Michael S. Merry

Zelfs in sterk pluralistische schoolsystemen, zoals in Nederland, blijft de houding van de regulier geschoolde meerderheid negatief tegenover de thuis onderwijzende minderheid. Een groot deel van dit verzet komt voort uit vermeende zorgen over de onderwijsbehoeften van het kind. Daarmee gepaard gaat de overtuiging dat scholen kinderen de basis bieden die nodig is om in de samenleving te kunnen functioneren. Toch vindt onderwijs ook regelmatig buiten scholen plaats. Thuisonderwijzers wijzen erop dat school en educatie niet synoniem zijn. Leren, ontdekken en zich ontwikkelen worden op veel plekken bevorderd. Dat is altijd zo geweest. Welke bezwaren tegen thuisonderwijs zijn er nog meer? Ik bespreek er drie: sociale ongelijkheid, burgerschap en de belangen van kinderen.

Efforts to address citizenship entail defining, elucidating and defending the rights, roles and responsibilities of persons who share a political culture. The discussion encompasses the political rhetoric of freedom and equality on one hand, and decency and social cooperation on the other. Citizenship describes articulated dispositions, entitlements and actions dictated by governments and constitutions, where cultural, political and religious differences find common ground. Its virtues remain ideals. Some states manage better than others to deliver on these ideals, while others champion the importance of citizenship in only the thinnest sense. Whatever the case, citizenship entails a reciprocal relationship between individuals and the state, taking in a variety of social, economic and political virtues, though the ranking of these virtues is unsettled. The contours of citizenship include various and sundry modes of attachment and obligation.

Across the world, most societies remain deeply segregated by ethnicity, language, class, religion and political creed. In the academy, most scholars hold the view that these patterns come about in large part as a result of discrimination and racism. Accordingly, many hold the view that any social inequities occasioned by segregation can only be mitigated through policies more carefully fine-tuned to achieve ethnic, racial or social class ‘integration’. In this essay, I question this simplistic view and only begin to sketch the outlines of an argument for pursuing justice for stigmatised minorities under non-ideal conditions, i.e., persistently high levels of segregation.

In this unpublished paper from 1997, I argue that the cultural context in which Jonathan Edwards operated becomes supremely important if one is to understand what motivated him to defend the particular ideas that he did. His intellectual world was preponderantly Puritan Calvinist. Notions of "covenant" overshadowed the New England religion that conceived of a peculiar pact between God and the "elect." Christians, then, had an obligation to live up to their end of the arrangement. However, Puritan theology was not confined to Calvinism; it grew out of a culture that was steeped in natural theology a la Aquinas and Descartes.

Het begrip ‘levensbeschouwing’ is om meerdere redenen problematisch. Critici vinden dat er te veel ruimte voor interpretatie bestaat en dat sommige ouders er misbruik van maken om hun kind, om wat voor reden dan ook, van school weg te houden. De ambiguïteit leent zich ook voor wilde speculatie door mensen die niet weten wat thuisonderwijs inhoudt, die onwetendheid gebruiken om ouders belachelijk te maken die ernstige en principiële redenen voor hun keuze hebben en vanuit de ergst denkbare scenario’s conclusies trekken over thuisonderwijs als geheel.

When people feel that their country has betrayed its core ideals, it is natural for them to consider whether they ought finally to give up on their country. Our interest is with those who sincerely love their countries, and yet who are inclined to abandon their country because they judge it to have betrayed its ideals. We consider different variants of patriotism before defending what we call critical patriotism, a stance involving a commitment to a nation’s ideals without the attendant need to love one’s country unconditionally. We further argue that even in the cases where one has good reasons to remain loyal to one’s country, doing so will typically be supererogatory rather than obligatory. The issue before us is of crucial practical significance given the current trend of people feeling justified in abandoning their country in response to feeling that their political ideals have been betrayed.

