This is a work of normative political philosophy that seeks to identify the legitimate goals of public education policy in liberal democratic states and the implications of those goals for arguments about public funding and regulation of religious schools. ;The thesis of the first section is that the inferiority of certain types of religious school as instruments of civic education in a pluralist state would not suffice to justify liberal states in a general refusal to fund such schools. (...) States with no position on the value of autonomy for the good life would have to balance civic concerns against the preferences of religious parents who want to send their children to narrowly religious schools to shield them from exposure to ethical diversity. But, I argue, the principles of liberal democracy actually presuppose the value of autonomy. ;In the second section, I develop a conception of ethical autonomy and argue for its adoption as a public value. Autonomy, understood to entail distinctively rational reflection that must nonetheless inevitably be situated within an unchosen cultural context, can be publicly justified as having instrumental value to all persons in their quest to live a good life. And I defend the legitimacy of adopting autonomy as a goal of public education policy against a series of objections, most notably those grounded in claims about parental rights and fairness to traditional cultures. ;In the third section, I explore the implications of the autonomy goal for religious schools. After defending secular public schools from several prominent criticisms, I consider the argument that religious secondary schools are unsuitable to deliver education for autonomy because they provide children with inadequate exposure to and rational engagement with ethical diversity: I conclude that states cannot justify prohibiting or even presumptively denying public funding to all religious secondary schools, but that there is need for extensive public regulation. Finally, I argue that religious primary schools should be treated differently because of the particular developmental needs and capacities of pre-adolescents. Religious primary schools whose pedagogy is non-authoritarian are specially suitable to lay the foundations for autonomy in young children from religious families. (shrink)

_Teaching in a democracy is challenging and filled with dilemmas that have no easy answers._ For example, how do educators meet their responsibilities of teaching civic norms and dispositions while remaining nonpartisan? _Democratic Discord in Schools_ features eight normative cases of complex dilemmas drawn from real events designed to help educators practice the type of collaborative problem solving and civil discourse needed to meet these challenges of democratic education. Each of the cases also features a set of six commentaries written (...) by a diverse array of scholars, educators, policy makers, students, and activists with a range of political views to spark reflection and conversation. Drawing on research and methods developed in the Justice in Schools project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), _Democratic Discord in Schools_ provides the tools that allow educators and others to practice the deliberative skills they need in order to find reasonable solutions to common ethical dilemmas in politically fraught times. (shrink)

The British government recently announced its willingness to expand the number of state–funded faith schools. It was a decision that aroused considerable controversy, with much of the unease centring around the allegedly divisive nature of such schools. In this article I defend faith schools against the charge that they necessarily undermine social cohesion and show how they can, in fact, legitimately be seen as a force for unity. In addition, I challenge the critics’ key assumption that non–denominational (...) schools are inherently better positioned than their faith–based counterparts to promote a tolerant society. (shrink)

The British government recently announced its willingness to expand the number of state–funded faith schools. It was a decision that aroused considerable controversy, with much of the unease centring around the allegedly divisive nature of such schools. In this article I defend faith schools against the charge that they necessarily undermine social cohesion and show how they can, in fact, legitimately be seen as a force for unity. In addition, I challenge the critics’ key assumption that non–denominational (...) schools are inherently better positioned than their faith–based counterparts to promote a tolerant society. (shrink)

This paper accepts as given that business students want to get ahead. It criticizes business schools for their failure to reduce the incongruence between doing what is right and doing what it takes to get ahead. Because of this failure business school graduates carry negative ideas, attitudes and behaviors vis-à-vis social responsibility from business schools into the business world. Recommendations are made for increasing the social responsibility of business schools.

A collection of original philosophical essays that together make a robust case for the teaching of philosophy in schools. >.

In the past decade well-designed research studies have shown that the practice of collaborative philosophical inquiry in schools can have marked cognitive and social benefits. Student academic performance improves, and so too does the social dimension of schooling. These findings are timely, as many countries in Asia and the Pacific are now contemplating introducing Philosophy into their curricula. This paper gives a brief history of collaborative philosophical inquiry before surveying the evidence as to its effectiveness. The evidence is canvassed (...) under two categories: schooling and thinking skills; and schooling, socialisation and values. In both categories there is clear evidence that even short-term teaching of collaborative philosophical inquiry has marked positive effects on students. The paper concludes with suggestions for further research and a final claim that the presently-available research evidence is strong enough to warrant implementing collaborative philosophical inquiry as part of a long-term policy. (shrink)

Brenda Cohen; Equality, Freedom and Independent Schools, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 12, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 121–128, https://doi.org/10.

Brenda Cohen; Equality, Freedom and Independent Schools, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 12, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 121–128, https://doi.org/10.

