This paper considers the potential role of schools and teachers in the character development of pupils aged 10-19. It is based largely on the views of 5207 pupils in England, drawn from 25 state schools, including five primaries. Data include document contents, interviews and surveys with pupils and their teachers. Pupil accounts suggest that…

This article offers a critique of Harry Brighouse's "autonomy-facilitating education", which aims to enable students to reflect critically on their lives and society without disposing them to do so. Because it is "character-neutral", this kind of education purportedly avoids some of the controversy surrounding autonomy-promotion. At the same time,…

This qualitative study presents a retrospective analysis of how a cohort of young men, who as boys were assigned to residential care in Malta, perceive the citizenship education that they received while "in care" as having empowered them--as boys, adolescents, and eventually as young adults. Rather than focusing on citizenship education that is…

Thomas Wartenberg offers his book as a guide that will provide elementary school teachers what they need to facilitate philosophical discussions with children. My concerns are centered on the nature and role of philosophical discussion, the level of philosophical acumen needed for facilitating such discussion, and the role of character development…

This short commentary offers praise for Tom Wartenberg's book "Big Ideas for Little Kids" and raises questions about who is best qualified to lead a philosophy discussion with children, and how we are to assess the benefits of doing philosophy with children.

This article is a response to criticism of my book "Big Ideas for Little Kids." The main topics addressed are: Who is the audience for the book? Can people without formal philosophical training can be good facilitators of elementary school philosophy discussions? Is it important to assess attempts to teach philosophy in elementary school? Should…

Wartenberg's "Big Ideas for Little Ideas" presents an apt argument for and explanation of one method for doing philosophy with young people. There is much about the text which is strong but some of the philosophical and children's literature pairing is not as strong as it should be, and the audience for the book does seem to shift as it progresses.

Moral particularism, defined as the view that moral judgment does not require moral principles, has become prominent both in moral philosophy and in philosophy of education. This article re-examines Nussbaum's case for particularism, based on Sophocles' "Antigone", because her stress on sensitive appreciation of circumstantial specifics is…

Among those who regard open-mindedness as a virtue, there is dispute over whether the trait is essentially an attitude toward particular beliefs or toward oneself as a believer. I defend William Hare's account of open-mindedness as a first-order attitude toward one's beliefs and critique Peter Gardner's view of open-mindedness as a non-commital…

This chapter examines the following central question: How do direct democratic ballot initiatives affect the public good? A second, related question is this: When voters collectively make policy decisions, what responsibilities do researchers have to contribute to informing public deliberation about the relevant issues? In an attempt to answer…

In everyday language, whether a school is described as "public" or not is determined by the way it is funded and by who is allowed to attend it. Ideally however, a public school should also be defined and evaluated by its unique goal--to renew a public by providing the young with the skills, dispositions, and perspectives required to engage with…

This chapter proposes that the relationship between schooling, citizenship, and democracy--so often taken for granted and discussed using idealistic perspectives--is better understood when using the lens of "embodied cognition" and a focus on metaphorical and prototypical ways of thinking. Our goal is to examine the always conflictive and elusive…

In this paper, the authors explore what citizenship means in an age that is largely defined by consumption and when education--both within and outside of schools--has become increasingly commodified and commercialized. They raise questions regarding how citizens, publics, and axiological dispositions are formed and deformed by the parasitic…

Schools have a seminal role in preparing a society's children for their adult responsibilities as workers, parents, friends, neighbors, and citizens. The United States, countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Brazil, India, South Africa, and other multiethnic democratic nation-states have increasingly diverse…

Access to education is one of a range of social citizenship rights that are intended to afford members of a society an opportunity to share in a basic level of social, economic, and cultural well-being and to mitigate societal inequalities. The idea that every individual has a right to education is deeply entrenched in the international discourse…