political issues have an important role in the geography curriculum, the long-term erosion of the value and insularity of disciplinary knowledge in society and the curriculum has blurred the distinction between educational aims and political advocacy in classrooms. Increasingly, teachers, policymakers, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) instrumentalize the curriculum with respect to their political objectives, including climate change and social injustice. In taking an advocacy approach to pedagogy, they potentially undermine liberal educational objectives, including the development of autonomy (...) and subjectification. Drawing on recent work in philosophy of education (e.g. Biesta; Van Poeck, and Östman) as well as social realist approaches to knowledge, I make a case for teaching about social and political issues on liberal educational grounds. Geography plays a key role in the school curriculum by providing a space for exploring the human condition through the study of people in contrasting environments and cultural systems. Here, we examine how geography teachers can handle issues in a morally careful way and navigate a line between advocacy and educational aims. One key difference examined is the need to treat students as subjects in their own right and to help develop skills of moral enquiry. In practice this means encouraging an open-ended approach, exploring topics (and the values underpinning them) from a range of perspectives, developing sensitivity to difference, and showing tolerance for ideas of which one disapproves. For students to develop agency and moral independence, they must learn how to think about social and political issues rather than be told what to think. (shrink)

The great chain of being is an ontological conception in which all beings, from inanimate things to God, are ranked on a scale according to their perfectness. This hierarchical scheme, though widely known in the history of ideas, was systematically addressed by Arthur Lovejoy in 1936. The great chain of being as formulated by Lovejoy is composed of three main principles, whose roots can be found in Plato and Aristotle’s philosophies. These principles are “the principle of plenitude”, “the principle (...) of gradation” and “the principle of continuity.” The first principle, the principle of plenitude, was pointed out in Plato’s philosophy and the latter two, the principle of gradation and the principle of continuity, were addressed in Aristotle’s philosophy. According to Lovejoy, these three principles were systematically addressed in Plotinus’s philosophy and became an essential part of Neo-Platonic cosmology. Platon explains the abundance of beings with reference to the absolute goodness of the God in his famous book Timaios. Accordingly, God has absolute goodness and this attribution has given rise to an abundance of beings as goodness requires the existence of things. The other two principles, the principle of gradation and the principle of continuity, were forwarded by Aristotle and through his works affected Western thought. While the principle of gradation refers to the ranking of beings in a chain based on the criteria of their perfection, the principle of continuity is the natural consequence of that ranking in that all beings share at least a minimum level of similarity. Plotinus synthesized and systematized those three principles as an expression of ranked beings specific to emanation theory and added three hypostasis -One, Nous, and Soul- in addition to the natural world addressed in Aristotle’s works. Therefore, we see that beings were ranked from inanimate things to God in Plotinus’s works. This concept of hierarchical order of beings, the great chain of being, affected many cultures and philosophical ideas from Classical Islamic philosophy to the Western tradition. In this article, we confine our subject to only Western thought, including Medieval Christian theology and philosophy, the Renaissance period, and the Age of Enlightenment as well as a peculiar implication and interpretation of the great chain of being specific to modern times. In every period we will deal with just one thinker and their ideas to demonstrate the effect of the great chain of being on those thinkers’ philosophies and systems. In this context, we examined how Thomas Aquinas used the great chain of being to justify some theological and philosophical matters and tried to show how he utilized the principle of continuity effectively to explain the relationship between matter and soul. Marcilio Ficino, a Neo-Platonist philosopher of the Renaissance period, also used the great chain of being to explain the hierarchical order of beings and their ontological relationship to the perfect being, which is God, placing them in a rising line according to their closeness to God. On the other hand, when we come to the Age of Enlightenment we see that the great chain of being continues to be apparent in some philosophical works. One example is John Locke’s famous book An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Here Locke tries to make sense of the existence of many species of spirits with reference to the great chain of being, especially by using the principle of continuity. This attempt of justification shows us that the great chain of being, as an old philosophical and ontological concept, was still used even in the Enlightenment. Finally, it would be beneficial to address how the chain of being in question was presented and understood in modern times. Unlike the justification of some philosophical or theological subjects, in modern times the hierarchical structure of the great chain of being has been anachronistically read into the theory of evolution with reference to some medieval Muslim philosophers’ works. This approach, however, springs from the figural similarities between the great chain of being and the theory of evolution, although the contents of both theories are completely different. It would be accepted easily that similarities in figure do not necessitate similarities in content. In short, the great chain of being has been very effectively used in the history of philosophy to justify different subjects in different areas such as philosophy and theology. In this article, we address the usages of the chain in question and trace its effects specific to the Western tradition from the ancient period to modern times. (shrink)

Using the World Values Survey (WVS) as a background the paper discusses a tension between the general evaluative outlook of Swedish teacher students and the educational values established by The Swedish National Agency for Education (SNAE). According to the results from WVS, which maps evaluative differences between approximately 80 countries in the world, Sweden stands out as a country that rejects traditional values and embraces so called secular self-expression values. However, the values established by SNAE include both traditional (...) values, such as “sharing a common cultural heritage”, and secular self-expression values, such as “individual freedom and integrity”. Against this background we conducted a survey of 179 Swedish teacher students in order to investigate the relation between their evaluative outlook and the values they are supposed to convey to their pupils as established by SNAE. The result of the survey indicates that these students do not differ in any significant respect from the Swedish population in general as regards secular vs traditional evaluations. The fact that the traditional values emphasized by SNAE seem to be scarcely represented among the teacher students, makes questionable whether they will be present in their future teaching. On the assumptions that there are important educational values among the traditional as well as the secular self-expression ones, and that values are reproduced within an educational system, we argue that there is reason to take the imbalance in the evaluative outlook of the students seriously. (shrink)

