Happiness and EducationWhen parents are asked what they want for their children, they usually answer that they want their children to be happy. Why, then, is happiness rarely mentioned as a goal of education? This book explores what we might teach if we were to take happiness seriously as a goal of education. It asks, first, what it means to be happy and, second, how we can help children to understand it. It notes that we have to develop a capacity for unhappiness and a willingness to alleviate the suffering of others to be truly happy. Criticizing our current almost exclusive emphasis on economic well-being and pleasure, Nel Noddings discusses the contributions of making a home, parenting, cherishing a place, the development of character, interpersonal growth, finding work that one loves, and participating in a democratic way of life. Finally, she explores ways in which to make schools and classrooms cheerful places. Nell Noddings is Lee L. Jacks Professor of Education, Emerita, at Stanford University. She is past president of the Philosophy of Education Society and of the John Dewey Society. In addition to twelve books, she is the author of more than 170 articles and chapters on various topics ranging from the ethics of care to mathematical problem solving. Her latest books are Starting at Home: Caring and Social Policy (University of California Press) and Educating Moral People: A Caring Alternative to Character Education (Teachers College Press), both published in 2002. |
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... Teachers College Columbia , and the Bank Street College of Education . The project received an important boost when I was invited to give a lecture in the inaugural series of Seamus Heaney Lectures at St. Patrick's College in Dublin ...
... Teachers College Columbia , and the Bank Street College of Education . The project received an important boost when I was invited to give a lecture in the inaugural series of Seamus Heaney Lectures at St. Patrick's College in Dublin ...
Page 1
... teachers are afraid not to do this , fearing that chil- dren will be spoiled , unprepared , undisciplined , unsuccessful , and ultimately unhappy . Another motivating factor has been disappointment with my Christian upbringing . I have ...
... teachers are afraid not to do this , fearing that chil- dren will be spoiled , unprepared , undisciplined , unsuccessful , and ultimately unhappy . Another motivating factor has been disappointment with my Christian upbringing . I have ...
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... Teachers should not define happiness for their students and , al- though I clearly prefer a complex description of happiness , I have tried to leave the concept open to continued exploration . Similarly , I have not tried to separate ...
... Teachers should not define happiness for their students and , al- though I clearly prefer a complex description of happiness , I have tried to leave the concept open to continued exploration . Similarly , I have not tried to separate ...
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... teachers go in satisfying expressed needs ( those that arise in the one who has them ) ? How far should we press in es- tablishing and meeting inferred needs ( those that arise externally and are imposed on the one said to have them ) ...
... teachers go in satisfying expressed needs ( those that arise in the one who has them ) ? How far should we press in es- tablishing and meeting inferred needs ( those that arise externally and are imposed on the one said to have them ) ...
Page 5
... teaching all children algebra and teach them almost nothing about what it means to make a home ? If one's answer to this is that making a home is ... teachers and students . PART 1 Happiness as an Aim of Life and Education 5 Introduction.
... teaching all children algebra and teach them almost nothing about what it means to make a home ? If one's answer to this is that making a home is ... teachers and students . PART 1 Happiness as an Aim of Life and Education 5 Introduction.
Contents
Happiness | 9 |
Suffering and Unhappiness | 39 |
Needs and Wants | 57 |
The Aims of Education | 74 |
Educating for Personal Life | 95 |
Making a Home | 97 |
Places and Nature | 119 |
Parenting | 138 |
Interpersonal Growth | 179 |
Educating for Public Life | 195 |
Preparing for Work | 197 |
Community Democracy and Service | 220 |
Happiness in Schools and Classrooms | 240 |
Notes | 263 |
Bibliography | 291 |
303 | |
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Common terms and phrases
A. S. Neill academic adults aim of education aims-talk Alfie Kohn algebra analysis argue Aristotle Bachelard basic need Books California Press chapter character child choice classroom coercion consider contribute course critical cultural curriculum democratic develop Dewey discussion Ed Diener example experience explore expressed needs feel friends friendship Gaston Bachelard guilt happiness high school homemaking Hume Ibid important individual inferred needs inflicted insist intellectual interests John John Dewey learning liberal democracy live love of place Maria Jolas mathematics means moral natural Nel Noddings objective one's pain parents Plato pleasure Poetics of Space poetry problem question reason reject religious romantic love Sara Ruddick seems sense skills social society sort speciesism spiritual stories suffering suggested Teachers College Press teaching teenagers Theodore Zeldin things topics trans unhappy virtue women Yale University York young
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Page 287 - Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), and Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 25. In his article "The Communitarian Critique of Liberalism,