Erg populair op dit moment in het onderwijs is het idee van ‘multi-perspectiviteit’, een kader dat het belang benadrukt van meerdere gezichtspunten of perspectieven. Voorstanders hameren daarbij op het belang van wat zij ‘causaal redeneren’ noemen, het proces van het identificeren en begrijpen van oorzaak-en-gevolgrelaties, en bovendien een praktijk om verhalen uit verleden en heden actief te interpreteren en te vergelijken. Leraren geschiedenis en maatschappijleer zouden hun leerlingen dan ook moeten aanmoedigen om hun standpunten te onderbouwen met goede argumenten en daarbij alternatieve gezichtspunten te betrekken. Vrijwel niemand zal het oneens zijn met de stelling dat leren redeneren, bewijs verzamelen en discussiëren met medeleerlingen belangrijke vaardigheden zijn om onder de knie te krijgen. Toch zijn er zowel principiële als praktische problemen met deze aanpak.

Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) have a unique position in the landscape of higher education vis-à-vis trauma-informed pedagogy insofar as nearly all of their students identify with a cultural group that has experienced genocide, that continues to experience discrimination and poverty, and whose families are inevitably affected by serious psychological problems that plausibly might be considered as responses to trauma. In this paper, we principally concern ourselves with the healing role that TCUs are playing in the quest to repair the historical damage that has been done and also that continues to be done. Accordingly, we detail the important work they do. But, in doing so, we also closely examine the Indigenous historical trauma theoretical framework, which figures prominently in the thinking of many TCU staff, and suggest that a resiliency focus can helpfully assist with resolving a number of theoretical difficulties. We then move to assess the practical dimensions of healing and resilience in the Tribal College as staff members tackle the myriad challenges facing not only their students, but Tribal Nations more generally in the 21st century and beyond.

In matters concerning knowledge of ability, the philosophy of education is but a more specific form of applied epistemology. Yet philosophers of education also understand that any knowledge we may have of an individual’s abilities cannot – indeed should not – be divorced from its ethical ramifications. This is because purported knowledge about ability is used to inform decisions concerning educational opportunity, and these bear directly upon questions of fairness. In this chapter I examine a number of these epistemic and ethical questions in some detail, in particular as they pertain to the epistemology of ability. I then illustrate these concerns by focussing my attention on higher education, in particular a hiring decision in the university, where I investigate the kinds of knowledge that a selection committee for a PhD position ought to have at their disposal in order to make an informed and fair decision concerning the abilities of candidates. As it concerns the fundamental epistemic questions, I will show that the procedures used to yield knowledge of abilities is often corrupted by epistemic vice and epistemic misconduct that obstruct both understanding and fair procedures. I further elucidate a conundrum that arises when the putative knowledge used to assess ability encourages nepotism. This, I will argue, raises a number of troubling questions concerning the production of knowledge in the university.

Censorship in education has a very long history. Thus while recent instances of outrage about censorship in education tend to focus on specific illiberal forms of censorship (e.g. concerning the teaching of evolution or sex education), an historical look across cultures invites a wider and more nuanced perspective, including that censorship (a) is both an ancient and modern phenomenon; (b) is weaponized by both the Right and the Left; and (c) within educational institutions is likely unavoidable, if not also justifiable.

In this chapter, I will demonstrate why the ceaseless advocacy for ‘teaching the controversy’ in schools is both naïvely optimistic for what it hopes to accomplish, and ill-advised for what it fails to consider vis-à-vis the conditions necessary for its implementation. It is naïvely optimistic for what it expects of ordinary teachers under the conventional working conditions in most schools. And it is ill-advised because such exercises are only likely to exacerbate – rather than mitigate – tensions in both classrooms and communities of diverse background and opinion. Nothing in what I will argue means that successfully ‘teaching the controversy’ in schools is impossible. Exceptional teachers do exist. Nevertheless, I will demonstrate why exceptional teachers only serve to prove the rule. Indeed, I aim to show why even the rare teacher who does possess the relevant training, competence and moral courage is nevertheless prudent to abstain from broaching controversial material in class.

