Educators and policy makers confront challenging questions of ethics, justice, and equity on a regular basis. Should teachers retain a struggling student if it means she will most certainly drop out? Should an assignment plan favor middle-class families if it means strengthening the school system for all? These everyday dilemmas are both utterly ordinary and immensely challenging, yet there are few opportunities and resources to help educators think through the ethical issues at stake. Drawing on research and methods developed in (...) the Justice in Schools project at the Harvard Graduate School of Education,_ Dilemmas of Educational Ethics_ introduces a new interdisciplinary approach to achieving practical wisdom in education, one that honors the complexities inherent in educational decision making and encourages open discussion of the values and principles we should collectively be trying to realize in educational policy and practice. At the heart of the book are six richly described, realistic accounts of ethical dilemmas that have arisen in education in recent years, paired with responses written by noted philosophers, empirical researchers, policy makers, and practitioners, including Pedro Noguera, Howard Gardner, Mary Pattillo, Andres A. Alonso, Jamie Ahlberg, Toby N. Romer, and Michael J. Petrilli. The editors illustrate how readers can use and adapt these cases and commentaries in schools and other settings in order to reach a difficult decision, deepen their own understanding, or to build teams around shared values. (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)

In Community Matters: Challenges to Civic Engagement in the 21st Century, six distinguished scholars address three perennial challenges of civic life: the making of a citizen, how citizens are to agree , and how to define the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. These essays will encourage students, academics, and interested citizens outside the academy to go farther and dig deeper into these vital issues.

The Demands of Liberal Education analyses and applies contemporary liberal political theory to certain key problems within the field of educational theory. Levinson examines problems centred around determining appropriate educational aims, content and institutional structure and argues that liberal governments should exercise a much greater control over education than they now do. Combining theoretical with empirical research, this book will interest and provoke scholars, policy makers, educators, parents, and all citizens interested in education politics.

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)

Demonstratives play a crucial role in the acquisition and use of language. Bringing together a team of leading scholars this detailed study, a first of its kind, explores meaning and use across fifteen typologically and geographically unrelated languages to find out what cross-linguistic comparisons and generalizations can be made, and how this might challenge current theory in linguistics, psychology, anthropology and philosophy. Using a shared experimental task, rounded out with studies of natural language use, specialists in each of the languages (...) undertook extensive fieldwork for this comparative study of semantics and usage. An introduction summarizes the shared patterns and divergences in meaning and use that emerge. (shrink)

Common schooling and multicultural education intuitively seem to be mutually reinforcing and possibly even mutually necessary: each is motivated by and/or serves the aims of promoting social justice and equality, common civic membership, and mutual respect and understanding, among other goals. An examination of the practical relationship between the two, however, reveals that neither one is a necessary or sufficient condition for achieving the other; in fact, each may in fairly common circumstances make the other harder to achieve. In other (...) words, there is no direct instrumental relationship between multicultural education and common schools. Nor is there a clear expressive relationship between the two. Although common schools may serve as explicit, public symbols of our multicultural civic commitment to diversity, mutual respect and egalitarian inclusiveness, many demographically common schools neglect or even betray multicultural ideals, while many restricted entry and even segregated schools may express these ideals better than most comprehensive and integrated schools. Hence, while multicultural education and common schooling do intuitively stand for similar, mutually reinforcing ideals, in practice they may be linked more closely in the confusions and dilemmas of implementation they both raise than in their mutual realisation. (shrink)

Addresses the practical implementation of the liberal educational ideal. Section 5.1 identifies the ways in which choice, cultural coherence, and citizenship fit together within an autonomy‐driven education, and also discusses three other possible liberal or educational aims that should potentially help guide the implementation of the liberal ideal: economic competitiveness, democratic self‐reflection, and equality. Section 5.2 constructs a public policy of liberal education, arguing for strict state regulation of schools as well as for school choice in the form of controlled (...) choice. Section 5.3 discusses the changes that would need to take place in the areas of legislation, pre‐service and in‐service teacher training, public dialogue, school accountability, and cultural attitudes about education in order to make the liberal educational ideal a reality, especially in the US and Britain. (shrink)

