Educational Capital in the Elementary School of the Mid‐Nineteenth Century

This essay discusses the life and work of Elise van Calcar (1822–1904), a writer and maternal feminist who introduced Froebel’s kindergarten in the Netherlands. Van Calcar also was the leader of a Christian branch of spiritualism. The focus is pointed at parallels between her reading of Froebel and of ‘messages’ from spirits in the ‘other world’ with whom she claimed to be in touch during spiritualist séances. Both Froebel’s Romantic pedagogy and spiritualism put emphasis on harmony and synthesis. Each of her projects was an attempt to transcend the dichotomy between the public and the private. Spiritual motherhood ruled the kindergarten and non-conformist religion, alternative medicine and Froebel training were practised at home. Both the kindergarten movement and spiritualism made her promote a ‘natural’ approach. Yet, she never stopped warning of the danger of leaving a child’s moral development to nature. Like a garden a child had to be worked upon.     

Self-Deception in the Classroom: Educational manifestations of Sartre’s concept of bad faith

This article explores an important section of Jean-Paul Sartre’s famous early work, Being and Nothingness. In that section Sartre proposes that part of the human condition is to actively engage in a particular kind of self-deception he calls bad faith. Bad faith is recognized by the obvious inconsistency between the purported self-knowledge of an individual and ways of acting and being in the world that are demonstrably in defiance of that stated position. This article begins by exploring examples of this self-deception in education along with a short query into the role pain avoidance might play in the development of this particular skill. The article then goes on to offer a series of manifestations of bad faith that Sartre identified along with possible examples of how each example, perhaps ‘excuse’, of bad faith might appear in education.     

The under-recognition of the significance of social class conceptions of education in Piketty’s Capital

Abstract

Piketty’s Capital has created enormous interest around the world, not least in educational circles. One reason for this may be his readiness to refer, in a book largely focused on economic history, to the ways that education has, and might, contribute to better and more equal social outcomes. This article welcomes this approach, but argues that Piketty’s suggestions remain somewhat limited due to his adherence to a more or less distributional, rather than relational, approach, and then sets out to address this issue by arguing that the assumption that it is the distribution of credentials which accounts for their contribution is mistaken. Instead, the article advances arguments which recognize the separate contributions of the content of credentials, and their valorization. The main focus of this article is thus on the different ways educational credentials are realized, which, it is argued, is a major basis for the maintenance of educational inequality.     

What Jim Crow’s Teachers Could Do: Educational Capital and Teachers’ Work in Under-resourced Schools

This article explains how Jim Crow’s teachers—former teachers of legally segregated schools for blacks—prepared and motivated disadvantaged students in spite of funding and resource deprivation. According to the author, black teachers fashioned situated pedagogies for the acquisition of educational capital that could be used in exchange for jobs, rights, and social power. Findings reveal three strategies of opportunity which provide some clues to how urban teachers today can educate poor children of color in under-resourced schools, such as generating materials and supplies, situating curriculum and instruction, and mobilizing human resources. The analysis draws upon 44 oral history interviews with former teachers in the coastal plains of North Carolina, as well as secondary historical sources.     

The Analytic System of Martin Heidegger’s Da-sein and the Anthropology of Max Scheler in the Educational Perspective

When applied to education, Heidegger’s analysis of Da-sein suggests that in his ontology the epistemological problem of clarifying cognition is replaced by the existential problem of the cognition of the understanding individual. Thus, Heidegger treats “education” ontologically as the ability to achieve Da-sein as one’s own true and integral being whose Da-sein always takes precedence in understanding. On this basis, we can say that Heidegger treats education as a transcendental ontological structure that he, like Scheler, calls “disclosedness.” And although Heidegger almost never uses the term “education” in his analytic system, preferring instead to use expressions such as “authentic being,” “projection of the self,” etc., all of this content that he invests in this term closely follows Scheler’s interpretation, because it also characterizes human existence as “open” and “not foreordained.” For Scheler, the same “open” existence is an expression of existential human freedom, since it serves to manifest the spirit as the ontological principle. Considered in epistemological and value terms, this freedom, according to Scheler, is what he refers to as “education,” a transcending state of being that is manifested for another thing in existence as something that is “known” by loving participation in it with a view to achieving “one’s authentic self.”     

Where’s the Community Practice? Gaps in Community Practice Education in a Clinical-Community Social Work Program

Although the profession of social work has a rich history of supporting community organizing and engagement efforts, there has been a trend toward educational programs that focus heavily on the clinical components of social work. The purpose of this study was to perform an exploratory investigation of the potential need for more community-centered educational content at a school of social work in the Gulf Coast, which advertises itself as offering a clinical-community practice program. Researchers developed and administered a questionnaire to all current students of the School of Social Work to evaluate the program’s efforts to provide a balanced clinical-community practice education. Student responses to the questionnaire suggested that the community practice learning opportunities at the school were not represented equally in quality or quantity to the clinical material. Students reported limited access to field placements that focused on community practice. The researchers suggest that the results of this study are reflective of a potential national trend in social work education toward a narrower focus on clinical practice, and away from its roots in community organizing and advocacy.     

