Implicitly or explicitly, youth work practitioners, scholars and advocates typically invoke a set of egalitarian values to explain, justify and promote the ethical basis of their work. Despite such commitments, there exists conceptual ambiguity surrounding equality across much of the youth work literature which has significant consequences for how youth work is framed and defended. This article introduces the interdisciplinary field of Equality Studies and argues that an Equality Studies approach provides a means (...) to (i) clarify equality-related normative goals within the youth work field and (ii) enhance radically orientated youth work by strengthening the conception of equality at its core. It analyses three areas of conceptual ambiguity within the youth work literature with respect to the value of equality, in each case demonstrating how an Equality Studies approach can help remedy the problem. These areas are: (i) the assumption that equality means ‘sameness’; (ii) the limits of equality of opportunity and anti-discrimination; and (iii) the relationship between equality and other values. It then evaluates the concept of ‘equity’, arguing that it is a vague, inadequate and unnecessary vehicle for capturing egalitarian concerns. The article concludes with some comments on the feasibility of radically egalitarian youth work. (shrink)

In Corrupting Youth, Peter Euben explores the affinities between Socratic philosophy and Athenian democratic culture as a way to think about issues of politics and education, both ancient and modern. The book moves skillfully between antiquity and the present, from ancient to contemporary political theory, and from Athenian to American democracy. It draws together important recent work by political theorists with the views of classical scholars in ways that shine new light on significant theoretical debates such as those (...) over discourse ethics, rational choice, and political realism, and on political issues such as school vouchers and education reform. Euben not only argues for the generative capacity of classical texts and Athenian political thought, he demonstrates it by thinking with them to provide a framework for reflecting more deeply about socially divisive issues such as the war over the canon and the "politicization" of the university.Drawing on Aristophanes' Clouds, Sophocles' Antigone and Oedipus Tyrannos, and Plato's Apology of Socrates, Gorgias, and Protagoras, Euben develops a view of democratic political education. Arguing that Athenian democratic practices constituted a tradition of accountability and self-critique that Socrates expanded into a way of doing philosophy, Euben suggests a necessary reciprocity between political philosophy and radical democracy. By asking whether we can or should take "Socrates" out of the academy and put him back in front of a wider audience, Euben argues for anchoring contemporary higher education in appreciative yet skeptical encounter with the dramatic figure in Plato's dialogues. (shrink)

The vast majority of schools in Canada are dominated by unsafe spaces and experiences for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth 1 who continue to experience higher rates of suicide, depression, isolation, harassment/bullying, and self-harm compared to their straight peers2. Gay/Straight Alliances (GSAs) and other LGBTQ-inclusive groups exist in schools with the goal of mitigating and working against homophobia. Most often in Ontario (Canada), straight teachers lead these groups3. Because of the pervasive role straight teachers play in (...) GSAs and other anti-homophobia initiatives in schools, there is a practical need to analyze the role and experiences of straight teacher ally activists working with LGBTQ students and the overall effectiveness of anti-homophobia efforts under their purview. Here, I explore the efficacy of straight teacher allies, the importance of understanding straight privilege, and the significance of radical heterosexuality for straight people doing LGBTQ activism. Relying on queer theory and decolonizing/Indigenous queer theory, I argue that it is necessary for straight teachers to acknowledge their straight privilege in order to challenge homophobia’s companions: heterosexism and heteronormativity. In addressing the latter two covert forms of oppression in schools, teachers and students could shift into deeper, more effective resistance measures. (shrink)

Walter Benjamin’s treatise »The Life of Students« (1914/15) is not only an insightful document of the youth culture movement, but also an important philosophical contribution to the discussion on the idea and task of the university. In his critique of the contemporary university, the 22-year-old student develops the counter-concept of a future university that, rejecting all heteronomous functionalizations, finds its purpose in radical and risky intellectual work. This vision is rooted in the strict dichotomy of study and (...) career, the origins of which lie in German educational idealism around 1800, and in the concept of creative Eros that refers back to Plato. The promise is to restore the productive synthesis of spirit, Eros and youth under the sign of the youth movement.After a commentary on this little-noticed work (I.), the article outlines the contemporary context and the basic lines of the history of ideas between Kant, Fichte and Nietzsche, to which Benjamin refers with his concept (II.). The focus, however, is, following the concept of constellation research, on the critical comparison with the university concepts that have been developed between 1917 and 1923 by Max Weber, Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers (III.–V.). Although it was not a debate in the true sense, the reconstruction of this constellation in the history of ideas nevertheless allows to analyze the contradictions and deficits, but also the cognitive potential and the possible topicality of Benjamin’s treatise in a broader context. (shrink)

Bernard Stiegler works systematically through the current crisis in education and family relations resulting from the mesmerizing power of marketing technologies. He contends that the greatest threat to social and cultural development is the destruction of young people's ability to pay critical attention to the world around them. This phenomenon, prevalent throughout the first world, is the calculated result of technical industries and their need to capture the attention of the young, making them into a target audience and reversing the (...) relationship between adults and children. _Taking Care_ exposes the carelessness of these industries and urges the reader to re-enter the "battle for intelligence" against the drive-oriented culture of short-term attention characteristic of the negative aspects of the new technologies. Long-term attention, Stiegler shows, produces retentions of cultural memory mandatory for social development—and for the counteracting of ADD and ADHD. Examining the history of education from Plato to the current quagmires in France and the United States, he tracks the notion of critical thinking from its Enlightenment apotheosis to its current eradication. Stiegler is unique in combining the most radical of theoretical constructs—such as "grammatization"—with quite traditional values, values he proposes we re-address in our not-so-brave new world. (shrink)

By embodying the hopes of a set of qualitative liberals who believed that postwar economic abundance opened up opportunities for self-development, David Riesman's bestselling The Lonely Crowd influenced the New Left. Yet Riesman's assessment of radical youth protest shifted over the course of the 1960s. As an antinuclear activist he worked closely with New Left leaders during the early 1960s. By the end of the decade, he became a sharp critic of radical protest. However, other leading members (...) of Riesman's circle, such as Kenneth Keniston, author of the influential Young Radicals, applied Riesman's ideas to create more sympathetic understandings of the New Left. Examining reactions to the New Left by Riesman and his associates allows historians to go beyond the common understanding of the key ideological divisions of the 1960s as existing between liberalism and radicalism or between liberalism and conservatism to better appreciate the significance of splits among liberals themselves. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Manos HadjidakisThe Story of an Anarchic Youth and a "Magnus Eroticus"Yiannis MiralisThe name of Manos Hadjidakis is probably unknown to contemporary musicians and music educators. After all, the Greek composer achieved his international fame back in 1961 when he won an Oscar for his soundtrack of the movie, "Never on Sunday." Numerous other awards followed from England, France, Germany, and of course, Greece. After his six years in (...) New York City (1966-1972), the composer returned to Greece where he produced a wealth of diverse musical work and had a profound impact on every aspect of Greek cultural life.Through his radio lectures, the notes on the covers of his records, and his articles in a variety of magazines and newspapers, he expressed his often radical ideas without any fear, but with honesty and passion. His commentaries covered a wide variety of topics such as music, poetry, and the arts, politics and nationalism in art, music education, tradition and change, and the overall cultural problems and dilemmas of his time. The magnitude of his musical and artistic work is yet to be fully discovered and appreciated.In this paper, I will provide a biography of Manos Hadjidakis with a closer [End Page 43] examination and description of his multifaceted work. Through this attempt, a better understanding of who Hadjidakis was and the impact that he had on the musical and cultural life of modern-day Greece will emerge. I decided to use numerous direct quotes from Hadjidakis' books and interviews not only because he eloquently expresses his thoughts and ideas, but also because through these quotes one can get a clear sense of his humor, intellect, and personality. This paper may also serve as food for thought for music educators in and outside of Greece. I say this because much of his work and thought remains unknown to the general public, as well as to music performers and educators. Unfortunately, to some extent this is true even in his own home country of Greece. Even though Hadjidakis was not a music educator in the specific sense of the term, many of the things that he fought for and achieved in his life had an identifiable educational component in them. For example, before each of the performances of the Orchestra of Colors that he founded and conducted, Hadjidakis always gave elaborate lectures on the composers and on the works to be performed at the amphitheatre of the Medical School of the University of Athens. Overall, if we use the Oxford English Dictionary's definition of "education" as "culture or development of powers, formation of character, as contrasted with the imparting of mere knowledge or skill,"1 Hadjidakis can be regarded as a true educator and many of his ideas have a direct implication for music education and education in general. This is what I will examine in the second part of this paper, focusing especially on his ideas on Eros and the importance of song.Hadjidakis' ChildhoodHadjidakis was born on October 23, 1925 in the city of Xanthi in northern Greece. The city was thriving due to the local cultivation and sale of tobacco. His father was a tobacco merchant and his family was initially well off and able to pay for his piano lessons. After the death of his father in 1931, when Hadjidakis was only six years old, the family moved to Athens where he attended high school at nighttime, while working various jobs during the day.During World War II Hadjidakis became involved in a number of political organizations and simultaneously took lessons in diction in order to realize his dream of becoming an actor. However, because he had difficulty pronouncing the letter "r," he had to turn his attention and creativity away from acting and in a different direction. Additionally he received some formal training in classical music, but according to his own words,[m]y relationships with formal music studies were extremely similar to my relationships with dentists; I always approached them and always left them before the end of the treatment. When I was eighteen years old I gave up [End Page 44] music and I surrendered myself to poetry. When... (shrink)

