Educations and Their Purposes

Download or read book Educations and Their Purposes written by Roger T. Ames and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 6 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Education is the point of departure for the cultivation of human culture in all of its different forms. Although there are many contested conceptions of what is meant by a good education, there are few people who would challenge the premise that education is a good thing in which we should heavily invest. In this volume, representatives of different cultures and with alternative conceptions of human realization explore themes at the intersection of a changing world, the values we would choose to promote and embody, and the ways in which we educate the next generation. Chapters included in Part I, "Education, Relationality, and Diversity," examine the growing intellectual awareness of a pervasive interdependence amid diversity in all aspects of the human experience brought on by the unrelenting processes of globalization. Although the discipline of philosophy has moved over recent years to reconsider the important role of affect in the project of philosophizing, this long-neglected aspect of human experience has taken on new life within philosophies of education. One of the most distinguished voices in the philosophy of emotions offers a sustained reflection in the opening chapter to Part II, "Educating Emotions: The Phenomenology of Feelings." Like emotions, human somaticity has been an overlooked area of philosophical reflection in the important business of education. In Part III, East Asian traditions of thought that have never committed to the familiar mind-body dualism are appealed to as a resource for rethinking the body in education. The tension between personal authenticity and indoctrination in the role that education plays in preparing a person for a successful life is the subject of Part IV, "Creativity and Habilitation," followed by chapters on the mutual accommodation of different approaches to education. The final essays discuss the role of aesthetic sensibilities in moral development with the theme