Laura D'Olimpio

Laura D'Olimpio argues that aesthetic education ought to be a compulsory part of education for all students, from pre-primary through to high school, as it is essential that young people have the opportunity to make art, experience and understand art and be informed as to the artistic history and aesthetic theories that have shaped their own culture and others. The book defends arts education on the basis of art's distinctive value and centrality to human experience. It also engages with topics such as the art teacher's role in the classroom, curricula concerns and gleaning moral meanings from artworks.

Educating against extremism doesn't just involve seeking to prevent individuals from becoming extremists or radicalized, although that, of course, is a significant concern. There is also an important role for education in teaching the rest of us, the general populace, the best way to react and respond when we learn of a terrorist attack or consider the potential risk of violent extremism in our community, or even worldwide, given we are connected globally via technology. In this article, Laura D'Olimpio argues that educators have a central role to play in teaching young people to respond to the news of violent extremism and the worry about terrorists and terrorism in ways that support our sense of community and personal well-being. Among the ways in which educators may support such aims is by educating the emotions. There are practical and moral reasons to temper our fearful reactions, and it is in our best interest to educate pupils to avoid allowing fear of terrorists or violent extremism to interfere with their daily lives and actions. D'Olimpio claims that our best response to extremism, both representationally and practically, is to refuse to be terrified. By not being overwhelmed by fear or altering our day-to-day activities, we not only better support a well-functioning democracy and our own happiness or flourishing, but we also disempower rather than empower extremists.

Educating against extremism doesn't just involve seeking to prevent individuals from becoming extremists or radicalized, although that, of course, is a significant concern. There is also an important role for education in teaching the rest of us, the general populace, the best way to react and respond when we learn of a terrorist attack or consider the potential risk of violent extremism in our community, or even worldwide, given we are connected globally via technology. In this article, Laura D'Olimpio argues that educators have a central role to play in teaching young people to respond to the news of violent extremism and the worry about terrorists and terrorism in ways that support our sense of community and personal well-being. Among the ways in which educators may support such aims is by educating the emotions. There are practical and moral reasons to temper our fearful reactions, and it is in our best interest to educate pupils to avoid allowing fear of terrorists or violent extremism to interfere with their daily lives and actions. D'Olimpio claims that our best response to extremism, both representationally and practically, is to refuse to be terrified. By not being overwhelmed by fear or altering our day-to-day activities, we not only better support a well-functioning democracy and our own happiness or flourishing, but we also disempower rather than empower extremists.

In A Theory of Moral Education, Michael Hand defends the importance of teaching children moral standards, even while taking seriously the fact that reasonable people disagree about morality. While I agree there are universal moral values based on the kind of beings humans are, I raise two issues with Hand’s account. The first is an omission that may be compatible with Hand’s theory; the role of virtues. A role for the cultivation of virtues and rational emotions such as compassion is vital in accounting for the emotional aspect of morality. The second issue pertains to Hand’s foundational premise of human beings’ rough equality. Following Martha Nussbaum, I argue that contractarian approaches must be critically evaluated to ensure the social contract properly includes and accounts for the human dignity of those who are typically excluded from the benefits of society. Hand’s justificatory arguments rely upon a contractarian premise, and the contract itself needs scrutiny and adjustment if it is to support a viable theory of moral education.

Social media is a key player in contemporary political, cultural and ethical debates. Given much of online engagement is characterised by impulsive and emotive responses, and social media platforms encourage a form of sensationalism that promotes epistemic vices, this paper explores whether there is space online for moral responses. This paper defends the need for moral engagement with online information and others, using an attitude entitled ‘critical perspectivism’. Critical perspectivism sees a moral agent adopt a critical eye, supplemented by a caring disposition, when engaging with interactive digital media and the stories of others that are technologically mediated. Such an ethical attitude is required given our globally connected, technological world features new versions of recognisable challenges to democracy and the reasonableness of citizens. There is a vital role for educationalists to play in teaching and making space and time for students to practice being critically perspectival.

