Personal,relational and beautiful: education,technologies and John Macmurray’s philosophy

Fifty years ago, the philosopher John Macmurray responded to calls for education to redesign itself around the exigencies of international competition with a robust rebuttal of such instrumentalism. He argued instead that the purpose of education was ‘learning to be human’. This paper explores how Macmurray’s ideas might be applied to contemporary use of technology in education. In so doing, it argues that the use of technologies in education should be guided by the aspiration to create socio-technical practices that are personal (located with the person), relational (a resource for friendship and collaboration) and beautiful (designed to promote reflection and contemplation).     

Education as if people matter: John Macmurray,community and the struggle for democracy

The educational writings of John Macmurray, one of the finest philosophers of his generation, have a special relevance for us today. In similar circumstances of international crisis he argues for the central importance of education addressing fundamental issues of human purpose—how we lead good lives together, the emphasis on wisdom rather than knowledge alone, the advancement of a truly democratic culture, and the overriding importance of community in human flourishing. A pioneering advocate of education of the emotions, he champions the development of imagination, spontaneity and authenticity as key to educating ‘the capacity for change itself’. For Macmurray, educators must place relationships and care at the heart of all they do. Overemphasis on technique and its typical separation from wider human purposes is emblematic of much of our contemporary malaise. An inclusive, caring community is the precondition of our human being and becoming. The paper concludes by taking some of Macmurray’s key philosophical insights and developing a framework which enables us to make judgments about whether or not contemporary approaches to education support or diminish our lives as creative, caring human beings within a context of social justice and democratic human fellowship.     

John Macmurray’s Learning to Live and the new media, 1931–1949: learning for labour or leisure?

John Macmurray was a public intellectual and an early proponent of popular education through the new medium of radio. National broadcasting of the time was finding its role in the competing cultures of education and entertainment, and significantly one of Macmurray’s first radio projects in 1931–1932 concerned the issue of ‘Learning to Live’. Here he explored the tension between learning for labour and learning for leisure. Public understanding of education over the following two decades was fostered through the media of print and cinema. Three examples are identified here to explore how this ‘conceptual couple’ of ‘learning’ and ‘life’ were treated: a propaganda film (1941) that adopted Macmurray’s title, Learning to live; School and life, an official report published in 1947; and a commercial documentary production in 1949 entitled Education for living. Macmurray conveyed his ‘applied philosophy’ through public broadcasting even before his major academic publications and his use of radio itself demonstrated its potential for learning as leisure activity for a mass audience. As in radio, so in documentary film, and even in official reports new understandings of education had to be accessible and attractive. Appraisal of Macmurray’s work must include an historical examination of new media in the development of educational discourse.     

Emptiness and the Education of the Emotions

This article argues that Buddhist philosophy offers a plausible theory of the education of the emotions. Emotions are analyzed as cognitive feeling events in which the subject is passive. The education of the emotions is possible if and only if it is possible to evaluate one’s emotional life (the normative condition) and it is possible to satisfy the normative condition through learning (the pedagogical condition). Drawing on the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, as well as the concepts of conditioned arising, emptiness and anattā, the article presents a view of the education of the emotions that rejects craving for permanence.     

The personal world of schooling: John Macmurray and schools as households

Macmurray’s distinction between communities, which are positive and personal, and societies, which are negative and impersonal, along with his insistence that schools are necessarily communities, like families and friendship groups, provides the basis for his claim that we may act as though we were teaching arithmetic or history, but in fact we are teaching people. Macmurray’s philosophy can be used to reconceive schools as, or as like, households. Schools have an admixture of intimacy (supervised eating and toileting, for example) and professional standards and accountability, making them neither ‘public’ nor ‘private’. The people in schools—staff and students—are and should be treated as close and friendly, whilst schools are also open to the society and communities beyond the schools. Support for seeing schools as households is provided by recent empirical research on intergenerational ‘closeness’—underpinning a non-sexualised version of friendship, as described by Macmurray. Theorising schools as communities like households, this paper indicates some of the implications of Macmurray’s work for contemporary education policy and practice.     

育人工作在工科院校艺术团建设中的实践探索

本文介绍了普通高校大学生艺术团建设的现状和存在的问题,从育人工作以及工科院校大学生艺术团建设的特点出发,对育人工作在工科院校大学生艺术团建设中的具体体现进行了分析。并通过笔者自身的实践探索,提出育人工作与工科院校艺术团建设相互渗透的优势,以育人促进工科院校大学生艺术团的健康发展,使其在高校素质教育中充分发挥应有的作用。     

Utopianism,transindividuation, and foreign language education in the Japanese university

Abstract

This article examines the current state of foreign language education in Japanese universities as illustrative of the troubling conditions facing the liberal arts (i.e. the transformative arts) in a globalized neoliberal milieu. The utopian ideal in education has always insinuated, at the least, a pedagogy that inspires personal agency, creative investment, challenge to power and social change. This imagining of incalculable futures, however, has been undermined by the seemingly inevitable and confluent forces of a networked world, represented most forcefully by the socioeconomic reductionism of neoliberal globalism. In the context of contemporary Japanese higher education, these forces are joined by Japan’s uniquely ambivalent relationship with the ‘outside’ world, and manifested in the rigid conceptualizations that motivate deeply problematic government and institutional initiatives for the ‘globalization’ of higher education. Within the frame of Bernard Stiegler’s work on transindividuation (psychosocial transformation), this article critiques these influential practices as fundamentally antithetical to the challenge of engaging Japanese learners of foreign languages in sustainable ‘economies of contribution’—economies which foster critical engagement and which open paths to transindividuation. The article concludes by arguing for a radical reimagining of the landscape of foreign language pedagogy in Japan and for a repositioning of learners from ‘short-circuited’ semiotic consumers to ‘long-circuited’ semiosic participants.     

