This essay takes up the issue of the impact of technology on jobs in modern workplaces, and the curricular challenges thereby engendered for vocational educators. Conceptions of the nature of workplaces are examined, along with conceptions of the types of skill needed. It is proposed that distinction be made between vocational education at the secondary school, and that beyond. At the secondary school, vocational education would be education about work, and the goal would be vocational literacy. This would constitute a (...) liberal vocational education. Beyond that, vocational education would be for jobs, but would include liberal features, such as general education course work, and training in job families. (shrink)

abstract In this paper I consider the nature of the purported vice of moralism by examining two examples that, I suggest, exemplify this vice: the first from Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter; the second from David Owen's account of his experience as European negotiator between the warring parties in the former Yugoslavia. I argue that in different ways both these examples show the kind of human weakness or failure that is involved in the most extreme version of moralism, a weakness (...) that involves an inability to see or acknowledge those one seeks to judge as real, morally accountable, human beings. (shrink)

In pluralistic Western societies, schools have a specific task in moral education. This task is to be understood neither as the transmission of specific values, nor as the development of moral reasoning skills or universal values, but as teaching pupils to handle plurality in an autonomous way. The concept of autonomy is interpreted from a Vygotskian and Deweyan position, where learning in school means learning to participate in cultural activities in a reflective and critical way. Participation has both intellectual and (...) moral aspects, and thus moral education can never be separated from cognitive education. (shrink)

These twelve articles consider central issues in the philosophy of education, particularly the concept of education, the content of education, teaching and learning, and justification of education. Contributors include John Woods, W.H. Dray, I. Scheffler, P.H. Hirst, P. Herbst, Mary Warnock, R. Pring, D.W. Hamlyn, and Mrs. P.A. White.

This article explores the educative importance of ethos from a broadly philosophical perspective. It is argued that, for a range of reasons, the notion of ethos in the context of education needs to be brought into clearer focus. An analysis is offered of the concept of ethos, with particular reference to the context of classrooms and schools. The educative importance of ethos is explored, with reference to a range of difficulties and challenges which it presents.

... as 'logicism') that the content expressed by true propositions of arithmetic and analysis is not something of an irreducibly mathematical character, ...

The regularities in nature, simply by being regularities, call for explanation. There are only two ways in which we could, with any plausibility, try to explain them. One way would be to suppose that they are imposed on the world by God. The other would be to suppose that they reflect the presence of laws of nature, conceived of as forms of natural necessity. But the only way of making sense of the notion of a law of nature, thus conceived, (...) is by construing a law as the causing of the associated regularity, and the only remotely plausible account of such causing would be in terms of the agency of God. So, by whichever route, we are led to the conclusion that the regularities are brought about by God. So the presence of the regularities in nature provides us with a strong case for accepting the existence of God. (shrink)

This paper explores the meaning of education in contrast with ‘pedagogy’. Whereas education can be defined as ‘learning for its own sake’, pedagogy can be defined as learning oriented towards social goals. An attempt to find an adequate conceptualisation is first of all sought in Aristotle, but his concept of education is found to depend on too narrow a concept of rational activity. A more adequate conceptualisation is found in Michael Oakeshott's contrast between morality and enterprise associations. However Oakeshott's definition (...) of education needs modifying if it is to take account of the idea of critical knowing, which is seen as crucial to any definition of education. (shrink)

Since the end of the 1990s, creativity has become a growing area of interest once more within education and wider society. In England creativity is now named within the school curriculum and in the curriculum for children aged 3-5. There are numerous government and other initiatives to foster individual and collective creativity, some of this through partnership activity bringing together the arts, technology, science and the social sciences. As far as education is concerned, this growth in emphasis and value placed (...) on encouraging creativity can be seen as being in stark contrast with the government policy prevalent from the late 1980s onward. One of the underpinning themes and justifications for this re-kindling of interest in fostering creativity is that the individual and collective empowerment which is fostered by the development of creative skill is seen to be a good thing at the social and economic level in particular (Craft, 2002). These justifications have been discussed elsewhere (Jeffrey and Craft, 2001). But an important question to ask is, how desirable are the cultural norms of continual change and innovation in Western society? This paper examines some possible social, environmental, cultural and ethical limits to creativity, in the context of educating for creativity (NACCCE, 1999). It argues that the notion of creativity may be value- and culture-specific and that this poses the so-called liberal educator with various dilemmas of principle and pedagogy, which are explored. (shrink)

In pluralistic Western societies, schools have a specific task in moral education. This task is to be understood neither as the transmission of specific values, nor as the development of moral reasoning skills or universal values, but as teaching pupils to handle plurality in an autonomous way. The concept of autonomy is interpreted from a Vygotskian and Deweyan position, where learning in school means learning to participate in cultural activities in a reflective and critical way. Participation has both intellectual and (...) moral aspects, and thus moral education can never be separated from cognitive education. (shrink)