In the intellectual confusion prevailing since the demise of Marxism and “marxism”, the attempt is made to define democracy as a matter of pure procedure, explicitly avoiding and condemning any reference to substantive objectives. It can easily be shown, however, that the idea of a purely procedural “democracy” is incoherent and self-contradictory. No legal system whatsoever and no government can exist in the absence of substantive conditions which cannot be left to chance or to the workings of the “market” (...) but must be posited as objectives of political activity. The confusion results from a deficient understanding of what makes a society and an empty idea of “freedom”. The objective of politics is not happiness, an affair to be left to the individuals, but it certainly is liberty understood as participation in the governance of the polity; it is also the pursuit of the common good, defined as the sum of the prerequisites and facilitations of individual autonomy depending on collective action, and as the realization of commonly agreed collective goals. (shrink)

Increasing attention to the issue of child labor has been reflected in codes of conduct that emerged in the past decade in particular. This paper examines the way in which multinationals, business associations, governmental and non-governmental organizations deal with child labor in their codes. With a standardized framework, it analyzes 55 codes drawn up by these different actors to influence firms’ external, societal behavior. The exploratory study helps to identify the main issues related to child labor and the use of (...) voluntary instruments such as codes of conduct. Apart from a specific indication of the topics covered by the code, especially minimum-age requirements, this also includes monitoring systems and monitoring parties. Most important to company codes are the sanctions imposed on business partners in case of non-compliance. Severe measures may be counterproductive as they do not change the underlying causes of child labor and can worsen the situation of the child workers by driving them to more hazardous work in the informal sector. This underlines the importance of a broad rather than a restrictive approach to child labor in codes of conduct. The paper discusses the implications of this study, offering suggestions for future research. (shrink)

How should history of education be written? To put the question is far more easier than to provide a concrete answer. In contemporary research, there continue to be pedagogistic complaints about finding answers to present-day educational problems via history. In our view, such an ahistorical utilitarianism as well as the legitimizing and/or mythologizing belief in a particular pedagogical system, in which the history of this field is so rich since the institutionalization of the discipline at the end of (...) the nineteenth century, should be avoided at all costs. But the danger of presentism lurks around the corner as a sine qua non condition in any form of historical research. As can be found out via the comments on our own work, much of the criticism goes back to old conceptions of the discipline, conceived as “historical pedagogy” rather than as history of education. Apparently, in the field of pedagogy people are still convinced that the history of education, even if it does not provide edifying examples and useful lessons, must in any case have a training value for professionals – which in the light of modern, advanced research is rather a difficult idea to defend. (shrink)

This work raises the philosophical implications of the contemporary Taiwanese as a Chinese cultural people that socio-philosophically defined herself as a moral or ethical person. The political history of Taiwan has been marked by her struggle for self-determination. Self-determination based and reflected on a self-affirmation and self-identification that is internationally recognized and legitimized. This, no doubt, beyond the generalized bent by all nations towards globalization and multi-culturalism, there has been a more and more openness to the western nations. As (...) she looks towards the West, she ipso facto looks away from the Main Land China. This work is neither an investigation in political science nor a historical critique and reconstruction. It is rather a philosophical critique on the philosophical anthropology of a people that is fundamentally ethical, that is now facing and open to climes of which their philosophical anthropology is not in essence ethical. Put differently, it is an evaluation on the notion of “the Taiwanese person”. An evaluation on how “the Taiwanese person” from the standpoint of philosophical anthropology could still be claimed to be a Confucian. The question is: could the Taiwanese person today be said to be「仁者」, if Confucian philosophical anthropology asserts, 「仁者人也」? Hence, this work will attempt to respond to this question by a philosophical analysis of the notion of 「仁者」as an ethical person based on Karol Wojtyłian notion of the ethical person. To understand the notion of the “ethical” or “moral” person, the concept of “ethics” or “moral” and “person” ought to be exposed. Therefore, in this work Wojtyłian philosophy shall be employed as the epistemological foundation for the definition and explication of the concepts: ethics, moral and person. The writer considers the philosophy of Karol Wojtyłian as a plausible paradigm amongst the western philosophies in the exposition of Confucian ethics and philosophical anthropology. The conception of person as “Person-revealed-in-action” or as it is popularly known, the “Acting Person”, underpins properties of the human person that are very fundamental in the Confucian conception of the person. This “person- revealed-in-action”, is an ethical person, as 「仁者」is 「人」in the Confucian Philosophy. This is as a result of the similarity in the fundamental claims maintained both in the Confucian ethics and philosophical anthropology and in that of Karol Wojtyła. Thus, this work is executed as follows: 1. Exposition of the Problematic. 2. Exposition of Confucian Philosophical Anthropology. 3. Exposition of Karol Wojtyła Ethical Person. 4. A Wojtyłain Reconstruction of 「仁者」and the Notion of Ethical Person. 5. Critique of the Taiwanese Person as「仁者」and Conclusion. (shrink)

