Teaching Honesty in a Populist Era: Emphasizing Truth in the Education of Citizens by Sarah M. Stitzlein, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024

Sixth-Form Citizens. An inquiry of the Schools Committee of the Association for Education in Citizenship into the Social Content of Sixth-form Curricula. Pp. xvi, 287. 10s. 6d. 1950. (Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press) - Volume 35 Issue 311

Education for Citizenship in Secondary Schools; Greater London: A Social Geography; Downs and Weald: A Social Geography of South-East England; Young Pegasus: An Anthology of Verse; A Short Course in English Grammar; Common Sense in the English Examination; The Master Craftsmen; Over My Shoulder; Records of a Family, 1800-1933; The Book World Education for Citizenship in Secondary Schools . With a Foreword by the Right Oliver Stanley , M.C., M.P. Issued under the auspices of the Association for Education in Citizenship. Oxford University Press . 4 s . 6 d . Greater London: A Social Geography . With a Foreword by the Right F. P. Thornhiix . Christopher's . 3 s . 6 d . Downs and Weald: A Social Geography of South-East England . By J. F. P. Thornhiix . Christopher's . 2 s . 6 d . Young Pegasus: An Anthology of Verse . Arranged by A. A. Le M. Simpson . Bell & Sons . 2 s . A Short Course in English Grammar . Lancelot Oliphant . Oxford University Press . 2 s . Common Sense in the English Examination . Sylvester Lavtpear . Pitman's . 5 s . The Master Craftsmen . M. Gompertz . Nelson . Pp. 268 Many illustrations. 2 s . 6 d . Over My Shoulder . By Bernard Martin . Duckworth . 10 s . 6 d . net. Records of a Family, 1800-1933 . By H. McLachlan . Manchester University Press . 8 s . 6 d . net. The Book World . By various Authors. Edited by John Hampden . London : Nelson . 6 s . net. English: Journal of the English Association, Volume 1, Issue 2, 1936, Pages 183–190, https://doi.org/10.1093/english/1.2.183 Published: 01 August 1936

Reviewed by: The World Underfoot: Mosaics and Metaphor in the Greek Symposium by Hallie M. Franks Sean Corner Hallie M. Franks. The World Underfoot: Mosaics and Metaphor in the Greek Symposium. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. xii, 220. $85.00. ISBN 978-0-19-086316-6. One might say that this book aims to do for the mosaics of the andron (the "men's quarters" in which guests were received and drinking parties held) what F. Lissarrague's The Aesthetics of the Greek Banquet: Images of Wine and Ritual (Princeton 1990) did for vase painting. The mosaics are perhaps especially liable to be treated as merely decorative, with no meaning beyond (occasionally) a cursory reference to the room's function: vines for the andron like fish-themed bathroom decor today. Franks seeks to show us that the metaphors at play are much richer than this. Placing the imagery in the context of the lived experience of the symposium, she offers a reading of it as ripe with meaning. The study treats pebble mosaics of the "long fourth century." Most are found in private homes, the overwhelming majority in association with the andron. As Franks acknowledges, the andron mosaics that we have are "surprisingly varied" (often unique) and their subjects often not obviously "sympotic." Thus, she has elected to "concentrate in particular on mosaics that respond to patterns of sympotic activity," on that basis elucidating how some of these images are, in fact, related to the symposium. In contrast to vase painting, not much attention has been paid to the meaning, in context, of these mosaics. Scholars have argued that they may be understood as Dionysiac, or as Orientalizing, or as evocative of masculine ideals. These claims, Franks contends, are either problematic or stand to be considerably complicated and expanded upon. After a methodological introduction and a first chapter introducing the mosaics and the symposium, chapter 2 treats a set of mosaics that may be read as figuring the symposium as a sea voyage, whether as focused on the