In this paper, we are going to address job satisfaction and perceived self-efficacy within the context of residential child-care. A joint report from the European Foundation for the Improvement on Living and Working Conditions and the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work revealed that managers in the field of health and education were the most concerned about the psychosocial risk of their employees, although concern is not automatically translated into tools to face the risk and to manage (...) it. So, measuring and improving employees’ job satisfaction and self-efficacy can be an important means for organizations to prevent the outcomes of psychosocial risk, and supporting high quality performance of workers. But profound changes are affecting the nature of work at large, and specifically social educator’s in the field of residential care with minors. Globalization, radical technological and communication developments, as well as the pressure to frame care as a commodity, are quickly changing procedures and praxis at work, and even the meaning of job itself. All these changes are highly demanding for this category of professionals, as much as the fact that the organizational setting is vanishing as a resource to sustain their professional attitudes and behaviours. Under these circumstances, job satisfaction and self-efficacy can be hard to experience, and isolating their precursors is essential to develop healthy and effective work environments. This paper means to highlight the process of supporting self-efficacy and job satisfaction in the educational work in residential youth care that is still underrepresented in research. It presents data emerging from two studies, study 1 involving 268 educators and study 2 involving 472 educators belonging to different Italian residential child-care services. Study 1 consists of a quantitative study including the following measures: attachment style, job satisfaction, work-related self-efficacy, and length of service. Study 2 consist of a qualitative exploration deepening the sources of educators’ work-satisfaction. Quantitative data support the identification of attachment style and length of service as antecedents of work-related self-efficacy. Qualitative data show the importance of relational issues in shaping the educators’ satisfaction at work. (shrink)

O presente estudo busca compreender a aderência de jovens a um instituto católico – Toca de Assis – que se caracteriza por adotar um estilo de vida configurado por radical pobreza, renúncia a bens e estudos formais, e dependência exclusiva da providência divina, além de desenvolvimento de trabalho com pessoas em situação de rua. Busca entender a opção juvenil por um estilo de vida religiosa rigoroso a partir de propostas de vida contrastivas com a sociedade contemporânea e, de certo (...) modo, com a própria Igreja, visando identidades alternativas e fortes. Assim, o artigo desenvolve o tema Juventude; Toca de Assis, renúncia, pobreza; tem como objetivo verificar as relações entre juventude, comportamento e adesão a estilos de vida radicais; usa, principalmente, da metodologia das ciências sociais; tem por conclusão provisória a compreensão de que os jovens que aderem à Toca de Assis, ao renunciar a bens materiais, estudo, e ao assumirem uma vida de pobreza e solidariedade com os pobres, estão em um movimento de contrastividade e contestação social motivadas por uma identificação com o Cristo sofredor. Palavras-chave : Toca de Assis. Renúncia. Pobreza. Jovens.: The present study aims to understand the adherence of youth people to a Catholic institute called Toca de Assis. This group adopts a lifestyle of radical poverty, wich calls for renunciation of material goods and also to formal studies. Participants in this group also claim rely solely on state of divine providence for their material survival. Young people in this group perform a work of assistance to people marginalized by society and to those who live at risk on the streets. The article seeks to understand the reasons for the choice of young people for a religious lifestyle so strict that contrasts with the lifestyle of contemporary society and in a sense, the Church itself, aiming at the formation of alternate identities. Thus, the article develops the theme “youth”, “Toca de Assis”, “resignation”, and “poverty”. The study aims, in short, to examine relationships between youth behavior and adherence to radical lifestyles; For this purpose, a methodology of social science is used. As in interim conclusion, this discussion indicates the following: youth people who adhere to Toca de Assis, renouncing material possessions, study, and assuming a life of poverty and solidarity with the poor, are in a movement of social protest and are motivated by an identification with the suffering Christ. Keywords : Toca de Assis. Renunciation. Poverty. Youth. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Art Education and the Emergence of Radical Art Movements in Egypt: The Surrealists and the Contemporary Arts Group, 1938–1951Patrick Kane (bio)So it wasn’t the aim of the artist to just toss out a work of art. A tradition of the exhibition of the natural, and its meaning was not that it fled from life, but that it had penetrated and plunged into reality. Its meaning was not (...) a prescription or plain exercise in the taste of the sublime, or harmony of forms and charming scenes; and its meaning was not as a decoration of life; it was in its expression of what life inspires in us to give back.—Henry Moore, as quoted by Ramses Yunan, in “The Aim of the Contemporary Artist”1In these crucial days of difficulty, the artists in this country live in tall aristocratic towers.... For this peasant has an art of his own that sustains him, and it is not that art of the educated class.—Kamil Al-Tilmisani (c. 1941–1942)By 1938, as the agrarian crisis in Egypt deepened, the Depression, food shortages, low wages, expropriations of crops, and forced rents opened a polemic among Egyptian intellectuals over the role of the state and the looming threat of fascism. With the dismissal of the government of Mustafa Al-Nahas at the end of 1937, the political turbulence underscored the weakening of the Wafd Party. Opponents of the old Wafdists and supporters of the monarchy resorted to openly fascist tactics, including the establishment of youth organizations and the Blue Shirts, the fascist front of the young Wafdists who modeled themselves on Mussolini’s Black Shirts. The serial crises of agrarian struggles and parliamentary stalemates between [End Page 95] nationalists and monarchists led to increasingly militant stances by the paramilitary fascist organization Misr Al-Fattah (Young Egypt) as a counter to the Muslim Brothers. When Mahmud Khalil resigned from the Wafd and assumed the presidency of the Senate in 1938, his ascension opened a new phase of struggle in politics through culture and the arts.2 In this context, caricatures and satirical sculptures of Khalil appeared in 1939 that parodied him as the icon of a “dictatorship of art.”3 Leading intellectuals from all political stances addressed these issues directly. The cultural journals were peppered with articles on the problems of everyday life and the material crises with such representative titles as ‘Abbas al-Aqqad’s “Food for the Rich,” in which he raised the problem of food shortages and inequity as an issue for reform.4 Within the year, articles in Al-Risala and Al-Thaqafa drew comparisons with French and Italian nineteenth-century landscapes as a model for the recognition of the countryside as a subject. In journalism and the arts, suffering became a part of the recognition of the everyday, as articles appeared on Millet’s nineteenth-century paintings of French peasants.As the war in Europe encroached into the cover pages of Egypt’s cultural journals, Zaki Muhammad Hasan wrote an essay for Al-Thaqafa entitled “The Angelus,” with a reproduction of the 1859 painting by Jean Francois Millet (1814–1874).5 Hasan wrote about Millet’s interest in the “the daily labors of the peasant” as a depiction of the conditions of French peasants. Hasan’s mention of Millet’s own peasant origins, and his listing of paintings of social conditions, including Les Glaneuses (The Gleaners), reflected a broadening interest in the artistic subject of the peasant and the rise of the peasant as artist. Although in Millet’s painting there is a prayer scene of a man and a woman in the fields that is generally regarded as the evening prayer with the sun setting, an Egyptian reader could link the prayer with the issue of workers taking breaks in the fields at a time when the issue of compensation of peasant farm workers was paramount.6 Hasan introduced “The Angelus” to his readers as a Catholic prayer in southern Europe offered at dawn, noon, and sunset and compared the origins of the prayer’s stanzas from the Gospel of Luke 1:28–31 with passages from the chapter on Maryam in the Quran... (shrink)

