Table Of ContentMoral and Political Discourses
in Philosophy of Education
This book focuses on moral and political education and critically engages
with educational issues from a philosophical perspective. It engages with
questions of moral education as well as questions about citizenship education,
to address apprehensions on learning in a liberal democracy while parallelly
invoking issues from within the curriculum, the school environment and
teacher-student relationship.
With contributions from renowned philosophers and educationists,
this volume discusses themes like civic education and liberal democracy;
toleration and freedom; Tagore’s conception of the moral and political self;
key issues in moral education; cosmopolitanism, compassion, care ethics
and moral purpose of schooling; to revisit and rethink some foundational
questions related to education, curriculum and pedagogy.
This volume will be essential reading for educationists and educators and
will be important for scholars and researchers of philosophy of education,
education, teacher education and school education.
Prakash Iyer is Assistant Professor, Philosophy of Education at Azim Premji
University, Bangalore, India. His research interests are in moral and political
philosophy, particularly the implications of conflicts between political
theories on political education.
Indrani Bhattacharjee is Assistant Professor, Philosophy of Education at
Azim Premji University, Bangalore, India. She is working on a book on the
philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore, circa 1908–1916.
Moral and Political Discourses
in Philosophy of Education
Edited by Prakash Iyer and
Indrani Bhattacharjee
First published 2022
by Routledge
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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ISBN: 978-0-367-14725-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-11079-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-28549-3 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9780429285493
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Contents
List of contributors vii
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
INDRANI BHATTACHARJEE AND PRAKASH IYER
PART I
Democratic theory, and education in a democracy 9
1 Civic education in a democratic society 11
GEOFFREY HINCHLIFFE
2 Education, social realism and liberal cultural values 26
ALKA SEHGAL CUTHBERT
3 Education, essentialism and the epistemic vices of intolerance 38
JOHANNES DRERUP
PART II
Purposes of moral and political education 51
4 Did the Marathas rule India? Reflections on
postmodernism, reality and school history textbooks 53
AMMAN MADAN
5 Caring pedagogies: beyond critique 72
KANCHANA MAHADEVAN
vi Contents
6 Beyond nationalism: Rabindranath Tagore’s university and
the politics of the self 91
SUKALYAN CHANDA
7 Moral education, development of the self and role of
nature: an enquiry into Tagore’s philosophy of education 101
ROMA BHATTACHARYA
8 The moral purpose of schooling in England during a
changing context: promoting human capability
and development 112
OLIVER WIMBORNE
PART III
Teaching-learning and the environment in a school 127
9 Structural violence in a school setting: a philosophical
discussion on conflict resolution 129
ALEX GUILHERME
10 Teaching tolerance and political judgement: bearing on
higher education 141
PRAKASH IYER
11 Questions and performatives: communities of enquiry as
conventional contexts 153
ENRICO POSTIGLIONE
12 A dialogic approach to education for democratic values
illustrated with an empirical study of the effect of Internet-
mediated dialogue across cultural differences 170
RUPERT WEGERIF
Index 181
Contributors
Roma Bhattacharya is a doctoral student in the sociology of education at
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. Her research interests
include educational policy, curriculum studies and sociological theory.
Sukalyan Chanda is Assistant Professor of English at Gushkara Mahavidya-
laya at Gushkara in West Bengal, India. He is working on a book on
Rabindranath Tagore’s conception of the Ashrama school at Santiniketan.
Alka Sehgal Cuthbert is a teacher, independent researcher and writer on
education. Her current projects include literature as an aesthetic form of
knowledge, and challenges emerging from calls to decolonise curricula.
Johannes Drerup is Professor of Philosophy of Education and Educational
Theory at TU Dortmund, Germany, and Guest Professor at the Free Uni-
versity of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He is at work on a book on
education and tolerance.
Alex Guillherme is Adjunct Professor at Pontifícia Universidade Católica do
Rio Grande do Sul at Porto Allegre, Brazi l. He has numerous publica-
tions on Martin Buber’s philosophy, perspectives on violence in schools
and Artificial Intelligence and education.
Geoffrey Hinchliffe is Lecturer in Education at the School of Education and
Lifelong Learning, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. He is the
author of Liberty and Education: A Civic Republican Approach (2014),
and is currently writing a book about the provenance of the values
informing education in the 21st century.
Amman Madan is Professor of Sociology of Education at the School of Edu-
cation, Azim Premji University, Bangalore, India. He is the author of
Education and Modernity: Some Sociological Perspectives (2019).
Kanchana Mahadevan is Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Mumbai, India. She is the author of Between Femininity and Feminism:
Colonial and Postcolonial Perspectives on Care (2014), and is currently
viii Contributors
working on a project that involves rethinking political freedom by engag-
ing with women of faith.
Enrico Postiglione is a doctoral student of philosophy at the University of
Modena and Reggio-Emilia, Italy. He has published on philosophy for
children and the nature-technology debate in Western philosophy.
Oliver Wimborne has done his doctorate at King’s College, University of
London, UK. His research interlaces philosophy of education, school-
leaver transitions, post-16 educational policy and reform and institu-
tional ethics.
Rupert Wegerif is Professor of Education at the University of Cambridge,
UK. His published work includes the books Mind-Expanding: Teaching
for Thinking and creativity in Primary Education (2010) and Dialogic:
Education for the Internet Age (2013).
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank all participants at the Sixth International Conference
on the Philosophy of Education held at Azim Premji University, Bangalore,
in January 2018. This book has been in the works for a little longer than
expected, and therefore we thank the authors who contributed to this vol-
ume for their patience and goodwill. We also wish to take the opportunity
to thank our colleagues in Philosophy of Education, School of Education,
Azim Premji University, namely, Abhijeet Bardapurkar, Ajita Raghavendra,
Rabi Prakash, Rohit Dhankar and Varadarajan Narayanan, for their invalu-
able help in organising the conference.
Indrani Bhattacharjee and Prakash Iyer
Bangalore, March 2021
