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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Page 3
... the philosopher David Hume , I have little admiration for the ascetic virtues unless they are necessary for the happiness of others , and they rarely are . To be happy , human beings must have important needs 3 Introduction.
... the philosopher David Hume , I have little admiration for the ascetic virtues unless they are necessary for the happiness of others , and they rarely are . To be happy , human beings must have important needs 3 Introduction.
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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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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
Popular passages
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,