condition of being out at sea or on the journey to exotic and fantastical places. In chapter 3, she turns to mosaics related to the journeying or wandering Dionysos or hero, and in chapter 4 to mosaics featuring the wheel. Finally, chapter 5 treats mosaics [End Page 366] whose imagery Franks relates to symposia of an imagined, primitive past. She reads the mosaics in relation to scholarly treatments of related vase painting and literature and considers how the mosaic interacts with other aspects of the banqueters' experience to give it a meaningful shape and content. These mosaics, she argues, do not merely exist as a decorative backdrop but actively participate in the construction of conviviality as a shared experience of symbolic circularity or metaphorical journey to remote times or places, generating feelings of fraternity, unity, and equity, and channelling potentially harmful competition, thus strengthening bonds among citizens. Franks' emphasis on understanding the social function of the symposium in terms of intimately felt, lived experience is welcome. I have myself argued that, rather than an "anti-city," the symposium provided a sentimental education in citizenship in the context of a set of ethical and social protocols that responded to tensions endemic in the microcosm of the banquet and macrocosm of the city ("Symposium," in J. Wilkins and R. Nadeau [eds.], A Companion to Food in Antiquity [Oxford: Wiley Blackwell 2015], 234-242). Franks adopts a judicious and nuanced approach to debates about the symposium, and the originality of her contribution lies not in her view of the institution's social function, but in her reconstruction of the meaning of the mosaics as they contributed to the shaping of the symposiasts' experience. The result is a short but rich and stimulating study. I was not convinced that the apparatus Franks constructs out of the work of a selection of theorists contributed much. It is not merely that the ideas are presented in gratuitously obscure language, but that those ideas, even when they are intelligible, are of dubious coherence and do little analytic or explanatory work, serving only as rhetorical dressing. This detracts little from the book, however, since, tellingly, Franks makes little...

My book, Teaching Honesty in a Populist Era: Emphasizing Truth in the Education of Citizens (Oxford University Press, 2024), defines honesty and explains how it is both connected to truth and essential for a healthy democracy, especially during populist and polarized times. The book received the North American Association for Philosophy & Education Book Award. In my contribution to this symposium on the book, I respond to critics who celebrate and challenge how the book responds to current struggles in democracy and how my suggestions for improvement might be implemented in schools.

07–484Aceto, Michael (East Carolina U, USA; acetom@ecu.edu), Statian Creole English: An English-derived language emerges in the Dutch Antilles. World Englishes (Blackwell) 25.3 & 4 (2006), 411–435.07–485Anchimbe, Eric A. (U Munich, Germany), World Englishes and the American tongue. English Today (Cambridge University Press) 22.4 (2006), 3–9.07–486Bartha, Csilla & Anna Borbély (Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary; bartha@nytud.hu), Dimensions of linguistic otherness: Prospects of minority language maintenance in Hungary. Language Policy (Springer) 5.3 (2006), 337–365.07–487Coetzee-Van Rooy, Susan (North-West U, Potchefstroom, South Africa; basascvr@puk.ac.za), Integrativeness: Untenable for world Englishes learners?World Englishes (Blackwell) 25.3 & 4 (2006), 437–450.07–488Gooskens, Charlotte (U Groningen, The Netherlands; c.s.gooskens@rug.nl) & Renée van Bezooijen, Mutual comprehensibility of written Afrikaans and Dutch: Symmetrical or asymmetrical?Literary and Linguistic Computing (Oxford University Press) 21.4 (2006), 543–557.07–489Gooskens, Charlotte & Wilbert Heeringa (U Groningen, The Netherlands; c.s.gooskens@rug.nl), The relative