In recent years a number of popular books have savaged religion arguing it is a dangerous delusion that poisons human societies and relationships. This is but the most recent manifestation of a secularising agenda that has been sweeping contemporary democratic societies since the Enlightenment. This book pushes back against that agenda, examining its key assumptions and arguing that the exclusion of religious people and ideas from education and the public square is both undemocratic and unwise. For the most part the book draws arguments and examples from Christianity, the religious tradition of the authors, but it recognises that many religions share the concerns and possibilities examined. The book examines contemporary expressions of the secularising agenda in Western democracies with particular focus on how that is played out in education. It demonstrates how republican theory understood within a faith perspective provides a shared understanding and substantive basis for education within a Western democracy. It explores the historical connections and disconnections between religion and civic life in the West from ancient to contemporary times and examines religiously based civic action and pedagogical approaches contending both have the potential to contribute greatly to democracy. It will be of value to any who are interested in exploring how democracies can include the voices of all their citizens: the religious and the secular.

Politics and Education: Cases from eleven nations tackles the relationship between politics and education. The book presents several dimensions of the politics-education relationship, such as the use of education in achieving political agendas and the effects of the interest of a political group on educational policy. The book present cases from 11 different countries that show the interaction between education and politics, such as the use of educational policy as a compensatory legitimation in West Germany; the educational opportunity under pre- and post-revolutionary condition in Nicaragua; and the education and the maintenance of the social-class system in Jamaica. The text will be of great interest to readers concerned with the implication of political agendas for the education system of a country.

Although the early history of progressive education is often associated with John Dewey in America, the author argues convincingly that the pedagogues in the elementary schools in the big cities of Imperial Germany were in the avant garde of this movement on the European Continent. Far more than a history of ideas, this study provides the first comprehensive analysis of the culture wars over the schools in Germany in the 1920s. Going up to the Nazi seizure of power, the author's narrative sheds new light on the courageous defense of the republican state by the progressive educators in the 1930s and the relationship between the traditionalists' opposition to school reform and the attraction of certain sections of the teaching profession to the Nazi movement.

Rodowick takes after the theories of Hannah Arendt and argues that thinking is an art we practice with and for each other in our communities. In An Education in Judgment, philosopher D. N. Rodowick makes the definitive case for a philosophical humanistic education aimed at the cultivation of a life guided by both self-reflection and interpersonal exchange. Such a life is an education in judgment, the moral capacity to draw conclusions alone and with others, and letting one’s own judgments be answerable to the potentially contrasting judgments of others. Thinking, for Rodowick, is an art we practice with and learn from each other on a daily basis. In taking this approach, Rodowick follows the lead of Hannah Arendt, who made judgment the cornerstone of her conception of community. What is important for Rodowick, as for Arendt, is the cultivation of “free relations,” in which we allow our judgments to be affected and transformed by those of others, creating “an ever-widening fabric of intersubjective moral consideration.” That is a fragile fabric, certainly, but one that Rodowick argues is worth pursuing, caring for, and preserving. This original work thinks with and beyond Arendt about the importance of the humanities and what “the humanities” amounts to beyond the walls of the university.

With Aristotle’s Teaching in the “Politics,” Thomas L. Pangle offers a masterly new interpretation of this classic philosophical work. It is widely believed that the Politics originated as a written record of a series of lectures given by Aristotle, and scholars have relied on that fact to explain seeming inconsistencies and instances of discontinuity throughout the text. Breaking from this tradition, Pangle makes the work’s origin his starting point, reconceiving the Politics as the pedagogical tool of a master teacher. With the Politics, Pangle argues, Aristotle seeks to lead his students down a deliberately difficult path of critical thinking about civic republican life. He adopts a Socratic approach, encouraging his students—and readers—to become active participants in a dialogue. Seen from this perspective, features of the work that have perplexed previous commentators become perfectly comprehensible as artful devices of a didactic approach. Ultimately, Pangle’s close and careful analysis shows that to understand the Politics, one must first appreciate how Aristotle’s rhetorical strategy is inextricably entwined with the subject of his work.

This book focuses on how politics shapes the capacity and commitment of elites to tackle the learning crisis in six developing countries. It deploys a new conceptual framework to show how the type of political settlement shaptes the level of elite commitment and state capacity to improving learning outcomes.

