Collective memory,political nostalgia,and the rhetorical presidency: Bill Clinton's commemoration of the March on Washington,August 28, 1998

This essay offers a reading of President Bill Clinton's address on August 28, 1998 in which he commemorates the 35th anniversary of the March on Washington. Specifically, Clinton's August 28th address reveals how the presidency has become a hermeneutic site for the formation of collective memory and political nostalgia. This analysis discusses the uses of political nostalgia for the purposes of political image (re)construction as evidenced by Clinton's exploitation of the civil rights movement to explain and excuse his personal failings and his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. We also present a divergent version of Clinton's rhetoric, giving specific attention to how his particular use of nostalgia in this address works to articulate and confront many of the powerful dichotomies (masculine/feminine; war/peace; black/white; private/public) that define his presidency, his public persona, and the larger political culture in postmodern America.     

Mocking the sacred: Frederick Douglass's “slaveholder's sermon” and the antebellum debate over religion and slavery

In his early addresses on religion and slavery, particularly his famous “Slaveholder's Sermon, “Frederick Douglass used parody to address one of the abolition movement's most serious challenges, the belief that the Bible sanctioned slavery. Douglass strategically juxtaposed explicit claims to his status as a fugitive slave with a persona he enacted by mocking proslavery preaching in such a way that he confronted audiences with what Kenneth Burke called “perspective by incongruity.” In this way, he forcefully undermined proslavery religion's claim to legitimacy.     

《追风筝的人》哈桑悲剧命运分析

《追风筝的人》中的哈桑善良、忠诚,但他的命运却以悲剧收场。导致其悲剧的因素是多方面的:种族歧视和身份低贱让哈桑深感自卑,从而看轻自己的生命;阿米尔父亲的人格面具使他与哈桑不敢相认;阿米尔的人格面具欺骗了哈桑,使他甘愿牺牲。     

《心是孤独的猎手》中米克的性别认定困境

卡森·麦卡勒斯(1917-1967)是20世纪美国文学史上一位颇具影响力的作家。作为一名具有强烈社会责任感的作家,麦卡勒斯高度关注人类生存境况。她的首部小说《心是孤独的猎手》(1940)就突出地表现了这一主题。本文从萨特存在主义出发旨在探讨《心是孤独的猎手》中的人物米克面临生存困境时的自由选择。在南方淑女为规范形象的社会压力下,米克的男性性情与女性身体之间的冲突使她备受折磨。最终她选择模仿传统妇女形象。通过描写米克的挣扎、痛苦,麦卡勒斯成功地激起大众对处于父权制文化下女性生存困境的关注。     

After the moral panic? Reframing the debate about child safety online

This paper examines the initial ‘moral panic’ surrounding children's access to the Internet at the end of the last century by analysing more than 900 media articles and key government documents from 1997 to 2001. It explores the ambiguous settlements that this produced in adult–child relations and children's access to the Internet. The paper then revisits the policy and media debate a decade later by examining the Byron Review, Digital Britain Report and media coverage of these, in order to explore how these settlements have been negotiated, resisted and transformed over the subsequent period. In so doing, the paper asks whether it is time to reframe the debate about children's occupation of online public space, less in terms of ‘care’ for children's needs that tends to result in exclusionary and surveillance strategies, and more in terms of children's rights and capacities to engage in democratic debates about the nature of an online public space in which they are already participating.     

MacIntyre's Revolutionary Aristotelian Philosophy and his Idea of an Educated Public Revisited

In this article I revisit MacIntyre's lecture on the idea of an educated public. I argue that the full significance of MacIntyre's views on the underlying purposes of universities only become clear when his lecture on the educated public is situated in the context of his wider ‘revolutionary Aristotelian’ philosophical project. I claim that for MacIntyre educational institutions should both support students to learn how to think for themselves and act for the common good. After considering criticisms from Putnam, Wain and Harris I conclude that MacIntyre's later work points towards an idea of educated ‘community’ that is more outward looking and open to difference than his earlier articulated idea of an educated ‘public’.     

