Conceptions of how best to educate students with disabilities have shifted toward one of two extremes: denying that disabilities exist or accommodating them to the extent that there is no expectation of student progress toward realistic goals. In this article, the authors contend that both attitudes defeat the primary educational aim of helping…

Young people from all backgrounds have high expectations for both themselves and their schools, as do their families and communities. But for too long, schools have not lived up to their responsibilities to students. They have focused disproportionately on either those students who are traditionally high-achieving or on overall performance…

In this theoretical article, we distinguish two stages of learning a new mathematical concept--participatory and anticipatory. We use a recently developed mechanism for explaining mathematical conceptual learning--reflection on activity-effect relationship--as well as von Glasersfeld's tripartite model of a scheme, to explain qualitative…

The Ready School, a concept endorsed by the National Education Goals Panel, focuses on getting schools ready for children to supplement the traditional approach of getting children ready for school. The author cites 10 qualities associated with Ready Schools and describes the eight-dimension Ready School Assessment project now being tested by the…

Since passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, thinking about America's schools has been taken over by something like philosopher Rene Descartes's malignant demon of doubt. The act's exclusive focus on assessing student achievement and faculty accountability in terms that can be "proved" mathematically has cast into doubt a…

Educational accountability is a fundamental right of citizens in a democratic society serving the public interest. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 holds states, school districts, public officials, educators, parents, and students accountable through auditable performance standards. At the same time, the lack of discussion about how to decide…

In 1897 Gauguin painted "Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?", which now hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. In typical Gauguin style, the painting depicts primitive Tahitians looking in wonder at the tropical paradise surrounding them. There is sunlight and freedom, the vibrant colors of Tahiti, a river in the woods, a…

In his essay, "Aims in Music Education: A Conceptual Study," Constantijn Koopman criticizes the lack of attention to the aims of music education and the confusion of aims and methods in some music education writing. Leaving aside questions relating to the philosophical merits or otherwise of blurring boundaries between aims and methods or the…

Students nowadays are getting mixed messages about the meaning of education. Evidence has emerged that what colleges have been saying to students were not aligned with what colleges have been doing for students. Students found that the values that seemed to drive policy shifted from department to department, course to course, term to term. As a…

For more than twenty-five years, field education programs have been the primary pedagogical strategy by which contextual (practical) theological training has occurred at most Orthodox theological schools in America. These programs are based on a developmental approach, with students progressing from observation to participation to actual…

How to civilize our young people? Enforcing a pedagogy of virtue is a waste of time. PC curricula reek of Stalinism. Nor does it make much sense to teach popular culture. The media perform that civilizing function all too well. The goal is to impart wisdom, but you can't know it all, so we talk about it as best we can. Fortunately, writes Robert…

Socrates taught that contemplation of beauty and knowledge reveals cosmic harmony and the rhythms of the universe. De Tocqueville, however, observed that a modern democracy places more immediate demands on its citizens, preoccupying them with utility and the fear of physical deprivation. Carson Holloway reminds us that liberal education for its…

Purpose: Over the past few decades, several theories and models have evolved to guide health education practice. Some of these models are participatory and democratic; nevertheless, much health education practice is based on achieving goals established by "health authorities," which are called here the didactic model. The purpose of this paper is…

It is widely held that personal autonomy is a quality of character at which educators ought to aim. In this paper I argue that those who hold this view are misguided. I identify two ordinary senses of autonomy, and a range of technical senses currently popular with philosophers, and show that none of them constitutes a defensible educational aim.…

International organisations were the main proponents of Lifelong Learning when the concept was first developed in the early 1970s. Although different organisations used different labels--Lifelong Learning, recurrent education, education permanente--they all emphasised that learning is a lifelong process and that all education should be organised…