contribution of pronunciational, lexical, and prosodic differences to the perceived distances between Norwegian dialects. Literary and Linguistic Computing (Oxford University Press) 21.4 (2006), 477–492.07–490Guilherme, Manuela (U De Coimbra, Portgual), English as a Global language and education for cosmopolitan citizenship. Language and International Communication (Multilingual Matters) 7.1 (2007), 72–90.07–491Koscielecki, Marek (The Open U, Hongk Kong, China). Japanized English, its context and socio-historical background. English Today (Cambridge University Press) 22.4 (2006), 25–31.07–492Meilin, Chen (Three Gorges University, China) & Hu Xiaoqiong, Towards the acceptability of China English at home and abroad.English Today (Cambridge University Press) 22.4 (2006), 44–52.07–493Mesthrie, Rajend (U Cape Town, South Africa; raj@humanities.uct.ac.za), World Englishes and the multilingual history of English. World Englishes (Blackwell) 25.3 & 4 (2006), 381–390.07–494Poole, Brian (Ministry of Manpower, Muscat, the Sultanate of Oman), Some effects of Indian English on the language as it is used in Oman. English Today (Cambridge University Press) 22.4 (2006), 21–24.07–495Robinson, Ian (U Calabria, Italy), Genre and loans: English words in an Italian newspaper. English Today (Cambridge University Press) 22.4 (2006), 9–20.07–496Ross, Kathryn (U Oxford, UK; kathryn.ross@trinity.ox.ac.uk), Status of women in highly literate societies: The case of Kerala and Finland. Literacy (Blackwell) 40.3 (2006), 171–178.07–497Sala, Bonaventure M. (Cameroon), Does Cameroonian English have grammatical norms?English Today (Cambridge University Press) 22.4 (2006), 59–64.07–498Wei-Yu Chen, Cheryl (National Taiwan Normal U, Taiwan; wychen66@hotmail.com), The mixing of English in magazine advertisements in Taiwan. World Englishes (Blackwell) 25.3 & 4 (2006), 467–478.07–499Wong, Jock (National U Singapore, Singapore; jockonn@hotmail.com), Contextualizing aunty in Singaporean English. World Englishes (Blackwell) 25.3 & 4 (2006), 451–466.07–500Xiaoxia, Cui (Yunnan U, China), An understanding of ‘China English’ and the learning and use of the English language in China. English Today (Cambridge University Press) 22.4 (2006), 40–43.07–501Young, Ming Yee Carissa (Macao U Science & Technology, Macau; myyoung@must.edu.mo), Macao students' attitudes toward English: A post-1999 survey. World Englishes (Blackwell) 25.3 & 4 (2006), 479–490.

S. P. Mackenzie. Politics and Military Morale: Current Affairs and Citizenship Education in the British Army, 1914-1950. New York: The Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press. 1992. Pp. xiv, 245. - Volume 25 Issue 2

THE third number of Agenda (London: Oxford University Press. 65. quarterly) is notable for the valuable article on “Reconstruction Research conducted in Britain by the European Allies”, by Ethel J. Lindgren. This article contains almost the first full account of the origin and character of the London International Assembly established as a result of the initiative of the League of Nations Union in the summer of 1941, for purposes of study, discussion and a free exchange of views as private individuals and not as representatives of Governments or parties. Of the five commissions established in November 1941, only the first is concerned with a war-time problem, namely, political warfare. The second deals with the trial of war criminals and to the third was relegated future international organization and security against war, and to the fourth social and economic reconstruction. By the end of January 1942, four sub-commissions had been appointed, dealing with collective security, international organization, economic and financial problems and labour and social questions. The fifth is a joint commission of the London International Assembly and the Council for Education in World Citizenship on the place of education, religion and science and learning in post-war reconstruction. The last to be set up, its membership is large and keen.