The education system is faced with many demands of justice. What these demands imply and how they are justified is, however, disputed. In this book, international contributors present cutting edge research to discuss the relationship between educational justice and the value of education. By combining reflections on educational justice with reflections on the human good and the aims of education, the book reveals that it is not enough to assess certain patterns of distribution; the value of (...) what is to be distributed must also be clarified. In this respect, deliberations about the value of education have to play an integral part in giving an account of educational justice. Questions addressed in the volume include: - In what sense should justice, fairness and equality be realised in the education system? - How is educational equality related to equality of opportunity? - Is the main concern that everyone should be educated equally well – or just well enough? Education, Justice and the Human Good discusses the positional value of education and its relation to educational justice, emphasising that education is valuable not only for competitive reasons, but in its contribution to human flourishing. The book will appeal to those from the field of the philosophy of education as well as applied political philosophy, from undergraduates to professional academics. (shrink)

In accordance with the principle of historical materialism, nature of the property depends primarily on the fact that the actual possession of the property, rather than on their legal ownership first. Accordingly, the Isle of Man from the stock of the "separation of ownership 'departure, the actual property is not recognized joint-stock private property, but" social property ", so they also hopes to achieve socialism in stock. However, the situation at the time, the Isle of Man is sometimes still (...) only legal private ownership of property from the stock starting to think so, sometimes with analysis of private enterprise, "Das Kapital" residual value analysis on the model of joint-stock company, joint-stock property changes on the significant underestimate, even such as the stock is still equivalent to private ownership. According to the principle of materialism, the feature of property first depends on the reality of factual possession of property, but does not first depend on its legal ownership. Hence, from the theory of share holding system of its "separdtion of ownership and manageship" , Marx and Engels considered that the property of share holding system is actually not the private property, but the "public property". They, therefore, put the hope of realizing socialism on the share holding system. But under that situation, Marx and Engels could only consider the problems from the legal private ownership of the property of share holding system by using the theory of surplus values ​​and even regard the share holding system as private ownership. (shrink)

This book is about disobedience. Positive disobedience. Disobedience as a kind of professional behaviour. It shows how teachers can survive and even influence an education system that does staggering damage to potential. More importantly it is an arm around the shoulder of disobedient teachers who transform people's lives, not by climbing promotion ladders but by operating at the grassroots.Disobedient Teaching tells stories from the chalk face. Some are funny and some are heartbreaking, but they all happen (...) in New Zealand schools.This book says you can reform things in a system that has become obsessed with assessment and tick-box reporting. It shows how the essence of what makes a great teacher is the ability to change educational practices that have been shaped by anxiety, ritual and convention. Disobedient Teaching argues the transformative power of teachers who think and act. (shrink)

The belief system of academicians has an impact on how religious education (RE) is carried out in public universities. The ideology of RE lecturers - whether it is moderate, radical, or liberal - is greatly influenced by their own religious beliefs. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between religious paradigm of religious education lecturers on interreligious tolerance and pluralism in public universities in Indonesia. The study sample comprised 142 lecturers drawn from ten (...) public universities in Indonesia. A mixed method research design guided this study, where qualitative data was used to reinforce or clarify the findings from the quantitative data. The data was statistically assessed using the nonparametric Mann-Whitney U-test to reveal whether the demographic profiles of RE lecturers was related to their religious paradigm regarding the relationship between religion-state, inter-religious relations and intra-religious relations. The study's findings indicate that the lecturer's personal beliefs about religion affect their opinions on the relationship between the state and religion, as well as the relationships within religious groups. Moreover, religious educators have a middling level of comprehension of their religious paradigm. To promote understanding and harmony among the academic community, it is suggested that a platform for religious moderation be established at public colleges where educators and students of various religions can converse and resolve fundamentalism. (shrink)

Since 2013, Vietnam has implemented a plan to reform the whole education sector. However, there is little understanding on the status of educational research in Vietnam, which may lay the foundation for such plan. Thus, this research aims to analyze the whole picture of educational research from Vietnam, as seen from the Clarivate Web of Science (WOS) database: 215 publications were recorded, ranging from 1991 to 2018. These 215 publications were further analyzed from five perspectives: (...) 1) number of publications by year; 2) research fields and levels of education; 3) top institutions with the highest number of publications; 4) international collaboration; and 5) quality. Some of the most notable results are: 1) the educational sciences in Vietnam have been still under-developed until recently; 2) among different research topics research among educational sciences, some (e.g., Vocational Education and Training or Early Childhood Education) seemed to be overlooked whereas others (e.g., Higher Education and Teaching and Learning) seemed to receive more attention from educational scholars; 3) all the most major education – specialized universities did not appear among the top five institutions with highest number of publications; 4) Australia, Thailand, the USA, New Zealand and China were the countries with the highest number of co-publications with Vietnamese researchers; and 5) The majority of publications belonged to low-ranked journals. Implications would be withdrawn for Vietnamese policymakers, education leaders, educational researchers and teachers in order to adjust their policies and/or action plans; thus, enhancing the performance and impacts of educational research in the future. (shrink)

This is a persona] account of an Aboriginal woman who went through the education system in Australia to obtain finally her law degree. Aboriginal people experience many hurdles in the education system. Many Aboriginal children feel alienated within the legal system which until recently focused on a colonial history of Australia, ignoring the experiences, indeed the presence, of indigenous people in Australia. The Australian government had a policy of not educating Aboriginal people (...) past the age of 14. The author was one of the first generation that could go straight from high school to university. She speaks of the debt she feels towards the generations of her people that fought for her right to access to higher education. The author went on to become the first Aboriginal person to be accepted into Harvard Law School which brought different personal challenges and allowed for reflection on comparisons of the sensitivity towards race in both education systems. When the author returned to Australia, she took a position teaching at the University of New South Wales. She had to come to terms with working within a system that she had felt alienated within as a student. Her position at the front of the class has created a sense of empowerment that she can pass on to her Aboriginal and female students. (shrink)

