Imagining the World: The Significance of Religious Worldviews for Science Education

This article begins by examining whether ‘science’ and ‘religion’ can better be seen as distinct or related worldviews, focusing particularly on scientific and religious understandings of biodiversity. I then explore how people can see the natural world, depending on their worldview, by looking at two contrasting treatments of penguin behaviour, namely that provided in the film March of the Penguins and in the children’s book And Tango Makes Three. I end by drawing some initial conclusions as to what might and what might not be included about religion in school science lessons. Science educators and teachers need to take account of religious worldviews if some students are better to understand the compass of scientific thinking and some of science’s key conclusions. It is perfectly possible for a science teacher to be respectful of the worldviews that students occupy, even if these are scientifically limited, while clearly and non-apologetically helping them to understand the scientific worldview on a particular issue.     

The Religious School Curriculum

Washington correspondent of The New Statesman and Nouvelle Observateur and a founder and editor of Mayday, a new weekly of political reporting

     

法国大革命中的宗教改革

法国大革命是资产阶级革命史上最彻底的一次资产阶级民主革命,彻底推翻了封建制度,实现了"民族再生"。作为封建王权重要支柱的天主教会始终处在革命的漩涡之中。资产阶级的不同革命派别由于自身的宗教观念差异和所处革命情境的不同,在天主教的改造问题上经历了利用、打压、建立新教和重新利用的过程,宗教斗争异常激烈。     

The Rural School Leadership Dilemma

The idea that rural schools and communities, indeed, even rural people, are somehow substandard or second-class has deep historical roots. The goal of this essay is to reveal that history so as to render stereotypical conceptions all things rural less powerful and more easily dismissed by rural school professionals. Consequently the focus is on one dilemma every rural school leader faces: when to speak up in the face of rural denigration.     

The Common School

The paper is concerned with the conflicting principles revealed respectively by those who argue for the common school and by those who seek to promote a system of schools that, though maintained by the state, might reflect the different religious beliefs within the community. The philosopher, John Dewey, is appealed to in defence of the common school, though similar ideas are reflected in the developing comprehensive ideal in Britain.     

正义共识的困境分析

在前现代社会,人们对现存制度和个人行为的评价体系完全陷于意识形态、神圣观念、权力和国家的“信条”中,所以“共识”的霸权给人们并没有造成正义价值观念的明显分裂,共识在前现代社会并不是一个社会和理论问题。进入现代社会以来,社会的结构转型,现代化对传统的挑战,利益日趋分化,多元社会的形成,阶级、阶层结构的复杂化和分化,新旧全球化的转型,文明与文化的冲突及意识形态的分歧,使得正义的共识成为一个重要的难题。     

学校责任教育的困境与对策

"责任"是我国社会主义核心价值观之一,随着我国政治、经济、文化等的变革,我们在享受物质与精神丰富的同时,也给思想政治教育特别是责任教育造成一定的困境。要突破学校责任教育的困境,必须依循教育规律,根据不同的教育对象,探索责任教育的基本原则与有效途径。     

Religious Tolerance and Understanding in the French Education System

This research is based on an interview and survey-based case study of an Islamic lycée, a Catholic lycée, and two public lycées in the Ile-de-France region of France. The study investigated whether students in private schools receiving some form of education about religion tend to be more tolerant and demonstrate more religious understanding than students in public schools receiving little to none. The results showed that tolerance and understanding were not necessarily codependent and that a number of other factors seem to have a similarly significant impact on student religious tolerance and understanding as receiving education about religion.     

The Teaching of Hebrew in the Reform Religious School

There are few educators today who would take issue with the assertion that research, and the findings of research, are beginning to dominate the American educational scene. The growing influence of science and the scientific method on every aspect of contemporary living has brought about significant change and innovation in the school, in the home and in the community at-large.     

学校课程建设的公共性:本质、困境与超越

学校课程建设是引领人们在追求公共善的过程中超越个人理性,开展课程价值协商与集体审议的过程.公共性作为学校课程建设的内在属性和应有形态,蕴含着公开性、平等性和公益性的本质特征.公共精神的匮乏,主体意识的缺失,公共空间的不足导致了学校课程建设公共性发展的困境.为提升学校课程建设的质量,促进课程公共价值的实现,需要在公共精神培育的基础上,提升参与者的主体意识,拓展学校课程的公共空间.     

学校课程建设的公共性:本质、困境与超越

学校课程建设是引领人们在追求公共善的过程中超越个人理性,开展课程价值协商与集体审议的过程.公共性作为学校课程建设的内在属性和应有形态,蕴含着公开性、平等性和公益性的本质特征.公共精神的匮乏,主体意识的缺失,公共空间的不足导致了学校课程建设公共性发展的困境.为提升学校课程建设的质量,促进课程公共价值的实现,需要在公共精神培育的基础上,提升参与者的主体意识,拓展学校课程的公共空间.     

Society and Education: The Content of Education in the French African School

The aim of this paper is to examine the content of education on the primary and secondary levels, in some francophone countries of the Sub‐Sahara. The author has made a comparative study on education in Ivory Coast, Dahomey, and East‐Cameroon. Since fourteen francophone African states (most of them members of O.C.A.M.‐‐Organisation Commune Africaine Malgache), guided by the ex‐metropole, follow similar systems of education, a number of generalizations may be applied to these countries.     

Culture and the Common School

This essay addresses the question: given the flattening out of the cultural hierarchy that was the vestige of colonialism and nation‐building, is there anything that might be uniquely common about the common school in this postmodern age? By ‘uniquely common’ I do not mean those subjects that all schools might teach, such as reading or arithmetic. Nor do I mean just subjects that might serve a larger public purpose, but that might be taught in either publicly supported or privately supported schools. Rather I mean subjects that speak to the shaping of a child's identity as a member of a common community in the way that the common school was intended to create when its commission was to develop and maintain a single national or colonial identity and loyalty. I argue that there is a kind of connectivity that common schools should foster even as the nation‐building and colonial past is rejected, and that this connectivity is what is common about the common schools. I argue that any concept of culture that merely flattens out the normative dimension of educating is deficient as an educational theory, and propose a conception of culture that is educationally productive.     

解释学视野中的学校制度困境及其变革

学校制度的产生与实施,关涉学校场域内多类主体的相互理解.现行学校制度所呈现的种种不足,其背后实际蕴含着深刻的主体间“理解”匮乏问题.为促使制度能更好地凝聚学校变革的力量,改革者应秉持柔性化、有弹性的制度设计理念,构建多元参与的制度生成路径,确立既公正又彰显人性关怀的制度执行过程.