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Books > Social sciences > Education > Philosophy of education
A thought-provoking contribution to the renaissance of interest in
Bergson, this study brings him to a new generation of readers.
Ansell-Pearson contends that there is a Bergsonian revolution, an
upheaval in philosophy comparable in significance to those that we
are more familiar with, from Kant to Nietzsche and Heidegger, that
make up our intellectual modernity. The focus of the text is on
Bergson's conception of philosophy as the discipline that seeks to
'think beyond the human condition'. Not that we are caught up in an
existential predicament when the appeal is made to think beyond the
human condition; rather that restricting philosophy to the human
condition fails to appreciate the extent to which we are not simply
creatures of habit and automatism, but also organisms involved in a
creative evolution of becoming. Ansell-Pearson introduces the work
of Bergson and core aspects of his innovative modes of thinking;
examines his interest in Epicureanism; explores his interest in the
self and in time and memory; presents Bergson on ethics and on
religion, and illuminates Bergson on the art of life.
At Fault is an exhilarating celebration of risk-taking in the work
of James Joyce. Esteemed Joyce scholar and teacher Sebastian
Knowles takes on the American university system, arguing that the
modernist writer offers the antidote to the risk-averse attitudes
that are increasingly constraining institutions of higher education
today. Knowles shows how Joyce's work connects with research,
teaching, and service, the three primary functions of the academic
enterprise. He demonstrates that Joyce's texts continually push
beyond themselves, resisting the end, defying delimitation. The
characters in these texts also move outward-in a centrifugal
pattern-looking for escape. Knowles further highlights the
expansiveness of Joyce's world by undertaking topics as diverse as
the symbol of Jumbo the elephant, the meaning of the gramophone,
live music performance in the "Sirens" episode of Ulysses, the
neurology of humor, and inventive ways of teaching Finnegans Wake.
Contending that error is the central theme in all of Joyce's work,
Knowles argues that the freedom to challenge boundaries and make
mistakes is essential to the university environment. Energetic and
delightfully erudite, Knowles inspires readers with the infinite
possibilities of human thought exemplified by Joyce's writing.
In an effort to enhance the quality of education, universities and
colleges are developing programs that help faculty and staff
internationalize curriculum. These programs will purposefully
develop the intercultural perspectives of students. Curriculum
Internationalization and the Future of Education is a critical
scholarly resource that examines the steps taken to diversify a
number of courses from various disciplines and addresses the
challenges with curriculum internationalization. Featuring coverage
on a broad range of topics, such as active learning, student
engagement, and grounded globalism, this book is geared towards
academics, upper-level students, educators, professionals, and
practitioners seeking current research on curriculum
internalization.
What is philosophical about the practice Philosophy for Children
(P4C)? In this open access book, the authors offer a surprising
answer to this question: a practitioner's contemplation of the
potentiality to speak, or what can be called infancy. Although
essential to the experience of language, this most basic and
profound capacity is often taken for granted or simply
instrumentalized for the educational purposes of developing
critical, caring, or creative thinking skills in the name of
democratic citizenship. Against this kind of instrumentalization,
the authors' radical reconceptualization of P4C focuses on the
experience of infancy that can take place through collective
inquiry. The authors' Philosophy for Infancy (P4I) emerges as a
non-instrumental educational practice that does not dictate what to
say or how to say it but rather turns attention to the fact of
speaking. Referencing critical theorist Giorgio Agamben's extensive
work on the theme of infancy, the authors philosophically engage
the core writings of Matthew Lipman and Ann Sharp, foundational
scholars in the P4C tradition, to rediscover this latent
potentiality in the original P4C program that has yet to be
developed. Not only does the book provide a new theoretical basis
for appreciating what is philosophical in Lipman and Sharp's
formulations of P4C, it also provides a unique elucidation of key
concepts in Agamben's work-such as infancy, demand, rules,
adventure, happiness, love, and anarchy-within a collective,
educational practice. Throughout, the authors offer applications of
P4I that will provide anchoring points to inspire educators to
return to philosophical experimentation with language as a means
without end. The ebook editions of this book are available open
access under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 licence on
bloomsburycollections.com.