The Very Idea of an Educated Public: On Philosophical Education and MacIntyre's Project

In this paper, I aim to reconsider MacIntyre's notion of an educated public. In particular, I aim to do so in light of his recent elucidation of the role of philosophical education in rejecting, or at least challenging, predominant and shared cultural assumptions. I begin by outlining MacIntyre's original case for an educated public as found in The Idea of an Educated Public. I then briefly consider and respond to three prominent criticisms of MacIntyre's original explication of the notion. In responding to these criticisms, it will be made clear that subtle shifts in MacIntyre's subsequent treatments of the notion reduces the dependency of such a public's existence on the university. I conclude by arguing that the development in MacIntyre's articulation of the necessary conditions for an educated public when considered in conjunction with his recent defence of the conditions for an ‘adequate philosophical education’ provides his philosophy of education with the conceptual resources needed to break free of a final difficulty which MacIntyre himself has articulated. Specifically, I contend that the four stages of an adequate philosophical education MacIntyre outlines are such that they need not be restricted to implementation in formal educational institutions such as the university.     

在德育中摘下“人格面具”

“人格面具”是荣格心理学概念之一,它揭示了人们的表现行为和真实自我之间的不一致性,认为要全面发展人格的多个方面,防止面具人格的单一发展。“人格面具”进入社会关系并为某种从众的社会心理所推波助澜,引发了“虚假认同”道德问题。因而,道德教育作为一种对人的德性的培养必须要研究“人格面具”现象的心理学生发机制,增强受教育者的抗诱惑能力,及时发现和补救“虚假认同”的行为。     

Clinton and Vietnam: A case for amnestic rhetoric

Bill Clinton's 1993 Memorial Day speech at the Vietnam Wall is an example of amnestic rhetoric, which seeks to discourage public debate and to diminish public memory. In this essay I argue that Clinton's epideictic discourse camouflages an act of apologia in which he defends his controversial opposition to the Vietnam War. Second, I argue that Clinton simultaneously directs his audience's attention away from the past and toward the future, urging them to remember the buried, but to bury the memory of Vietnam. Third, I argue that the speech culminates with an act of rhetorical investiture for Clinton as commander in chief. Finally, I propose the concept of amnestic rhetoric as an addition to public memory scholarship.     

Towards an Aesthetic Education? Rorty's Conception of Education

The ‘liberal utopia’ presented by Richard Rorty in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity is a unique attempt to address the ancient problem of the relationship between individual and society or, in Rorty's terms, that between the private and the public. This article examines Rorty's influential conception of education and asks: can his book be regarded as utopian? Is it possible to establish an education for democracy on his ‘postmodern’ premises? I conclude that Rorty's attempt to separate private from public and to promote a fusion between irony and solidarity is tantamount to founding human existence on an aestheticising orientation. This entangles Rorty in self-contradiction and raises educational and political problems which remain unresolved.     

Superhighway or Road to Nowhere? Children's Relationships with Digital Technology

This article offers a critical overview of the cultural and educational benefits and dangers of digital media for young people. It argues that public debates on this issue have veered from utopian hype to moral panic. In contrast, the author argues for a more measured account of how young people appropriate such technologies in the context of their everyday lives. The article goes on to provide brief accounts of the author's previous research on children's engagement with computer games, and on their creative uses of multimedia in the home, which illustrate this approach. The article concludes with some broad principles which might guide future policy in this field.     

Teaching Religion in Public Schools: Review of Warren A. Nord,Does God Make A Difference?

In this review of Warren Nord's Does God Make a Difference? Taking Religion Seriously in Our Schools and Universities, Walter Feinberg provides a detailed analysis of Nord's argument that the study of religion should be constitutionally mandated as a corrective to the overwhelmingly secular course of study offered in contemporary public schools and universities. Nord bases his claim on both constitutional and educational grounds. His constitutional argument is that, due to their secular bias, schools fail in their requirement to take a neutral stance toward religion; he contends that this creates a school environment hostile to religion that thus requires a legal remedy. Nord's primary educational argument is that religion courses are needed to counterbalance the secular bias dominant in public schools and universities. Feinberg delineates how Nord's constitutional argument fails and how his educational argument has serious flaws and contradictions. According to Feinberg, a stronger argument for mandating courses on religion in schools would be that because public schools exist in a religiously infused environment, it is important for students to be exposed to alternative understandings that promote reflection on and criticism of one's own beliefs, including religious beliefs. Feinberg concludes that if religion is to be taught in the public schools, it needs to be justified on civic rather than religious grounds.     

