This paper explores the fundamental tenets of Plato's philosophy of education, particularly his views on a practice of great educational potential: communal musical participation. According to Plato, music can attune the individual and the community to cosmic harmony and this, in turn, is the only way to form and maintain a community. The paper…

Ninety years ago, John Dewey's discussion of "the religious"--as distinct from traditional "religion"--opened new ways of thinking about the connection between spirituality and everyday forms of human action. But in what ways does our contemporary religious landscape invite us to reimagine and reconstruct Deweyan approaches to…

The focus within the European tradition of democratic education has increasingly been on personal traits or character traits, values, and skills, rather than on broad structural features or systemic issues. This is reflected in a recent publication by the Council of Europe titled "Competences for Democratic Culture: Living Together as Equals…

Uma Ramani's characterization of practical life is philosophical and anthropological, suggesting that "human history is the story of the evolution of our practical life activities." Practical life is a collaborative activity that creates community and culture. One's adaptation to life through the daily work of ordering our environment…

In everyday language, whether a school is described as "public" or not is determined by the way it is funded and by who is allowed to attend it. Ideally however, a public school should also be defined and evaluated by its unique goal--to renew a public by providing the young with the skills, dispositions, and perspectives required to…

This dissertation uses theoretical explorations and participant conversations to consider the constitutive possibilities of ethnographic writing that works between students, faculty, and communities and uses those possibilities to describe the philosophy and key elements of an ethnographic composition pedagogy. The project begins with an…

This paper will attempt to define a philosophy of adult education for the purpose of workforce development in Southern Africa. The different influences such as Ubuntu and communalism, indigenous education, diversity western philosophy, globalization and technology are explored in the context of the Southern African region.

An educational philosophy for most schools denotes the usual statement of providing the foundation for quality education to all students is visibly posted in many of the school offices for all to see. This foundation is based on three major pillars, schools, teachers, and communities. The pillars are not separated; they cannot exist by themselves.…

One of the tasks of Jean-Paul Sartre's later work was to consider how an individual could live freely within a free community. This paper examines how Sartre describes the process of group formation and the implications of this discussion for education. The paper begins with his metaphor of a bus queue in order to describe a series. Then, by means…

In this essay Duck-Joo Kwak explores a moral perfectionist approach to citizenship education, which is distinct from liberal and communitarian models. One of educational challenges to this approach is how to cultivate our students' sense of membership, which is shaped by a thick sense of the good life, while being not merely compatible with but…

This article examines Francis W. Parker's (1837-1902) and Tsunesaburo Makiguchi's (1871-1944) views of harmonious community life as the goal of education through bilingual analysis of Parker's "My Pedagogic Creed" (1897) and Makiguchi's On the Significance of Social Aspects that Mr. Parker Says Should be Incorporated into the School Experience…

There is an extensive body of literature which argues that the Internet supports student-centred learning, collaboration, community, higher-order thinking and the construction of meaning and knowledge. As such, many e-learning advocates have turned to the Community of Inquiry as an ideal pedagogy because it too shares these educational ideals.…

This article is based on a constructively critical analysis of the "community of inquiry" model developed by Garrison and Anderson (2003) as part of their "e-learning" research. The authors claim that certain collaborative interactions create "distant presence" fostering the emergence of a "community of…

There is an apparent tension between Immanuel Kant's model of moral agency and his often-neglected philosophy of moral education. On the one hand, Kant's account of moral knowledge and decision-making seems to be one that can be self-taught. Kant's famous categorical imperative and related "fact of reason" argument suggest that we learn the…

An epidemic of disengagement in American high schools is faced as institutions fail to offer meaningful and relevant ways to connect curriculum with students' emerging life stories. These students do not see how schooling, as it is presently constituted, is important to their own developing identities. One solution to this problem is to organize…