Church youth work is the activities and programs organized by churches for young people. These activities aim to contribute to the religious, spiritual and social development of young people. Church youth work brings young people together and supports them in areas such as religious education, spiritual development, community service, leadership development and active participation in the religious community. It is seen that youth work, which was previously a part of family work, has been (...) organized as a different field of work over time. Churches carry out activities in this field through an organizational structure called youth ministry. Churches generally have a certain systematic and work program in their youth work. Most churches organize their youth programs according to the relevant educational levels. Churches tend to create smaller sub-groups within the youth program and divide young people by grade level. These divisions are usually at the middle and high school level, but youth groups extend to university students and are often referred to as "college and career". Higher education seems to be emphasized in youth work. Many theological faculties offer different postgraduate programs to meet various needs. The quality of youth work is largely determined by the academic studies conducted in this field. Practical theology, which is established as an academic discipline in faculties of theology, both provides the theoretical background that shapes the practice of these studies and provides training to train qualified personnel in the field. The approach to youth ministry can vary, taking into account the different views on the subject, the places where this ministry is provided and the characteristics of people. There are different paradigms in church youth work, especially for young people living in cities. These are called traditional, liberal, activist and prophet-centered youth paradigms. Another pillar of church youth work is spiritual counseling services. Recently, churches have started to employ professional spiritual counselors. Spiritual counseling, a concept that emphasizes the Christian cultural origins of counseling, is now included in youth work. Spiritual counseling is seen as a professional guidance fed by religious and spiritual sources. Church spiritual counselors listen to the problems faced by young people, support them and try to understand them. Spiritual counselors provide guidance based on religious teachings and values to support the personal development of young people. Spiritual counseling conducted by churches can take various forms. These include individual counseling, group counseling, family counseling, online counseling, retreats and workshops. The personnel who carry out the youth work of the churches are also called youth leaders. Accordingly, it is seen that various leadership models in the literature are discussed in this context. Some leadership models that are thought to inspire youth work are: Servant leadership, ethical leadership, spiritual leadership and transformational leadership. In this research, these leadership models are discussed in the context of church youth work. This research aims to reveal the basic approaches and principles in this field by focusing on the studies in the context of non-formal religious education in Catholic Churches. Although it varies from region to region or from church to church, the main problem of this study is to examine the youth work of the Catholic Church in the context of non-formal religious education in general. The research data were obtained through document analysis method. On this occasion, it is thought that this study will also be useful in the context of a comparative evaluation of non-formal religious education in our country. (shrink)

We write as Australian youth work educators. We consider some of the ethical challenges involved in teaching youth work ‘in a warm climate’, situated in the diaspora of English youth work but where youth work also has a uniquely Australian character, placing us in an ethically liminal space in our teaching between an understanding of youth work that is robustly defended as being both ‘good’ and ‘true’, and what we do, (...) which is different from this, and has its own character and strengths. We situate this in the policy history of youth work in Australia, particularly in the ‘neoliberal turn’ that this has taken in the last four decades which has created ethical challenges for us, just as it has for those elsewhere. Two guiding questions shape this paper. The first is, given our differences, what challenges do we face in maintaining connections with ‘good’ youth work and its value base as traditionally defined and defended in England, and relatedly, given that policy and funding regimes in the UK seem to be aligning more with an Australian model, is there anything that the youth work community in the UK can learn from the Australian experience? (shrink)

In this paper I revisit the different elaborations of the concept of social totality that we can find through various moments of the work of the Marxist philosopher Georg Lukács, focusing on the understanding of the praxis of social agents tied to each of them. I begin with the analysis of this concept in his youth works and then I highlight a radical change of view between the characterizations found in History and class consciousness and Ontology of (...) social being. My argument is that this reconsideration is associated with the theoretical necessity of conceiving a subjective praxis that could avoid alienation, as it seems to occur in the theoretical model of Lukács’ youth work. Finally, I conclude that this new conception of the social totality enables a new kind of emancipatory praxis, far from the party dogmatisms that typify a great part of the twentieth century socialism. (shrink)

Trying to comprehend the contemporary social phenomenon from the imaginaries theory perspective, is to recognize that the history of humanity is the history of the human imaginary and its work (Castoriadis 2002). It is about an acceptable and relevant possibility, that is recognized in the human bei..

Evidence of the far-reaching impact of the Anthropocene on young people presents youth work with opportunities to reflect on some long-standing issues. This pioneering exercise considers the implications for youth work practice and its ethical frameworks should it embrace the tenets of the ‘new materialism’. We ask how youth work practice is currently understood, especially in ‘British-influenced youth work’ and whether there are problems with its conceptual, ethical and practice frameworks. We offer (...) an account of ‘new materialism’ then consider the implications for the ethics of youth work practice if practitioners were to adopt this ontological perspective. Conceptually youth work would have a more relational orientation and rely less on essentialist universalised categories like ‘child’, ‘adolescent’ and ‘adult’. It would jettison developmentalist narratives and the structure-agency impasse by elaborating new accounts of assemblages-contingency. Adopting this approach also entails an ethic of cultivation grounded in care for the world. Such an ethic would entail situational judgements about how to enact care in a world in which unexpected changes periodically emerge. This bears a close relationship to ‘phronetic practice’. (shrink)

A premise of this paper that despite an emphasis on professional distance the occurrence of self-disclosure is inevitable in the practice of youth work, yet there is little in-depth discussion in the literature, which recognises or reflects this. We utilise literature from counselling and psychotherapy which highlights the pervasive and unavoidable nature of self-disclosure within therapeutic relationships. In doing so we argue that not only is self-disclosure inevitable in youth work, but that decisions about whether or (...) not particular disclosures are right or wrong are difficult, arguing that they need to be reflected upon and explored in their particular context. We suggest some boundaries for self-disclosure, as well as offer a model within which to begin to distinguish aspects of self-disclosure. This it is hoped will help maintain both effective and professional relationships with young people, but maintain that this still requires the professional judgement of youth workers. In so doing self-disclosure is recognised as not only inevitable but as a useful aid to youth work practice. (shrink)

