A growing number of advocacy groups, educators, and families are concerned that something important is missing from modern public education. They recognize the necessity of students making progress in their math and reading abilities, but they fear that a narrow focus on those subjects has caused schools to neglect other essential aspects of…

In a recent thought-provoking piece, Peter Roberts argues against the central role of happiness as a guiding concept in education, and argues for more attention to be paid to despair. This does not mean cultivating despair in young people, but allowing them to make sense of their own natural occasional despair, as well as the despair of others. I…

While universities are intensely protective of revenue streams related to intellectual property interests for the institution and professors, the financial and legal interests of students in the entrepreneurial process have largely been overlooked. This lack of attention, both in universities and in the literature, is intriguing given the…

Can moral flaws lessen an artwork's aesthetic value? Answering yes to this question requires both that artworks can be morally flawed and that moral flaws within a work of art can have an aesthetic impact. For present purposes, the author will assume that artworks can be morally flawed by such means as endorsing immoral perspectives, culpably…

The author's first impression of the philosophy for children program in Hawai'i (p4c) was a strong, intuitive feeling that this approach to education can be a vehicle to change the world. This feeling has not faded at all in the course of her five-year commitment to p4c. Yet, as the author has exchanged her ideas about p4c with teachers and…

Justice is often thought to require that students receive educations that are, in some important sense, equal. I lay out, and raise questions about, an argument that seems to support this conclusion. The questions I raise about the argument suggest that what justice requires is not equality, but adequacy, of education. More specifically, I contend…

There has been little critical exploration of the ethical issues that arise in professional practice common to adapted physical activity. We cannot avoid moral issues as we inevitably will act in ways that will negatively affect the well-being of others. We will make choices, which in our efforts to support others, may hurt by violating dignity or…

I respond to Noddings with further clarification of the notion of empathy and also argue that previous care ethics has put too much of an exclusive emphasis on relationships. I respond to Darwall by pointing out some implausible implications of his own and Kantian views about respect and by showing how a sentimentalist approach can avoid those…

Hispanic and Latino Americans want security from terrorists as much as all other Americans. A protective membrane surrounding the country that is too porous is of little use and constitutes a danger to residents, both citizens and non-citizens alike. This much is uncontroversial. Similarly, most American citizens truly benefit from the work…

Michael Slote's very interesting work on moral sentimentalism and moral education raises some important questions on the meaning of empathy, the limitations of "inductions", and the development of moral education from the perspective of care ethics. These questions are addressed in this commentary. (Contains 5 notes.)

In this article, the author shares his reactions to angry letters to his books, particularly the one titled "Mr. Granite Is from Another Planet." Nearly all the complaints the author receives inform him that it's his responsibility as an author to promote positive messages and moral lessons in his books. However, the author contends that his books…

In this paper we will define the object of study of "Pedagogiek", followed by a brief discussion about current trends in educational policy, teacher education and educational research. We refer here to the continental European "pedagogy as human science", or more precisely the "science of the child's upbringing" in…

Michael Slote proposes a rethinking of moral education from the perspective of a normative ethics of care combined with his distinctive sentimentalist metaethics. I raise questions concerning the role of empathy in Slote's picture and argue that empathy is related to respect and sentiments through which we hold ourselves and one another…

In this article we argue that when university researchers engage in democratic participatory action research with schools the process requires a special type of attention to the ethical difficulties which can arise. We note how current professional standards of ethics are inadequate to fully address many of the dilemmas faced in collaborative…

This article argues that under neoliberal casino capitalism there has been a wholesale attack not only on the social state but also on those public spheres that enable the formative cultures necessary to produce critical agents, engaged subjects, and the literacies necessary to make power and authority accountable. In this instance, the struggle…