Roy Goddard

Philosophy is vital to the study of education, and a sound knowledge of different philosophical perspectives leads to a deeper engagement with the choices and commitments you make within your educational practice. This introductory text provides a core understanding of key moments in the history of Western philosophy. By introducing key transition points in that history, it investigates the plight of present day education, a period in which the aims and purposes of education have become increasingly unclear, leaving education open to the rise of instrumentalism and the forces of capital. Accessibly written, the book carefully analyses the common assumptions and conflicted history of education, provoking questioning about its nature and purposes. The authors argue vigorously that thinking critically about education from a philosophical perspective will give practicing and trainee teachers, as well as students on undergraduate Education and Masters-level courses a fuller command of their own role and context.

Philosophy is vital to the study of education, and a sound knowledge of different philosophical perspectives leads to a deeper engagement with the choices and commitments you make within your educational practice. This introductory text provides a core understanding of key moments in the history of Western philosophy. By introducing key transition points in that history, it investigates the plight of present day education, a period in which the aims and purposes of education have become increasingly unclear, leaving education open to the rise of instrumentalism and the forces of capital. Accessibly written, the book carefully analyses the common assumptions and conflicted history of education, provoking questioning about its nature and purposes. The authors argue vigorously that thinking critically about education from a philosophical perspective will give practicing and trainee teachers, as well as students on undergraduate Education and Masters-level courses a fuller command of their own role and context.

David Morant recalls the fate of a generation that cleaved to a preposterous idea - the notion that society could be ordered justly and that lives might be lived more freely and passionately. His generation experienced a moment, a sense of an opening into difference. But as the decades wear on, Morant has come to face the failure of that possibility, witnessing the rise of an obliteratingly monolithic, glitteringly violent and sterile order that permits no alternative way of being.Teacher, moralist, slightly embarrassed sports jock and unintentional libertine, worried always about violence, not least his own, David Morant picks through the wreckage of his times to understand what happened and whether the old commandment to enjoy this life and to change the world still has meaning.Morant is the disjointed, impure text that results from that effort.