Lessons from a new science? : on teaching happiness in schools

Recent media reports about new programmes for 'happiness lessons' in schools signal a welcome concern with children's well-being. However, as I shall argue, the presuppositions of the discourse in which many of these proposals are framed, and their orientation towards particular strands of positive psychology, involve ideas about human life that are, in an important sense, anti-educational. © 2008 Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain

Anarchism and education : a philosophical exploration

Anarchism is rarely given serious consideration by political philosophers, often being\ud dismissed as 'utopian', or naively optimistic about human nature. Likewise, although\ud there is a substantial anarchist tradition of educational ideas and practice, this is rarely\ud mentioned in texts on philosophy or history of education.\ud Drawing on work in political philosophy, philosophy of education and history of\ud education, I explore the theoretical foundations of anarchism and the educational\ud ideas of anarchist theorists and activists. The anarchist perspective, it is argued, is\ud unique in the world of radical education, and should not be conflated with libertarian\ud education. In order to highlight the philosophical insights which emerge from\ud anarchist thought and practice, I compare anarchism with the connected traditions of\ud liberalism and Marxism.\ud In addition to dismissing some common misperceptions of anarchism, I discuss the\ud educational implications of fundamental anarchist ideas. Central to this discussion is\ud the notion of human nature which, while at the crux of much of the criticism of\ud anarchism, also has a crucial bearing on the role of education within anarchist\ud thought. It is argued that one cannot grasp the anarchist position on education\ud without understanding the political context from which it stems. Equally, one cannot\ud assess the viability of anarchism as a political ideology without appreciating the role\ud played by education within anarchist thought — a role which is often overlooked.\ud While not purporting to resolve the theoretical tensions within anarchism, I show that\ud anarchist thought yields insights for educational philosophers, policy makers and\ud practitioners. In exploring the charge of utopianism, I suggest that a consideration of\ud anarchist ideas prompts us to ask questions about the role of philosophy of education.\ud Anarchism, it is shown, overlaps significantly with both the liberal and the socialist\ud traditions. Thus, although anarchism may seem in many ways to challenge the liberal\ud tradition, it in fact both affirms important liberal principles and offers a motivating\ud ideal for educators and philosophers of education

Philosophical Reflections on Child Poverty and Education

The harmful effects of Covid 19 on children living in poverty have refocused attention on the complex nature of child poverty and the vexed question of its relationship to education. The paper examines a tension at the heart of much discussion of child poverty and education. On the one hand, education is often regarded as essential for children’s flourishing and a means by which children can “escape” poverty; yet on the other hand, education systems, institutions, and practices, often reflect and entrench the disadvantages associated with poverty. Narratives concerning education as an escape from poverty tend not to deal in any depth with the injustices associated with poverty, stressing instead the transformative potential of education. By contrast, largely sociological analyses of the ways in which schooling reproduces inequalities tend to stop short of developing a normative account of how education can contribute to transforming the structural injustices related to poverty and its effects on children’s lives. In working to move beyond this analytic impasse, the paper shows how the cluster of concepts, which Robeyns (2018) locates as central to the capability approach, give insights which help to address these two different lacunae. The notion of conversion factors highlights the significance of taking account of existing relationships in education, while the distinction between capabilities and functionings helps guide practices regarding the education of children living in poverty. Drawing on literature on the heightened inequalities associated with poor children’s experience of lack of schooling during the COVID pandemic, the paper sketches some of the ways in which sociological analysis and normative evaluation can be linked in taking forward an “ethically engaged political philosophy” (Wolff, 2018) to discuss child poverty and education in real schools

The Gender Wars, Academic Freedom and Education

Philosophical arguments regarding academic freedom can sometimes appear removed from the real conflicts playing out in contemporary universities. This paper focusses on a set of issues at the front line of these conflicts, namely, questions regarding sex, gender and gender identity. We document the ways in which the work of academics has been affected by political activism around these questions and, drawing on our respective disciplinary expertise as a sociologist and a philosopher, elucidate the costs of curtailing discussion on fundamental demographic and conceptual categories. We discuss some philosophical work that addresses the conceptual distinction between academic freedom and free speech and explore how these notions are intertwined in significant ways in universities. Our discussion elucidates and emphasises the educational costs of curtailing academic freedom

