John White offers a provocative characterization of philosophy of education. In this brief reaction, I evaluate the characterization and urge the maintenance of a strong connection between philosophy of education and philosophy.

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…

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…

This article criticizes the view that, if cultural factors within the black community explain poor educational outcomes for blacks, then blacks should bear all of the disadvantages that follow from this. Educational outcomes are the joint, iterated product of schools' responses to students' and parents' culturally conditioned conduct. Schools are…

This article examines the rationales for school choice, and the significance of choice mechanisms for racial disparities in educational opportunities and outcomes. It identifies tensions between liberty-based rationales and equality-based rationales, and surveys research findings on the outcomes of school choice policies, especially with regard to…

Cognitive enhancement--augmenting normal cognitive capacities--is not new. Literacy, numeracy, computers, and the practices of science are all cognitive enhancements. Science is now making new cognitive enhancements possible. Biomedical cognitive enhancements (BCEs) include the administration of drugs, implants of genetically engineered or…

Education is a primary way to equip children with the knowledge, skills, and competences necessary to live a life of harmonious relationships with diverse human beings. The escalating violence in the name of religion and ethnicity in Indonesia and other parts of the world is worrying, and one potential long-term solution is to educate school…

Five years ago in "Theory and Research in Education", James R. Muir fired a new salvo in the debate regarding the merits of Isocrates' educational program, a controversy that has endured for more than two millennia. Was the Isocratean program misguided and lowbrow, as in the estimations of Plato and Aristotle--or was it the most successful program…

This article first examines why the homeschooling movement in the USA emerged in the 1970s, noting the impact of political radicalism both right and left, feminism, suburbanization, and public school bureaucratization and secularization. It then describes how the movement, constituted of left- and right-wing elements, collaborated in the early…

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is an initiative that dates back to the early 1990s. Whilst policy statements at this time referred to ESD as a bringing together of environmental and development education, in the UK, as in most other industrialized countries, it has been the environmental agenda that has tended to dominate. In the UK,…

The United Nation's Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) aims to prepare students for pressing economic and environmental problems. In this article, I argue that an exclusive emphasis on an ambiguous goal, sustainable development, raises important questions for educational ethics. Specifically, I argue that DESD mission…

Globalization has unleashed profound changes in education. These include positivistic international school comparisons, a singular focus on schools as drivers of economic development, and the adoption of neoliberal market principles in school. These changes, however, generally go unexamined within the field and literature of global education.…

This study indicates that the state-mandated high-stakes social studies assessments in four states do not require students to demonstrate that they have met the cognitive demands articulated in the state-mandated learning standards. Further, the assessments do not allow students to demonstrate the critical thinking skills required by the…

It is generally supposed that a curriculum should engage students with worthwhile knowledge, which requires an understanding of what it means for something to be worthwhile: a substantive conception of the good. Yet a number of influential curriculum theories deny or undermine one or another aspect of the key assumption upon which a meaningful…

This article finds Michael's Hand's argument for the abolition of faith schools to be deficient because key premises of his argument seem false. I argue that the concept of knowledge that Hand employs in arguing that no religious proposition is known to be true is overly strict. I reject Siegel's attempt to amend Hand's argument to make it…