In this article, the author offer a response to Nathan Snaza's (2013a, 2013b, 2014a; Sonu & Snaza, 2015) "bewildering" pedagogy as developed in the "Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy". Pedagogy is about the role of being-with in human development; it does not primarily answer to cognitive or competency development or…

This essay reviews Atkinson's article "Dewey and Democracy" and argues that while Dewey and the social foundations classroom may indeed be important for teacher preparation, it is not in the way Atkinson suggests. Namely, I argue that Atkinson's essay has three distinct (yet interrelated) issues: his problematic oversimplifications, what…

Since the seventeenth century, there have been two narratives about modernity in general and America in particular. The author uses the term "narrative" to include (a) facts, (b) arguments, and most important, (c) a larger vision of how one sees the world and chooses to engage the world. The first and originalist narrative is the Lockean Liberty…

In this article, I respond to the work of Gert Biesta regarding the question of what education should be for. He maintains education ought to be oriented towards the "good" rather than measurement, accountability and efficiency. While sympathetic to such claims, I nonetheless question his avowal that discussion of the purposes of…

The author wishes to thank Barry Bull for his excellent and stimulating paper, and he would like to pose five questions or points for his consideration in response. In preface to his first question, the author wants to say that he finds cogent and persuasive the discussion in the section "Issues for Political Liberalism in Higher Education" of…

In this article, I develop and defend a prioritarian principle of justice for the distribution of educational resources. I argue that this principle should be conceptualized as directing educators to confer a general benefit, where that benefit need not be mediated by improved academic outcomes. I go on to argue that it should employ a metric of…

In a recent article in "Academic Questions" political scientists Robert Maranto and Matthew C. Woessner have suggested a program to reform their discipline and enhance its social utility. They encourage researchers to engage with consequential social issues and educate the public, while admonishing political scientists to resist partisan advocacy…

In this article, the author, after reviewing current educational trends, suggests that what really needs to happen is to "abandon education altogether." He contends that the worst problems of our times result from education, or, at least, what passes for education. The contemporary world's most intractable, most destructive, most…

One of the main factors implicated in the atomization of contemporary life, both as cause and effect, is the brunt and tenor of modern liberal education. For it cannot be denied that liberal education in the classic sense has severed its mandate to instruct and enlighten from the archive of the past and has been replaced by the concept of…

The agenda of "A Crucible Moment: College Learning & Democracy's Future," "commissioned," "funded," and "nurtured" by the U.S. Department of Education, is nothing less than an attempt to implement a "transformation" of America by "transform[ing] current academic norms about what counts as…

In this article, the author talks about "A Crucible Moment: College Learning & Democracy's Future." There is a moment within "A Crucible Moment: College Learning & Democracy's Future" when the report gets it right. The academics tackle a National Governors Association study that envisions colleges as job training centers. The authors of "A…

The crucial epistemological question for formulating the principles that underlie moral education concerns the status of rationality and objectivity in ethics and education. In this essay Katariina Holma argues that the intertwined understanding of the concepts of education, ethics, rationality, and objectivity is built into our language and our…

There are people whose names are identified with their fields. When an outsider wants to learn about the field of educational technology and enters some keywords, David H. Jonassen is perhaps one the few people whose names will appear instantly. Of course, this is not without reasons. David H. Jonassen has produced enormous amount of work…

While we agree with Cooling's argument from fairness, we argue that Cooling fails to give an adequate account of how fairness can be conceived, particularly because he does not decisively tackle the issues surrounding doing God in a plural context, or the contentious issues of compulsory collective worship and faith schools. In order to explore an…

Educational theorists frequently invoke rights claims to express their views about educational justice and authority. But the unyielding nature of rights claims presents a significant quandary in democratic contexts, given the tension between rights claims and majoritarian democracy. Educational theorists have given limited attention to this…