This article investigates the theoretical link between two approaches to civic character education: Service Learning and the Just Community, given that the two share a strong democratic ethical component. Based on historical research and bibliographical review, we show that John Dewey's pragmatism forms a theoretical foundation of both approaches.…

A new theory of emulation--the method by which one learns from moral role models--is emerging through the combined efforts of philosophers, psychologists and educationists. Using a previous argument reconceptualising emulation as a moral virtue as a philosophical springboard, in this paper, I extend this theory by building a more robust case for…

This article's question is whether Spinoza understands the highest human perfection -- which he equates with both our highest good and the love of God -- as a theoretical state, consisting in having knowledge and the perfection of beliefs, or as a practical state, consisting in having virtue and the perfection of action. Consequently, the article…

Since the 1990s, education for the virtues of citizenship has become widespread in the United States and United Kingdom. It is intended to inculcate virtues such as courtesy, respect and truthfulness in school children. This essay defends education for the virtues of citizenship against two criticisms. According to the first, which might be called…

This article argues for the need of a new, pragmatic response to claims of indoctrination in public school classrooms across the United States. While attempts at defining indoctrination and moral arguments for and against certain pedagogical practices may be worthwhile, the article maintains that claims of indoctrination, whether substantive or…

In this article, I argue that parental privacy has often been given too much weight in theorising about justice at schools. Susan Okin famously stated that as the family serves as the children's 'first school of justice', it should also be internally just. However, she agreed with John Rawls on that interfering directly within the family life,…

There is a debate within philosophy of literature as to whether narrative artworks should be judged morally, for their ethical value, meaning and impact. On one side you have the aesthetes, defenders of aestheticism, who deny the ethical value of an artwork can be taken into consideration when judging the work's overall aesthetic value. Richard…

Admiration is often described as having a singular motivational profile -- the disposition to imitate. This article provides a developmental assessment of admiration's action-potential, proposing a series of stages between (1) naïve imitation, a basic mimetic impulse, and (2) non-imitative virtuous actions. The process is marked by an increasing…

This article argues for the thesis that epiphanies are a central means for transformative moral and intellectual growth. Drawing on recent work on this concept in moral education, the article develops a conception of epiphany as a genre of transformative experience with three distinct phenomenological dimensions: a disruption of our everyday…

Howard's moral fortification theory of criminal punishment lends itself to justifying correction for children in schools that is supportive. There are good reasons to include other students in the learning opportunity occasioned by doing right in response to wrong, which need not exploit the wrongdoing student as a mere means. Care ethics can…

In her Exemplarist Moral Theory, Linda Zagzebski argues that we can empirically discover the meaning of moral terms like 'virtue' and 'the good life' by direct reference to moral exemplars -- those people we admire as morally exceptional. Her proposal is promising, because (1) moral exemplars play an important motivating role in moral education,…

This article is a reply to Matthew Clayton and David Stephens's 2018 article 'What is the point of religious education?' (see EJ1173708). I begin by problematising the 'acceptability requirement' used to justify the authors' conclusions. I then disambiguate the key claim made in the article. If interpreted broadly, as an attack on curricula that…

John White and John Tillson have both raised objections to the theory of moral education I have recently advanced. Here I reply to their objections and offer some critical remarks on the alternative accounts of moral education they propose.

Virtue education is gaining popularity in institutions of higher education. Given this growing interest, several theoretical accounts explaining the process of virtue learning have emerged. However, there is scant empirical evidence supporting their applicability for intellectual virtue. In this study, we apply a theory of virtue learning to the…

This article explores some general considerations bearing on the question of whether virtue can be measured. What is moral virtue? What are measurement and evaluation, and what do they presuppose about the nature of what is measured or evaluated? What are the prospective contexts of, and purposes for, measuring or evaluating virtue, and how would…