Youth work is deemed to require a distinctive commitment to ethical behaviour from the adults involved. This is expressed in the requirements for the initial education of workers, in the subject benchmarks and national expectations for youth workers. A significant influence in this debate is Howard Sercombe. Sercombe seeks a substantive framework for youth work ethics. The project offers clear potential benefits alongside equally great dangers. His platform is an integration of two foundations: a particular (...) definition of youth work and a particular account of what it means to be ‘a profession’. I argue that both foundations are flawed, and potentially harmful to practice and policy. At the heart of Sercombe’s account, however, is a focus on youth work as based on a ‘covenantal relation of trust between youth workers and young people’. This insight, submerged and marginalised, does offer a substantive foundation for youth work ethics. (shrink)

Ethical youth work is ‘good' youth work but how do youth work practitioners collectively determine what is ‘good'? This article presents findings from four-country surveys of youth workers' attitudes and understandings of what constitutes ‘good', that is to say ‘ethical’ practice. The article presents the principles that youth workers say underpin ethical practice in Australia, Estonia, Iceland, and Ireland. The first three countries have well established Codes of Ethics and/or Practice and Professional (...) Associations, while Ireland does not. A survey of youth work practitioners funded by Erasmus Plus, was conducted across the four countries (n = 405). A comparative analysis of data across countries revealed consensus around key characteristics of youth work practice such as the participation, empowerment, and safety of young people. These core principles form the basis of good and ethical action by practitioners. In countries which have codified these principles, these Codes were reported to be useful tools to support practitioners in their work. The survey further suggests that reflective practice is important in the application of ethical codes to concrete practice situations acting as a form of collective accountability and praxis. To conclude, we consider the implications of these findings for professionalism, and professionalisation in youth work nationally and internationally. (shrink)

Most professionally-qualifying youth work programmes in the UK are secular programmes in mainstream universities. Current UK National Occupational Standards require youth workers to ‘Explore the concept of values and beliefs with young people’. Faith organisations form the largest sector of the UK youth work field and all youth workers need to be equipped to work inclusively with diverse communities. This research explored, through a semi-structured survey sent to programme leaders, the coverage of religion, (...) faith and spirituality in youth work training courses in England. We found tensions in how religion, faith and spirituality are incorporated into programmes and how programme leaders think youth workers should engage with it in their practice. Where explicit content on religion, faith and spirituality is incorporated into training programmes, it tends to focus on controversial issues such as radicalisation. The survey revealed a lack of consensus across programme leaders as to how the NOS relating to values and beliefs should be interpreted and whether their graduates are being sufficiently equipped to work with diverse religious communities. The research exposes a need for more explicit recognition of the place of religion, faith and spirituality in youth work and in the curricula of secular training programmes. (shrink)

Ethical Issues in Youth Work presents a systematic analysis of some of the core ethical dilemmas facing youth workers in their day to day practice. Among the topics discussed are: *when to break confidentiality *the ethics of religious conversion *conflicts between cultures *balancing the autonomy and control of young people *maintaining an equilibrium between accountability to funders, empolyers and young people This book also examines some of the key issues facing youth workers in the context of (...) public fears of youth crime, lawlessness, drug use, teenage pregnancy and policies designed to control and contain as well as educate and care for young people. Ethical Issues in Youth Work offers a timely and unique insight into both the perennial dilemmas of youth work practice and some of the more recent challanges faced by youth workers in the light of current public attitudes and government policy towards young poeple. (shrink)

Whether or not youth work should professionalise and to what degree governments should regulate youth work services have been a widely debated topic within the Australian youth sector in recent tim...

This study attempted to answer the question of how to share the values and ethics of youth work among practitioners and with policymakers, funders, and society. Although social interest in youth support in Japan has been on rise recently due to the increase number of difficulties surrounding young people, the ‘ethics and values’ in practice and in the field can be driven by the neoliberal social and political trends present in our society. This study presents a way (...) to resist and counter the penetration of neoliberal practical ethics and organisational management through the process of visualising, sharing and legitimising the ‘practical ethics and values’ embedded in the fields where youth work has been developed with young people. This is the research-based practice of ‘practitioners collectively telling, writing, sharing, and communicating the stories of practice’. (shrink)

Following the work of Jacques Derrida and modern educational authors, this article argues that Western education currently holds mainstream formal educational practices as the standard by which all other educational practices should be judged. This is a problem because this positions every other educational practice, including non-formal education as supplemental to formal education. Derrida calls this the logic of supplementarity. Drawing on data from over 2 years of research in Flemish youth work, that the logic of supplementarity (...) inhibits non-formal educational environments in articulating their own educational goals. We conclude that supplementarity is an unavoidable characteristic of education, and that exactly by acknowledging practices as supplemental, it becomes possible to work towards a Derridean ideal of an education ‘yet-to-come.’ In this logic, we argue, it becomes possible for non-formal educational practices to both challenge formal conventions and to better their own practices. (shrink)

Our editorial introduces this Special Issue devoted to exploring the ethics of youth work practice in the twenty-first century. The call for papers for this Special Issue went out in October 2022 w...

Three of Zygmunt Bauman’s recent books are assessed to present insights into the recent development of his thought and the challenges it poses to the social sciences, humanities and the wider public. By reading Bauman’s recent work through the influence he takes from Georg Simmel, the former’s disparate recent work is understood as an attempt at the cultivation of critical and ethical engagement through the externalization and objectification of his own subjective culture. The more radical elements of (...) Bauman’s work are emphasized in his attempts to stimulate a counter-culture through encouraging critical analysis of society. It is proposed that he achieves this through ‘polylogic’ discourse and engagement with the public. Sociology is presented as a tool of freedom through ‘defamiliarizing the familiar’ and Bauman’s most powerful tool in this is the demonstration of his particular critical view of the world. The broad-ranging engagement with diverse topics in his recent books enables him to place this critical perspective, rather than a particular topic or issue, at the centre of his work. The metaphorical and other literary devices used by Bauman to stimulate critique and in particular to spur on the radical potential of youth are highlighted as some of his most powerful contributions. (shrink)

This paper extends the discourse on the importance of the relationship between practitioner and young person as a defining tenet of effective youth work practice, recognising the privileged position occupied by Youth Workers in the social ecology of the young people with whom they work. Reflecting the ethical obligations inherent in this relationship, particularly its focus on enhancing young people’s agency and developmental outcomes, the paper outlines how youth work practice infused with professional love (...) aligns with conceptualizations of an ethic of care. Reporting on interviews conducted with Youth Workers practicing in different settings across one local authority area in the UK, the paper articulates how practitioners’ ethic of care shapes their work with young people, and the extent to which love features as an element of their professional practice. Practitioners describe their motivation to express care that extends beyond legalistic interpretations of their ‘duty of care’ towards young people, using the language of care, love and nurture almost interchangeably. The paper demonstrates the importance of inclusion and reciprocity as fundamental elements of ethical practice, as well as the need to infuse practice with hope, suggesting the value of an affirmative ethic to complement a focus on love and care. (shrink)

One thing an examination of the literature on youth work makes clear is a lack of clarity on youth work's purpose. This study investigated the value of using the concept of telos as an analytical tool to orient youth work towards the right ends. Relevant literature was systematically reviewed. The value of telos in understanding youth work was examined. Common aims of youth work were described. The merits of different goals (...) were assessed to figure out which, if any, is youth work's proper purpose. A telos would provide youth work a clear and cohesive definition, act as a useful guide for good practice, and distinguish youth work from other interventions into young people's lives. The case was made for the telos of youth work to be 'enabling young people to live the good life'. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the hermeneutical method of Theodoret of Cyrus, who was one of the most important Biblical commentators and an influential theologian of the School of Antioch. This paper attempts to point out the fact that in the person of the Blessed Theodoret we find the first attempt of synthesis between the Antioch and Alexandria hermeneutical schools. In his hermeneutical work Theodoret attempted to overcome the contradictions existing up to that point and to (...) follow a middle way, without discarding neither the literal nor the spiritual-allegorical interpretation. It could be argued that Theodoret rejected the extreme hermeneutical trends of both the Alexandrian and Antioch inspirations; he developed his unique methods and tactics, which were rooted in the previous patristic tradition of the Church Fathers. (shrink)

In the face of criticisms that professional codes of ethics are not effective in promoting ethical behaviour, this article explores a methodology developed in a major Western Australian youth work agency for applying a Youth Work Code of Ethics in practical, real-time situations. The experience resulted in workers being conscious of the clause-by-clause content of the code across a range of situations, and being able to use it as a resource in their day-to-day work.

