In recent years, scholars have turned to cosmopolitanism as a framework for thinking through issues of language and citizenship. In this article, I present Daisaku Ikeda's philosophy of cosmopolitan education and compare it with others' in the extant literature. I examine, from a philosophical perspective, its roots in the Mahayana tradition of…

The current heritage fascination signals the omnipresence of the Present. Recently it has spawned a distinct type of teaching and learning: "heritage education". In this article we argue that, despite its presentist connotations, heritage education offers interesting opportunities for understanding the foreignness of the past, a…

This study was conducted to investigate the moral development of one hundred Kuwaiti high school teachers. They ranged in age from 23 to 48 years with a mean of 28.6 years and a standard deviation of 8.3 years. The teachers' individual moral judgment levels were assessed by the Defining Issues Test (DIT)--an objective test designed by James Rest…

In the last year, two prominent, famous, and revered coaches, Jim Tressel and Joe Paterno, committed disastrous lapses of ethics. Both coaches preached that sport and athletics build character. They either taught ethics or leadership courses at their institutions or were exemplars of ethical behavior in their personal and professional lives. Both…

Current evolutionary and cognitive theories of religion posit that supernatural agent concepts emerge from cognitive systems such as theory of mind and social cognition. Some argue that these concepts evolved to maintain social order by minimizing antisocial behavior. If these theories are correct, then people should process information about…

This study compared moral and social reasoning in individuals with and without autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Ten familiar schoolyard transgressions were shown to 18 participants with and 18 participants without ASD. They judged the appropriateness of the behavior and explained their judgments. Analysis of the rationales revealed that…

Two experiments examined biases in children's (5/6- and 7/8-year-olds) and adults' moral judgments. Participants at all ages judged that it was worse to produce harm when harm occurred (a) through action rather than inaction (omission bias), (b) when physical contact with the victim was involved (physical contact principle), and (c) when the harm…

In this article we argue that "ubuntu" (human interdependence) is not some form of essentialist notion that unfolds in exactly the same way as some critics of "ubuntu" might want to suggest. Rather, we offer a philosophical position that (re)considers the situation of the self in relation to others. The article starts from the general issues at…

This thinkpiece arises from personal reflection on researching "sexualisation", on the individuals and issues encountered and on elements that were unspoken or more rarely voiced. It suggests that the discourse on sexualisation tends to construct an "other" from which speakers distance themselves, variously defined as "bad" mothers, sexualized…

American higher education has been in almost perpetual crisis for several generations, with students experiencing fragmentation and loss of coherence across the curriculum. Most liberal arts colleges in the 19th century had a required senior course in "moral philosophy" to integrate the curriculum and prepare students for future leadership, but…

A key aspect of contemporary lifelong learning theory, policy, and practice is the idea that, because of rapid changes in contemporary societies, there is a constant need for individuals to learn new knowledge and skills in order to adapt themselves to changing conditions. There is, therefore, an increased emphasis on the personal dimension of…

This paper examines ways in which current moral values are influenced by earlier patterns of thinking carried forward in root metaphors whose meanings were often framed by the analogues settled upon in the past by thinkers who were influenced by the silences and prejudices of their culture. It is argued that such tacitly inherited metaphors…

The happy victimiser phenomenon has puzzled many researchers in the field of moral development. After having learnt and internalised what is morally right and wrong, young children tend to attribute positive feelings to observed models of their age who explicitly harm other children. This has been mainly explained as a lack of moral motivation or…

Many competing ideas exist around teaching "standard" high school social studies subjects such as history, government, geography, and economics. The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of social studies teaching and learning as a moral activity. I first propose that current high school curriculum standards in the United States often…

In this article, the author talks about the registers of the religious and focuses on the Terence H. McLaughlin lecture 2010. He starts from MacIntyre's observation that people live in a world characterized by a vocabulary of value whose purchase on life is no longer authentically experienced: "MacIntyre's diagnosis of the impoverished…