There is a debate within philosophy of literature as to whether narrative artworks should be judged morally, for their ethical value, meaning and impact. On one side you have the aesthetes, defenders of aestheticism, who deny the ethical value of an artwork can be taken into consideration when judging the work’s overall aesthetic value. Richard Posner backs artists such as Oscar Wilde who famously wrote, ‘there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all’. On the other side of the debate are proponents of ethical criticism such as Martha Nussbaum, Wayne Booth, Noël Carroll and Mary Devereaux. This article examines the educational implications of each position and ultimately defends the importance of moral education alongside aesthetic education. Given artworks are powerful vehicles for moral sentiments and meaning, it is important that viewers are taught to engage critically with art’s ethical features as well as aesthetic features. In this way, educational concerns pose a challenge to the position of aestheticism.

What is knowledge? What makes me, me? Do we have free will? People have been asking such fundamental questions about the nature of reality for centuries, but how can they help us make sense of our existence in a 21st-century world of social media, cyber wars, cloning, artificial intelligence and virtual reality? Short Cuts: Philosophy provides the map you need to travel beyond traditional foundations and explore a diverse array of deep thinkers. Soul-searching questions prompt 'short cut' answers written by experts in their field, with each one the setting-off point for instructions that plot a path through the philosophical landscape. With 'one-stop' graphics visualizing a memorable theory or idea for each concept, and 'route map' glossaries explaining key words and their connections, Short Cuts: Philosophy will help you wrestle with the meaning of ancient and modern philosophical thought.

The point of education is to support students to be able to live meaningful, autonomous lives, filled with rich experiences. The arts and aesthetic education are vital to such flourishing lives in that they afford bold, beautiful, moving experiences of awe, wonder and the sublime that are connected to the central human functional capability Nussbaum labels senses, imagination and thought. Everyone ought to have the opportunity to learn about art, to appreciate and create art, to critique art and to understand how we are connected to the culture of our society. A life without art is unimaginable, and to the extent that people lack aesthetic experiences, their lives are impoverished, not ‘fully human’. Given that the distinctive value of art objects is that they afford aesthetic experience, it is upon this foundation that an argument ought to be mounted as to why schooling needs the arts, specialised teachers, and all students deserve aesthetic education. Therefore, in this paper, I offer a defence of compulsory aesthetic education across the curriculum on the basis of the aesthetic experiences the arts afford, and the central role such experiences play in eudaimonia—the flourishing life.

This volume investigates the role of the arts in character education. Bringing together insights from esteemed philosophers and educationalists, it looks to the arts for insight into human character and explores the arts' relationship to human flourishing and the development of the virtues. Focusing on the moral value of art and considering questions of whether there can be educational value in imaginative and non-narrative art, the nine chapters herein critically examine whether poetry, music, literature, films, television series, videogames, and even gardening may improve our understanding of human character, sharpen our moral judgement, inculcate or refine certain skills required for virtue, or perhaps cultivate certain virtues themselves. Bringing together research on aesthetics, ethics, moral and character education, this book will appeal to students, researchers and academics of philosophy, arts, and education as well as philosophers of education, morality, aesthetics, and teachers of the arts.

In this paper, I offer a defence of aesthetic education in terms of aesthetic experience, claiming that aesthetic experience and art appreciation is a vital component of a flourishing life. Given schools have an important role to play in helping prepare young people for their adult lives, it is crucial they should consider how best to equip students with the means to achieve a flourishing life. It is on these grounds I defend arts education as compulsory across the curriculum. In order to adopt this position, I firstly critically engage with two competing defences of including the arts on the curriculum on the basis of firstly, the role art has to play in supporting self-expression, and secondly, a defence of the arts in relation to their role in supporting moral improvement. After explaining why these arguments fail to do the work required to defend aesthetic education as thoroughly as is needed, I turn to the defence based on aesthetic experience because it allows for a defence of the arts to be made on the basis of art’s distinctive value.