This article explores the development of professional training for youth leaders (now, youth workers) in England and Wales between 1939 and 1945. The article identifies the state's construction of young people as a problematic social category at a time of national crisis and its mobilization of youth leadership as part of the war effort. The Board of Education supported, sometimes tacitly, the development of courses in some universities and voluntary organizations for youth leaders. By 1942 full-time (...) courses of training existed at five universities and university colleges and one voluntary organization and were recognized by the Board under Circular 1598. This article explores tensions between the discourse of voluntarism, in which youth leadership had traditionally been set, and the newly developing discourse of professionalism. The article suggests that these discourses are fundamentally ethical and tensions lay in contested definitions of the ?good youth leader?. Little consensus existed on what counted as the good leader, animating a conflict between voluntarism and state provision. The article concludes by drawing distinctions and continuities between the war years and the present day. (shrink)

This critique of some of the prevailing approaches to youth work argues that theories of practice offer better ways of understanding and achieving good practice. A significant body of literature suggests good youth work involves engaging young people in education and training, implementing a practice model, or acting upon young people's feedback. However, criticisms of these accounts suggest they are inadequate. This article makes the case that we need to think about the problems youth (...) class='Hi'>work is trying to address as 'wicked problems' that call for 'wicked solutions' and argues that practice theories missing from the youth work literature provide more in the way of wicked solutions compared to the conventional approaches to youth work. Three practice theories - from Arendt, Bourdieu and Shove, Pantzar and Watson - are examined together with discussion of their implications for conceptualising and realising good practice. (shrink)

In this thesis I argue that what we tend to see in contemporary accounts of human service practice in the relevant literature is a ‘common-sense’ informed by a complex mix of neoliberal political and policy imperatives and various kinds of technical-rational styles of administration and management. These accounts of practice can inadvertently contribute to the problems they are meant to address and can do more harm than good. Common-sense accounts of practice also align with how human services are typically regulated (...) and they align with prevailing ways the education of human services takes place, including in universities. Consequently, the same types of problems that take place with human service practice also take place with the institutionalisation and reproduction of human services. If we are serious about achieving good practice in human services, then we need to think more clearly about what practice in human services is. <br /><br />There is a good case for articulating a theory of human service practice to inspire new and better ways of achieving good practice. The theory of good practice outlined here draws on the philosophy of Aristotle and neo-Aristotelian accounts of practice. It draws especially on Dunne who argues that a theory of practice should offer a defensible account of how we should conceptualise the stuff that human services deal with, and the sorts of knowing, action and ends that best accord with such conceptualisations. <br /><br />I argue that the beings at the centre of human services should be understood as complex, emergent, unpredictable, and ‘wicked’ in the sense that Rittel and Webber talk about. This highlights the possibility that the people, problems and practices of human services can be revealed in multiple and contrary ways. Accordingly, human services hold both promises and dangers for people and good practice is far from self-evident and is highly contestable in each individual case. <br /><br />I argue that phronesis (practical wisdom) is the way of knowing that best corresponds to and is most suited to deal with the uncertain, messy, contingent and context-dependent beings of human services, which require and deserve ongoing deliberations and good determinations on each occasion that are at the same time always tentative and remain open to other suggestions and modification especially because our knowledge may be erroneous and incomplete. I argue that good practice also requires reflexivity and value rationality to help identify and alleviate the problems associated with neoliberal approaches to practice and as an alternative to technical rationality and value neutrality. <br /><br />I make the case for praxis (good action) along with a range of other human activities including value-rational deliberation as the forms of action that best align with and are most appropriate for dealing with the ever-changing, often inexplicable and always difficult beings of human services. Praxis is in accordance with phronesis and can be understood in part as durable practice and in part as responding to each case in new ways. In particular, it involves figuring out and enacting the most desirable course of action in each instance of practice while at the same time remaining receptive to other possibilities and to doing things differently particularly because we might not always be immediately aware of what we are doing, and our actions could be doing more harm than good. <br /><br />I show that clarity about our telos will help to re-orient human services to pursuing preferred ends and securing goods that are better suited to the entities of human services compared to instrumentally designed relations between widely applicable and transferable techniques and pre-determined outcomes. I argue for the telos of youth work to be enabling young people to live the good life. Following my accounts of phronesis and praxis this orientation of human services towards more desirable and ethical purposes takes the form of a commitment that is always carefully reconsidered at the same time as determinedly pursued. However, unlike outputs that can be wholly predetermined, efficiently sought after and completely achieved, this is an end that is never fully attained. This is especially the case because there is always more that can be known and done and because there are always disagreements on the goods to be secured. <br /><br />This theory of practice should correspond to and supports the education of people for professional practice. In particular, the education of human services needs to reproduce how the beings of human services are to be conceptualised and the ways of knowing, forms of action and ends that cohere. At the same time, university-based human service education should support the development, exercise and experience of good practice-as-praxis guided by phronesis. <br />. (shrink)

This article explores the opportunities afforded by Ursula Le Guin’s allegory ‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas’ for thinking about the role of youth work in modern cities and societies that are deemed to be successful but at the same time fail some young people. Using Melbourne and Australia as examples and following Le Guin the case is made that the prosperity of ‘liveable’ cities and ‘lucky’ countries coincides with the neglect and mistreatment of some young people. (...) The same cultural, economic and political practices and processes that produce the beauty and abundance also produce the inequalities and hardships, and these include policies inspired by neoliberalism, processes of individualisation, and utilitarianism. Unlike the ones who walk away from Omelas youth workers can stay and fight adversity and injustice, however alleviating problems young people experience is more complex than it is often thought to be. One reason this is the case is because youth work is entangled with the same range of ethical, emotional, intellectual, political, and economic circumstances that generate thriving places and disadvantaged young lives, and inadvertently youth workers can reproduce the challenging and limiting conditions faced by some young people. (shrink)

A Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Szent-Györgyi concerns himself with the underlying forces and conditions that have prevented the realization of the higher possibilities of the American Dream, and, by extension, of all mankind. He addresses himself especially to the youth of the world in his attempt to show how man, the more he progresses technologically, seems the more to regress psychologically and socially, until he resembles his primate ancestors in a state of high schizophrenia. The fundamental question asked by (...) this book is: Why is it that most of the scientific research that is done to elevate human life serves in the end to destroy it? That this phenomenon exists is unarguable. How to alter it is the problem the author tackles. He finds the possibility, indeed the instrument of our survival, in our youth. Dr. Szent-Györgyi calls upon youth the world over to organize and exercise their power to create a new world. He implores them not to waste their energies in petulance and frustration-the world is ripe for the radical changes needed for man's survival, and for youth to fritter away their opportunity would be to compound the tragedy and seal the fate of mankind. Born into the fourth generation of a noted family of scientists in Hungary, Albert Szent-Györgyi decided at an early age to devote his life to biological research. As a medical student he required international recognition for his studies in microscopic anatomy. The First World War, which he spent in the service of the Austro-Hungarian army, caused a break in his career. After the war he left his devastated country to work for ten years in various countries, notably Germany, Holland, England and the United States. He then returned to his native Hungary to help rebuild science there. In 1937, he won the Nobel Prize for his studies on metabolism and for the discovery of ascorbic acid (Vitamin C). He soon found himself in conflict with the growing movement of Nazism, was arrested, escaped, and was hunted for years by the secret service of Hitler. After World War II, disappointed by Soviet colonialism and the terrorist methods of Stalin, he left Hungary and found refuge at the Marine Biological Laboratory of Woods Hole, Massachusetts. (shrink)

