Who is keeping watch to warn when policies and practices become essentially the same as those used in previous eras to justify the destruction of human beings? This question is asked by author Jessica Heybach, as she describes the etymological roots of the word "neutrality," the social function of teacher as neutral, and its relationship…

This article considers the concept of self as a core concern within the philosophy of education. The question that is asked is "How do we understand the self that is being educated? This issue is a concern as is any theory of education today that seeks to persuade teachers and public alike that education should be grounded in a healthy,…

How to reconcile the needs of the individual with the needs of the community is an enduring problem in the field of educational philosophy. John Dewey, for example, proclaimed the coordination between the individual and social factors as, "the ultimate problem of all education." When evaluating the dynamics of individualism versus the…

In this article, the author examines Dewey's moral deliberation. Liu argues that Dewey's work will enrich both character education and Kohlberg's moral education. Liu focuses on character education and on Kohlberg's moral education because these are the two dominant approaches. Character education seeks to cultivate good…

The small school movement originated in the democratic ideology of Deborah Meier, who sought to create schools that gave students, parents, teachers, and all stakeholders in the communities they served a voice in education. In New York City, Meier's vision was implemented haphazardly by a group of business and political elites able to pour…

In this paper, Adrienne Johnson looks to connect the philosophies of Charles Taylor and Hans-Georg Gadamer toward lifelong education, specifically as they relate to UNESCO's second and third educational principles of democracy, broadly conceived as the realization of one's own potential and human development, understood as the complete…

A small, but growing, number of states have legislation that protects the conscience of parents by allowing them to opt out of teaching practices and content. Most notably, HB 542 in New Hampshire allows parents to opt their children out of the teaching of any material or through any pedagogical style that they find "objectionable" to…

In this paper, the author contends that the ability to create a political realm is dependent upon one's state of freedom. She questions what it means to be free and whether assumptions of the definitions of this concept are always good or beneficial. After discussing some of the known theories about freedom, she states that schools are some…

For several decades education has struggled to find a way out of the entanglement of modernity, the premises and assumptions under which modern education has operated. According to Robin Usher and Richard Edwards, modern education, as the "dutiful child of the Enlightenment," has been "allotted a key role in the forming and shaping…

In this address, the author builds the case that a new political economy of education, dominated by what Pauline Lipman calls the "neo-liberal social imaginary," is changing the moral context in which educators imagine their professional roles. The author argues that educators are placed in relation to others in rather complicated…

The author argues that Dewey's conception of the lost individual and his proposed solutions for reconstruction can help both schooling and society address problems of depoliticization and individualization. He first examines Dewey's notion of formation of the self, forged through transactions with one's physical and social…

The author examines one particular systematic and normative theorization of social justice in Barry Bull's "Social Justice in Education." Bull embarks on a timely and ambitious theory-to-practice project of grounding an educational theory of social justice in Rawls's seminal, liberal, distributive justice tome. The author…

This article examines the kind of space formed by philosophical discussion of education with lower-income, adult learners making their way back to structured education amidst work and life responsibilities. It explores two new social contexts that define this experience of return to education. The first is the sociability of philosophical…

Henry A. Giroux claims this to be the "worst of times" for US public education. Not alone in this judgment, numerous other scholars stand in agreement with him. These thinkers view the current corporate/accountability/testing movement, with its iron grip on public school policies, as disfiguring and disparaging the US system of public…

Media portrayals and education policies have combined with anecdotes about charter school successes to produce a favorable assessment of charter schools by two-thirds of Americans. Such media celebrations often group an array of charter school types together, thereby disguising their differences. Indeed, the public seems unaware there are…