Should Eudaimonia Structure Professional Virtue?

This article develops a eudaimonistic account of professional virtue. Using the case of teaching, the article argues that professional virtue requires that role holders care about the ends of their work. Care is understood in terms of an investment of the self. Virtuous role holders are invested in their practice in a way that makes professional excellence part of their own good. Failure to care about the ends of professional practice reveals a lack of appreciation of the value of professional work. This ‘investment view’ is contrasted with the currently popular ‘key goods view’, which claims that professional virtues require a profession‐specific teleological structure. Unlike ordinary virtues, which are governed by eudaimonia or human flourishing, professional virtues are allegedly derived from professional ends, like health or education. The article argues that this delivers an unconvincing criterion for determining the merits of character traits.     

Where the Action Is: How Drama Contributes to the Art of the Teaching and Learning of English

This paper looks at the way drama works to bring a model of an arts curriculum into reality. He also shows how drama is valuable when discussed as a separate, autonomous subject in the school curriculum as opposed to one subsumed within English. He argues for a view of the arts and gives an example of a sequence of work in an English GCSE class based around Arthur Miller's play View from the Bridge. From this he draws out several strands about the relationship of the drama curriculum to the individual students and teachers, the school, and to culture. He also emphasises the primacy of performance in drama education.     

Ethical Issues in the Malaysian Education System

Malaysia is a multi-ethnic country in which the government gives preferential treatment in education, employment, and ownership to its majority ethnic group: Bumiputera. However, affirmative action policies in the current Malaysian context should work according to John Rawls’ Theory of Justice by being based on income rather than ethnicity. Certainly Malaysian Government should be praised for giving freedom to the Chinese and Indians to select their preferred school and this is partly consistent with Amartya Sen’s view of freedom; however this article argues that these communities are apparently given constraint freedom of choice.     

Paulo Freire and the Politics of Education: A response to Neumann

Jacob Neumann provides a thoughtful reading of Paulo Freire in the 21^st century: Education, dialogue, and transformation. His comments on the importance of contextualising Freire’s work and the value of openness in engaging Freirean ideas are insightful and helpful. His use of the term ‘apolitical’ is, however, rather more problematic. Drawing on points made in Paulo Freire in the 21^st century, and with links to Freire’s wider philosophy and pedagogy, this article argues that education from a Freirean perspective is always political.     

Creative partnerships? Cultural policy and inclusive arts practice in one primary school

This article traces the ‘cultural turn’ in UK educational policy through an analysis of the Creative Partnerships policy (New Labour's ‘flagship programme in the cultural education field’) and a consideration of an arts project funded under this initiative in one primary school. It argues that current educational policy foregrounds the economic importance of cultural activity and its contribution to the social inclusion agenda. However, ‘creativity’ is seen as being located outside mainstream school structures, in projects rather than in the National Curriculum, and in artists rather than in teachers. The emphasis is on enjoyment and inclusion rather than cultural or social critique, or significant curriculum change. The transformative potential of involvement in the arts is marginalised in favour of a relatively weak form of social inclusion.     

Doing time in the sociology of education

Abstract

This article is both an editorial introduction for this special issue and a distinctive contribution in its own right. The article seeks to extend a dynamic and multiple conception of time to the sociology of education to think beyond the clock time associated with modernity and industrialisation. This need is illustrated through an account and critique of E.P. Thompson’s canonical account of clock time. The article argues that this construction of clock time implicitly frames most work in the sociology of education. The concept of ‘timespace’ offers a way to go beyond both clock time and the current ‘spatial turn’ in the sociology of education that prioritises space over time. It is shown how computerisation also ushers in a new temporality, which works simultaneously with clock time and perhaps presages the move from a disciplinary to control society. The article accepts that there are multiple and dynamic temporalities and correlatively supports a working together of historical and sociological imaginations towards a sociology of education that acknowledges and works with multiple temporalities, empirically, methodologically, theoretically and in research writing.     