[Robert Stalnaker] Saul Kripke made a convincing case that there are necessary truths that are knowable only a posteriori as well as contingent truths that are knowable a priori. A number of philosophers have used a two-dimensional model semantic apparatus to represent and clarify the phenomena that Kripke pointed to. According to this analysis, statements have truth-conditions in two different ways depending on whether one considers a possible world 'as actual' or 'as counterfactual' in determining the truth-value of the statement (...) relative to that possible world. There are no necessary a posteriori or contingent a priori propositions: rather, contingent a priori and necessary a posteriori statements are statements that are necessary when evaluated one way, and contingent when evaluated the other way. This paper distinguishes two ways that the two-dimensional framework can be interpreted, and argues that one of them gives the better account of what it means to 'consider a world as actual', but that it provides no support for any notion of purely conceptual a priori truth. /// [Thomas Baldwin] Two-dimensional possible world semantic theory suggests that Kripke's examples of the necessary a posteriori and contingent a priori should be handled by interpreting names as implicitly indexical. Like Stalnaker, I reject this account of names and accept that Kripke's examples have to be accommodated within a metasemantic theory. But whereas Stalnaker maintains that a metasemantic approach undermines the conception of a priori truth, I argue that it offers the opportunity to develop a conception of the a priori aspect of stipulations, conceived as linguistic performances. The resulting position accommodates Kripke's examples in a way which is both intrinsically plausible and fits with Kripke's actual discussion of them. (shrink)

Evidence will be presented from two projects to support our argument that concepts and associated activities of leadership are shaped by the political contexts in which they are embedded. By comparing the managerialist purposes and definitions of school leadership in England with more democratic orientations in Denmark, we add our voices to the growing concern about the future of democracy in England.

abstract In this paper I consider the nature of the purported vice of moralism by examining two examples that, I suggest, exemplify this vice: the first from Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter; the second from David Owen's account of his experience as European negotiator between the warring parties in the former Yugoslavia. I argue that in different ways both these examples show the kind of human weakness or failure that is involved in the most extreme version of moralism, a weakness (...) that involves an inability to see or acknowledge those one seeks to judge as real, morally accountable, human beings. (shrink)

This paper explores the meaning of education in contrast with ‘pedagogy’. Whereas education can be defined as ‘learning for its own sake’, pedagogy can be defined as learning oriented towards social goals. An attempt to find an adequate conceptualisation is first of all sought in Aristotle, but his concept of education is found to depend on too narrow a concept of rational activity. A more adequate conceptualisation is found in Michael Oakeshott's contrast between morality and enterprise associations. However Oakeshott's definition (...) of education needs modifying if it is to take account of the idea of critical knowing, which is seen as crucial to any definition of education. (shrink)

In his book, Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community, Wendell Berry describes two poles of how one understands ‘economy’: (a) ‘the kind of economy that exists to protect the “right” of profit’ and (b) ‘the kind of economy [that] exists for the protection of gifts’. In this paper I describe a similar polemic in how one understands ‘education’. I suggest that, correspondingly, there are two kinds of education. There is (a) the education of commodity—the kind of education that seeks to produce (...) persons who will maintain and increase the economy of profit. And there is (b) the education of community—the kind that seeks to foster persons who will maintain and preserve the essential characteristics of community. From the description of these two polemical views of education, it is clear which of them is the more favourable and sensible. (shrink)

A kind of ‘neo‐Aristotelianism’ that connects educational reasoning and reflection to phronesis, and education itself to praxis, has gained considerable following in recent educational discourse. The author identifies four cardinal claims of this phronesis‐praxis perspective: that a) Aristotle's epistemology and methodology imply a stance that is essentially, with regard to practical philosophy, anti‐method and anti‐theory; b) ‘producing’, under the rubric of techné, as opposed to ‘acting’ under the rubric of phronesis, is an unproblematically codifiable process; c) phronesis must be given (...) a particularist interpretation; and d) teaching is best understood as praxis in the Aristotelian sense, guided by phronesis. The author argues that these claims have insufficient grounding in Aristotle's own writings, and that none of them stands up to scrutiny. (shrink)

This essay takes up the issue of the impact of technology on jobs in modern workplaces, and the curricular challenges thereby engendered for vocational educators. Conceptions of the nature of workplaces are examined, along with conceptions of the types of skill needed. It is proposed that distinction be made between vocational education at the secondary school, and that beyond. At the secondary school, vocational education would be education about work, and the goal would be vocational literacy. This would constitute a (...) liberal vocational education. Beyond that, vocational education would be for jobs, but would include liberal features, such as general education course work, and training in job families. (shrink)

Three proposals are made regarding values acquisition in schools. It is believed that: (a) optimal conditions for the integration of values into school-students' lives will include students' voluntary commitments; (b) values learning must lead to personally transformed relationships between students and topics considered worthwhile; (c) since values learning is, arguably, the core of formal education, there has to be some consistency between what is learned and the wider socio-political scene. It is argued that these conditions are hard to fulfil via (...) the prescribed, performance-oriented curricula currently on offer in English school classrooms. (shrink)