What is philosophy of education? This question has been answered in as many ways as there are those who self-identify as philosophers of education. However, the questions our field asks and the research conducted to answer them often produce papers, essays, and manuscripts that we can read, evaluate, and ponder. This paper turns to those tangible…

Patricia White ("Stud Philos Educ" 18:43-52, 1999) argues that the virtue gratitude is essential to a flourishing democracy because it helps foster universal and reciprocal amity between citizens. Citizens who participate in this reciprocal relationship ought to be encouraged to recognize that "much that people do does in fact help to make…

The article defends ubuntu against the assault by Enslin and Horsthemke ("Comp Educ" 40(4):545-558, 2004). It challenges claims that the Africanist/Afrocentrist project, in which the philosophy of ubuntu is central, faces numerous problems, involves substantial political, moral, epistemological and educational errors, and should therefore not be…

Emerging research shows that undergraduate students are searching for a deeper meaning in their lives from their university studies. Leading students forth into this kind of meaningful action is the primary responsibility of the Philosopher of Education. This paper describes how such meaningful action can be accomplished by integrating the…

This article sheds light on the European Union's policy on citizenship; on the collective dimension of this policy, its "we". It is argued that the inclusive, identity-constituting forces prominent in EU policy on European citizenship serve as a basis for the exclusion of people, which is illustrated by the recent expulsion of Romani from France.…

The computer engineers who refer to the education of computers do not have a definite idea of education and do not bother to justify the fuzzy ones to which they allude. Hence, they logically cannot specify the features a computer must have in order to be educable. This paper puts forth a non-standard, but not arbitrary, concept of education that…

An individual is in the lowest phase of moral development if he thinks only of his own personal interest and has only his own selfish agenda in his mind as he encounters other humans. This lowest phase corresponds well with sixteenth century British moral egoism which reflects the rise of the new economic order. Adam Smith (1723-1790) wanted to…

Educationalists are currently engaging with Jacques Ranciere's thought on emancipation and equality. The focus of this paper is on what initiates the process that starts emancipation. With reference to teachers the question is: how do teachers become emancipated? This paper discusses how the teacher's life is made "sensible" and how sense is…

This paper begins with a discussion of Stanley Cavell's philosophy of language learning. Young people learn more than the meaning of words when acquiring language: they learn about (the quality of) our form of life. If we--as early childhood educators--see language teaching as something like handing some inert thing to a child, then we unduly…

What happens to education when the potential it helps realizing in the individual works against the formal purposes of the curriculum? What happens when education becomes a vehicle for its own subversion? As a subject-forming state apparatus working on ideological speciesism, formal education is engaged in both human and animal stratification in…

In this paper I interpret Montaigne's essay, "On Educating Children", as a pedagogical text through its performance of a distinct epistolary function, one that addresses the letter-recipient for the purpose of shaping the ideas, actions, and beliefs of that individual. At the same time, I also read "On Educating Children" within the context of the…

Central in the analyses of women's and gender studies within the history of education has been Rousseau's (Emil oder Uber die Erziehung, 12th edn. Ferdinand Schoningh, Paderborn 1762) educational novel Emile, especially Book 5, which deals with the education of Sophie, Emilie's future spouse. Given the lasting interest in the person of Rousseau…

This article takes as its starting point the commonplace that Rousseau's "Emile" enabled his contemporaries to discover not only childhood but physical education. Focused on what the pedestal erected for Jean-Jacques somewhat overshadows, a brief historiographic overview and a survey of some major writings on education before Rousseau (by the…

Notwithstanding the general accepted understanding that Rousseau is the master of modern education reflecting the progress by enlightenment this articles suggests that Rousseau's "Emile" is--as most of Rousseau's other writings are, too--testimony to a brilliant and passionate writer expressing thoughts about his concern how to deal with…

The Republican education, its concepts, theories, and form of discourse belong to the shared European heritage of the pre-modern Age. The pedagogy of humanism and its effects on the early Modern Age are represented by Republicanism. Even if Republicanism found a political continuation in liberalism and democratism of the Modern Age, the same…