Parts one and two of this volume present the theoretical lenses used to study the social contexts of education. These include long-established foundations disciplines such as sociology of education and philosophy of education as well as newer theoretical perspectives such as critical race theory, feminist educational theory, and cultural studies in education. Parts three, four, and five demonstrate how these theoretical lenses are used to examine such phenomena as globalization, media, popular culture, technology, youth culture, and schooling. This groundbreaking volume (...) helps readers understand the history, evolution, and significance of this wide-ranging, often misunderstood, and increasingly important field of study. This book is appropriate as a reference volume not only for scholars in the social foundations of education but also for scholars interested in the cultural contexts of teaching and learning. It is also appropriate as a textbook for graduate-level courses in Social Foundations of Education, School and Society, Educational Policy Studies, Cultural Studies in Education, and Curriculum and Instruction. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 71-84 [Access article in PDF] Christian Views on Ritual Practice Society and Sacrament: The Anglican Left and Sacramental Socialism, Ritual as Ethics Nicholas GrovesLoyola University Introduction August in New York City is frequently a time of intense heat, where the congestion of city living kindles tempers to the breaking point. This is true in a special way in the tenements of the city, where people (...) without air-conditioning take raw anger and frustration into the streets. It was in this environment, in the tenements of the Lower East Side, that gang violence erupted in August of 1959. At least two young people were shot in gang-related "rumbles" and retaliation. Blacks and Puerto Ricans, already scrambling for the few available jobs society provided for them, squared off against each other. Police and the city of New York vowed more punishment, more arrests. (At this same time, Leonard Bernstein portrayed these struggles in terms of the love of Tony and Maria, but in "real life" it was "East Side Story" as much as "West Side Story.")In response to renewed war among his youth, the Episcopal priest, Fr. Kilmer Myers of St. Augustine's Chapel (now St. Augustine's Parish) also took to the streets. Canceling the church's usual patronal festival and carnival, he led his people in a procession through the streets of his neighborhood, with clergy clad in the solemn vestments of the Eucharist, with banners, incense, and hymns. His purpose: to pray and to plead that the killing stop, and that the authorities see the agony of the young who had abandoned an almost three-year "truce" he had helped work out with youth leaders between rival gangs.Myers wrote later in his book, Light the Dark Streets (Greenwich, Conn.: Seabury Press, 1957) about his ministry at St. Augustine's. In contrast to a city government and police department intent on further punishment as a solution to gang problems, Fr. Myers posed the presence of people who lived and worked with the young people and a community in desperate need: A parish such as this... so filled with darkness, defeat... and a longing for victory.... We think of next year and the year after that. We are not sure that we have the strength or that we can ask for it. The shouts in the street become an unending shout. The angry cry mingles with music from the tenement.... [End Page 71] There is the scream of the police siren. Will it stop in the block? There is the uncertainty at each youth affair. Will someone be shot or stabbed? (p. 96) In 1981, Bishop Desmond Tutu challenged the government of South Africa to abandon its policy of apartheid, a challenge he and others later won. But at that point, with any kind of victory far from certain, he confronted his opponents with words about his own spiritual commitment: I want to say that there is nothing the government can do to me that will stop me from being involved in what I believe is what God wants me to do. I do not do it because I like doing it. I do it because I am under what I believe to be the influence of God's hand. I cannot help it when I see injustice. I cannot keep quiet. I will not keep quiet, for as Jeremiah says, when I try to keep quiet, God's word burns like a fire in my breast. But what is it that they can ultimately do? The most awful thing that they can do is to kill me, and death is not the worst thing that can happen to a Christian. (Quoted in S. DuBoulay, Tutu: Voice of the Voiceless [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988], pp. 174-175.) How does ritual involve ethics? I would like to present for your consideration one example of such an intersection: the witness of what some have called the "Anglican Left" in both Britain and the United States, or what the historian Peter Jones has named "sacramental socialism... (shrink)

Background and PurposeMany critically ill patients in intensive care units (ICUs) are unable to communicate their wishes about goals of care, particularly about the use of life-sustaining treatments. Surrogates and clinicians struggle with medical decisions because of a lack of clarity regarding patients’ preferences, leading to prolonged hospitalizations and increased costs. This project focused on the development and implementation of a tool to facilitate a better communication process by (1) assuring the early identification of a surrogate if indicated on admission (...) and (2) clarifying the decision-making standards that the surrogate was to use when participating in decision making. Before introducing the tool into the admissions routine, the staff were educated about its use and value to the decision-making process.Project and MethodsThe study was to determine if early use of a simple method of identifying a patient’s surrogate and treatment preferences might impact length of stay (LOS) and total hospital charges. A pre- and post-intervention study design was used. Nurses completed the surrogacy information tool for all patients upon admission to the neuroscience ICU. Subjects (total N=203) were critically ill patients who had been on a mechanical ventilator for 96 hours or longer, or in the ICU for seven days or longer. The project included staff education on biomedical ethics, critical communication skills, early identification of families and staff in crisis, and use of a simple tool to document patients’ surrogates and previously expressed care wishes. Data on hospital LOS and hospital charges were collected through a retrospective review of medical records for similar four-month time frames pre- and post-implementation of the assessment tool.ResultsSignificant differences were found between pre- and post-groups in terms of hospital LOS (F=6.39, p=.01) and total hospital charges (F=7.03, p=.009).ConclusionsProject findings indicate that the use of a simple admission assessment tool, supported by staff education about its completion, use, and available resources, can decrease LOS and lower total hospital charges. The reasons for the difference between the pre- and post-intervention groups remain unclear. Further research is needed to evaluate if the quality of communications between patients, their legally authorized representatives, and clinicians—as suggested in the literature—may have played a role in decreasing LOS and total hospital charges. (shrink)