This paper proposes an in-depth on the legal and educational linguistic policy of the state that affect the everyday practice school French students. The allied French academic culture to the school culture are articulated to serve the construction of republican citizenship. This ideological construction, political and cultural affects students entering the use of French particularities of its cultural, social status or family origin. From a historical and legislative perspective the authors address the orientation of the teaching of French in (...) the educational system as an obstacle to the integration of groups of students who do not fit the narrow linguistic-political patterns that the system imposes. And finally, from an applied perspective, explores the factors that can lead to the breakdown of monolingual system, moreover, is articulated as a cultural system of segregation and exclusion of class.Este artículo propone una reflexión en profundidad sobre las consecuencias jurídicas y pedagógicas de la política lingüística del estado que afectan en la práctica cotidiana escolar al alumnado francés. La cultura académica francesa aliada con la cultura escolar se articulan al servicio de la construcción de la ciudadanía republicana. Esta construcción ideológica, política y cultural afecta a los estudiantes que incorporan al uso de la lengua francesa particularidades propias de su entorno cultural, social o de su origen familiar. Desde una perspectiva histórica y legislativa los autores abordan la orientación de la enseñanza de la lengua francesa en el sistema educativo como un obstáculo para la integración de los grupos de alumnado que no se ajustan a los estrechos patrones linguístico-políticos que el sistema impone. Y por último, desde una perspectiva aplicada, exploran los factores que pueden desembocar en la ruptura del sistema monolingüe que, además, se articula como un sistema de segregación cultural y de exclusión clasista. (shrink)

This very long book sets out to track and trace the working-class men and, less commonly, women who, against the limited expectations of their social position, learned Greek and Latin as an aspiration for personal change. The ideology of the book is clear and welcome: these figures “offer us a new ancestral backstory for a discipline sorely in need of a democratic makeover.” The book's twenty-five chapters explore how classics and class were linked in the educational system of Britain (...) and in its cultural performativity: Is he a gentleman? Does he have Greek? became the paradigmatic questions, as the study of classics became a sign of cultural attainment and social exclusion. This book sets out to explore the counterstory of the cobblers and shepherds who, like Jude the Obscure, fought against society's oppressiveness to access classical learning.The book's breadth is exemplary. It looks at the issue through genres and media, through different communities and national identities, through the prosopography of ragged-trousered philanthropists, beggar-lecturers, body-building performers, and through other institutions and people who helped, including adult-education teachers, kind bosses, supportive vicars, and fiery communists. This breadth, and the fascinating research that it encapsulates, will make this book a fantastic resource for future scholarship: it outlines the richness of a field that has been all too rarely explored properly. If you do not know Stephen Duck, “the thresher poet,” or Hawkie, the crutch-wielding beggar who performed from the books he sold on the streets of Glasgow, then this book is the place to the meet them. The cast list alone is worth the entrance ticket.Yet this very breadth is also the source of the book's limitations. The sheer number of cases listed, treated at similar length and depth, repeatedly conceals the complexity and even the interest of individual figures or events. So, the numerous representations of Vesuvius in shows around London in the first half of the nineteenth century—after the discoveries at Pompeii—are duly noted as a source of excitement and knowledge about antiquity, but against the recent treatment by Clare Pettitt in Serial Forms (which came out the same year) this mere noting looks desperately thin. There is little discussion of how the characters themselves talked about or negotiated class. This deficiency is particularly important for someone like Charles Kingsley, who was very active in the Chartist movement but also became Queen Victoria's chaplain and the professor of history at Cambridge. There are hilarious descriptions of Kingsley's stammering engagement with the working-class leaders he actively supported, which capture how awkward the interaction of classes could be even and especially when the participants shared a goal of transformation. (Ed Richardson's Classical Victorians: Scholars, Scoundrels and Generals in the Pursuit of Antiquity is good on these moments of awkwardness but is one of several books whose absence from the notes looks pointed.) The authors list cases of working men who were picked up by fashionable society as poets or scholars, many of whom were dropped almost as quickly back into penury—but the telling description of such a case in Kingsley's Alton Locke is passed over, although it reveals an acute self-consciousness about such narratives in a best-selling novel.The very structure of the book tends toward listing cases rather than analyzing them in depth. It is not clear why “Shoemaker classicists” should take up a chapter, bar there having been some. Nor is it clear why some figures are not included. John Brown was an uneducated Scottish shepherd who taught himself Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. He was discovered by a professor, one John Pringle, when he went into a shop to buy a secondhand Greek Testament (though his own church thought this newfound and inexplicable linguistic brilliance suspicious or even satanic). Brown went on to write the wonderfully titled The Self-Interpreting Bible, which remained in print and sold very widely for more than a century after its publication in 1778—especially after it was championed by the evangelical preacher Charles Simeon. It is a pity that Brown escaped the authors’ net, but religion, one of the main reasons to learn the classical languages, is downplayed throughout this study, although its imbrication with classics is everywhere in evidence. The book, significantly enough, leads rather toward a rosy-eyed depiction of posh classical communists like Geoffrey de Ste. Croix and George Thompson, and other such heroes of the authors.The authors are much more at home in the years of ardent republicanism in the decades on either side of the turn of the nineteenth century and in the beginning of the twentieth century, when socialism and communism became embedded in British life. The last half of the nineteenth century, when classics really established itself institutionally as a discipline, and its revolutionary potential moved away from the zeal of the Romantic philhellenists into the artistic idealism of a Richard Wagner or the sexual freedom of an Oscar Wilde, are less adequately explored. The huge attendance at art galleries and the Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace as a route to encountering the past of antiquity in material form are barely addressed (Kate Nichols's Greece and Rome at the Crystal Palace would have helped); nor do shows like Astley's Circus get air time (Rachel Bryant Davies's Troy, Carthage, and the Victorians is revealing). It is particularly noticeable in such a voluminous study that there is no discussion of how turning to Greek was a crucial route for the self-understanding of what was considered transgressive male sexuality—and for a particular engagement between the classes. To understand the social force of classics requires a deeper appreciation of the dynamics between conservatism and transformation, disciplinarity and self-discovery. The big picture of how classics matters is lost in the gems picked out by the authors. Gems they are, but their facets need more attention and their setting a broader perspective. (shrink)

