It is likely that the process of global climate change will continue to accelerate. There is a lack of political will to confront the problem and the consequences for humanity — including widespread ...suffering and institutional destabilization — will be disastrous. How should educators respond to a catastrophic future? Here, Bryan Warnick argues that two criteria should guide the educational response. The response should not (1) undermine efforts to find an “unprecedented solution” to climate change, or (2) leave students unprepared to adapt to a global catastrophe. Using these criteria, he analyzes several possible ways to help students adapt to disaster, including teaching survivalism, encouraging forms of emotional resilience (like the Stoic apatheia), and helping students to appreciate the current moment. These adaptive responses seem to violate the first criterion. At the same time, an educational response focused entirely on climate activism seems to violate the second criterion. Warnick ends by exploring ways to accommodate the need for both adaptation and social engagement, finding promise in the idea of a tragic activism.
“Educational equity” is universally lauded but equally ill-defined. At least five contrasting meanings of equity are in current use: equal distributions of outcomes across populations; equal outcomes ...for every child; equal resource allocations across students, schools, districts, states, or nations; equal experiences for each child; and equal levels of growth by each child. Furthermore, these conceptions are themselves often subsumed to concerns for benefiting the less advantaged, ensuring educational adequacy, or prioritizing short-term benefits versus long-term structural change. Researchers, educators, and policy makers alike will benefit from understanding these distinctions and trade-offs, not least in order to reimagine and restructure the unjust conditions that make some of those trade-offs unavoidable in the first place.
In this paper I argue that there is a need to reconnect with the question of purpose in education, particularly in the light of a recent tendency to focus discussions about education almost ...exclusively on the measurement and comparison of educational outcomes. I first discuss why the question of purpose should always have a place in our educational discussion. I then explore some reasons why this question seems to have disappeared from the educational agenda. The central part of the paper is a proposal for addressing the question of purpose in education—the question as to what constitutes good education—in a systematic manner. I argue that the question of purpose is a composite question and that in deliberating about the purpose of education we should make a distinction between three functions of education to which I refer as qualification, socialisation and subjectification. In the final section of the paper I provide examples of how this proposal can help in asking more precise questions about the purpose and direction of educational processes and practices.
Employability is becoming increasingly central to the mission and functioning of universities, spurred on by national and supranational agencies, and the demands of marketisation. This article ...provides a response to the normative dimensions of the question, progressing through four stages: first, there is a brief consideration of the meaning and manifestations of employability and the historical conditions underpinning its emergence; second, the question is addressed of whether employability is a desirable societal and individual aim per se; third, there is a discussion of the fundamental purpose of the university, drawing on the well-known accounts of Newman and Collini, before – fourth – addressing the principal question of whether and in what way employability might fit within that purpose. It is argued that employability is a valid aim of universities only in so far as it is consistent with the central purpose of the institution to foster human understanding through open-ended enquiry. Further questions are discussed, namely, whether other social institutions are better equipped to promote employability, possible costs for the university, the ethical dimension and differences between public and private institutions.
Within the recent rise in the incorporation of contemplative practices in higher education, mindfulness stands out as the most studied and implemented practice. However, most of its studied ...implementations have been focused on interventions associated with mental health. Very little attention has been given to the study of mindfulness's potential broader educational impact. This study is based on the analysis of final assignments from the course ,,mindfulness and education,,, taught to 673 students at three Faculties of Education between 2011 and 2018 and on a retrospective questionnaire. Results show that in addition to common effects of mindfulness (e.g., stress-reduction), many students recognised mindfulness as an educational practice that had transformed their view of the nature of education and sometimes of life itself. The paper lends support to the understanding and framing of mindfulness as aformative educational practice that accords with aims of higher education.
In this article, Claudia Ruitenberg argues that the debate for or against instrumentalism in education is less fruitful than (a) a debate about the ends worth striving for, regardless of whether ...education is the best means to that end; and (b) a debate about the educational practices that are currently valued in and of themselves, regardless of whether these will turn out to serve other ends in the future. Using examples from visual art and examining arguments for and against “art for art's sake” and “education for education's sake,” Ruitenberg argues that education designed for instrumental purposes is already infected by a certain uselessness, while education that supposedly serves no purpose outside of itself “suffers” from a certain usefulness.
In this paper, I ask whether educational value is determined in any way by intrinsic value. The aim of the paper is to explore whether appeals to the intrinsic value of an activity or state of ...affairs can justify proposed educational value. I turn to Korsgaard's work on the concept of intrinsic value to cast light on the relationship between intrinsic value and educational value. Korsgaard claims that the often held distinction between intrinsic and instrumental value conflates two separate distinctions. These are the intrinsic/extrinsic value distinction and the final/instrumental value distinction. These two distinctions will be considered with regard to literature that appeals to intrinsic value. The distinctions between intrinsic/extrinsic value and final/instrumental value will be used to clarify puzzles which arise when philosophers of education use the concept of intrinsic value to make claims about educational value. I argue that the intrinsic/extrinsic value distinction has little bearing on an activity's educational value. The instrumental/final value distinction is relevant, but does not imply that activities with final value are any more educationally valuable than those with instrumental value. I conclude that, regardless of the distinction being appealed to, general intrinsic value has little bearing on educational value.
In this essay, Mason Marshall argues that Plato's views on Forms play a central role in his educational philosophy. In response to what certain commentators have recently written, Marshall contends ...that this interpretation not only is accurate but also is advantageous because of how it can help philosophy of education. He also addresses the view, proposed by one philosopher of education, that Plato believes that the most valuable sort of knowledge cannot be fully expressed in words and that the objects of this knowledge are something other than transcendent Forms. Preferable to that view, Marshall argues, is the idea that Plato wants knowledge of Forms which is nonrepresentational.
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