Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift argue that education is a positional good; this, they hold, implies that there is a qualified case for leveling down educational provision. In this essay, Ben Kotzee discusses Brighouse and Swift's argument for leveling down. He holds that the argument fails in its own terms and that, in presenting the problem…

In this essay Sharon Lamb considers how progressives have begun to win the longstanding battle to shape sex education and what they have had to give up in the process. After framing the battle in historical context, Lamb uses discourse analysis to explore the hidden values in the "evidence-based" (EB) curricula that progressives…

Our society's preoccupation with making educational policy and practice "scientific" is attested to by the stated mission of the Institute of Education Sciences: "to provide rigorous evidence on which to ground education practice and policy." Early in the twentieth century, John Dewey also advocated for a vision of education guided by science, and…

According to Alfred North Whitehead, education precedes through three stages as it develops students' minds: (1) romantic; (2) precision; and (3) generalization. These stages are related to Whitehead's ideas about prehension and symbolic reference. Educational practices should strike a balance between the stages to encourage learning. (PP)