Within the rough ground that is the field of education there is a complex web of ethical obligations: to prepare our students for their future work; to be ethical as educators in our conduct and teaching; to the ethical principles embedded in the contexts in which we work; and given the Southern context of this work, the ethical obligations we have to this land and its First Peoples. We put out a call to colleagues whose work has been concerned with the pedagogies of professional ethics, the ethical burdens of institutional injustice, and the application of ethical theory to education’s applied fields. In the responses we received it can be seen that ethical concerns in education are broad ranging, covering terrain varying from the preparation of preservice teachers, ethics in higher education, early childhood and care, educational leadership, relational and communicative ethics. Perhaps it could also be argued that this paper demonstrates Gibbon’s observation that ‘Assumptions about the particularity of this time as new and ripe with opportunity to make a difference through philosophy of education are not new and there’s much to learn from the persistence of wanting to imagine that they are’. However, while the field of ethics is perennially concerned with human relations and pedagogical interventions to improve these, the responses collected here show that educational ethics is far from static. Educational ethics is a field that continues to develop in response to changing contexts.

ABSTRACTAs our technology rapidly advances, designer babies and other bioethical issues are fast becoming possible. Instead of solely being considered in economic terms, or in terms of accuracy and desirability, ethical questions should also be asked such as ‘is this a good thing to do?’. This article considers whether moral people would ‘design’ and genetically engineer their babies and applies the moral theories of virtue ethics, deontology and utilitarianism to help guide our ethical decision-making in relation to this complex issue. Even if we can do something, we should pause and consider whether or not we should.

Welcome to a special issue of the 'Journal of Philosophy in Schools' that explores whether moral education may take place in the community of philosophical inquiry by practitioners of philosophy in schools. To be even more specific, the issue hotly debated in this, Volume 7 Number 2 of the JPS, is whether there is room for directive teaching within the CoI. Given that ethical issues are significant, divisive, and central to the well-lived life, it matters whether they can be taught and/or discussed and debated in appropriate ways with young people. Included in this special issue are different arguments as to whether the CoI is the right place for moral inquiry, and how moral debate, moral instruction, moral formation and ethical inquiry may best be facilitated with young people in educational settings using philosophical tools and techniques. Of particular concern is how such moral education may occur whilst avoiding the charge of indoctrination.

While some may argue that universities are in a state of crisis, others claim that we are living in a post-university era; a time after universities. If there was a battle for the survival of the institution, it is over and done with. The buildings still stand. Students enrol and may attend lectures, though let’s be clear—most do not. But virtually nothing real remains. What some mistakenly take to be a university is, in actuality, an ‘uncanny’ spectral presence; ‘the nagging presence of an absence … a “spectralized amnesiac modernity with its delusional totalizing systems”’. It is the remains and remnants of the university.[1]Overstatement? Perhaps. We think many if not most administrators, at all levels, will likely dissent. So too will many if not most teachers and students. Trying to determine whether this is correct, or to what extent, by consulting polls and reading opinion pieces in various education journals and professional papers is likely to be of little help. In any case, it is the hypothesis, along with closely related ones, and concerns about what can be done in the circumstances, that have generated this special issue.This special issue highlights and illustrates that most of the contested issues regarding educational theory and practice central to how universities and schools should be, and how they should be run, are first and foremost questions of value rather than fact. They are questions regarding what we want, but more importantly what we should want, from our universities and schools; about what they should be and what students, teachers and administrators should be doing to facilitate this.[1] See Cox and Levine and Boaks, Cox and Levine.

This article is a collective writing experiment undertaken by philosophers of education affiliated with the PESGB (Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain). When asked to reflect on questions concerning the Philosophy of Education in a New Key in May 2020, it was unsurprising that the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on society and on education were foremost in our minds. We wanted to consider important philosophical and educational questions raised by the pandemic, while acknowledging that, first and foremost, it is a human tragedy. With nearly a million deaths reported worldwide to date, and with everyone effected in one way or another by Covid-19, there is a degree of discomfort, and a responsibility to be sensitive, in reflecting and writing about it academically. Members of this ‘Covid Collective’ come from various countries, with perspectives from Great Britain and Ireland well represented, and we see academic practice as a globally connected enterprise, especially since the digital revolution in academic publishing. The concerns raised in this article relate to but move beyond Covid-19, reflecting the impact of neoliberalism [and other political developments] on geopolitics with educational concerns as central to our focus.

