After a brief overview of what intellectual virtues are, I offer three arguments for the claim that education should aim at fostering "intellectual character virtues" like curiosity, open-mindedness, intellectual courage, and intellectual honesty. I then go on to discuss several pedagogical and related strategies for achieving this aim. (Contains…

This essay focuses on the need to educate the new "persona educada", a dignified, honorable person with a good measure of social and personal responsibility who also possesses the habits of the mind and heart. To cultivate "una persona educada" requires a newly formed vision of education and pedagogy. Examples of three entrenched agreements that…

As the leader of the nation's only campus dedicated exclusively to early college, the author heads an institution that ensures students graduate sooner than the national average. As an academic who pursued her graduate work at Oxford University--an institution that confers most of its undergraduate degrees in three years--the author has had direct…

Times of threshold change, such as the transformation from the industrial era to the knowledge economy of today, produce pressures to redesign the institutions people live with to respond to, or better, shape this change. In America's knowledge economy, there is broad agreement that the only way to preserve the nation's economic edge will be…

In order to address some of the key underlying issues currently distorting dominant approaches to schooling it is necessary to acknowledge and engage with our broad intellectual and cultural responsibilities currently shunned by contemporary policy. Philosophy has a key role to play here, in terms of both deconstruction and recommendation. Drawing…

Contrasting approaches to early childhood education are evident in the constructivist versus instructivist schools of thought. On one side, the child is seen as active constructor of knowledge and understanding; on the other, the child is dependent on another's instruction in knowledge and skills. This paper explores some of the implications of…

Brings the pragmatic and educational goals of language study together through the concept of narrative imagination, which suggests that the study of literary texts promotes civic and intellectual development and allows students to see the world from another point of view. Sets forth five interconnected reading goals as guides for adapting…

Ways in which philosophical inquiry serve the Christian scholar include these: providing historical analogues, useful paradigms, principles for interpretation of occurrences, tools for systematic analysis of intellectual and social systems, rhetoric of dissent, strategies for change, and mechanisms for preservation of concepts. (Author/MSE)

Throughout its history, American education has focused narrowly on practical and vocational issues and has ignored the need for intellectual development. The lesson is not yet fully learned, and an emphasis on critical thinking as a goal of education is only beginning to gather strength. (MSE)

The purpose of this article is to construct Piaget's contributions to education, focusing on cognitive aspects. Explored are the goals of education: independent inquiry and acquisition of a body of information, passivity in traditional education, and the psychogenetic view of knowledge formation. (SK)

Theories of scholarship as ritual in nursery school and kindergarten and education as contest in elementary school through secondary school are discussed. Consequences of carrying such false notions into higher education are noted. Mastery, intellect, and courage are proposed as the three elements necessary to scholarship. (Article originally…

Much that schools have attempted to perform could be better accomplished by community-based education that would link older adults and youth. Intellectual development and citizenship are uniquely the responsibility of the schools. (Author/MLF)

A working definition of the humanities and characteristics of a liberally educated person are specified. The humanities embrace areas of human knowledge that possess these elements: central concern for human beings rather than for the processes of nature or the structures of society; primary focus on the individual rather than on the group;…

Wingspread Conference (October 1984) presentations are given: "Pilgrims and Immigrants: Liberal Learning in Today's World" (Frank F. Wong); "How Can One Know America, Who Only America Knows?" (Robert L. Nichols); "Internationalizing the Curriculum in the Natural Sciences" (Jack L. Carter); "International Perspectives on Campus" (Franklin M.…

Sixteen educators and noneducators comment on John Henry Martin's proposal to narrow the goals of schooling and involve others more fully in the education of adolescents. (Author/MLF)