Previous articleNext article FreeBook ReviewsMartin, Christopher. The Right to Higher Education: A Political Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. Pp. 272. $74.00 (cloth).Jennifer MortonJennifer MortonUniversity of Pennsylvania Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreHigher education is in a moment of crisis. The promise of a college degree as a vehicle of upward mobility has met a reality that seems to reinforce rather than redistribute inequalities. The ballooning costs of colleges and universities leave too many students—mostly low-income and working-class students—saddled with massive debt and, in the worst cases, no degree. Activists calling for “free college” insist that higher education ought to be a universal right on a par with compulsory K–12 education. But this plea has been met with skepticism by higher education scholars, many of whom tend to see the issues saddling the sector as those of distribution, completion, and access (William G. Bowen, Matthew M. Chingos, and Michael McPherson, Crossing the Finish Line [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009], pt. 2). These scholars argue that free higher education mostly benefits those students who are already on the path to college—middle-class and upper middle-class students—rather than those who are the worst off—for example, students who will not complete high school. Despite the truth of this claim, I share Christopher Martin’s frustration with the way this kind of argument normatively flattens the value of higher education. Higher education offers many students an opportunity to cultivate new values, relationships, and talents that will reshape who they are. When we focus solely on distribution, we miss out on having a genuinely rich conversation about the value of higher education.Christopher Martin’s ambitious book rejects the narrow focus on distribution. Instead, aligning with activists who call for free college, he lays out a philosophically careful argument in support of higher education as a universal right. Martin is well aware that his argument runs counter to the received view among scholars of higher education who sharply distinguish between compulsory K–12 education, which is seen as a matter of right, and postsecondary education, which is seen as a matter of choice. Colleges and universities tend to view themselves as part of a market catering to families and young adults who are choosing to pursue higher education for individual, idiosyncratic goals. However, unlike other consumer markets, the benefits individuals reap from higher education build on and reinforce inequalities that take shape early in a person’s life, threatening equality of opportunity. For this reason, we see it as permissible for the government to fund higher education and to have some say in its distribution. These two interests—consumer sovereignty and distributive fairness—have dominated how we think about higher education, Martin argues. The problem, he claims, is that this way of thinking about higher education relies on a very narrow view of individual autonomy—the consumer making choices from which they will benefit, potentially unfairly. As I will suggest later on, there is another diagnosis we might offer—higher education is generally too focused on understanding its role through the lens of the educational goods it offers individuals, ignoring the many other kinds of goods it can offer communities.In chapter 2 Martin considers civic arguments for higher education that develop an alternative to the individual autonomy-based argument he favors. Civic arguments for state-provided education typically turn on two ideas. The first is that education is necessary to ensure the autonomy of future citizens. The second is that education is a public good insofar as educated citizens contribute to our society in a myriad of ways. What scholars call the convergence thesis posits that education can jointly satisfy these two aims. Consequently, the state can compel and should provide education for future citizens. The problem, Martin argues, is that in the case of adults, the convergence thesis falls apart. Adults should be free to choose whether to engage in higher education and what kind of education to pursue. To insist otherwise runs afoul of a central liberal commitment to respecting citizen’s autonomy.Chapters 3 and 4 lay out the central tenets of Martin’s autonomy-based argument for higher education as a right. Martin argues that “citizens have an individual and equal interest in access to post-secondary education” over the course of their life (70). Martin’s argument relies on two important claims. The first is a widely accepted tenet of liberalism—autonomy is essential to flourishing. The second is that education can promote autonomy over the course of a person’s life, not just in the childhood years. Education instills the internal conditions necessary for pursuing a conception of the good, but it also can create environments that support that pursuit over a lifetime. It is the second half of this claim that is central to Martin’s novel theory of higher education as a right.Compulsory K–12 education offers students many of the internal conditions critical to autonomy, but a high school diploma does not transform a student from a nonautonomous being into a fully autonomous one. Once we notice the oddity of thinking of autonomy as a capacity that doesn’t need sustaining over time, Martin argues, we can start to appreciate the limitations of our current way of thinking about the role of postsecondary educational institutions. Martin claims that the environment is critical to supporting the development of autonomy. Postsecondary