This article echoes those voices that demand new approaches and ‹senses’ for management education and business programs. Much of the article is focused on showing that the polemic about the educative model of business schools has moral and epistemological foundations and opens up the debate over the type of knowledge that practitioners need to possess in order to manage organizations, and how this knowledge can be taught in management programs. The article attempts to highlight the moral dimension of management (...) through a reinterpretation of the Aristotelian concept of practical wisdom. I defend the ideas that management is never morally neutral and that Aristotelian practical wisdom allows the recovery of moral considerations in management practice. I analyze the impact and implications that the introduction of practical wisdom in business schools entails for the conception and objectives of management education. This view reconfigures management education in terms of attention to values, virtues and context. Therefore, management programmes should prepare students to critically evaluate what they hear and to make decisions coherent with their values and virtues. In the final section, I reflect on the pedagogical implications of this approach. I point out that an integrated model of ethics and practical wisdom promotes education of cognition and education of affect as well. I provide an example to illustrate my perspective and to support my conclusions. (shrink)

Rationale and objectives: Medical humanities are becoming increasingly recognized as positively impacting medical education and medical practice. However, the extent of medical humanities teaching in medical schools is largely unknown. We reviewed medical school curricula in Canada, the UK and the US. We also explored the relationship between medical school ranking and the inclusion of medical humanities in the curricula. -/- Methods: We searched the curriculum websites of all accredited medical schools in Canada, the UK and the US (...) to check which medical humanities topics were taught, and whether they were mandatory or optional. We then noted rankings both by Times Higher Education and U.S. News and World Report and calculated the average rank. We formally explored whether there was an association between average medical school ranking and medical humanities offerings using Spearman's correlation and inverse variance weighting meta-analysis. -/- Results: We identified 18 accredited medical school programmes in Canada, 41 in the UK, and 154 in the US. Of these, nine (56%) in Canada, 34 (73%) in the UK and 124 (80%) in the US offered at least one medical humanity that was not ethics. The most common medical humanities were medical humanities (unspecified), history, and literature (Canada); sociology and social medicine, medical humanities (unspecified), and art (UK); and medical humanities (unspecified), literature and history (US). Higher ranked medical schools appeared less likely to offer medical humanities. -/- Conclusions: The extent and content of medical humanities offerings at accredited medical schools in Canada, the UK and the US varies, and there appears to be an inverse relationship between medical school quality and medical humanities offerings. Our analysis was limited by the data provided on the Universities' websites. Given the potential for medical humanities to improve medical education and medical practice, opportunities to reduce this variation should be exploited. (shrink)

Recent events have raised concerns about the ethical standards of public and private organisations, with some attention falling on business schools as providers of education and training to managers and senior executives. This paper investigates the nature of, motivation and commitment to, ethics tuition provided by the business schools. Using content analysis of their institutional and home websites, we appraise their corporate identity, level of engagement in socially responsible programmes, degree of social inclusion, and the relationship to their (...) ethics teaching. Based on published research, a schema is developed with corporate identity forming an integral part, to represent the macro-environment, parent institution, the business school and their relationships to ethics education provision. This is validated by our findings. (shrink)

Civic education that prepares students for principled civic participation is vital to democracy. Schools face significant challenges, however, as they attempt to educate for democracy in a democracy in crisis. Parents, educators, and policy‐makers disagree about what America's civic future should look like, and hence about what schools should teach. Likewise, hyperpartisanship, mutual mistrust, and the breakdown of democratic norms are perverting the kinds of civic relationships and values that schools want to model and achieve. Nonetheless, there (...) is strong evidence that young people want to be civically engaged and are hungry for more and better civic learning opportunities. Reviving the civic mission of schools is thus a win‐win‐win. Adults want it, youth want it, and democracy needs it. We propose three means by which educators and the public can reconstruct our common purpose and achieve civic innovation to help democracy in crisis: support action civics, strengthen youth leadership outside the classroom, and engage both students and adults with “hard history” and contemporary controversies. (shrink)

The Philosophy for Children in Schools Project is an ongoing research project to explore the impact of philosophy for children on classroom practice. This paper reports on the responses of head teachers, teachers and local educational authority officers in South Wales, UK, to the initial training programme in Philosophy for Children carried out by the University School of Education. Achieving change in schools through the embedding of new practices is an important challenge for head teachers. Interviews and qualitative (...) questionnaires were used to explore perceptions of and attitudes towards the dialogic practice of P4C and the related challenges for school leaders. The results provide an insight into how head teachers planned to embed the new practice of P4C in their schools. Results from the interviews and questionnaires have been subject to iterative analysis and categories derived under which to discuss the findings. There are many similarities in the ways in which different head teachers go about planning change n their schools as well as differences. The results provide insight into the role of initial continuing professional development in school development and the processes by which individual heads plan to embed change in practice across the whole school. (shrink)

