Defending Public Schooling

This is a perilous time for the dream and promise of education. With Betsy DeVos heading the Department of Education, some states are already making moves to privatize education. Arizona is promising $5,000 per child for parents to spend as they like. What kind of private school charges only $5,000? I worry about the kind of education that middle-class and working-class kids will get in the kind of privatized schools they'll be sent to.     

On Deciding The Aims and Content of Public Schooling

In this paper, John Tillson defends an approach to deciding the aims and content of public schooling from the critique of Public Reason Liberalism. The approach that he defends is an unrestricted pairing of the Epistemic Criterion and of the Momentousness Criterion. On the Epistemic Criterion, public schooling should align students' credence with credibility. On the Momentousness Criterion, public schooling ought to include content that it is costly for children to lack the correct view about, where they are otherwise unlikely to have it. Public Reason Liberals seek to restrict both the Epistemic and Momentousness Criteria to within a range that is acceptable to politically reasonable citizens. In response, Tillson argues, first, that the considerations that encourage Public Reason Liberalism instead motivate unrestricted versions of the Epistemic and Momentousness Criteria; and, second, that Public Reason Liberalism faces a dilemma, that it either entails absurd consequences or must undermine itself in addressing these.     

The Relationship Between Public and Private Schooling and Anti-Semitism

No previous research has directly examined the relationship between attending a public or private school as a child and people’s attitudes toward Jews when they become adults. This article sheds new light on this issue by using a large, nationally representative survey of over 1,500 adults in the United States to see how childhood schooling is related to adult anti-Semitism. It finds that even after controlling for a variety of background characteristics, people who attended private schools exhibit more positive attitudes toward Jews than those who attended public schools.     

人类学之于公共管理实践的历史渊源及重要性

人类学与公共管理具有深厚的学术渊源。但由于历史原因,人类学在我国学科设置上被人为忽略三十多年,致使国内公共管理领域对人类学知之甚少,更不了解人类学与公共管理的学术渊源。而人类学在管理领域的历史性作用,不仅体现了人类学对丰富我国管理学的理论具有重要意义;而且也反映了在我国各民族交往日益频繁的情况下,在管理人才的培养中引入人类学或民族学学科知识的必要性与紧迫性。     

挑战公立教育的美国“家庭学校”

近十多年来，美国家庭学校迅速增加，甚至在一些州家庭学校学生已经超过公立学校学生。这不容忽视的现象无疑对公立教育是一种挑战。文章对美国家庭学校的特点、兴起原因、优势及其对公立学校的威胁进行了述评。     

美国联邦政府干预公共教育起点问题的再讨论

学界一般认为,18世纪中后期《西北土地法》的颁布确立了联邦以赠地的形式参与教育事务,是联邦干预公共教育问题的起点,但这一认识是不准确的。通过系统梳理18世纪中后期一系列土地法令形成的过程,发现《西北土地法》中教育条款的出现并不是出于联邦对教育自身的考量,而是意在提高西北新州的地价、稳定移民的妥协方案,这不足以成为联邦干预公共教育的起点事件。联邦政府对美国公共教育的有意干预是在南北战争之后美国工业化的腾飞中最终生成并确立下来的。19世纪早期的美国公共学校运动迫切需要一条有效的同质化策略来消解自殖民地时期以来的教育地方主义;同一时期的美国的工业化与工厂制——科学、效率、一致性和科层制,有效地为美国公共学校运动提供了一条逻辑缜密的同质化策略。这意味着,联邦政府干预教育实质上是19世纪后期联邦政府引导、干预、成就美国工业化过程中所扮演的领导角色在教育系统的体现。     

The Schooling of Ethics

Abstract

Growing concern about a shrinking cultural consensus on values, coupled with religious pluralisation and the realisation that schooling is not, and cannot be, value-neutral,have led to proposals to teach ethics in schools, interpreted as a contribution of the discipline of philosophy to the common curriculum. To the extent that this approach is seen to hinge on the alleged autonomy of ethics, it has the potential to indoctrinate the contestable view that rationality is the prime motivator of moral commitment. A case is made for regarding philosophical ethics and religious (or world-view) studies not as alternative avenues to values education but each as a core curriculum priority, different but complementary to the other in its content.     

Public Schooling,the Market Metaphor,and Parental Choice

Leading organizational change is like climbing a mountain. Transformational leaders must prepare to lead change, understand the process and nature of change, and provide the essential gear so that those involved can be successful. The author draws on the literature and personal experiences as a hiker and change leader to provide a guide for leading organizational change.     

Private Subtractory Tutoring: The Negative Impact of Shadow Education on Public Schooling in Myanmar

An expanding literature focuses on the so-called shadow education system of private supplementary tutoring, and contributes to understandings of the nexus between in-school and out-of-school learning. This paper, contextualised in broader literature, draws on questionnaire and interview data from students, teachers, principals, parents and other stakeholders in Myanmar, and observes that shadow education may subtract as well as supplement. For some decades, public education in Myanmar has suffered from financial stringency, large classes, and overloaded curriculum. Students and their families have sought private tutoring, particularly from public school teachers, to supplement school education; and teachers and other providers have welcomed the revenue that they can earn. As a result, private tutoring has become embedded in the lives of many students and teachers, and has consumed time and energy supposed to be spent on school education. However, the private tutoring has also helped to keep the school system running.     

论夸美纽斯的学校观

夸美纽斯是十七世纪捷克著名的教育家,他一生著述繁多,在教育的诸多方面都做出了突出的贡献。文章从夸美纽斯对传统学校的批判、对学校的理解和其学校观的现代启示三个方面进行论述,以期对我们今天的学校教育有所借鉴。     

公共教育的两难——西方学校教育的现代性伦理问题

西方学校教育面临现代性伦理问题,即学校是为个人自由而教育,还是为社会团结而教育的道德两难困境。了解这一问题,有助于我们理解和把握当前我国学校教育改革的价值取向。     

Cooperative Governance of Successful Public Schooling: Successes,Frustrations and Challenges

In search of embodying values that underpin democracy at school level, the objectives of the article include exploring expectations generated by the constitutional dispensation (Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 108/1996, section 41) and delineating those moulded by the South African Schools Act (84/1996, Preamble). While the latter formally signify a State-education-partnership, the intention for teachers, learners and parents to accept especially governance responsibilities towards school democracy prompted our focused three-way alliance between parent-teacher-learner parties for the purpose of this article. Our conceptual framework is informed by Permuth, Mawdsley and Silver (2015), who contend that the essentially new facet of moving towards integrating qualitative research with doing traditional legal research could expand legal reasoning and even complement it with empirical credibility. Authenticated by Adler (2015), the article therefore combines focusing on cooperative governance as an act to shape schooling in the traditional legal way (by asking what questions) with qualitative research features to inform us by also asking how and why questions. We chose a documentary design with a comparative angle; selected documentary resources; and took an exploratory approach to gain understanding and weigh the investigated documents by comparing and appraising primary and secondary sources. We also regarded whatever was embedded yet not recorded as similarly important to what was recorded and how a specific concept was extended (De Waal and Serfontein 2015). Reviewing relevant case law, we present an overview of cooperative school governance progress; a constitutional challenges-based intervention; continuous acceptance of responsibility and accountability; and successes, frustrations and challenges concerning the future pathway to successful schooling. Given the snowballing set of demands on public schools, the catch is for partners to know each other's strengths and weaknesses so that balanced contributions will cause governance towards quality education. The drastic parental governance and leadership role-change, with higher moral-social responsibility levels, calls for carefully designed conferences to guide parent-partners’ exercising the necessary discretion underpinned by critically considering the significance of serving society.