education, he says, has a critical role to play in creating such an environment. It offers students not just paths to employment but also opportunities to develop their talents, gain knowledge, and encounter values that they might not have previously encountered. Thus, postsecondary education has a critical role in sustaining our autonomy.Note, however, that if we accept Martin’s autonomy-promoting argument, it’s not clear, as he himself acknowledges, that higher education as traditionally conceived is the only or even primary vehicle through which to support adult education. That is, universities and colleges will be but a part, potentially a very small one, of a postsecondary educational sector that supports diverse ways of life. Vocational schools, art schools, and nondegree programs targeting retirees should all play a role in an educational system that is autonomy maximizing. Under Martin’s view, the retiree who hopes to learn more about philosophy and the low-income student who wants to achieve socioeconomic mobility through education both have a claim to postsecondary education.Martin’s account of higher education offers a welcome departure from the labor-market-focused discussion of higher education to which we have become accustomed. He supports a postsecondary education sector guided by the goal of giving all citizens “access to social forms and practices … that run broader than labor market access” (116). This means that the state would exert control over the postsecondary sector to make sure that it not only focuses on responding to labor market incentives but also offers a variety of paths for adults of all ages to pursue. As Martin notes in chapter 5, postsecondary education is a basic right because of the critical role it plays in enabling citizens to pursue a wide variety of ways of life. He argues that this means that the state ought to have significant authority in shaping the opportunities it offers its citizens.This argument would seem to cut against the institutional independence that scholars have typically thought colleges and universities enjoy. Martin accepts this claim but also suggests that it is compatible with colleges and universities enjoying a great deal of authority over their internal affairs. However, according to Martin, the state can interfere to make sure that the sector is not catering exclusively to a too-narrow range of values. The vision of higher education as a right guaranteed by the state is attractive on several fronts, but it leads inevitably to the question we cannot seem to avoid when discussing higher education—who pays?In chapter 6, Martin argues that postsecondary education should be paid for by all of us and thus should be free. His argument is quite simple—financial barriers undermine autonomy. They distort the choices students make in pursuing higher education—whether to attend and what paths to pursue in college and beyond. Debt, in particular, undermines graduates’ capacity to pursue the lives they want. But what about the wealthy? Shouldn’t they at least pay for their education? Martin’s response here is indicative of the broader vision underlying the right to higher education. He argues that if we ask the rich to pay, we, in effect, give them a free pass from “being a full party to [the] liberal social vision” (183) that underlies the right to postsecondary education. The system of higher education we are considering would be a part of the basic structure of autonomy-supporting institutions that all of us can enjoy. This system generates moral obligations for all of us to be citizens that contribute to the common good. Martin suggests that if we allow some in our society to see education as a good for which they are paying, then this would let them “off the hook” from being a party to the moral reciprocity on which the system depends. Many will not find this argument satisfying, but it is consistent with the radical rethinking of the role of higher education proposed by this book.For Martin the right to higher education is akin to the right to health care. Even though some of us use health care more than others, we all (theoretically) have a right to access health care because of the way in which it supports our ability to lead good, flourishing lives. In health care systems like that of Canada, where Martin is based, everyone contributes to the health care system irrespective of need, and everyone is entitled to make use of it irrespective of their ability to pay. Many would balk at the idea that higher education should be seen in this way. It is, after all, not strictly necessary in the way that health care is. Everyone does eventually need to avail themselves of the doctor, but many people have led good, flourishing lives and never interacted with the system of higher education.However, one cannot deny that higher education is an institution that increasingly affects us all, even those who don’t choose to participate in it. The higher education sector plays an enormous role in the labor market; policy decisions; educating our bosses, lawyers, doctors, and politicians; and producing the knowledge on which our society runs. We might not all want to participate in it as students, but there is a strong claim to be made that we all ought to be invested in how it functions. Along these lines, as much as I admire Martin’s careful and compelling argument, I think that it is a mistake to rest the justification for a robust system of postsecondary education on individual autonomy. By doing so, we fail to understand that colleges, universities, vocational schools, community colleges, and the like are not just education institutions but ones that play important civic, cultural, and