The significance of utopian thought for education can be made evident through reconceptualizing utopia and approaching it alongside the notion of dystopia. Awareness of dystopian elements of reality radicalizes the kind of critique that assists utopian thought and makes engagement with it more pressing. Awareness of the lurking danger of future dystopia goes hand in hand with a utopia that is cautious and vigilant of its own possible turn into catastrophe. If education is not just an institution of the unreflective (...) socialization and social integration of the young immersed in technicist and prudentialist goals, if it is about futurity and vision of a better world, it has to rely on, and renegotiate, utopian thought. Yet, all this presupposes a new descriptive account of the self and the world that breaks with the kind of anthropology and ethics that generated a particular conception of utopia as impossible and purely oneiric. (shrink)

The modern tendency to treat all Greek Golden Age textuality as apolitical and escapist has contributed to the ongoing neglect of the first Western educational text, Hesiod's Works and days. Most commentators have missed the interplay of utopian and dystopian images in Hesiodic poetry for lack of the appropriate conceptual framework. Once the escapist prejudice is overcome, the Hesiodic text appears as the first extant Occidental coupling of political utopianism with emancipatory ethico-political education. Once freed of its dated metaphysical-theological resonances, (...) Hesiodic utopianism is compatible with a renewed political and ethical education for cosmopolitanism and justice because the embarrassingly detailed and teleological element of temporal modern utopias and the equally embarrassing rigid architecture of spatial utopias are absent. There is no strict utopian prediction and the message for change is articulated for the whole of humanity. (shrink)

Much of the political and public debate about faith-based schooling is conducted at the level of generalised assertion and counterassertion, with little reference to educational scholarship or research. There is a tendency in these debates to draw upon historical images of faith schooling (idealised and critical); to use ideological advocacy (both for and against) and to deploy strong claims about the effects of faith-based schooling upon personal and intellectual autonomy and the wider consequences of such schooling for social harmony, race (...) relations and the common good of society. This paper will attempt to review some of these controversies in the light of recent educational and research studies. Particular attention will be given to research investigations of Catholic schooling systems in various cultural and political contexts, studies which are largely unknown outside the Catholic community. In addition to reviewing educational studies of faith-based schooling, the paper will offer critical appraisal of the main arguments in the debate and it will also outline a possible research agenda for future inquiry in this sector of educational studies. (shrink)

The paper proposes that taking the notion of “community of inquiry” as a regulative ideal is a valuable working tool for the refinement and improvement of the practice of Philosophy for Children (P4C). Reed (1996) and Sprod (1997) have already drawn attention to this, stating that the community of inquiry is more a regulative idea than a typical occurrence. Building on these claims, we will show that taking the notion of community of inquiry as such gives new light to many (...) of the items and aspects of the description of what constitutes a community of inquiry. Consequently, it provides ways to identify important moments in the philosophical practice that consolidate the community of inquiry, and a working tool to grasp and handle some of the crucial moves that the facilitator, as well as other participants, do to install and strengthen the community in the sessions. (shrink)