Today’s education system needs to be global. ‘World Class Education’ involves a globally accepted high standard of education. Every country needs an increasing number of highly educated people and skilled professionals in order to integrate into the globalization process. These professionals include scholars, philosophers and leaders with vision. Leaders are our human capital. The state must provide opportunities for higher education to create human capital that meets global standards. The overall development of a society (...) is largely determined by the quality of its education, especially higher education. A well-educated, well-trained population could propel a nation towards rapid economic growth. Despite lack of natural resources, countries such as Japan, Korea and Singapore have made rapid economic progress. This was because they invested heavily in education and training. On the other hand, countries such as Nigeria or Congo, despite enormous natural resources, are poor and backward because of large-scale illiteracy and lack of skilled workforce. The aim of education is to create well-trained, competent and progressive individuals who can perform all kinds of tasks and take on a lot of responsibilities. Higher education is the stage of education that takes place at the post-secondary level, and is provided mostly and most meaningfully by universities. A university introduces its students to discussions and debates that prevail in various disciplines and fields of knowledge. The objective of a university is not only to create and disseminate knowledge but also to develop human resources that will accelerate the socio-economic development of the nation. This is possible only when the employees working in these universities are motivated and empowered. To achieve this objective, universities must restructure and redesign their HRD practices and processes. In this background, the present article analyzes the existing HRD practices and processes in 10 leading universities in India and how should these universities go about transforming their HR systems and mechanisms to meet the rapidly changing environmental demands. The research approach and methodology adopted to carry out this study includes collection of primary and secondary data. Primary data has been collected by administering a well-structured and well-designed questionnaire on HRD climate survey developed by XLRI Jamshedpur. The questionnaire had been administered to 1,000 respondents selected from the 10 leading universities of India. Data from both the sources were analyzed statistically by applying various statistical tools and techniques to find the conclusions, based on which the guidelines, recommendations and policy implications were made for the improvement of HRD practices in the universities. (shrink)

These days, the radicalization of young people is above all viewed as a security risk. Almost all research into this phenomenon has been carried out from a legal, criminological or socio-psychological perspective with a focus on detecting and containing the risks posed by radicalization. In the light of the political developments since September 11, 2001, this is entirely understandable but perhaps not altogether wise. Research and theory development from a pedagogical perspective can also make a significant contribution (...) towards a better understanding of radicalization processes and possibly offer new points of departure for intervention strategies. On the basis of five typical cases, the authors examine the role of educators, social workers and teachers, and the problems they face when dealing with young people with extreme ideals. This article attempts to provide insight into the pedagogical conditions for the development of extreme ideals and suggests starting points for developing effective countermeasures. (shrink)

The Internet of Things (IoT) is, in part, an information handling system that can remove humans from the information handling process. The particular problem explored is how we are to understand privacy when considering informational systems that handle personal information in ways that impact people’s lives when there is no human operator in direct contact with that personal information. I argue that these new technologies need to take concepts like privacy into account, but also, that we ought (...) also to take these technologies into account to reconsider and perhaps reconceptualise privacy. This paper argues that while an inhuman system like the IoT does not necessarily violate the interpersonal privacy of people, if the IoT is used as part of a state surveillance program, a political notion of privacy may be violated. (shrink)