economic roles in the communities in which they are located.Consider, for example, the problem of educational deserts. In some rural communities, access to higher education is limited, as is access to a variety of well-paying, stable employment opportunities. This can push young people to seek educational and career opportunities elsewhere (Robert Wuthnow, The Left Behind [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018]). As I have argued in previous work (Jennifer Morton, Moving Up Without Losing Your Way [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019]), this dynamic leads to potential costs to the ethical life of those communities. When young people see the incentives of moving far from home, those communities lose valuable members. For example, one might make it easier for young people in a rural community to access higher education by offering free tuition, travel, and admission to existing colleges and universities far from home. Some students might not take up those opportunities, preferring to stay close to home, but many will, and if all goes well, they’ll find that this path leads to the flourishing lives they envisioned elsewhere. The autonomy of the fortunate students is enabled by this intervention, but the conditions for flourishing in the community that they leave behind are not.Would increasing access to postsecondary education in this community enable those who stay there to lead more autonomous lives? One might argue that it would insofar as it would offer those people who want higher education access closer to home. The knowledge and skills that they will now have access to will open up different pursuits, thus increasing their autonomy. This might be a very small cohort, however, and the intervention—a new postsecondary institution—could be quite costly. What about those citizens whose autonomy would be more meaningfully increased by better working conditions or a more generous safety net? When we consider cost, it might seem to make more sense to make it less expensive for young people to leave home than to bring postsecondary education to their communities. However, if we broaden our thinking beyond the benefit to those individuals who are seeking education as a means to pursuing their interests and goals, we see that institutions of higher education can do more for the public good. It can also improve communities.In many cities, including my own, universities and colleges are among the largest employers and own vast swathes of property. These institutions play an outsized role in shaping the residential neighborhoods around them, including funding public schools and the arts, creating employment, and a myriad of other goods that affect the lives of community members in ways that go beyond the educational benefits they confer on students. When these institutions are private, they exercise this power with little government oversight. I agree with Martin that the civic argument in favor of higher education falls short when we narrow our thinking to the civic benefit that graduates will generate when we respect their autonomy. However, this doesn’t require that we give up on evaluating institutions of higher education using a civic lens: perhaps we should think of them not only as educational institutions but also as employers, landowners, and entities with immense political power. This isn’t true of all institutions of higher education, of course, but even a community college in a small town is positioned to further important civic goals. The fact that many are not able to do so because of a lack of financial support is a missed opportunity.The crisis in higher education is not only limited to access or cost; it also involves how we are perceived outside of our institutional walls. There is increasing skepticism of colleges and universities, the expertise we produce, and our social value. To regain our place as a vital institution, we need to reorient the postsecondary sector toward serving the public good more broadly, not just to serving our students and colleagues. Still, Martin’s carefully argued book is a welcome contribution to helping us reimagine the place of higher education in an increasingly unequal and fractured world. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Ethics Volume 133, Number 2January 2023 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/722129 For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

S. P. MacKenzie. <italic>Politics and Military Morale: Current Affairs and Citizenship Education in the British Army, 1914–1950</italic>. (Oxford Historical Monographs.) New York: Clarendon Press of Oxford University Press. 1992. Pp. xiii, 245. $60.00

Abstract Neustadt, Richard E. & Ernest R. May. Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers. New York: The Free Press, 1986, 329 pages, $19.95—Hardback. Reviewed by Allan R. Brandhorst Mills, C. Wright. The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press. 1959, 234 pages, $19.95—Hardback, $7.95—Paperback. Reviewed by Richard K. Jantz MECC (Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium). World GeoGraph, a microcomputer software program for the Apple IIgs (768K, two disk drives recommended). 3490 Lexington Avenue North, St. Paul, MN (612/481-3500), $139.00. Reviewed by A. W. Strickland Englund, Tomas. Curriculum as a Political Problem—Changing Educational Conceptions, With Special Reference to Citizenship Education. Bromley, U.K., 1986, 383 pages. Reviewed by Murray R. Nelson U.S. Department of Education. What Works: Research About Teaching And Learning. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1986 (orig.); 1987 (rev. ed.), 86 pages, $3.00. Reviewed by Marlene Barron