Randall R. Curren

This paper develops an interpretation and analysis of the arguments for public education which open Book VIII of Aristotle's Politics, drawing on both the wider Aristotelian corpus and on examination of continuities with Plato's Laws.Part II: Sections IV–VII examine the arguments for the first of the two conclusions which Aristotle advances in VIII. 1, namely that education is important enough to merit the legislator's attention. It is shown, through a development of links between Politics V and the arguments of VIII. 1, that Aristotle's two arguments for this conclusion are calculated to appeal to two distinct subgroups within his intended audience, those who would be moved by a desire to promote the common good, and those who could only be counted on to desire the preservation of their own rule.

This paper assesses the historical meaning and contemporary significance of Aristotle’s educational ideas. It begins with a broad characterization of the project of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Politics, which he calls “political science” (hê politikê epistêmê), and the central place of education in his vision of statesmanship. It proceeds through a series of topics fundamental to his educational ideas, culminating in the account of education in Politics VIII. A concluding section appraises the uses to which Aristotelian ideas are currently put in philosophy of education, identifying some confusions in the influential literature of “practices.”

This paper addresses the responsibilities of philosophers. It distinguishes philosophers by profession, philosophers as a type of person playing a social role by doing philosophy, and philosophers without any professional or social role as a philosopher. It criticizes and rejects the internal goods view of philosophers’ responsibilities, according to which a philosopher’s only responsibility as a philosopher is to do ‘good’ philosophy. It examines the responsibilities of philosophy professors and the role of philosophy teaching in liberal education, criticizing the implications of the internal goods view for university missions and commenting on related deficiencies of the Code of Conduct of the American Philosophical Association. The central conclusions are that philosophers should accept responsibilities to do philosophy in the public interest and to adopt a cross-disciplinary and collaborative stance toward their role in educating students in the forms of understanding and judgment that will best equip them for life and citizenship.

This paper explores some general considerations bearing on the question of whether virtue can be measured. What is moral virtue? What are measurement and evaluation, and what do they presuppose about the nature of what is measured or evaluated? What are the prospective contexts of, and purposes for, measuring or evaluating virtue, and how would these shape the legitimacy, methods, and likely success of measurement and evaluation? We contrast the realist presuppositions of virtue and measurement of virtue with the behavioral operationalism of a common conception of measurement in psychometrics. We suggest a realist and non-reductive conceptualization of the measurability of virtue. We then discuss three possible educational contexts in which the measurement of virtue might be pursued: high-stakes testing and accountability schemes, the evaluation of programs in character education, and routine student evaluation. We argue that high-stakes testing of virtue would be ill-advised and counterproductive. We make some suggestions for how program evaluation in character education might proceed, and offer some examples of evaluation of student virtue-related learning. We conclude that virtue acquisition might be measured in a population of students accurately enough for program evaluation, while also arguing that student and program evaluation do not require comprehensive evaluations of how virtuous individual students are. Routine student evaluation will typically focus on specific aspects of virtue acquisition, and program evaluations can measure the aggregate progress of virtue acquisition in all its aspects while evaluating only limited aspects of the learning of individual students.

Until recently, it was widely assumed in societies with long-established, publicly funded school systems that school attendance served the interests of children, society, and parents alike. In the United States and other common-law jurisdictions, safeguarding and promoting the independent welfare and developmental interests of every child was a public responsibility under the parens patriae doctrine. Compulsory schooling laws enacted under parens patriae authority required all persons having care and control of a child to share their custodial authority with publicly certified teachers for limited periods of time. By compelling all parents to send their children to school, the state ensured that all children had access to instruction and opportunities for social, economic, and civic participation beyond what their parents alone could provide. Parents were incidentally freer to manage the competing demands of domestic life and paid employment, and the enforcement of child labor laws was greatly facilitated by efforts to ensure school attendance. While compulsory schooling laws imposed obvious limits on the custodial authority of all parents for the sake of all children, they were rarely challenged on that basis. Not so today

The aim of this paper is to articulate the basic elements of a comprehensive ethic of academic administration, organized around a set of three cardinal virtues: commitment to the good of the institution; good administrative judgment; and conscientiousness in discharging the duties of the office. In addition to explaining this framework and defending its adequacy, the paper develops an account of the nature of integrity, and argues that the three cardinal virtues of academic administration can be captured in the concept of integrity in academic administration. The Aristotelian basis for this framework is summarized, and its central ideas are illustrated through a variety of applications.