Increasing parts of the world population have rudimentary reading and writing skills but limited command of grammar, syntax and spelling. This functional illiteracy has detrimental effects on labor market participation, population health and political stability. Geographies of illiteracy also include affluent societies like the Netherlands, a country that is not only illustrative of a widespread phenomenon, but arguably also a bellwether of things to come elsewhere in the world if these developments are not reversed. This exploratory paper focuses on two institutional spaces where the literacy crisis is conventionally addressed: schools and public libraries. We argue that while each has a contribution to make, neither institution is currently able to curtail the trend, partially because preferred literacy promotion methods are incongruent with rapidly evolving changes in the literacy landscape, especially regarding youth communication. We consider three possible responses to our current literacy crisis and conclude that efforts to curb functional illiteracy require a pragmatic and multi-pronged approach, and perhaps even some counterintuitive strategies.

In this article I investigate the extent to which Bhikhu Parekh believes that a person's cultural/religious background must be preserved and whether, by implication, religious schooling is justified by his theory. My discussion will explore—by inference and implication—whether Parekh's carefully crafted multiculturalism, enriched and illuminated by numerous practical insights, is socially tenable. I will also consider whether, by extension, it is justifiable, on his line of reasoning, to cultivate cultural and religious understandings among one's own children. Finally, I will contend that Parekh, notwithstanding his cautious, even‐handed approach, commits several important errors, including conflating the culture of the parents with that of the children and insisting that cultural and religious persons ought to be allowed to defend their views in the public square on religious grounds.

Identity in the philosophical literature has until recently be confined mostly to ruminations on the self: as soul in Plato; rationality connected to, but not coterminous with, the body in Descartes; uninterrupted consciousness in Locke; a stream of experiences which a thing has in relation to itself in Hume; an emotive life in Rousseau; as noumenal self about which we can know little in Kant; as will in Schopenhauer; as an elusive but nonspecific something in Wittgenstein; and as the continuous, purposive struggle of creative power against an historically contingent concatenation of social, political, and cultural forces in Nietzsche and Foucault. Yet what follows is not a summary of metaphysics or philosophy of mind. There also is not sufficient space here to examine identity in each of the separate disciplines. Instead, what follows are some prefatory discursive remarks about identity; then, owing to the dominance of psychological theories on identity, a brief overview of some of its salient themes will be adumbrated; this will be followed by a discussion on identity formation and maintenance both in political philosophy and philosophy of education.

The challenges and opportunities associated with the education of immigrants predate modern school systems, though it certainly can be said that support for public schooling grew—for example, in Canada and the United States—as dominant (read White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant) groups came to see the importance of integrating masses of disparate origin. Educational responses to the children of immigrants over time have been varied, and many responses are indistinguishable from efforts to address other minority groups. In North America, the rapid expansion of immigration encompassing immigrant and refugee populations from around the world, particularly since the 1960s, has led to a number of structural and curricular changes in schools, only some of which were explicitly aimed at immigrants. One example of a policy aimed at the children of immigrants was bilingual education, and as this increasingly fell out of favor, ESL (English as a second language) classrooms became more common. However, with few exceptions, neither has been a very effective instrument for addressing the interests or concerns of immigrants themselves. Nevertheless, most parents strongly prefer that their children learn to master the dominant language, as a means of getting ahead.

Over the past decades there has been increasing vocal opposition to religious schools, particularly in Western Europe. Only some of this opposition is related to the perception that some religious schools might be excluding the less fortunate. Much of the opposition rests on the conviction that it is no longer tenable to fund and support so many religious schools when the number of persons professing religious belief has sharply declined. This argument, buttressed by the belief that Europe has undergone a profound “secularization,” maintains that religious schools are but an obsolete cultural relic to be discarded in favor of nondenominational alternatives. Relatedly, religious schools are believed to contribute to segregation and “divisiveness”: Rather than maintain a system in which persons are drawn to schools that reflect their own cultural or religious background, children ought to attend the same schools, learning from – and not only about – each other through substantive interaction. Underneath this argument lies a concern with fostering the skills and dispositions necessary for citizenship. It remains unclear, however, whether religious schools are more guilty of segregation than nonreligious schools. Nor is it clear why attending a religious school would make one less capable of cultivating the skills and dispositions necessary for citizenship than nonreligious alternatives.