Discusses the relationship between the exercise and development of autonomy and analyses their implications for liberalism and liberal education. Section 2.1 proves that since the liberal state values adults’ exercise of autonomy, it must also value children's development of autonomy. Section 2.2 argues that state paternalism towards children, in particular, state efforts to help children develop the capacity for autonomy even against their parents’ wishes, is consistent with liberal principles. Section 2.3 argues that parents have privileges rather than rights to (...) control their children's upbringing, but that these privileges nonetheless offer ample scope for parents to exert independent paternalistic control. Finally, Section 2.4 argues that the liberal ideal of autonomy not merely permits but requires the intrusion of the state into the child's life, specifically in the form of compulsory, ‘detached’, autonomy‐driven schools. (shrink)

Discusses contemporary liberalism's meaning, character, and justification. Section 1.1 argues that three constitutive commitments define contemporary liberalism and distinguish it from other theories. Section 1.2 demonstrates that, contrary to political liberalism's claims, these three commitments are best linked by the value of autonomy. Hence, contemporary liberalism is best understood as displaying weak perfectionism. Section 1.3 analyses autonomy more carefully, developing it as a substantive notion of higher‐order preference formation within a context of cultural coherence, plural constitutive personal values and beliefs, (...) openness to other's evaluations of oneself, and a sufficiently developed moral, spiritual or aesthetic, intellectual, and emotional personality. (shrink)

We identify three distinct ethical problems that can arise with risk displacement. Risk displacement is the shifting of extant risk from one or more individuals to other individual(s) such that the reduction of risk to the first group is causally implicated in increasing risk to the second group. These problems are: concentration of risk in inequitable ways; transfer of risk to already vulnerable or disadvantaged populations; and exercise of undue influence over potential research participants. The first two arise in both (...) public policy and research initiatives, whereas the third is a special concern that only applies to research initiatives. We argue that when one or more of these is of high magnitude, then the study or policy intervention may be ethically wrong. Finally, we conclude that although some risk displacement is ethically permissible, researchers and policymakers still have ethical reasons to reduce the magnitude of these problems. (shrink)

Analyses the relationships between cultural coherence, cultural pluralism, civic education, and autonomy. Section 4.1 argues that the skills, habits, values, and beliefs that underlie the capacity for autonomy also underlie the capacity for citizenship; hence, education for citizenship and for autonomy are mutually reinforcing. Section 4.2 develops an ‘English’ model of political liberal education, contrasting it with an ‘American’ model developed in Section 4.3 and a ‘French’ model in Section 4.4. Section 4.5 concludes that all of these political liberal models (...) of education, which attempt in different ways to balance cultural coherence and civic virtue without promoting autonomy, are inferior—on both theoretical and empirical grounds—to weakly perfectionist liberal education. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn the United States, constitutional and statutory law reinforce the right of all children to receive an education, regardless of their citizenship or immigration status. In a time of heightened anti-immigrant sentiment and law enforcement, however, partnerships among school districts, local law enforcement, and the U.S. Departments of Justice and Homeland Security subject undocumented and unaccompanied minor students to indefensible levels of risk for detention and deportation. We identify three stances that U.S. schools may take in the face of a (...) potential ‘school-to-deportation pipeline.’ Schools that engage in intentional collaboration actively increase detention and deportation by referring students to immigration officials for criminal, non-criminal, and even non-disciplinary activity. Schools that engage in predictable complicity may not intend to subject their undocumented and unaccompanied minor students to detention or deportation, but still put students at risk by involving police in school policies. We argue that U.S. schools should instead engage in proactive protection of immigrant students and families, including actively resisting federal policies when necessary. (shrink)

The goal of this book is to develop a coherent liberal political theory of children's education provision. This goal is motivated by three observations: although people's intuitions about liberalism already guide their approach to education policy, their intuitions are often wrong; in liberal states, liberal political principles should and do have important ramifications for education policy; and educational outcomes have important ramifications for the health and preservation of the liberal polity. The book does not justify liberalism's value—instead takes that as (...) given—but it does address the relationship between formal schooling and other forms of education, as well as discusses the difference between liberal and democratic theories of education. (shrink)

