Do the Study of Education and Teacher Education Belong at a Liberal Arts College?

The question whether the study of education and teacher education belong at a liberal arts college deserves careful consideration. In this essay Bruce Kimball analyzes and finds unpersuasive the three principled rationales that are most often advanced on behalf of excluding educational studies, teacher education, or both from a liberal arts college. Specifically, Kimball argues that no principled definition of the conventional liberal arts disciplines excludes the study of education without barring other fields now regarded as legitimate, and consistency demands that all such fields be excluded if any are. In addition, teacher education, even if considered as merely “craft know‐how” or as professional training, cannot be excluded from liberal arts colleges without arbitrarily classifying it as suspect and subjecting it to strict scrutiny. But the question of whether educational studies or teacher education fit any asserted definition of liberal education does not finally resolve the question of whether they belong in a liberal arts college. Kimball concludes by suggesting that there are moral and prudential reasons for liberal arts colleges to offer teacher education and, concomitantly, the study of education, even apart from the unpersuasive objections that they do not fit a definition of liberal education.     

How Should One Read a Book?

Activity 1 Think about the following questions,and write down your answers before reading the essay?(1)When you happen to stay with a stranger,for example,another passenger sitting next to you on a train over a long haul,which are you more likely to do,to initiate talks,or to wait for him or her to do so?How would they be different?     

Education for Liberal Democracy: Universalising a Western Construct?

An influential view of liberalism and its view of education holds that it is a western construct unsuited to non-western societies. Bikhu Parekh's critique of liberal democracy is taken here as representative of that position. In challenging that view, this article shows through an analysis of recent policy that post-apartheid education in South Africa expresses a liberal view of education, just as the political order introduced in 1994 is a liberal one. If we adopt Parekh's principle that societies should be allowed to choose their own destinies, there are transcendental grounds for promoting liberalism and a liberal view of education outside of the liberal western democracies.     

Why Should a Language Teacher Knowa bout Linguistics?

“A driving instructor can teach people driving without knowing anything about car mechanics. So why should a language teacher know anything about linguistics? ”To answer the question, this paper discusses the relevance of linguistics to language teaching, analyses the value of linguistics to a language teacher and ends up with a conclusion that a language teacher should learn something about linguistics.     

Polynesia à la Française? Education and the perpetuation of a Tahitian underclass

This article is concerned with the viability of the current French educational system in French Polynesia. By combining limited fieldwork with relevant local empirical data, it critically examines aspects of the French educational system and their implementation overseas. The goal is an illumination of the relationship in Tahiti between locally irrelevant secondary education and limited socioeconomic participation. A brief introduction and presentation of historical context are made, after which problematic educational dynamics are identified. Concerns include the question of language, political idiosyncrasies, the colonial legacy, drop-outs and school leavers, poor educational performance, the problem of redoublement, and cultural unsuitability.     

Why Bonnie and Ronnie Can't “Read” (the Siddur)

In the last issue of the Journal (volume 75, number 4), we read about our esteemed colleague Israel Scheffler's love affair with Hebrew. In this issue, we continue the conversation about Hebrew as part of a series of articles by distinguished senior colleagues who bring the wisdom earned by a lifelong career in Jewish education.

Many of us share Scheffler's love affair with Hebrew, and we are anguished by the challenges facing the American Jewish community with regard to the teaching and learning of Hebrew language. Whenever educators sit together, no matter the setting, they discuss: What are the best ways to teach Hebrew? What are ambitious, but reasonable goals for Hebrew language learning in pre-schools, day schools and after school programs? What constitutes literacy in each of these settings?

In this article, Lifsa Schachter, professor emeritus of education at the Segal College, shares some of her ideas on a range of questions such as these. Her ideas emanate from the research literature on second language acquisition, as well as from her own experiences and experiments designed to make a difference in the domain of Hebrew language learning. Lee Shulman (Shulman, 1987 Shulman, L. 1987. Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform. Harvard Education Review, Spring, : 1–20.  [Google Scholar]) asserts the validity of using the “wisdom of practice” in addressing educational challenges such as this one. Hebrew language teaching is an instance where experienced practitioners hold much knowledge. Yet, little of their knowledge has been committed to writing.

We're delighted to share this article with you and hope that it encourages others to write about grappling with the challenges of Hebrew language learning in our schools. We encourage our senior colleagues in particular to share their wisdom about this and other issues that can make Jewish education vital and vibrant for the Jewish people in the twenty-first century.     

“Did you like living in a trailer? Why or why not?”: Discourse and the third space in a rural pen pal exchange

This study describes efforts in a U.S. teacher education program to raise the teacher candidates' awareness of how place impacts schooling. The preservice teachers and second graders exchanged pen pal letters based on books set in contemporary rural America. The teacher candidates enacted four major discourses in the correspondence: personal, rural, global and traditional. Without connections to the children personally, as fellow rural residents or as participants in a conversation about rural life, the preservice teachers were left only to communicate through traditional and globalized discourses.     

Should Anger Be Encouraged in the Classroom? Political Education,Closed‐Mindedness,and Civic Epiphany

In light of recent political developments in Western democracies, several political commentators and theorists have argued that encouraging anger in citizens may contribute to social justice and should therefore constitute an aim of civic education. In this article, Douglas Yacek investigates these claims in depth. In doing so, he expands on previous work on the political and educational significance of anger — particularly by critical and “agonistic” theorists of civic education — in two distinct ways. First, Yacek explores the psychological costs and benefits of cultivating student anger. Second, he examines the potential cultural effects of anger in Western democratic societies. While sympathetic to the defenses of anger that have been recently offered in political and educational theory, Yacek concludes that we should be cautious about embracing anger in civic education. In particular, he argues that anger involves serious psychological risk, may exacerbate the social problems that it sets out to solve, and can lead to a disposition of adversarial and politically counterproductive closed‐mindedness. In the closing sections, Yacek suggests that experiences he calls “civic epiphanies” are central to cultivating a politically beneficial form of open‐mindedness, and argues that such experiences should therefore be encouraged in civic education.     

Education or Service? Remarks on teaching and learning in the entrepreneurial university

German universities come under fire: in contemporary political discourse they are considered to be antiquated, inefficient and unfit for international competition. Accordingly, the German government implemented an extensive program of reforms. Following the so‐called ‘Sorbonne Declaration’, the universities shall become part of an European higher education system with comparable and compatible structures. With the focus on the field of academic teaching and learning, this essay discusses the way of defining these activities in a new, entrepreneurial way, and the implications of this process within the university. The reflections lead to the thesis that the actual reforms ask for new forms of critique, because the neoliberal offer of marketable ways to teach and to learn makes the enduring asymmetry of power relations within the educational field invisible, endangers the democratic character of the university and trivializes education.     

Schools and Moral Education: Conformism or Autonomy?

In pluralistic Western societies, schools have a specific task in moral education. This task is to be understood neither as the transmission of specific values, nor as the development of moral reasoning skills or universal values, but as teaching pupils to handle plurality in an autonomous way. The concept of autonomy is interpreted from a Vygotskian and Deweyan position, where learning in school means learning to participate in cultural activities in a reflective and critical way. Participation has both intellectual and moral aspects, and thus moral education can never be separated from cognitive education.     

How to Read Shakespeare or Bus Schedules——What Should English Teachers Teach?

Many educators have rung alarmbells about the effects of the No Child Left Behind Act's testing requirements on the classroom curriculum. They fear these are narrowing the curriculum. They claim teachers are spending most of their time preparing students to pass state tests in reading and mathematics. If reading tests do influence what is taught, the high school literature curriculum may well become