Justifying the Arts: The Value of Illuminating Failures

This paper revisits how late 20th‐century attempts to account for conceptual and other difficult art‐work by defining the concept ‘art’ have failed to offer a useful strategy for educators seeking a non‐instrumental justification for teaching the arts. It is suggested that this theoretical ground is nonetheless instructive and provides useful background in searching for a viable approach to justification. It is claimed that, though definition may fail and grand theories not coalesce, one would be wise to emulate Passmore (1954, 1990) who argues for an aesthetic approach to works of art and who proceeds like the fox, from a specific work that becomes more complex through analysis. His approach is employed in describing a performance series by the Cellist of Sarajevo, which raises further questions regarding what it means to start from a specific art‐work and how doing so exemplifies Fleming's (2006) suggestion that in justifying the arts we connect them to our ethical lives. Passmore's strategy is then extended to the aesthetic experience of reading this essay and the paper concludes with the author's personal anecdote in response to Higgins' (2008) call for genuinely aesthetic defences of aesthetic education.     

Wildly wise in the terrible moment: Kant,Emerson, and improvisatory Bildung in early childhood education

Abstract

This paper aims to show how Emerson provides a reworking of Kantian understandings of moral education in young children’s Bildung. The article begins and ends by thinking of Emersonian self-cultivation as a form of improvisatory or wild Bildung. It explores the role of Bildung and self-cultivation in preschools through a philosophy that accounts for children’s ‘Wild wisdom’ by letting Emerson speak to Kant. The paper argues that Kant’s vision of Bildung essentially involves reason’s turn upon itself and that Emerson, particularly in how he is taken up by Cavell, shows that such a turn is already present in the processes of children inheriting, learning, and improvising with language. This improvisatory outlook on moral education is contrasted with common goals of moral education prescribed in early childhood education where the Swedish Curriculum for the Preschool Lpfö 98 is used as an example.     

幼儿音乐教育的价值与策略

音乐是幼儿最喜爱的艺术形式之一.幼儿在美妙的音乐中认识社会,表达情感.适宜的幼儿园音乐教育能够有效地促进幼儿各项能力的发展,包括语言表达能力、形象思维能力、音乐听觉能力、良好个性品质等.幼儿园应积极开展儿童音乐教育的实践与研究.     

Inclusive arts education in two Scandinavian primary schools: a phenomenological case study

Previous studies indicate that ideas related to special education could influence the way arts education is performed and motivated in schools. Further investigation is therefore required in order to raise awareness of how perspectives on inclusion can serve as a starting point for arts education, and vice versa. This article takes it starting point in an ethnographic double case study of arts education practices. Data were collected during the school year 2013/2014 in two Scandinavian schools (for pupils aged 6–13) with an articulated commitment to the arts. The methods used for data collection were observation and interviews. The material was analysed from a phenomenological point of view, and the analysis showed a predominantly holistic view of inclusion in the two schools. Five dimensions of inclusion were identified through the analysis: providing arts education for all, being connected to something larger, allowing access to different forms of expression and communication, establishing preconditions for holistic inclusion, and developing special arts education. The results indicate that these schools have made considerable progress in developing an inclusive arts learning environment. Results also suggest that a holistic inclusive view of education encourages a functional and vivid arts education for ‘all’, both inside and outside the classroom.     

Elusive prey: John Ogbu and the search for a grand theory of academic disengagement

John Ogbu’s work on ‘minority education’ has spawned a number of interesting and useful debates in the US. Having been both an early admirer and critic of Ogbu’s work, I reviewed his work in an Anthropology and Education Quarterly article . The present article reflects upon Ogbu’s work and upon my scholarly engagement with that corpus over the years. I discuss Ogbu’s Shaker Heights study , and offer some reasons why Ogbu is often misread as a deficit theorist. The article closes with an assessment of how Ogbu’s theory and ethnographic practice evolved in what turned out to be his last major piece of work published before his passing.     

Sustainability,virtue ethics,and the virtue of harmony with nature

This article argues that the dominant sustainable development approach fails to acknowledge the interconnectedness and interrelatedness of social and environmental issues, and that sustainability requires a ‘transformational’ approach, involving a fundamental change in how humans relate to each other and to nature. The authors propose that virtue ethics, grounded in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, provides a framework with which to tackle such a transformation; to redress the human-nature relationship and help foster a more ecological perspective; to facilitate a more holistic and integrative view of sustainability; and to explore questions of how to live and flourish within a more sustainable world. Beginning with an overview of virtue ethics and critique of current approaches in environmental virtue ethics, this article proposes a new virtue, ‘harmony with nature’, that addresses the interconnectedness of our relationship with nature. This is followed by a proposal for the re-visioning of human flourishing as being necessarily situated within nature. The article concludes with some of the implications of a virtue ethics approach to sustainability, and the new virtue, for both sustainability education and moral education.     

Critical liberal education: an undergraduate pedagogy for teacher candidates in socially diverse university settings

This article addresses the lack of attention universities have given to adjusting liberal education, the undergraduate major for teachers in California, to the increase of multi‐ethnic, multi‐racial, and social class heterogeneity in state universities. This article argues for a revised pedagogy for undergraduate liberal arts education for teacher candidates in California called critical liberal education. This pedagogy emphasizes the interdisciplinary knowledge and inquiry skills of a traditional program in conjunction with intercultural competence, civic engagement and an ethical stance toward social justice. This pedagogy brings liberal arts education in line with living in our complex multicultural democracy to create analytic, engaged teacher‐citizens for the twenty‐first century.