EN:

We are witnessing what can only be called an anti–critical thinking trend in contemporary society. In this brief essay I want to describe how and why critical thinking is in crisis, and what this means for the promotion of critical thinking as an educational aim. Several of my examples show how this crisis has distorted the public debate over COVID.

EN:

The pandemic made us hold our breath for a return to “normal.” But education in “normal” times involves race-based violence and class-based inequality that the pandemic simply made plainer to see. Reviewing the impacts of the pandemic and action for racial justice over the last two years, I show how the dislocation of the “normal” laid bare what Riz Ahmed has called “a ‘normality’ of entitlement and extraction.

EN:

In this collaborative analysis, we (a philosopher of education and an experienced public school educator) examine the experience of demoralization and remoralization in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We overlay the context of the pandemic with the context of institutional racism and their interwoven impact for educators of colour. We use one educator’s narratives about teaching during the pandemic as a launching point about where philosophical research on teacher demoralization needs to go next. We argue that the pandemic presents an opportunity for teachers to gain clarity about their moral centres and for school and district leaders to create space for teachers to enact their professional values and thus access the moral rewards of their work. Teachers of colour encounter distinct challenges in having their moral centres recognized, but their prior experiences with moral friction may present them with unique resources in these challenging times. Teachers’ energy and agency are squandered, leading to demoralization, if they are not given sufficient space to enact their professional values.

EN:

The pandemic resurrected gender as a central categorization of citizenship. COVID-19 reminds us that gender oppression continues in its traditional, materialist formulations to structure our economic, civic, and political lives. Postfeminism has diversified feminist discourses, and at times been used as a temporal claim – the “post” signifying the diminishing need for feminist theory or activism in light of advancements in gender equality. We use postfeminism in a genealogical and critical sense which encompasses the changes in feminisms and enunciates various contradictions that apply to generations of people. The conditions of COVID-19 prompt us to analyze what Stéphanie Genz aptly names boom and bust postfeminism. This analysis generates two implications for philosophers of education working in areas of gender and political identity.

EN:

The pandemic has made the mass remote delivery of higher education more plausible as a general direction for growth in the long-term. Choosing between this general direction and the status quo introduces various ethical dilemmas having to do with the basic aims and values of higher education. A move to remote learning as the institutional norm may set back some of these aims and values while advancing others. However, we also argue that complicating the assessment of these dilemmas is epistemic uncertainty about the traditional (i.e., late-twentieth-century) institutional context and what makes that context educationally worthwhile. Addressing these dilemmas requires a better understanding of what an educational institution is as well as those respects in which it adds value to society’s educational projects.

EN:

Homeschooling was occasionally a subject of popular interest pre-COVID, when media reported horrific cases of child abuse under the guise of homeschooling, or when controversies erupted over efforts in state legislatures or local school boards to introduce very modest oversight measures. COVID made homeschooling something nearly every parent considered as a long-term educational option for their children, and something arguably – depending on one’s definition of homeschooling – nearly all experienced. This article extracts from the societal experience of forced remote learning, challenging theoretical questions about the distinction between homeschooling and “regular schooling”; the wisdom of traditional brick-and-mortar, multi-service schooling; and the appropriateness of state officials passing judgement on any private form of schooling.

EN:

One area that is almost certain to be of some concern in the coming wave of COVID-related publications is the question of home versus school as “learning environments” – as specifiable sets of conditions for facilitating and shaping the ongoing learning process. “Learning,” in turn, is conventionally understood as a neurological and cognitive process that occurs all the time, with institutional learning environments cultivating more formal and regulated learning, but hardly erasing its original, “natural” characteristics. Home and school, however, are much more than just different cognitive environments; they represent heterogeneous, even mutually exclusive social and cultural systems, spheres, or worlds. Each is characterized by its own roles, relations, habits, and experiences. Given that this article appears in a philosophical forum, it takes as its focus an original philosophical treatment of the question of the domestic and scholastic spheres: Hegel’s previously untranslated remarks from an 1811 graduation address to a school in Nuremberg. Besides introducing a “new” Hegel text to English-language readers, the overview that follows also sheds light on a particular way of contrasting school and family life.

EN:

This article extends initial ideas on what hope is, why it matters to democracy, and how to teach it in schools, which were first presented by Sarah M. Stitzlein in her book Learning How to Hope: Reviving Democracy through Our Schools and Civil Society (Oxford University Press, 2020). It accounts for recent obstacles to hope, especially the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. It suggests ways that other philosophers of education might further pursue describing and cultivating hope in light of recent social, political, economic, and health obstacles due to the pandemic. It emphasizes the role of inquiry and problem-solving using pragmatist philosophical approaches.

EN:

COVID-19 reveals the way single causes have multiple effects on children. Proponents of evidence-based education, like their colleagues in medicine, need to attend to the inevitable side effects produced by programs and policies. I explain why continuing motivation to learn is one outcome that no responsible evaluation should omit.

EN:

This interview piece addresses the following questions: Does the COVID-19 pandemic offer any lessons for moral character education? Do the experiences of students, educators, and communities during the pandemic illustrate the importance of aspects of character education that may have been known but taken for granted? The three authors bring to this the perspectives of a philosopher of moral psychology and education (Curren, the interviewer), a clinical psychologist and co-founder of self-determination theory (SDT), a systematic approach in the psychology of motivation, development, and well-being (Ryan); and a moral theorist focused on mindfulness and virtue (Barber).

EN:

This article brings into relief two desiderata in childrearing, the importance of which the pandemic has made clearer than ever. The first is to ensure that, in schools as well as outside them, children have ample opportunities to enjoy goods that are particular to childhood: unstructured time, to be spent playing with other children, discovering the world in company or alone, or indeed pursuing any of the creative activities that make children happy and help them learn. I refer to these as “special goods of childhood.” The second desiderata is to turn childrearing into a more communal practice, with lesser parental monopoly of care. For this, we need to give children access to multiple caring adults, and thus more opportunities to form secure and protected relationships.

EN:

Education and, in particular, education concerned with our response to the climate crisis, can draw important lessons from the changed desires and re-evaluation of individual and collective values and goals that occurred as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has shown us the importance of making the limits of the world perceptible. While the limits imposed by the pandemic and climate change alike can lead to serious losses, they also bring the possibility of discovering and enjoying new ways of living within those limits. We call attention in particular to forms of relinquishment that bring new pleasures.