President Bush’s State of the Union Letter to Children

Dear Young Americans:Since September 11,2001,many of you have sent cards,letters,and drawings to express you love for our great Nation and for the famlies of the victims.Thank you for sharing your thoughts and ideas with me.     

A critical feminist and race critique of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-first Century

Abstract

Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-first Century documents the foreboding nature of rising wealth inequality in the twenty-first century. In an effort to promote a more just and democratic global society and rein in the unfettered accumulation of wealth by the few, Piketty calls for a global progressive annual tax on corporate capital. Employing a critical feminist and race perspective on the political economy, this article examines Piketty’s historical understanding of inequality, and considers how his proposed solution to redistribute corporate profits through a global tax on corporate capital would impact the racialized, gendered, and geographically based inequalities experienced by marginalized girls and women, including access to education, employment, and other basic needs. The article argues that Piketty’s proposed solution would leave corporate strategies for accumulating wealth untouched, and would do little to transform the durable, deeply entrenched inequalities experienced by poor, racialized girls and women.     

Rescaling education: reconstructions of scale in President Reagan’s 1983 State of the Union Address

This article presents a discourse analysis of President Ronald Reagan’s 1983 State of the Union Address. Focusing on questions of scale, the article considers how and with what effects Reagan reconstructs education as a local, state, national and global endeavour. It is argued that by situating education in a competitive global economy, Reagan justifies his project of rolling back social/educational programmes and placing the USA’s institutions more squarely in service to capitalist growth. Furthermore, it is argued that Reagan’s efforts to rescale education and society contribute to a New Right project of re-establishing a white-dominated racial order in the USA and around the world. Although Reagan did not prioritise education in his domestic agenda, his statements on education advanced the New Right’s project of rescaling society and set the terms of debate in education for subsequent presidents.     

The Educational Value of Nasreddin Hodja’s Anecdotes

The anecdotes of Nasreddin Hodja, who lived in Anatolia in the 13th century, have always attracted people due to the humour they contain, but this discussion also focuses on exploring the educational value of the anecdotes. According to teachers who contributed to this study, the anecdotes stimulate students’ interest in language work, create a relaxed learning atmosphere and help students think positively through Nasreddin Hodja’s humour. The anecdotes, which relate to social life and society, cover a rich diversity of topics with both positive and negative examples of behaviour; and they also may provoke positive effects in the personality development of children.     

‘All the World’s a Stage’: William Shakespeare’s Cultural Capital 400 Years after his Death

The article reviews the evolution of Shakespeare studies over the last 50 years and proposes a narrative to trace its development since the commemoration of Shakespeare’s birth in 1964 in three phases: first, the unfolding from the 1970s to the 1990s of what I have called the postmodern paradigm in Shakespeare studies, which I argue breaks with previous humanist universalising readings of his plays; second, the serious consideration of Shakespeare on screen in the 1990s and the 2000s, an academic field that grows in the context of performance and popular culture studies; and, third, the scholarly analysis of Shakespeare’s plays in the digital media in the new millennium, a period that also witnesses the study of the bard on the global stage of world cultures, with the continued perception that his work is both core British heritage and inevitable global commodity. These most recent trends in Shakespeare studies were present in the overall approach to the celebration of the bard during the 2012 London Cultural Olympiad, an event with Shakespeare at its centre that can be seen as the forerunner of the explosion of activities in 2016 for the 400th commemoration of his death.     

Teachers’ work in the Swedish School Inspectorate’s quality audits in a time of accountability

This article explores how the teacher is positioned and legitimised in the Swedish Schools Inspectorate’s quality audit reports. Using Foucauldian discourse analysis, two main subject positions are identified: activity-based subject positions where the teacher is constructed as an active actor, and competence- and responsibility-based subject positions where the teacher is constructed both as important for the students’ results, and as an individual in need of guidance. The teacher is positioned as a professional with limited competence. The reports show ambivalence regarding teachers’ position, which could be considered as delegitimising the teaching profession.     

Advancing Research in the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Technological Education Program

ABSTRACT

Advanced Technological Education is distinct from typical National Science Foundation programs in that it is essentially a training—not research—program, and most grantees are located at technical and two-year colleges. This article presents empirical data on the status of research in the program, discusses the program’s role in supporting NSF’s values of intellectual merit and broader impacts, and offers strategies for enhancing research within the program.     

Help will be welcomed from every quarter: the work of William Boyd and the Educational Institute of Scotland’s Research Committee in the 1920s

This paper discusses evidence, collected during an ESRC‐funded project (‘Reconstructing a Scottish School of Educational Research, 1925–1950’), of a remarkable vision to involve teachers in educational research in Scotland by the Educational Institute of Scotland in the 1920s through the work of its Research Committee. Led by William Boyd, the Committee thought that involvement in research was a crucial stepping stone towards achieving professional status for teachers. It conducted a number of detailed investigations involving teachers, thereby introducing research into the consciousness and practice of teachers. This paved the way for Scotland to make significant contributions to educational research on the international stage.