This book evaluates the educational system of the United States from schools for the young up to universities and various forms of adult education. It is not confined to the evaluation of intellectual achievement. Rather it tries to arrive at some judgment as to whether schools help people acquire the degree of maturity necessary for participation in the work of a nation called upon to assume world responsibilities. Education, rightly conceived, is the process by which (...) a growing person, according to his individual capacity, is prepared to understand himself, his place in society, his relation to the universe, and to act upon this understanding. A nation, to whatever extent it can afford to do so, should help future generations to strive for such achievements. But although this obligation is generally accepted by the American citizen, its practical requirements are still not fully understood. A classic soon after its original publication, this book is timelier today than ever. The author convincingly articulates the view that all our efforts at raising the intellectual and moral standards in our high schools are doomed to failure unless we boldly pair the right subject with the right talent. He demonstrates how we can achieve this without rejecting the precious heritage that is our tradition of free secondary schooling for all who can profit by it: his goal is nothing less than the creative combination of quality and justice in education. Ulich's prescriptions for education are bold and practical. The boldness is best characterized by his controversial suggestion that the emotional sphere serves as the means of unifying the highly diverse American society. We see the influence of modern theory and its disenchantment with the merely intellectual theory as a basis for understanding, communication, and meaning. The institution that Ulich proposes is an "ideal" one, but it is described in considerable detail. Its buildings, facilities, curriculum, and informal programs are designed to provide shared emotional experiences while retaining the need for intellectual differentiation. Robert Ulich (1890-1977) was James Bryant Conant Professor Emeritus of Philosophy of Education, Harvard University. He is the author of many books, including Philosophy of Education, and The Human Career. Before coming to Harvard University he served as assistant director of Leipzig Public Libraries, counselor in charge at Saxon University, and professor of philosophy at Dresden Institute of Technology. (shrink)

In order to facilitate cooperation to solve problems within a nation-state, a new approach which conceptualizes citizenship in terms of shared fate has been promoted to potentially ameliorate the tensions identified between civic liberty and solidarity. Proponents of an emphasis on shared fate frame it not in terms of a particular shared national identity, but in terms of participation in the shared project of the nation-state. The approach of singular shared fate rightly emphasizes the urgency of finding a common ground (...) for people to cultivate obligations to others and achieve sincere cooperation in a society. Unfortunately, in some cases it leaves room for some people to undermine the common ground and its good intention, however, as the promotion of a view of singular shared fate risks producing a hegemonic singular nation building project and predesigning an agreement before a truly inclusive and just dialogue among relevant stakeholders proceeds. To make the good intentions of the notion of shared fate realizable, a modification is explored, in recasting the concept of singular “shared fate” to plural “shared fates”. Given the situation that people in societies have the plural shared fates de facto, the view of plural shared fates recognizes that people will reject any singular substantial nation building project that has a predesigned direction. In current, divided societies, acknowledging multiple fates at the beginning, rather than predesigning a singular fate, can better provide a platform for all stakeholders to discuss their obligations to others toward sincere cooperation through equal co-construction of what is shared and what is not shared. To enhance civic education in a multicultural society, we suggest that complementing the concept of singular “shared fate” with a recognition of the value of plural “shared fates” can provide a context for all people to work together towards a more inclusive and just future. (shrink)

In this paper, I show that there is a bidirectional relationship between gender-based social norms and gender-segregated education policies that excludes girls from knowledge production within the Iranian school system. I argue that gender segregation in education reproduces hermeneutic inequality through the reinforcement of epistemic segregation as a form of epistemic injustice. In particular, I focus on gender-based instructional epistemic injustice, which refers to a set of epistemic practices that actively exclude a student or an (...) class='Hi'>education professional in their capacity as a knower from the process of knowledge production within an education system based on gender dynamics, roles, norms, or expectations. This, in addition, has an impact on schoolboys through the reproduction of active ignorance. I conclude that in societies such as Iran, where highly gendered norms play out in the school system and are further reinforced by that system, the result is not limited to gender segregation itself, but extends beyond it to a form of epistemic injustice that wrongs students by reproducing and reinforcing those highly gendered norms. (shrink)

Recent technological advancements have deeply transformed society and the way people interact with each other. Instantaneous communication platforms have allowed connections with other people, forming global communities, and creating unprecedented opportunities in many sectors, making access to online resources more ubiquitous by reducing limitations imposed by geographical distance and temporal constrains. These technological developments bear ethically relevant consequences with their deployment, and legislations often lag behind such advancements. Because the appearance and deployment of these technologies happen much faster (...) than legislative procedures, the way these technologies affect social interactions have profound ethical effects before any legislative regulation can be built, in order to prevent and mitigate those effects. Ethics in Online AI-Based Systems: Risks and Opportunities in Current Technological Trends features a series of reflections from experts in different fields on potential ethically relevant outcomes that upcoming technological advances could bring about in our society. Creating a space to explore the ethical relevance that technologies currently still under development could have constitutes an opportunity to better understand how these technologies could or should not be used in the future in order to maximize their ethically beneficial outcomes, while avoiding potential detrimental effects. Stimulating reflection and considerations with respect to the design, deployment and use of technology will help guide current and future technological advancements from an ethically informed position in order to ensure that, tomorrow, such advancements could contribute towards solving current global and social challenges that we, as a society, have today. This will not only be useful for researchers and professional engineers, but also for educators, policy makers, and ethicists. (shrink)

The precarious rights of senior citizens, especially those who are highly educated and who are expected to counsel and guide the younger generations, has stimulated the creation internationally of advocacy associations and opinion leader groups. The strength of these groups, however, varies from country to country. In some countries, they are supported and are the focus of intense interest; in others, they are practically ignored. For this is reason we believe that the creation of a network of all these (...) associations is essential. The proposed network would act as a support for the already-existing policies of the United Nations’ High Commission for Human Rights, of independent experts, and of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Older People. All three have long ago recommended the creation of a recognized instrument for uniting presently scattered efforts. The proposed network, therefore, will seek to promote the international exchange of relevant expertise, and it will reinforce the commitments and actions that single countries are currently taking to meet these objectives. For example, informative public events can be organised to promote particular support initiatives and to provide an opportunity for new members of the network to be presented. The network will promote health for senior citizens, disease prevention, senior mobility, safe free time for seniors, alimentary education, protection against new risks and dangers, as well as equity in the services necessary for seniors to adopt new information and communication technologies. In the case of retired academic members, the network will promote equality with respect to continuing use of digital technologies (particularly email), continuing access to research libraries, and the guaranteed ability for seniors to fund their own research programs and to deliver free seminars. (shrink)