'Welcome to our new open access publishing platform ‘Ubiquity’ and a big thank you to the University of Birmingham for hosting us here! The Library Services team have been absolutely amazing and we are pleased to publish Volume 7 Number 1 of ''Journal of Philosophy in Schools ' online and in an open-access format. We also wish to thank our wonderful copy-editor Anne Morrison, for her continued assistance and valuable input into the JPS. During these unprecedented times of lockdown and in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we hope there are some interesting ideas in here to distract and inspire you. With more parents involved in home schooling their children, we are grateful to the philosophy in schools community who have offered their support in unique ways. Check out the free resources and online lessons from our friends at The Philosophy Foundation, The Philosophy Man and others, and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @JournalP4C where we will continue to share more resources and articles. Our first issue for this year contains six original articles that explore how ‘philosophy’ is defined in the philosophy for children literature, and how it works best in various teaching contexts. Some of the papers from this and the forthcoming issue were initially presented at the 2018 FAPSA Conference which was held at The University of Notre Dame Australia’s Fremantle Campus 10-11 July, 2018 with an In-Action Day at Hale School 9 July.

In "The Imagination of Disaster," written at or close to the height of the Cold War, Sontag ruminates on what America's interest in, if not preoccupation with, science fiction films tell us about ourselves.1 Their popularity cannot be explained in terms of their entertainment value alone; or if it can, then why audiences found such films entertaining is something that itself needs explanation. Almost all films in the hero genre are also science fiction and are concerned with disasters of one kind or another. What Sontag has to say about disaster in the 1950s can easily be applied to the seemingly insatiable desire for hero films today. Her account is useful in explaining both what our attractions...

It is with pleasure that we welcome new and returning readers to the third issue of the Journal of Philosophy in Schools. Our second issue, published earlier this year, has reinforced the fact that there is an enthusiastic audience for academic research and reflection on philosophy with children, philosophy in schools and, by extension, philosophy and education. As of 1st November 2015, issue 2 had received over 16,943 total abstract views, giving an average of over 2420 views per article. Total article downloads were over 5222, giving the issue an average article download of over 746. We thank you for your continued support and are excited to report that we have 1316 Facebook ‘likes’ for our page, and 528 followers on Twitter. These figures have doubled in the last six months since the last issue of the JPS was published.

Welcome to the second issue of the Journal of Philosophy in Schools. We are pleased to report that our first issue received a wonderful reception. As of the 5th May 2015 the issue had received over 44,500 total abstract views, giving an average of over 4000 views per article. Total article downloads were over 6000, giving the issue an average article download of over 550. We have 853 Facebook ‘likes’ for our page, and 372 followers on Twitter. We thank you for your support and hope to continue the conversation about philosophy in schools and with school-aged children. With this in mind, it is our pleasure to launch the second issue, the first for 2015, which includes four brand new articles and a book review. We have also decided to continue the tradition of including a seminal article from Critical & Creative Thinking with a new introductory note by its author.