In contemporary societies, schools play an important role in reproducing the social system. Those who want to maintain the status quo find social reproduction desirable, while more radical scholars are critical regarding the social inequality and injustice perpetuated through this reproduction process. Traditionally, schools and families have assumed the more significant share of this ‘duty’ of educating for social reproduction, and, for better or worse, they have been largely successful. However, the landscape has shifted as automation and digitization have (...) exploded. In the 90s, the Internet’s increasing presence in the public domain revolutionized communications, and accordingly, capitalism found new avenues of exploitation, dramatically increasing social entropy. Using the works of Bernard Stiegler, this article problematizes the social reproduction field with a focus on schools. It argues that in this era of big data and digitization, schools have unknowingly allowed their traditional socialization and the cultivation of the youth’s intelligence functions to be sabotaged. This increasing erosion of schooling’s functions leads to a new, entropic reproduction that poisons the youth. Educators and parents cannot control this process; we all struggle to describe and fully understand it. (shrink)

A decade ago, a useful word was coined in honor of May Day by radical Italian labor activists: "precarity." It referred at first to the increasingly precarious existence of working people "at the margins" -- women, youth, migrants. Then it expanded to apply to the growing "precariat" of the core labor force, the "precarious proletariat" suffering from the programs of deunionization, flexibilization and deregulation that are part of the assault on labor throughout the world.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Jacob Burckhardt, Religion, and the Historiography of “Crisis” and “Transition”Thomas Albert Howard*A great historical subject, the representation of which should be the high point of a historian’s life, must cohere sympathetically and mysteriously to the author’s innermost being.Jacob Burckhardt 1If you are to venture to interpret the past you can do so only out of the fullest exertion of the vigor of the present: only when you can put (...) forth your... qualities in all their strength will you divine what is worth knowing and preserving in the past.Friedrich Nietzsche 2The renowned nineteenth-century Swiss-German historian Jacob Burckhardt (1818–97) was a masterful historian of crises and transitional periods. Two of his major works, The Age of Constantine the Great (1852) and The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860), bear out this claim. In his Constantine Burckhardt deals with the transition from late pagan antiquity to the early Christian Middle Ages, and in his more famous Renaissance he deals with the transition from the late Middle Ages to the beginnings of secular modernity. In the [End Page 149] latter, as is well known, he established one of the most compelling and creative theses in the history of modern historiography, virtually creating the “idea of the Renaissance” that has long influenced both scholarly and popular conceptions of that period. 3What elicited Burckhardt’s interest in crises and transitions in general and in these two periods of crisis and transition in particular? In this article, I shall argue that there is a strong relationship between Burckhardt’s own historical experience in the early and mid-nineteenth century and his choice of subject and mode of analysis in these two monumental works. In theoretical terms one observes a “dialectical” form of objectivity in the execution of Burckhardt’s historiographical tasks: a structural affinity or kinship between subject (Burckhardt, his historical experience) and object (late antiquity, Renaissance) predisposes Burckhardt to his theme/argument and thus provides a key to understanding the genesis and the character of insights that he offers in these two works. 4 To establish this point I shall focus on the category of religion, on Burckhardt’s own experience of questions of religious truth and skepticism in the nineteenth century, and on his treatment of religion in these two works.The Young Jacob Burckhardt and ReligionReligion is a crucial but often neglected aspect of Jacob Burckhardt’s thought. 5 Like a number of nineteenth-century German intellectuals, Burckhardt was a Pfarrersohn, a “pastor’s son.” 6 He grew up in a profoundly conservative Protestant environment in Basel, nicknamed “pious Basel” for its dogged resistance to the “ideas of 1789” and for its earlier heritage of Reformation and pietist religiosity. During Burckhardt’s youth in fact, his father was a children’s minister and head-deacon (Obersthelfer) before becoming in 1838 the city cathedral’s Antistes, the highest and most prestigious ecclesiastical office in Basel. In short, as his biographer Werner Kaegi has noted, Burckhardt’s early [End Page 150] upbringing and education were strongly shaped by the world of his father, a world of “old Protestant piety.” 7Following his father’s example, Burckhardt started out on the clerical track, studying theology at the University of Basel. However, during his Theologie-studium (1837–39) he experienced a profound crisis of faith brought on by an encounter with German historical biblical criticism and liberal theology represented in the person of W. M. L. de Wette (1780–1848). A radical theologian and biblical scholar, de Wette had wound up in Basel in 1822 after being dismissed from the University of Berlin for holding views considered heterodox and politically threatening by the conservative Prussian government. 8 In a letter to his friend Johannes Riggenbach written in August 1838 Burckhardt tells how de Wette’s critical theology had unseated his faith. “In my eyes,” Burckhardt wrote,de Wette’s system grows in stature every day; one simply must follow him, there is no alternative; but every day a part of our traditional church doctrine melts away under his hand. Today, finally, I realized that he regards the birth of Christ simply as a myth... (shrink)

Resumo: O objetivo desse trabalho é explorar a perenidade e o significado da expressão semel in vita para a filosofia de Descartes. Por meio de uma análise minuciosa de todas as ocorrências dessa formulação dentro do corpus cartesiano, busca-se evidenciar que semel in vita é um recurso retórico relevante que está vinculado ao momento decisivo da filosofia cartesiana de realizar uma reestruturação do conhecimento a partir da investigação radical e preliminar sobre o escopo do entendimento humano. É concluído, dessa (...) forma, que a estratégia cartesiana de reformulação científica, desde a sua juventude, depende de um inquérito sobre o entendimento puro, mas que este inquérito deve ser realizado e acabado, já que fornece os recursos para seguir em investigações ulteriores. Palavras-Chave: Descartes; Conhecimento; Metafísica; Fundacionalismo Semel in vita: considerations on the brevity of the Cartesian foundational project Abstract: The objective of this work is to explore the perenniality and meaning of the expression semel in vita for the philosophy of Descartes. Through a carefully analysis of all occurrences of this formulation within the Cartesian corpus, this work seeks to show that semel in vita is a relevant rhetorical resource that is linked to the decisive moment of Cartesian philosophy to carry out a restructuring of knowledge starting from the radical and preliminary investigation on the scope of human understanding. It is thus concluded that the Cartesian strategy of scientific reformulation, from its youth, depends on an inquiry into pure understanding, but that this inquiry must be carried out and finished, since it provides the resources to follow in further investigations. Key-words: Descartes; Knowledge; Metaphysics; Foundationalism Semel in vita: considérations sur la brièveté du projet fondamentaliste cartésien Résumé: Le but de ce travail est d’explorer la pérennité et la signification de l’expression semel in vita pour la philosophie de Descartes. Au moyen d’une analyse approfondie de toutes les occurrences de cette formulation dans le corpus cartésien, on cherche à mettre en évidence que semel in vita est une ressource rhétorique importante qui est liée au moment décisif de la philosophie cartésienne de réaliser une restructuration de la connaissance à partir de la recherche radicale et préliminaire sur l’étendue de la compréhension humaine. Il est donc conclu que la stratégie cartésienne de refonte scientifique, dès son plus jeune âge, dépend d’une enquête sur l’entendement pure, mais que cette enquête doit être menée et achevée, car elle fournit des ressources pour poursuivre des recherches ultérieures. Mots-clés: Descartes; Connaissance; Métaphysique; Fondationnalisme Data de registro: 23/12/2023 Data de aceite: 20/09/2023. (shrink)