This paper deals with two forms of education—Platonic and Socratic. The former educates childhood to transform it into what it ought to be. The latter does not form childhood, but makes education childlike. To unfold the philosophical and pedagogical dimensions of this opposition, the first part of the paper highlights the way in which philosophy is presented indirectly in some of Plato’s dialogues, beginning with a characterisation that Socrates makes of himself in the dialogue Phaedrus. The second part (...) details Plato’s condemnation of writing in the Phaedrus, and draws on the critique by Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze to establish what is at stake in this condemnation. In the third part, the pedagogical and political implications of this condemnation are reviewed, and Plato is placed in a surprising position in relation to his own teacher, Socrates. Finally, through a comparison between childhood and philosophy, the educational value of putting childhood and philosophy together is questioned. Through a number of questions, the paper ends problematising the pedagogical, political and philosophical value of placing the practice of philosophy in the realm of childhood citizenship education. It also recovers the value of philosophy—as a form of questioning and unlearning what we know and affirming the value of not knowing—in a childlike education. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Musik–Vielfalt–Integration–Inklusion: Musikdidaktik für die eine Schule [Music–Diversity–Inclusion–Integration: A New Philosophy of Music Education for an Inclusive School] by Irmgard MerktBeatrice McNamaraIrmgard Merkt, Musik–Vielfalt–Integration–Inklusion: Musikdidaktik für die eine Schule [Music–Diversity–Inclusion–Integration: A New Philosophy of Music Education for an Inclusive School] (Regensburg: Conbrio, 2019)Irmgard Merkt, a German music education scholar, is a pioneer of intercultural music education with regard to the development of the concept Schnittstellensansatz, (...) literally “interface approach,” as an initial concept of intercultural music education in the 1980s. Her book Musik–Vielfalt–Integration–Inklusion: Musikdidaktik für die eine Schule [Music–Diversity–Inclusion–Integration: A New Philosophy of Music Education for an Inclusive School] is a new philosophy of music education for schools, in which children and young people with and without disabilities as well as children and young people from the most diverse milieus and cultural backgrounds share a learning space.1 Merkt advocates for a broad concept of inclusion that refers both to the inclusion of children with different skills and abilities on a physiological and psychological level along with the integration of pupils from different cultures of origin. The overriding goal for the author is recategorization,2 which makes the terms “common school,” “school for all” or “inclusive music instruction” obsolete and which allows pupils to attend a kind of school and a kind of music education [End Page 187] that is inherently inclusive. Merkt even goes as far as promoting the dissolution of subject-specific margins of music education and establishing an omnipresence of music in everyday school life instead.3 However, I think it should be pointed out that completely dissolving or dismissing music education into interdisciplinarity or integrating music education into subject groups such as Aesthetic Education,4 would be compliant with attempts made on the level of educational policy in order to reduce the quantity of qualified music teaching within the curriculum.5 Nevertheless, Merkt’s critique of the German school system is nothing short of appropriate in view of the prevalent system-immanent character of exclusion as the recent Programme for International Student Assessment-report of 2018 reveals.6 Furthermore, it is essential to draw conclusions as to the extent to which music instruction can do justice to the diversity of the student body, both on an integrative and on an inclusive level.The first chapter of Musik–Vielfalt–Integration–Inklusion offers an overview of past and present viewpoints on the topic of inclusion. Ensuing, the second chapter outlines the evolution of music education and teacher training in view of students with special needs. Chapter Three focuses on integration, Chapter Four traces the lines of development in the field of intercultural music pedagogy, while in Chapter Five Merkt advocates an encompassing culture of recognition in which educators, learners, and different music cultures are acknowledged to an equal extent. In Chapter Six the author delves into the very beginning of music and its coincidence with the evolution of humanity from homo sapiens to homo musicus through the lens of science and musicology. The seventh chapter of the book constitutes a synopsis of the main ideas which are then amalgamated into the concept of “Mit einer Frage um die Welt” [around the world with one question].A key tenet of Merkt’s publication is decategorization. The term inclusion, going back to its Latin origin of inclusio or includere is bound to the existence of its antonym exclusion. Despite endeavors nowdays to reverse the term’s meaning from reclusion to all-embracing,7 efforts to establish inclusion would not be necessary without exclusionary preconditions. On a terminological level, the expression inclusion implicates that there is an existing dualism between an inclusive or enclosed in-group and an exclusive or excluded out-group. This close and inextricable linkage between the existence of inclusion and exclusion, shows the importance of Merkt’s endeavor of highlighting efforts and development of decategorization, both on a terminological and legislative level, as well as on the ideological level. She is portraying concepts of thinking and acting in view of disability as a recurring process of progression and regression in reference to exclusionary... (shrink)