The marketised and securitised shaping of formal education sites in terms of risk prevention strategies have transformed what it means to be a learner and a citizen. In this book, Karl Kitching explores racialised dimensions to suggest how individuals and collectives are increasingly made responsible for their own welfare as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ students, at the expense of the protection of their rights as learner-citizens. Focusing on Ireland as a post-colonial Atlantic state, the book demonstrates how liberal governance, racisms, migration and mass education are interconnected and struggled over at local, national, European and global levels. Using a variety of qualitative studies and analytic approaches, The Politics of Compulsive Education details the significance of mass education(s) to the ongoing racialisation of national sovereignty. It draws on in-depth historical, policy, media and school-based research, moving from the 19th century to the present day. Chapters explore diverse themes such as student deportation, austerity and the politics of community ‘integration’, the depoliticisation of third level education via international student and ‘quality’ teacher regimes, the racialised distribution of learner ‘ability’, and school-based bullying and harassment. Combined, these studies demonstrate the possibilities and constraints that exist for educational anti-racisms both in terms of social movements and everyday classroom situations. The Politics of Compulsive Education asks key questions about anti-racist responsibility across multiple education sites and explores how racisms are both shaped, and can be interrupted, by the interaction of the global and the local, as seen in terms of migration, the distribution of capital, media, education policy discourse, and teacher and learner identifications. It will be of interest to researchers, academics and postgraduate students of sociology, education, cultural studies, political theory, philosophy and postcolonial studies.

This title was first published in 2003:In the globalizing world, South Korea is widely regarded as a model example of how a school education system can enhance national economic development. Similar claims are made for other Asian NICs such as Taiwan. However, less understood is how the education system in South Korea became a site of intense conflict as, in the decade from 1989-99, a large movement of teachers battled with the government over development-related issues such as democratic reforms and human rights in schooling, in a struggle that divided this education-oriented society and at times plunged the nation’s schools into chaos. This book analyses the emergence of the National Teachers’ Union of Korea, Chunkyojo, and traces its struggle for educational reforms. The book examines the South Korean education system within national and global contexts and the historical experiences that have shaped the modern nation - such as its Confucianist history, its experiences of colonialism and the legacy of the Cold War conflict with North Korea. As South Korea searches for pathways for reunification, economic growth and the consolidation of democratic civil society, important new perspectives on the role of education emerge through this analysis of the teachers’ social movement. This book also presents separate chapters on teacher movements in Taiwan and the Philippines, that provide interesting comparisons to the South Korean case, while revealing the distinctive political and historical experiences that have shaped education in these societies and the emergence of reformist teacher movements. In a valuable appendix, the author discusses methodological and theoretical aspects of the research in this book.

The present book aims to analyse key features of the field of International Education. It also intends to study crucial elements of the relevant dimensions of the dichotomy Politics versus Policies. Educational policy and politic together constitute a vast field of research and intellectual endeavour. 'Policy' and 'Politics' are two words that are often confused with regard to their connotations. There is in fact some difference between the two words. 'Policy' is a 'principle'. 'Politics' is all about organizational process.

What do we know about the outcomes of education in developing countries? Where are the gaps in our knowledge, and why are they important to fill? What are the policy challenges that underlie these knowledge gaps, and how can education best contribute to eliminating the problem of widespread poverty in the developing world? This book arises out of a five year, DFID-funded programme of research examining the impact of education on the lives and livelihoods of people in developing countries, particularly those living in poorer areas and from poorer households. Based on highly innovative research that addressed common research questions across four countries in Africa and South Asia, the book presents new theoretical and empirical knowledge that will help to improve education and poverty reduction strategies in developing countries, through an enhanced recognition of education's actual and potential role. In addition to introducing the reader to a wide range of conceptual and policy-related problems concerning the impact of education on individuals and society, the book: provides the field of educational research with a contemporary economic and socio-cultural reassessment of educational outcomes in relation to poverty. discusses the challenges and priorities facing policy makers, practitioners and the international development community in improving the outcomes of education, particularly for the most disadvantaged in Africa, South Asia and other low income countries; identifies the key theoretical and methodological challenges involved in researching the outcomes of education for the poor. This book will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students and researchers in the fields of international and comparative education, education policy, development studies, African and Asian studies and related disciplines, and to those working on education policy at national or international levels in governments and international institutions. Education has an extraordinarily important role to play in efforts to eliminate poverty world-wide. This book reveals the nature and complexity of these relationships and provides indispensible pointers to the kinds and extent of policy changes that are required.