This year the Journal of Philosophy in Schools kicked off with a special issue, volume 5 number 1, comprising seven invited articles that addressed the foundational question of why philosophy should be taught in schools. Deftly guest edited by Michael Hand from the University of Birmingham, the papers make a cumulative and convincing argument for why philosophy should be taught across the pre-tertiary educational curriculum. The issue makes a strong argument that may be used to defend and propagate the philosophy in schools movement. We hope it will be used pragmatically, politically, and persuasively by our readers to raise awareness and further the cause of teaching philosophy to young people and extending philosophy beyond the Academy.This issue honours one person who has dedicated his career to furthering this cause. Philip Cam is an international authority on philosophy in schools who has been a pioneer in introducing philosophy and ethics into schools in Australia. Phil completed his MA in Philosophy at the University of Adelaide and his DPhil at the University of Oxford. He is Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Humanities and Languages at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, where he has been for over 30 years. In the various positions Phil has held at UNSW, in the Philosophy in Schools Association for NSW, and for the Federation of Australasian Philosophy in Schools Associations, he has worked hard, inspired and taught many, and contributed much to the shape of philosophy in schools across Australasia. This year, a little bird informed the JPS that Phil was retiring and turning 70, even while he continues to be productive, publishing, presenting and assisting with philosophy in schools projects and events. The opportunity thus presented itself to publish a collection of papers critically engaged with Cam’s work. Two further articles are included in this issue.

We are pleased to publish Volume 4 Number 1 of Journal of Philosophy in Schools in an open-access format. This issue contains five original articles exploring the efficacy of teaching philosophy to children in a variety of countries and cultural contexts. In this issue, we have researchers and practitioners represented from Hawai‘i, Israel, Canada, America and the United Kingdom. This international and multicultural mix serves to remind us that philosophy can be taught in any country and with children of all ages, although some local, religious and cultural considerations and sensitivities ought to be applied in relevant ways to pedagogical praxis.

Welcome to the fifth issue of the Journal of Philosophy in Schools. In April this year the Federation of Australasian Philosophy in Schools Associations held its biennial conference in Wellington, New Zealand. Organised by the then Chairperson of FAPSA, Dr Vanya Kovach, the conference was a great success and attracted many teachers as well as local and international academics working in the fields of Philosophy, Education, and Philosophy of Education. The two-day conference was supplemented by an ‘Action Day’ that saw contributing academics and practitioners facilitating Communities of Inquiry and P4C activities with students from local primary and high schools. The opportunity to listen to theoretical papers and then witness examples of praxis was a wonderful representation of the two arms of the Philosophy in Schools beast that we celebrate here at the JPS. In this issue, we are delighted to bring you five original articles that were initially presented as papers at the FAPSA conference, along with a book review.

Welcome to the fourth issue of the Journal of Philosophy in Schools. 2016 marks our third year of publishing the JPS online in an open-access forum, and we are so pleased with the support and positive responses we continue to receive for this initiative. We are delighted to offer you another five original articles in this issue that all engage with how philosophy is practiced with young people in various educational contexts. We are also steadily growing our social media presence and are excited to report that we now have 1797 Facebook ‘likes’ for our page, and 731 followers on Twitter. Our statistics in terms of article views and downloads is equally impressive. As of 1st May 2016, and taken together, the three previously published issues had received over 109,814 total abstract views, giving an average of 4,393 views per article. Total article downloads across the three issues are 38,379, giving an average article download of 1,535. This demonstrates the vitality of the audience interested in, researching, and practicing philosophy in their classrooms with students of all ages. We thank you for your continued support of the JPS and encourage you to continue to spread the word.

There is a traditional debate in analytic aesthetics that surrounds the classification of film as Art. While much philosophy devoted to considering film has now moved beyond this debate and accepts film as a mass art, a subcategory of Art proper, it is worth reconsidering the criticism of film pre-Deleuze. Much of the criticism of film as pseudo-art is expressed in moral terms. Adorno, for example, critiques film as ‘mass-cult’, mass-produced culture which presents a ‘flattened’ version of reality. Adorno worries about the passivity encouraged in viewers. Films are narrative artworks, received by an audience in a context, making the focus on the reception of the work important. The dialogue held between Adorno and Walter Benjamin post-Second World War is interesting because, between them, they consider both the possible positive emancipatory and negative politicization effects of film as a mass produced and distributed storytelling medium. Reading Adorno alongside Benjamin is a way to highlight the role of the critical thinker who receives the film. Arguing that the critical thinker is a valuable citizen, this paper focuses on the value of critical thinking in the reception of cinematic artworks. It achieves this by reconsidering Adorno and Benjamin’s theories of mass art.