As a generation of ‘digital natives,’ secondary students who were born from 2002 to 2010 have various approaches to acquiring digital knowledge. Digital literacy and resilience are crucial for them to navigate the digital world as much as the real world; however, these remain under-researched subjects, especially in developing countries. In Vietnam, the education system has put considerable effort into teaching students these skills to promote quality education as part of the United Nations-defined Sustainable Development Goal (...) 4 (SDG4). This issue has proven especially salient amid the COVID−19 pandemic lockdowns, which had obliged most schools to switch to online forms of teaching. This study, which utilizes a dataset of 1061 Vietnamese students taken from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)’s “Digital Kids Asia Pacific (DKAP)” project, employs Bayesian statistics to explore the relationship between the students’ background and their digital abilities. Results show that economic status and parents’ level of education are positively correlated with digital literacy. Students from urban schools have only a slightly higher level of digital literacy than their rural counterparts, suggesting that school location may not be a defining explanatory element in the variation of digital literacy and resilience among Vietnamese students. Students’ digital literacy and, especially resilience, also have associations with their gender. Moreover, as students are digitally literate, they are more likely to be digitally resilient. Following SDG4, i.e., Quality Education, it is advisable for schools, and especially parents, to seriously invest in creating a safe, educational environment to enhance digital literacy among students. (shrink)

In _Interpreting Interpretation_, William E. Rogers searches for a model for literary education. This model should avoid both of two undesirable alternatives. First, it should not destroy any notion of discipline in the traditional sense, terminating in the stance of Rorty's "liberal ironist." Second, it should not regard literary education as an attempt to cause students to ingest a pre-determined mix of facts and cultural values, terminating in the stance of E. D. Hirsch's "cultural literate." From the (...) semiotics of C. S. Peirce, Rogers develops the notion of interpretive system. The interpretive system called textual hermeneutics is used to interpret interpretation. From that perspective, the world looks like a text. Applying the principle rigorously allows an articulation of the problematic relations among interpretation, philosophy, and language itself. _Interpreting Interpretation_ clarifies the conception of textual hermeneutics as an ascetic discipline by showing the consequences of this conception for interpreting canonical texts and for humanities education in general. Discussions of poetry by Robert Frost and by John Ashbery illustrate how this conception applies to an analysis of literary texts. Ultimately, the book offers a Peircean alternative to the educational theories implied in the pragmatism of John Dewey and of Richard Rorty. Rogers provides a new vocabulary for talking about what people are doing when they read, write, speak, and hear interpretive statements about texts. The new vocabulary acknowledges the great difficulty of "teaching texts" in the face of postmodern anxieties about pluralism, relativism, or nihilism. What emerges is not curriculum but method—an argument that the humanities teach not texts but interpretive systems. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Capitalism as Religion and Religious Pluralism:An Approach from Liberation TheologyJung Mo Sungreligious pluralism and the struggle of the godsReligious pluralism as a social fact, namely, the coexistence of different religions within a social system, be it a country or an empire, is not anything new. The mere contact with other people and their various religions, for example, through commerce, still does not indicate religious pluralism. In (...) this case, each group of people has its religion and its gods, and recognizes that other groups of people exist with other religions and other gods. Religious pluralism occurs when, because of immigration or the conquest of one people over another, groups of people with different religions live together in the same social space.Whether by immigration or by conquest, the resulting religious pluralism does not occur in an egalitarian or harmonious manner. Immigrants are forced to live out their religion within their group as a marginal religion in society, or even in hiding when it is not accepted in the society where they went to seek a livelihood. In the case of conquest or expansion of empires, the conquering power imposes its cultural values and religion on the conquered peoples. The empire can try to extinguish the religions of conquered peoples and impose their own as if it is the only one acceptable, or tolerate them as long as these religions do not question the imperial order. This means that the coexistence of different religions within the empire takes place in a hierarchical relationship: The religion of the empire is the ultimate and the others are tolerated provided they accept their place as subordinate. The Roman Empire was an example of an empire that tolerated the religions of subject peoples as long as they didn’t question the absolute power of the empire, with its own empire religion and emperor worship.In this historical context, it is empirically impossible to live out a third way: recognizing the otherness of the other and respecting their religion as we respect our [End Page 155] own. That’s because the “encounter” between religions takes place in a situation of colonial conquest and domination. Expecting that there could be a relationship of respect and dialogue among equals would ignore the role of religion in premodern societies, especially in the processes of domination.In these societies, religion has the function of being the foundation of the world-view that legitimized the existing social order, as well as the process of external conquest. Religion fulfills the function of legitimizing and justifying the conquest and consequent exploitation and oppression of the conquered people. Therefore, religion performs a key task for systems of oppression, the reversal of evil into good: conquest as peace; exploitation as the path to salvation or integration into civilization. Furthermore, religion transcendentalizes the imperial system of oppression and presents it as eternal or as an expression of divine will. Therefore, how to classify religions and manage their coexistence is not just a problem for religious leaders, but also a matter of the state, a matter of interest for the king or emperor. The limits of religious tolerance are determined by the interests of the dominant social system, even when they are often discussed in religious or theological language.Of course, no religion, even those that perform the function of legitimizing an empire, is totally homogeneous. Within a religion, there is or can be a certain “theological pluralism.” The figure of Las Casas in the Spanish conquest of America is an example of the contradictions that are in all religions. But the defense of the Indians and their religion that was made by Las Casas had to be made in the court of the king of Spain. The means of evangelization and the ways of seeing the culture and religion of the Indians (i.e., the other) is a problem of the state, and not just the Church.Before thinking about the ideal of a religious pluralism that makes possible “a fraternal living together of religions as also a covenant of all those in favor of Peace and the Common Good of Humanity and the Planet,”1 we must also remember that the Bible... (shrink)