Best known for the progressive school he founded in Dessau during
the 18th century, Johann Bernhard Basedow was a central thinker in
the German Enlightenment. Since his death in 1790 a substantial
body of German-language literature about his life, work, and school
(the Philanthropin) has developed. In the first English
intellectual biography of this influential figure, Robert B. Louden
answers questions that continue to surround Basedow and provides a
much-needed examination of Basedow's intellectual legacy. Assessing
the impact of his ideas and theories on subsequent educational
movements, Louden argues that Basedow is the unacknowledged father
of the progressive education movement. He unravels several
paradoxes surrounding the Philanthropin to help understand why it
was described by Immanuel Kant as "the greatest phenomenon which
has appeared in this century for the perfection of humanity",
despite its brief and stormy existence, its low enrollment and
insufficient funding. Among the many neglected stories Louden tells
is the enormous and unacknowledged debt that Kant owes to Basedow
in his philosophy of education, history, and religion. This is a
positive reassessment of Basedow and his difficult personality that
leads to a reevaluation of the originality of major figures as well
as a reconsideration of the significance of allegedly minor authors
who have been eclipsed by the politics of historiography. For
anyone looking to gain a deeper understanding of the history of
German philosophy, Louden's book is essential reading.
The transition from apartheid to the post-apartheid era has
highlighted questions about the past and the persistence of its
influence in present-day South Africa. This is particularly so in
education, where the past continues to play a decisive role in
relation to inequality. Between Worlds: German Missionaries and the
Transition from Mission to Bantu Education in South Africa
scrutinises the experience of a hitherto unexplored German mission
society, probing the complexities and paradoxes of social change in
education. It raises challenging questions about the nature of
mission education legacies. Linda Chisholm shows that the
transition from mission to Bantu Education was far from seamless.
Instead, past and present interpenetrated one another, with
resistance and compliance cohabiting in a complex new social order.
At the same time as missionaries complied with the new Bantu
Education dictates, they sought to secure a role for themselves in
the face of demands of local communities for secular
state-controlled education. When the latter was implemented in a
perverted form from the mid-1950s, one of its tools was textbooks
in local languages developed by mission societies as part of a
transnational project, with African participation. Introduced under
the guise of expunging European control, Bantu Education merely
served to reinforce such control. The response of local communities
was an attempt to domesticate - and master - the 'foreign' body of
the mission so as to create access to a larger world. This book
focuses on the ensuing struggle, fought on many fronts, including
medium of instruction and textbook content, with concomitant
sub-texts relating to gender roles and sexuality. South Africa's
educational history is to this day informed by networks of people
and ideas crossing geographic and racial boundaries. The colonial
legacy has inevitably involved cultural mixing and hybridisation -
with, paradoxically, parallel pleas for purity. Chisholm explores
how these ideas found expression in colliding and coalescing
worlds, one African, the other European, caught between mission and
apartheid education.
Engaging in genuine dialogue and authentic communication is
essential for teachers to assist students' successes and help them
further their education through refining critical thinking skills
beyond the classroom. Critical Theory and Transformative Learning
is a critical scholarly resource that examines and contrasts the
key concepts related to critical approaches in educational
settings. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics including
repressive tolerance, online teaching, and adult education, this
book is geared toward educators, administrators, academicians, and
researchers seeking current research on transformative learning and
addressing the interconnectedness of important theories and praxis.
What is a good human life? A life of duty? Virtue? Happiness? This
book weaves a path through traditional answers. We live well,
suggests the author, not primarily by pursuing goods for ourselves,
but by cherishing other people and guiding them towards lives of
cherishing. We cherish objects too - the planet, my grandfather's
watch - and practices like music-making to which we are personally
drawn. In this work of 'populated philosophy' (copiously
illustrated by literary and 'real life' examples), a cherishing
life is presented as hard and irreducibly individual. The idea of
cherishing, says the author, points towards intimate, unreasonable
layers of the ethical life, as well as the deepening of wisdom and
connection. It also points towards incomparable satisfactions,
reminding us who we are and who we want to be.
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