This paper deals with two forms of education--Platonic and Socratic. The former educates childhood to transform it into what it ought to be. The latter does not form childhood, but makes education childlike. To unfold the philosophical and pedagogical dimensions of this opposition, the first part of the paper highlights the way in which philosophy…

Democracy is often theorized as a form of political association grounded in shared meanings, common experiences, and convergent interests among the associated individuals. Because differences and divergences seem to stand in the way of commonality and consensus, the coexistence of a plurality of meanings, experiences, interests, languages,…

The author tries to argue how epistemic sensibility as virtue sensibility can complement virtue epistemology. Many philosophers interrelated virtue reliabilism (e.g., Brogaard, 2006) and virtue responsibilism (e.g., Code, 1987) to virtue epistemology as two dimensions with many diverging and a few converging characters. The possible new dimension…

The positive reception of Buber's philosophy does not fully match Buber's intention in terms of overcoming the problem of the subject-object binary. In other words, a number of authors have remained within the traditional way of thinking by merely replacing the subject and object with Buber's I and You, establishing a more dogmatic normative…

Many personal experiences have convinced this author that philosophers of education have a highly important mission in the world. The fundamental problems in education and in the public world are not abstruse, abstract, or hidden: they are ordinary and open to view. All they require is clarity of thought, appropriate knowledge and methods for…

The article analyzes the constituent steps and measures of the Soviet campaign to eradicate illiteracy among adults in the 1920s-30s. A comparison of educational and ideological aspects of this campaign demonstrates how closely they were interrelated and how they facilitated the creation of new patterns of cultural behavior. The author shows that…

Tertiary education has been actively moving over the last two decades from the lecturer-centred to the student-centred approach, focusing more on "what the student does" rather than on "what the student is" or "what the teacher is". We, as academics, teacher educators, and teachers, do attend many workshops and…

Progressive schools, by their very nature, need to respond to changing societal conditions. Within that context, learning guided by the teachings of John Dewey will not only make the progressive tradition sustainable but also make it increasingly relevant in a future that will increasingly make demands on students to possess the knowledge to…

National Qualifications Frameworks (NQFs) are a principal means by which governments seek to assure the quality of higher education. A body of critical scholarship has, however, emerged in the last two decades that challenges their philosophical and practical foundations. Stephanie Allais is prominent amongst the critics. She has published…

Charter schools are, by definition, contract schools. Charter means contract. To understand this fundamental feature of charter schools and the limits that stem from this aspect, this paper analyzes the topic of contracts and what contracting means for coming to terms with charter schools. This analysis locates charter schools in the realm of the…

This article extends a recent educational engagement with the work of Jacques Rancière by linking his meditations on 19th-century worker emancipation to present cultural contexts and media forms. Taking Nick Prior's (2010) notion of the "new amateur" as point of departure, I argue that new media and attendant production contexts offer an…

This article engages critically with the concept of agency in infant and toddler educational discourse. It is argued that agency, when conceptualised with emphasis on individuality and the autonomous self, poses a conceptual "dead end" for those who are not-yet-in-language, such as babies and toddlers. In considering agency as an aspect…

Parents as partners is a slight digression in title from the grace and courtesy theme of the journal, but it builds its argument around the concept of cooperative relations between the parents and the school. Sarah speaks of the perception of the teacher and parents as each being unique and particular to the life and personality of each child. The…

This paper articulates John Dewey's socio-political and historical influence upon the foundation and evolution of the world-renowned Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education. It proposes that the pedagogical depth, influence and endurance of the Italian project are grounded in Dewey's philosophies of education, aesthetics and democracy.…

Despite the widespread of democracy, the term has no unified meaning; and thus a lack of clarity which renders communication ineffective. Democracy is a political term which allows individuals the freedom of choice when electing government officials. It gives individuals the most involvement in government oversight, elections and changes, as…