What are the conditions required for becoming better human beings? What are our limitations and possibilities? I understand "becoming better" as a combined improvement process bringing persons "up from" a negative condition and "up to" a positive one. Today there is a tendency to understand improvement in a one-sided way as a movement up to the…

Latinos in U.S.-Mexican borderlands encounter language barriers and clashing cultures. If this decade is to become one of transformation, it must grapple with the "uncomfortable" realities of Latino students and other minorities of color. This article delineates the theoretical perspectives of the Nepantlera pedagogy, a pedagogy with an…

The title incorporates the assumption that the "human" in education is being threatened by certain processes. The guiding questions are: What are these processes and what constitutes the "human" in education? Which activities characteristically performed by human beings are so central that they seem definitive of a life that is truly human and…

In this essay, Johannes Giesinger discusses the educational significance of Immanuel Kant's conception of human dignity. According to Kant, Giesinger claims, children can and should be educated for dignity: on the one hand, children realize their dignity by developing the capacity for moral autonomy; on the other hand, this capacity can only…

In this chapter, the author uses the phrase "contemplative practices" to encompass an array of personal and pedagogical methods that combine training in awareness and first-person epistemological approaches to knowing and being in the world. These practices include mindfulness meditation (Magee 2011). The gradual inclusion of mindfulness…

Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares: "Everyone has the right to education." This implies that the right to education and training applies to all persons, including all persons in prison. This position is considered here from a philosophical point of view and it will receive some support. Yet it is not obvious…

Young people without exception always deserve complete respect. They would deserve complete respect even if there were no societal benefits. There are, however, benefits to society. If people are respected as thinkers when they are young, they will think well as adults. Therefore, as a group, human beings will be more effective in meeting the many…

Despite encouraging changes in the expectations of programming for persons with moderate to severe intellectual disability (MSD), data suggest that programs for these individuals are still lacking in several critical areas. Building administrators play a key role in promoting high quality programs for students with MSD within local schools but may…

A study of human rights prepares students for their role as global citizens and their study of practices in the world's countries that relate to the rights of human beings. Today, when one talks of human rights it is usually with reference to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). It is the task of teachers to give students the…

Pre-colonial Africa was neither an educationally nor a technologically unsophisticated continent. While education was an integral part of the culture, issues of language identification and standardisation which are subject to contentious debate today were insignificant. Children learned community knowledge and history by asking questions instead…

From 2013 to 2014, more than 66,000 children and adolescents, unaccompanied by their parents, made journeys from urban and rural areas of México and Central America and arrived in the United States in search of safety and educational opportunities. To date, various local, state, and federal agencies, as well as community and faith-based…

Deborah Appleman's recent research has focused on teaching college-level language and literature courses for incarcerated men. In this article, she discusses using creative writing as a way to unlock creative potential, to foster students' love of language, and to offer a powerful outlet for self-expression in a class she teaches with…

Through technological advancements, people and organizations are capable today of interaction and impact in ways unimaginable a few years ago; such interactions are apparent from micro-level relationships among individuals, groups, and communities, to the macro-level interactions of business, governments, and societies. However, without…

This article presents "Learning to be Human", which John Macmurray delivered on 5 May 1958 as the annual public lecture at Moray House College of Education, now part of Edinburgh University. The key themes of the paper are ones to which Macmurray returned again and again in both his educational and his philosophical writing for over 40 years and…

A recent survey commissioned by the American Red Cross about the attitudes of the post-9/11 generation toward the Geneva Conventions reveals that 59% of youth, compared with 51% of adults, believe that torturing the enemy is always or sometimes acceptable. The Geneva Conventions are at the core of international humanitarian law (IHL) and protect…