Paying for Higher Education: Are Top-Up Fees Fair?

This paper considers four institutional models for funding higher education in the light of principles of fairness and meritocracy, with particular reference to the debate in the UK over ‘top-up fees’. It concludes that, under certain plausible but unproven assumptions, the model the UK government has adopted is fairer and more meritocratic than alternatives, including, surprisingly, the Graduate Tax

Civic education in the age of Trump

Trump’s emergence was enabled by numerous factors that have toxified American politics over several decades, and for which both parties bear some responsibility. Among these factors is what we might call the partisanisation of politics. (DIPF/Orig.

HOW LEADERSHIP EMERGED AS AN ISSUE FOR SCHOOLS – AND SOME REFLECTIONS ON SCHOOL LEADERSHIP TODAY

This paper complements the article elsewhere in the journal by Mick Waters. It traces the origins of the present focus within the UK on school leadership, outlines the importance of applying well-judged approaches to Appreciative Inquiry, Problem Solving and Ensuring Compliance to leadership practices in establishing organisational cultures and managing complex change and briefly suggests a re-setting of schooling purposes and aims for a new age in schooling better adjusted to our citizens’ present and future needs

A Tachistoscopic Study of Aesthetic Perception

The purpose of this experiment was to investigate the characteristic development of the perception of a painting for both artistically trained and untrained individuals. The method consisted in a series of brief exposures (165 sigma) of each of ten paintings, representing a wide range of schools of art. Six of the ten were colored reproductions. Exposures were repeated until the observer himself was satisfied that he had perceived the picture completely. To date results have been obtained on 60 observers (16 trained adults - graduate students and members of the faculty of the Department of Graphic Art - 24 untrained adults, and 20 children)

South African universities and human development : Towards a theorisation and operationalisation of professional capabilities for poverty reduction

This paper reports on a research project investigating the role of universities in South Africa in contributing to poverty reduction through the quality of their professional education programmes. The focus here is on theorising and the early operationalisation of multi-layered, multi-dimensional transformation based on ideas from Amartya Sen's capability approach. Key features of a professionalism oriented to public service, which in South Africa must mean the needs and lives of the poor, are outlined. These features include: the demand from justice; the expansion of the comprehensive capabilities both of the poor and professional capability formation to be able to act in ‘pro-poor’ ways; and, praxis pedagogies which shape this connected process. This theorisation is then tentatively operationalised in a process of selecting transformation dimensions

Family values reconsidered : a response

We respond to six critiques of our book Family Values: The Ethics of Parent-Child Relationships. Replying to Gheaus, we emphasize the limited and illustrative role given to the principle of fair equality of opportunity while, unlike Macleod, doubting that a just society could eliminate entirely the conflict between it and the family. In response to Sypnowich we clarify the ways in which our account is and is not perfectionist and, prompted by Cormier, acknowledge some lack of clarity in our views about parents’ rights to shape their children’s values. We sound cautionary notes about Weinstock’s view that the promotion of autonomy can be left to schools, and offer a more positive take on the value of childhood than that proposed by Hannan and Leland

Parental enhancement and symmetry of power in the parent–child relationship

Many instances of parental enhancement are objectionable on egalitarian grounds because they unnecessarily amplify one kind of asymmetry of power between parents and children. Because children have full moral status, we ought to seek egalitarian relationships with them. Such relationships are compatible with asymmetries of power only to the extent to which the asymmetry is necessary for (1) advancing the child's level of advantage up to what justice requires or (2) instilling in the child morally required features. This is a ground to oppose parental enhancements whose purpose is either to merely satisfy parents' preferences or to confer on the child advantages above and beyond what the child is owed by justice