Examines four objections stemming from the clash of theory and intuition. It argues that the ‘detached school’ should, with minor modifications, continue to provide the basis for the liberal educational ideal. Section 3.1 addresses concerns about state tyranny, arguing that the detached school both counters the threat of parental tyranny and ensures a substantive pluralism among schools and within society. Section 3.2 shows that detached schools can promote effective parental involvement. Section 3.3 addresses the hidden curriculum of schools, while Section (...) 3.4 discusses the ability of the detached school to help children develop cultural coherence and a stable sense of identity as well as a capacity for choice. (shrink)

Normative case studies are designed to offer richly detailed “worlds of possibility” that invite complex reflection and discussion about authentic ethical dilemmas in education. In this essay, Tatiana Geron and Meira Levinson argue that authors' choices of what details to include in a case are themselves ethical decisions that require significant ethical responsibility. Case details can shape which avenues of ethical inquiry are open to readers, whether and how institutional and structural conditions get considered, whose perspectives are included (...) and legitimized, and what political issues are understood as “open” or “closed.” At its best, case “world-building” can help readers understand the full complexity of ethical decision-making in education. However, for this to occur, case authors must seek out expert and dissenting perspectives, field test the case with diverse audiences, and remain reflexive about their own perspectives and how these shape their world-building decisions. (shrink)

"By nearly every measure, Americans are less engaged in their communities and political activity than generations past.” So write the editors of this volume, who survey the current practices and history of citizenship education in the United States. They argue that the current period of “creative destruction”—when schools are closing and opening in response to reform mandates—is an ideal time to take an in-depth look at how successful strategies and programs promote civic education and good citizenship. _Making Civics Count_ offers (...) research-based insights into what diverse students and teachers know and do as civic actors, and proposes a blueprint for civic education for a new generation that is both practical and visionary. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic raised not only overwhelming practical challenges but also deep ethical dilemmas for educators. There have been few efforts to connect these challenges to either ethical dilemmas teachers faced in pre-pandemic times or to philosophical analyses of complex normative terrain of teachers’ work. We facilitated eleven discussion groups with 101 educators from seven countries on the dilemmas they faced due to COVID-19. Analysis of these sessions reveals how the pandemic amplified, exacerbated and augmented pre-pandemic educational dilemmas in ways (...) that recalibrated teachers’ core values and beliefs, and highlights the importance of engaging teachers in ethical dialogue. (shrink)

This article seeks to demonstrate a particular application of Foucault's philosophical approach to a particular issue in education: that of personal autonomy. The paper surveys and extends the approach taken by James Marshall in his book Michel Foucault: Personal autonomy and education. After surveying Marshall's writing on the issue I extend Marshall's approach, critically analysing the work of Rob Reich and Meira Levinson, two contemporary philosophers who advocate models of personal autonomy as the basis for a liberal education.

Meira Levinson’s No Citizen Left Behind is a thoughtful, accessible, philosophically rich look at civic education in U.S. schools. The book’s central claims are, on the whole, quite persuasive. In the interests of fostering further discussion, this essay raises some questions about the book’s accounts of racial microaggressions in schools, the extent of authenticity in student experiences, and the practice of code-switching.

Meira Levinson argues for a robust civics education that models the practices of good citizenship. One of the elements of that civics education is teaching students how to take up the perspectives of others. The question arises: how do we teach students and citizens alike to take up the perspectives of others? Here I argue that we can make sense of perspective-taking by appealing to Rawls’s notion of public reason as an ideal. I conclude by arguing that a (...) commitment to the ideal of public reason can help identify and resist oppression and marginalization. (shrink)

What Is Aesthetic Pleasure? When is pleasure in an object properly denominated aesthetic? The characterization of aesthetic pleasure is something that ...

A chronicler who recites events without distinguishing between major and minor ones acts in accordance with the following truth: nothing that has ever happened should be regarded as lost for history."Few areas of American public life have received as much attention with as little actual on-the-ground study as citizen deliberation," Lawrence R. Jacobs, Fay Lomax Cook, and Michael X. Delli Carpini argue. "Whether and how real citizens engage in discursive participation; the nature, settings, and impact of this public talk; and (...) when and if 'talk' ever rises to the level of 'democratic deliberation'—each of these is ignored or, at best, occasionally introduced by way of illustration or anecdote" (2009, 20-21).This is .. (shrink)

A fun piece discussing the challenges to and prospects of building machines that are able to produce and understand natural language.