Learned men of the twelfth century, especially the first half, frequently wrote about themselves and each other. Well-known examples of autobiographical writing include Guibert of Nogent's De vita sua or Monodiae, Rupert of Deutz's defense of his theological career in his Apologia attached to his commentary on the Benedictine rule, Peter Abelard's Historia calamitatum, and Gerald of Wales's De rebus a se gestis. Examples of biographical narrative are easily found: the life of St. Goswin included an account of Goswin defeating (...) Abelard in disputation; Baudri of Bourgueil wrote a poem about famous schools and scholars; the anonymous Metamorphosis Goliae provided characterizations of many masters; John of Salisbury's Metalogicon described the teaching methods of Bernard of Chartres and, in an autobiographical account of his own education, offered sketches of many of the leading masters in northern France, while Otto of Freising's Gesta Friderici I Imperatoris recounted parts of the academic careers of Abelard and Gilbert of Poitiers. It is therefore possible to read about twelfth-century scholars in their own words: the way they taught, their personalities, their ambitions, their disappointments; in short, their lives, or representations of their lives. Moving toward the end of the twelfth century and into the thirteenth century, however, there is very little comparable material, perhaps even none. In the thirteenth century, scholars wrote a great deal about being a scholar, but they preferred always to stress their collective identity, so that narrative accounts of particular scholarly lives did not find a place within the emerging universities. Why was there a change in the way in which scholars chose to represent themselves and each other, a change that involved obscuring their lives, both from themselves and from us? Answering that question will reveal the long-term significance of conflict between Schoolmen and monks and the impact of monastic ideals upon universities. It will show how the need for support from parties outside the university and internal debates about the true nature and purpose of learning came together, how ideas developed within the world of learning mattered when conflict led to the grant of privileges, and how specific ways of thinking became politically significant when particular events generated a certain kind of document in which those ways of thinking were embedded. (shrink)

Antony Flew; The Philosophy of Schools Council History, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 23, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 113–121, https://doi.org/10.1.

Antony Flew; The Philosophy of Schools Council History, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 23, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 113–121, https://doi.org/10.1.

Ruth Jonathan, Nigel Blake; Philosophy in Schools: a request for clarification, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 22, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 221–2.

Is it ethical for a school to accept sponsorship from business, and if so under what conditions? Indeed, given the poor provision of many UK local schools for their pupils is it ethical to refuse business sponsorship? Where does responsibility lie? “To attract and persuade is not an appropriate behaviour in dealing with inexperienced parties.” The author completed her MBA at London Business School in July 1997 and is currently setting up a new family business, The Organic Food Company (...) Ltd. (shrink)

George MacDonald Ross; Philosophy in Schools, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 22, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 207–219, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467.

George MacDonald Ross; Philosophy in Schools, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 22, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 207–219, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467.

In the face of rising concerns about citizenship, national identity, diversity and belonging in Britain today, politicians from all sides of the political spectrum have looked to schools to inspire and invigorate a strong, modern sense of patriotism and common purpose, which is capable of binding people together and motivating citizens to fulfil their obligations to each other and to the state.In this timely and astute analysis, Michael Hand unpacks the claims made on both sides of the debate to (...) assess whether love of country is a defensible aim of education. Remarking on the curious failure of engagement between defenders and opponents of patriotic education, he looks beyond the usual arguments for and against, to offer original insight into whether teaching patriotic attachment can be defended on rational grounds. Rather than looking merely to the practical difficulties of cultivating common bonds without misrepresenting or distorting the country's history, Hand's tightly argued conclusion is that reasonable disagreement about the desirability of loving one's country rules out the explicit teaching of Patriotism in schools, and therefore, it should not be actively promoted but rather taught as a controversial issue in the classroom.Breaking new ground in the intellectual debates around teaching citizenship and promoting common patriotic purpose, Patriotism in Schools is an illuminating treatment of a pressing contemporary issue, which will animate and provoke debate amongst parents, teachers, students, academics, politicians and policy-makers alike. (shrink)

This is not a work of mine. For some reason, I am unable to remove it from my page. It is a list of Dr. Reiner Schürmann's lecture notes for courses that he taught at the New School for Social Research (aka The New School).

Graham Harman’s “Whitehead and Schools X, Y, and Z,” distinguishes among three schools of contemporary philosophy according to their respective positions on process, becoming, and relations: the schools of Whitehead and Latour, of Deleuze, Bergson, Simondon, and other philosophers of becoming, and of object-oriented philosophy. One of the goals of the essay is to challenge those who would too quickly align Whitehead with Deleuze.

Is it possible to look at schools as spaces for encounters? Could schools contribute to a deliberative mode of communication in a manner better suited to our own time and to areas where different cultures meet? Inspired primarily by classical (Dewey) and modern (Habermas) pragmatists, I turn to Seyla Benhabib, posing the question whether she supports the proposition that schools can be sites for deliberative communication. I argue that a school that engages in deliberative communication, with its (...) stress on mutual communication between different moral perspectives, gives universalism a procedurally oriented meaning, serving as an arena for encounters that represents a weak public sphere. An interactive universalism of this kind attaches importance to developing an ability and willingness to reason on the basis of the views of others and to change perspectives. In that respect, the institutional arrangements of schools are potential parts of the political dimension of cosmopolitanism, as well as its moral dimension, in terms of the obligations and responsibilities we develop through our institutions and in our actions as human beings towards one another. (shrink)

Examining in detail the work of consecration carried out by elite education systems, Bourdieu analyzes the distinctive forms of power—political, intellectual, bureaucratic, and economic—by means of which contemporary societies are governed.

This is the first comprehensive overview of the influence of Platonism on the English literary tradition, showing how English writers, including Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Blake, Wordsworth, Yeats, Pound and Iris Murdoch, used Platonic themes and images within their own imaginative work.