Po svoji uèinkovitosti pri spodbujanju éustev glede pripadnosti oz. nepripadnosti je morda edino religija sposobna tekmovati z domoljubjem. Morda tudi samo religija lahko tekmuje z domoljubjem v svoji sposobnosti, da spodbuja in neguje pripadnost milijonov, da bi dosegla niz ciljev povezanih z zvestobo. Vendar paje, kotje opazil John Kleinig (2014: 5), 'domoljubna in verska zvestoba, kljub vsem svojim vznemirjujoèim lastnostim, pogosto pristranska, izkljuóujoéa in celo teroristiéna'. Ince se posamezniki nekritiéno identificirajo z narodom, njegovimi ideali, zgodovino, institucijami in voditelji, ima domoljub nagnjenost delovati, braniti, napadati in celo imeti tujce za manjvredne.

Al decennia verdedigen liberale theoretici de stelling dat burgerschap de taak is van de school. Hoewel er onder hen substantiële meningsverschillen bestaan, delen ze allemaal hetzelfde geloof in zowel de plicht als capaciteiten van scholen om te doen wat hun theorieën voorschrijven. Wij hebben alle begrip voor de gedachten achter deze theorieën; ze brengen namelijk idealen tot uitdrukking die wij na zouden moeten streven. Ze beschrijven niet de scholen die wij hebben, maar die we nodig hebben. Maar welke verdiensten deze geïdealiseerde liberale visies op burgerschapseducatie ook mogen hebben in een vergaderzaal, ze zijn niet overtuigend en bruikbaar. Simpelweg omdat ze onvoldoende rekening houden met de empirische realiteit van de bredere politieke context waarbinnen beleid op het gebied van burgerschapseducatie wordt ontwikkeld en geïmplementeerd.

Ondanks antidiscriminatiebeleid en de lippendienst die universiteiten tegenwoordig bewijzen aan ‘inclusie’, ‘sociale veiligheid’ en ‘gelijke kansen’, is discriminatie binnen de universiteit nog steeds wijdverspreid. Ervaringen met discriminatie op de universiteit zijn vooral pijnlijk voor degenen die geen hogere functie krijgen, ook al voldoen ze aan alle eisen. Klachten worden vaak niet serieus genomen, waarna universiteitsbestuurders vaak hardnekkig ontkennen dat ze iets verkeerd hebben gedaan, waardoor de slachtoffers zich vernederd en gedemoraliseerd voelen.

Whataboutism ist eine Strategie, bei der auf eine Anschuldigung mit einer Gegenfrage reagiert wird, die ebenfalls eine Anschuldigung impliziert, wodurch die ursprüngliche Frage eher umgangen als beantwortet wird. Es handelt sich um eine wirksame Methode, um die Aufmerksamkeit auf eine andere Situation zu lenken, indem ein vergleichbarer oder auch unvergleichbarer Kontrast hergestellt wird, wodurch der Beschuldigte versucht, sein eigenes Verhalten zu rechtfertigen und sich der Verantwortung zu entziehen. Allerdings implizieren nicht alle Formen des Whataboutism eine Fehlschlussfolgerung, noch werden sie immer falsch angewendet. Der Kontrast, der sich aus der Frage „Was ist mit ...?“ ergibt, kann dann einen entscheidenden Beitrag zu einer Situation leisten, die einer weiteren kritischen Analyse bedarf, und damit die Glaubwürdigkeit der Argumentation stärken.

Whataboutism is een strategie waarbij op een beschuldiging wordt gereageerd met een wedervraag die eveneens een beschuldiging impliceert, waardoor de oorspronkelijke vraag eerder wordt ontweken dan beantwoord. Het is een effectieve methode om de aandacht te verplaatsen naar een andere situatie door een vergelijkbaar, dan wel onvergelijkbaar, contrast te bieden, waardoor de beschuldigde het eigen gedrag probeert te rechtvaardigen en verantwoordelijkheid probeert te ontlopen. Maar niet alle vormen van whataboutism impliceren echter een drogredenering, noch worden ze altijd verkeerd toegepast. Het contrast dat voortkomt uit de vraag ‘what about’ kan dan een cruciale bijdrage leveren aan een situatie die een verdere kritische analyse vereist, en daarmee de geloofwaardigheid van de argumentatie versterken.