This paper explores the role of iconicity in spoken language and other human communication systems. First, we concentrate on graphical and gestural communication and show how semantically motivated iconic signs play an important role in creating such communication systems from scratch. We then consider how iconic signs tend to become simplified and symbolic as the communication system matures and argue that this process is driven by repeated interactive use of the signs. We then consider evidence for iconicity at the level (...) of the system in graphical communication and finally draw comparisons between iconicity in graphical and gestural communication systems and in spoken language. (shrink)

Quarterly publication discussing various topics in environmental ethics, including features, discussion papers, book reviews, editorial commentaries, and other text related to environmental philosophies. Some issues also include announcements and other news related to the environmental studies community.

The concept of paternalism is intricately tied to the concept of autonomy. It is commonly assumed that when paternalistic interventions are wrong, they are wrong because they impede individuals’ autonomy. Our aim in this paper is to show that the recent shift towards conceiving of autonomy relationally highlights a separate conceptual space for a nonpaternalistic kind of interpersonal intervention termed maternalism. We argue that maternalism makes a twofold contribution to the debate over the ethics of interpersonal action and decision-making. Descriptively, (...) it captures common experiences that, while not unusual in everyday life, are largely absent from the present discussion. Normatively, it describes a type of intervention with justification conditions distinct from the standard framework of paternalism. We explicate these contributions by describing six key differences between maternalism and paternalism, and conclude by anticipating and responding to potential objections. (shrink)

What theory should we accept from the practical point of view, or accept as a basis for guiding our actions, if we don’t know which theory is true, and if there are too many plausible alternative theories for us to take them all into consideration? This question is the theme of the first three parts of this dissertation. I argue that the problem of theory acceptance, so understood, is a problem of practical rationality, and hence that the appropriate grounds for (...) theory acceptance are practical considerations. I argue for a number of principles of theory acceptance, and I explore the implications of these principles for the acceptance both of descriptive theories and evaluative theories. (shrink)

In his classic “Freedom and Resentment,” P. F. Strawson introduces us to an optimist who believes that our moral responsibility practices are justified by their beneficial consequences. Although many see Strawson as a staunch critic of this consequentialist position, his stated view is only that there is a gap in the optimist’s story where the reactive attitudes should be. In this paper, I fill in the gap. I show how optimism can be suitably modified to reflect an appreciation of the (...) reactive attitudes. And I argue that the ensuing position—on which our moral responsibility practices, taken as a whole, are justified both by their regulation of behavior and by their enabling of interpersonal relationships—provides us not only with a plausible justification of our moral responsibility practices, but also with a fruitful framework for evaluating potential reforms. (shrink)

We seem to talk about repeatable artworks, like symphonies, films, and novels, all the time. We say things like, "The Moonlight Sonata has three movements" and "Duck Soup makes me laugh". How are these sentences to be understood? We argue against the simple subject/predicate view, on which the subjects of the sentences refer to individuals and the sentences are true iff the referents of the subjects have the properties picked out by the predicates. We then consider two alternative responses that (...) involve reading these sentences as generics, similar to "The polar bear has four paws". The first response takes these sentences to be about kinds, and the second takes the relevant noun-phrases to act as predicates. We reject these accounts, but offer a third alternative which is informed by both, and which enables us to deny the existence of repeatable artworks while endorsing the truth of sentences seemingly about them. (shrink)

The central aims of this paper are to show how linguistic corpora have been used and can be used in philosophy and to argue that linguistic corpora and corpus analysis should be added to the philosopher’s toolkit of ways to address philosophical questions. A linguistic corpus is a curated collection of texts representing language use that can be queried to answer research questions. Among many other uses, linguistic corpora can help answer questions about the meaning of words and the structure (...) of discourse. Through a discussion of examples, the paper shows that there are many philosophical questions that can be addressed by using a linguistic corpus. However, linguistic corpora need not (and often cannot) replace traditional philosophical methods. Lastly, it argues that the special properties of linguistic corpora, including their independence and the current ease and cheapness of access, make them an indispensable resource for philosophers. (shrink)