人性的呼唤——对约瑟夫·海勒《出事了》中精神危机的思考

约瑟夫·海勒《出事了》中揭示了现代人的精神危机,水文以此为起点,分析了“罗格斯”中心主义对人类精神世界的束缚与规训,并跟随海勒的叙事线索探寻隐藏在规训面孔下的人性。     

CIVIC FRAGMENTATION OR VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATION? HABERMAS,FRASER, AND CHARTER SCHOOL SEGREGATION

In this essay, Terri Wilson puts the argument developed by Kathleen Knight Abowitz that charter schools could be considered as counterpublic spaces into interaction with empirical research that explores patterns of voluntary self‐segregation in charter schools. Wilson returns to the theoretical tension between Jürgen Habermas and Nancy Fraser over the inclusivity of the public sphere. Wilson argues that Fraser's concept of counterpublic space rests on an oversimplification of Habermas's concept of the public sphere and, further, that justifying school choice through Fraser's “multiplicity of publics” offers few resources for questioning the increasing segregation of schools. According to Wilson, Habermas's normative project—and his concept of “idealization,” in particular—offers both an answer to Fraser's critique and a better application of “the public sphere” to the issue of school choice. Wilson concludes by considering how Habermas's understanding of the public sphere as a normative ideal might serve as a useful resource for evaluating the public‐ness of charter school reform.     

Jean‐Jacques Rousseau,the Mechanised Clock and Children's Time

This article explores a perplexing line from Rousseau's Emile: his suggestion that the ‘most important rule’ for the educator is ‘not to gain time but to lose it’. An analysis of what Rousseau meant by this line, the article argues, shows that Rousseau provides the philosophical groundwork for a radical critique of the contemporary cultural framework that supports homework, standardised testing, and the competitive extracurricular activities that consume children's time. He offers important insights to contemporary parents and educators wishing to reimagine an educational system that is currently fuelled more by familial and international amour propre than by children's interests and needs. Not the least of these is his recognition that to reimagine children's education would require a new configuration of the very terms of modern life. Problematically, however, Rousseau's alternative to mechanised clock‐time depends on the labour of Sophie, whose time is also reconfigured. For the next generation of children to be educated according to natural time, Sophie's labour needs to be off the clock too, which is just as much a linchpin of her removal from the public sphere of citizenship and the paid workforce as it is of Emile's education for public life, or so the final section of this paper argues.     

‘It didn't have to be so hard’: the first years of teaching in an urban school

This article presents a case study of Mark Westin from his first to his fifth year of teaching fifth grade in an urban public school. Despite extreme management challenges and limited administrative support in a school with unusually high turnover, Mark persevered through his difficult novice years to become among the most respected and dedicated teachers in his school. Through classroom observations and interviews with Mark, I first present a snapshot of Mark's first year of teaching, followed by a longitudinal study of Mark's perceptions of his early years of teaching, gathered through observations, field notes and interviews during the succeeding four years. As Mark's confidence, experience and teaching competence grew, he became increasingly reflective and critical of his teacher preparation and his early teaching experiences, especially the lack of support he received from the school administration. A high proportion of teachers in similar situations leave teaching in the first several years. Mark's story helps to put a human face on the exceptions and offers his perspectives on improving teacher preparation and support.     

The Religious Roots of Ernest L. Boyer's Educational Vision: A Theology of Public Pietism

The educational theories and policies promoted by Ernest L. Boyer (1928–1995), who served as chancellor of the SUNY system, U.S. Commissioner (Secretary) of Education, and president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, were significantly influenced by his affiliations with the Brethren in Christ Church and the Society of Friends (Quakers) even though he rarely spoke about his faith publicly. Drawing on Anabaptist, pietistic, and apophatic (silence-oriented) theological traditions, Boyer's public career demonstrated a service-focused convictional theology that could be termed “public pietism.” Boyer's educational philosophy focused on human connectedness and called for all citizens to be active participants in improving their communities by living out nonsectarian “consensus virtues.” While Boyer was a strong proponent of the separation of church and state, his public service was imbued with deeply held Christian values.