The author reviews the literature in professional education that cites Ernest Becker’s work from the 1960s-70s. Some of Becker’s main ideas from his own writing on education are also reviewed. The purpose here is to establish a sketch, not a full-study, of the importance of Becker’s educational legacy and begin some critique of the biases of professional educators in regard to utilizing Becker’s work. This critical reflectivity is an appropriate model of Becker’s own integrative approach to knowledge and (...) learning. The aim is to ensure that future applications may be cautious to certain reductive tendencies and offer more diverse perspectives that are truer to Becker’s oeuvre and core ideas about human behavior and societies in general, and education specifically. The author concludes that the future of Education, formal and informal, would do well to take a long serious look at Becker’s work, especially as the world’s children, youths and adults are is becoming more and more vulnerable to frightening conditions, with cascading collapse of systems, including extinctions of all kinds already well underway in an era of global threats nearing extremes. Becker’s oeuvre is both realistic and idealistic, offering Education a way to radically improve to help make for a better world. (shrink)

This article reads Carlyle as a reader of Goethe to recover why he proclaimed Goethe as the `benignant spiritual revolutionist' of modernity and `first of the moderns'. As Goethe's first major English translator, Thomas Carlyle was also arguably the first to grasp the nature and purpose of Goethe's project to interpret modernity as a revolutionary epoch involving changes in consciousness, culture and material development. For Carlyle, Goethe's Faust presents modern consciousness and culture from the side of elegy - as the (...) search by an old man for eternal youth and an infinite world without constraints involving tragic loss. Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, by contrast, presents the same processes from the side of romantic quest, that is, from the perspective of a youth growing into adulthood, as looking into the future with infinite hope. Finally in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, Carlyle discerns that the radical form of this novel as a discontinuous narrative that embodies movement, change and incompletion enables Goethe to represent the social conditions of moderns as a spiritual challenge and historic achievement. Carlyle's critical perspicacity is evident not least in his choice of Goethe's works to translate as much as his own essays on Goethe's place in modern European letters. In his close reading of Goethe, Carlyle captures the symbolic form of modernity as incorporating three levels of revolutionary transformation of individual consciousness, of culture and of modernity as mythic condition consisting of tragic development, creative destruction and perpetual movement and change. Moderns then are challenged to become authors of their own texts and lives. Carlyle contrasts Goethe's achievement against other primary candidates for the title of modern spiritual revolutionist in ironically Goethean terms: Napoleon (Prometheus), Byron (Faust and Young Werther) and Voltaire (Mephistopheles). Thereafter, the older Carlyle puts aside his critical readings of Goethe to become his own Goethean authority on the modern condition, most notably in his most famous books, Sartor Resartus, The French Revolution, Chartism, On Heroes, and Past and Present. By reading Carlyle as a reader of Goethe we can begin to discern that Carlyle was not only an historian, biographer and political commentator of his own place and times but a critical theorist seeking to interpret the modern epoch, with and beyond Goethe. (shrink)

The debtor-creditor relation, which is at the heart of this book, sharpens mechanisms of exploitation and domination indiscriminately, since, in it, there is no distinction between workers and the unemployed, consumers and producers, working and non-working populations, between retirees and welfare recipients. They are all "debtors," guilty and responsible in the eyes of capital, which has become the Great, the Universal, Creditor.--from The Making of the Indebted Man Debt -- both public debt and private debt Has become a major concern (...) of economic and political leaders. In The Making of the Indebted Man, Maurizio Lazzarato shows that, far from being a threat to the capitalist economy, debt lies at the very core of the neoliberal project. Through a reading of Karl Marx's lesser-known youthful writings on John Mill, and a rereading of writings by Friedrich Nietzsche, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Michel Foucault, Lazzarato demonstrates that debt is above all a political construction, and that the creditor/debtor relation is the fundamental social relation of Western societies.Debt cannot be reduced to a simple economic mechanism, for it is also a technique of "public safety" through which individual and collective subjectivities are governed and controlled. Its aim is to minimize the uncertainty of the time and behavior of the governed. We are forever sinking further into debt to the State, to private insurance, and, on a more general level, to corporations. To insure that we honor our debts, we are at once encouraged and compelled to become the "entrepreneurs" of our lives, of our "human capital." In this way, our entire material, psychological, and affective horizon is upended and reconfigured. How do we extricate ourselves from this impossible situation? How do we escape the neoliberal condition of the indebted man? Lazzarato argues that we will have to recognize that there is no simple technical, economic, or financial solution. We must instead radically challenge the fundamental social relation structuring capitalism: the system of debt. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Prelude to the Special Issue of the Journal of Aesthetic Education on Children’s LiteratureEllen Handler Spitz, Guest Editor (bio)When Professor Pradeep A. Dhillon, editor of the Journal of Aesthetic Education, suggested to me one day that I might guest edit a special issue of the journal devoted to the topic of children’s literature, my initial reticence was toppled and my sense of resolve buoyed as I began to fantasize (...) with billowing excitement about just how this might be done. First, I dreamt up the image of guest editor as bountiful hostess—setting out delectable dishes in an elegantly appointed banquet before the readers of this journal. That metaphor faded, however, despite Maria Tatar’s eloquent reminder to us in these pages that gastronomy has frequently and salubriously been juxtaposed with reading. I could not help worrying (even though children vociferously protest the logic of this problem) that one cannot have one’s cake and eat it too. Therefore, switching to music, I began to imagine the editor as conductor of a highly select ensemble of musicians, all gifted with glorious well-seasoned voices. They might perform a concert (recorded for posterity, of course) of pieces aimed at an audience of those who care passionately about aesthetics, education, literature, and above all about children, and at those who, perhaps with tenderness, still recall their own childhood reading.But how to accomplish this in practical terms? Well, I reasoned, I would simply invite a group of distinguished senior scholars who, having achieved their reputations in related fields and having written on other subjects as well, have published highly significant works pertaining to children’s literature. Each person would contribute a composition in his or her own voice, and there would be complete freedom, carte blanche, no holds barred—the only constraint being page numbers. Would the results turn out to be harmony or cacophony? Well, I speculated, if each voice were finely tuned, resonant, and clear, whether treble or bass, forte or pianissimo, the outcome—although [End Page 1] unpredictable in terms of specifics—would, unquestionably, be musical. But that, dear reader, is ultimately for you to judge, for you have now heard precisely how this issue came into being and will, we hope, read on. Each author I asked responded to my call with alacrity and, in his or her original style and tone, made my task as conductor a perfect pleasure.We offer you a work in three parts. First, you will encounter two melodious and euphonious pieces, contributed respectively by Marina Warner (“Out of an Old Toy Chest”) and Maria Tatar (“From Bookworms to Enchanted Hunters: Why Children Read”). Here, the overarching themes of children’s play and make believe are set up, analyzed, and explored. Playing and reading are placed side by side, as well as reasons why children love to read and how they are variously exhorted, extolled, and even occasionally excoriated by adults for doing so.Our second movement consists of three apparently unrelated motifs, contributed in turn by Gareth Matthews (“Philosophical Adventures in the Lands of Oz and Ev”), Seth Lerer (“Style and the Mole: Domestic Aesthetics in The Wind in the Willows”), and myself (“Ethos in Steig’s and Sendak’s Picture Books: The Connected and the Lonely Child”). Actually, however, these essays are not unrelated, for each motif arises from a particular mode of interpretation grounded in turn in philosophy, in literary history and theory, and in psychology. The works considered are all by notable writers for children: L. Frank Baum, Kenneth Grahame, William Steig, and Maurice Sendak.For our grand finale, we offer two sonorous, seriously challenging contributions, one by Jack Zipes (“Why Fantasy Matters Too Much”) and the other by Eliza T. Dresang and Bowie Kotrla (“Radical Change Theory and Synergistic Reading for Digital Age Youth”). These works grapple with contemporary matters, with fantasy, with technology, and with “radical change” as these can be discerned in the literature, imagery, and general cultural lives of today’s and even, quite possibly, of tomorrow’s children. Gesturing toward the future even more strikingly, we conclude this work with a flourishing coda in the actual voice of a living child... (shrink)