Minimal Utopianism in the Classroom

In this paper, we build on recent work on the role of the ‘utopian pedagogue’ to explore how utopian thinking can be developed within contemporary higher education institutions. In defending a utopian orientation on the part of HE lecturers, we develop the notion of ‘minimal utopianism’; a notion which, we suggest, expresses the difficult position of critical educators concerned to offer their students the tools with which to imagine and explore alternatives to current social and political reality, while acknowledging the contingent ethical constraints of the system within which they and their students are working. While agreeing with utopian theorists such as Darren Webb who have defended the need for ‘blueprint utopias’ in education in the face of the reduction of the idea of utopia to a purely process-oriented pedagogy, our focus here is on the prior educational task of providing the conceptual and communicative tools for utopian thinking to emerge. The collaborative nature of this paper is reflected in the interdisciplinary sources on which we draw in developing our ideas, including moral philosophy, literary theory, political philosophy, anarchist theory and utopian studies

Report of the Academic Board Working Group on Racism and Prejudice

A Special Meeting of Academic Board was held on 12 December 2019 in response to a requisition calling for the establishment of a Working Group ‘to advise on racism and prejudice that would investigate the proposed adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism and its consistency with/inconsistency with Academic Freedom at UCL’. Academic Board resolved at that meeting to set up a Working Group ‘to report to the Board so that it may advise Council on the matter of group-specific definitions of racism.’ Elections to the Working Group were accordingly held and the Working Group began its work in February 2020

Gastrin: A Distinct Fate of Neurogenin3 Positive Progenitor Cells in the Embryonic Pancreas

Neurogenin3+ (Ngn3+) progenitor cells in the developing pancreas give rise to five endocrine cell types secreting insulin, glucagon, somatostatin, pancreatic polypeptide and ghrelin. Gastrin is a hormone produced primarily by G-cells in the stomach, where it functions to stimulate acid secretion by gastric parietal cells. Gastrin is expressed in the embryonic pancreas and is common in islet cell tumors, but the lineage and regulators of pancreatic gastrin+ cells are not known. We report that gastrin is abundantly expressed in the embryonic pancreas and disappears soon after birth. Some gastrin+ cells in the developing pancreas co-express glucagon, ghrelin or pancreatic polypeptide, but many gastrin+ cells do not express any other islet hormone. Pancreatic gastrin+ cells express the transcription factors Nkx6.1, Nkx2.2 and low levels of Pdx1, and derive from Ngn3+ endocrine progenitor cells as shown by genetic lineage tracing. Using mice deficient for key transcription factors we show that gastrin expression depends on Ngn3, Nkx2.2, NeuroD1 and Arx, but not Pax4 or Pax6. Finally, gastrin expression is induced upon differentiation of human embryonic stem cells to pancreatic endocrine cells expressing insulin. Thus, gastrin+ cells are a distinct endocrine cell type in the pancreas and an alternative fate of Ngn3+ cells

Happiness Lessons in Schools

Proceedings of the 3rd International Symposium between the Institute of Education, University of London (UK), and the Graduate School of Education, Kyoto University (Japan) : 21-22 September 2009 Institute of Education, University of Londo

Tiger mothers and praise junkies : children, praise and the reactive attitudes

This paper addresses some discussions of praising children in contemporary parenting advice. In exploring what is problematic about these discussions, I turn to some philosophical work on moral praise and blame which, I argue, indicates the need for a more nuanced response to questions about the significance of praise. A further analysis of the moral aspects of praise suggests a significant dimension of the parent-child relationship that is missing from, and obscured by, the kind of parenting advice exemplified by the discussions of praise with which I began