Quality-of-life policing, responsive to the concerns of urban communities, presents a profound paradox. On the one hand, the collateral effects of drug use, especially in public and in racially fragmented, low-income communities, result in levels of crime and fear of crime that renders the communities almost uninhabitable; on the other, the collateral effects of policing drug crime, for these same communities, destroy the community's human fabric. A "new" generation of legal scholars have embraced and transformed the Broken Windows model of (...) policing urban communities. These theorists share a "social norms"perspective: they suggest that law's direct threat of imposing sanctions is not the sole means of constraining conduct. A variety of other devices, including non-legal, "social" norms, may supplement the law's coercive power. The social norms "take" on the Broken Windows argument is that public low-level crime undermines the social structures of local communities. Inner city blight sends a distinct message: that community members reject or ignore norms supporting law-abiding behavior in favor of norms supporting law-breaking. Accordingly, social norms theorists advocate empowering police and local communities through a variety of traditional and newly minted public order offenses (such as anti-loitering statutes and youth curfews) as means of attacking high crime in urban and predominantly minority neighborhoods. In this article, I take up the challenge of public order policing. My claim is that the sort of preventative policing social norms theorists advocate can and should be separated from reactive "investigative" policing directed at apprehending criminals. Separating preventative and investigative policing means that the police, as currently constituted, are the wrong people to engage in preventative policing. Instead, the appropriate people include municipal officials with no power to engage in investigation but who have the authority to enforce norms of public order. My proposal is to radically restructure the manner in which we think about the legitimacy of various policing practices and the type of authority the police wield. Our current focus on constitutional remedies for low-level police abuses has failed to ameliorate the justified resentment expressed by individuals and local communities subject to heightened amounts of increasingly invasive policing.The attempt to limit police authority through prospective constitutional (and other) norms that control their ability to search, seize, and interrogate suspects is properly confined to the police's investigative role. Limits do not work to constrain their ability to police public order and engage in crime prevention. Yet even at the investigative stage, the Court has already replaced the rule-based due-process model of authority with a series of role-based exceptions to the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments' constitutional requirements. Both role- and rule-based concepts of authority concern the proper scope of legitimate authority. Rule-based authority has its basis in adherence to the content of particular rules; role-based authority is based in the powers afforded individuals in particular roles of public authority. Whereas rule-based authority derives its legitimacy primarily from the government's right to promulgate norms, role-based authority gains legitimacy from the degree to which the official's role is matched to the circumstances triggering authority. (shrink)

It is difficult to find just one place to look for children and childhood in the American philosopher John Dewey’s work. This is not because he uses the terms so often, but because the concept of childhood pervades his opus in and through another set of terms—development, growth, experience, plasticity, habit, impulse, and education. In Dewey’s language, none of these terms mean quite what they mean in other thinkers’ language, and especially not in the language of the human development (...) theorists of the early twentieth century and after, who based their thinking on a monological, unidirectional developmental trajectory that could be applied at all levels of the evolutionary continuum. Dewey is an interactionist through and through, and thus all his terms should be understood as dialectical. He does not invoke the concept “child” without invoking the concept “adult,” nor does he describe anything that does not have a normative dimension, which by definition belies “pure” description. His is a language of possibility, and the limits of human possibility are incalculable. This is why the concept of childhood is so important in his work. In this text we present selections from two works, the first emerging at the sickening epicenter of the Great War, in 1916—a war in which youth was sacrificed to what he calls adult “infantilisms” on a historically unprecedented scale, and a war that, arguably, effectively suppressed the educational possibilities his work represents for the rest of the century. Democracy and Education is his magnum opus on education, and characteristically both garrulous and brilliantly pointed, maddeningly oblique and trenchantly critical, painfully dull and fitfully enthralling, explicitly conservative and implicitly radical. The next selections are from Human Nature and Conduct , published in 1922, when the orgiastic death-feast of the tyrants, the politicians, and their hosts of blind acolytes was over. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Radical Change Theory and Synergistic Reading for Digital Age YouthEliza T. Dresang (bio) and Bowie Kotrla (bio)Books with digital age characteristics... stimulate curiosity and foster community.—Elizabeth Lennox Keyser, 1999Today’s students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors.—Marc Prensky, 2001PrologueOne of our favorite books is McGillis’s The Nimble Reader: Literary Criticism and Children’s Literature.1 McGillis applies various literary theories—among them the New Criticism, structuralism, feminism, and postmodernism—to (...) much-loved, time-honored books such as E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web (1952), in each case coming up with a fresh interpretation of a well-known text. The Nimble Reader makes the point that the meaning of any object, experience, or creative endeavor can be evasive and changes according to the lens through which it is viewed. Theory uncovers, illuminates, reveals, explains, predicts, and adds value and dimensions to what otherwise might have been overlooked. [End Page 92]That is what we hope Radical Change Theory does—we hope that it stimulates thinking, brings new perspectives, and adds value to what is already recognized as an immense treasure: the body of children’s literature and the young (and old) readers who love and appreciate it. As an addition to the assortment of approaches McGillis covered, we anticipate that Radical Change Theory is a way to see the mosaic of contemporary children’s literature in a new light, to examine and explain some parts of it that may have gone unnoticed. We offer it as a way to think about contemporary youth in relation to their literature, and we suggest applying Radical Change Theory in retrospect in order to highlight and appreciate “radical” authors and illustrators of the past who wrote for “radical readers” in their times. Radical Change Theory is only one perspective among many, and we realize that the phenomena it addresses could be explained or augmented in other ways, as McGillis demonstrated.IntroductionThe 2008 Caldecott Award for the most outstanding picture book for children published in the United States in the previous year was presented to Brian Selznick, author and illustrator of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, which is hundreds of pages longer than an ordinary picture book.2 Approximately 300 of its 533 pages are wordless black and white sketches that tell the story—not illustrating the text but replacing it. Hugo Cabret is a twelve-year-old boy living in the walls of a Paris train station in 1931; he becomes involved in a mystery adventure with the pioneer silent film maker George Méliès, a fitting element for a largely visual book. Selznick notes that he thinks of the book as somewhere between a graphic novel, a picture book, and a film.3 Each sequence of drawings can itself become a miniature silent move if the reader employs a flipbook technique. Hugo Cabret offers a highly interactive reading experience with vivid visual appeal, intertextuality, and multiple layers of meaning. It also provides a dramatic departure from the typical picture-book tradition and joins a number of other radically changed books that have special appeal for digital age youth.While it was perfectly clear to almost everyone during the 1990s that technology was changing, almost no one acknowledged the concomitant change in a sizeable and growing cadre of handheld books for youth. Some of those who did notice expressed puzzlement and regret at the break from a more traditional form and format; others expressed curiosity. Some others sought explanations.4 One purpose of this essay is to provide one explanation for the nature and character of these “changed” books and to demonstrate that they are somewhat different from but firmly rooted in more traditional children’s literature.But not only are books changing—at least some young readers are as well. In the 1990s, as youth who were born in the late 1970s began to mature, [End Page 93] we, along with some other educators and scholars, noted what seemed to be a change from previous generations in how many youth approached thinking, learning, creating, and engaging with media, including reading handheld books. Various terms, including the net generation, digital natives... (shrink)