The setting is a garden in Elysium. The sun is shining. A rich verdant lawn is surrounded by flower beds and flowering bushes, with a grove of magnificent trees behind. Beyond, a large lake and in the distance high mountains. Five comfortable garden chairs are placed in the shade of some trees. There is a low table on which are placed a wine decanter and glasses, three of which are half full. Richard, Jill and Frank are deep in discussion.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Truth in Tragedy:When are we Entitled to Doubt a Character's Words?A. Maria Van Erp Taalman KipIn Sophocles' Electra 563–76 Electra explains what happened at Aulis. Because Agamemnon had shot a stag in Artemis' grove and boasted of his deed, the goddess demanded the sacrifice of his daughter. If he refused, the Greeks would not be allowed to leave Aulis, either to go home or to sail to Troy. Thus, (...) Electra assures her mother, he was forced to make the sacrifice, "under sore constraint and with sore reluctance" (tr. Jebb, Sophocles ad loc).The same version of the story is found in the Cypria(Davies, Fragmenta 32, 55–63), but Sophocles adds a new detail: the impossibility of going home. This is a significant addition. According to the Cypria, Agamemnon could have renounced the war in order to save Iphigeneia, but this solution was not open to his Sophoclean namesake, since refusal meant the Greeks were doomed to remain at Aulis, more or less as prisoners. In this way, we are given to understand that for Sophocles' Agamemnon there was in effect no alternative. This considerably lessens his guilt, while Clytaemnestra is largely deprived of what might have been a righteous motive for her deed. The other motive, her adulterous love, now carries all the weight. But is what Electra says true? Or, to be more precise: are the audience meant to accept her information as true?A number of scholars have answered this question in the negative and it may be useful to begin by examining their arguments. In his article with the telling title "A Defence of Sophocles" J. T. Sheppard asks: "What if the story... were false? 'They tell me...,' she says (566). But what if it were not true? What if Agamemnon was a criminal?" (7). J. H. Kells (Electra), in his general introduction to 566–633, ridicules the whole story as recounted by Electra: "This was the popular belief as to how such unpleasantnesses as Ajax's madness and the Greeks' detention at Aulis came about. But did Sophocles expect an intelligent person to believe it? I do not think so, since in Ajax, in which such causes of Ajax's madness are ventilated, we are also given a behind–the–scenes picture [End Page 517] of the goddess concerned in action (Ajax 1–133), and there we see that the madness of Ajax was in fact inspired by no such divine jealousy: it was simply to prevent Ajax from killing the Greek leaders (51)—an aim which he conceived through no divine infatuation, but because he was angry over the bestowal of the arms of Achilles (41)."Kells' comment on 573 is also noteworthy: : did any intelligent Greek really believe this?" and on 566ff: " 'as I am told.' Does not she know why her father sacrificed her sister?" In the same vein R. P. Winnington–Ingram (Sophocles 220) says that "Electra's account of Aulis, admittedly second–hand ( 566), is the story she would like to believe; and we can hardly suppose that Sophocles wishes us to take it too seriously as an explanation of events." In a note he refers to Kells and adds: "If Sophocles had been concerned to give a serious account of Agamemnon's dilemma, he would hardly have trivialized it in the way he does. The fact remains that Agamemnon did kill his daughter."1On closer inspection, these arguments are not actually arguments at all. Both Kells and Winnington–Ingram appear to be very certain about Sophocles' intentions and expectations, but neither of them presents any convincing reason to disbelieve Electra's account. Sophocles does not give them what they want and therefore they assume that he is not serious. Winnington–Ingram may consider Agamemnon's dilemma trivial, but it makes no sense to say that Sophocles trivialized it, as if it were something real that existed outside of myth. For the purpose of this play, the reason for Artemis' demand was not relevant, but the sanction was. And what about Kells' rhetorical questions? He does not explain why an "intelligent person" or an "intelligent Greek" would disbelieve what Electra says. Because it is... (shrink)

In 1956, a few writings of Wittgenstein that he didn't publish in his lifetime were revealed to the public. These writings were gathered in the book Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (1956). There, we can see that Wittgenstein had some discontentment with the way philosophers, logicians, and mathematicians were thinking about paradoxes, and he even registered a few polemic reasons to not accept Gödel’s incompleteness theorems.

Aristotle's definition of the soul should be interpreted as: 'the soul is the entelechy of a natural body that serves as its instrument'.

The criminal law presently distinguishes between actions and omissions, and only rarely proscribes failures to avert consequences that it would be an offense to bring about. Why? In recent years it has been persuasively argued by both Glover and Bennett that, celeris paribus, omissions to prevent a harm are just as culpable as are actions which bring that harm about. On the other hand, and acknowledging that hitherto “lawyers have not been very successful in finding a rationale for it,” Tony (...) Honoré has sought to defend the law's differential treatment. He proposes a “distinct-duties theory” that in addition to the general duties we owe to everyone, we also owe distinct duties to a more limited collection of people and associations, specified by features of our relationship with them. Where a distinct duty holds, breach by omission may well be no better than breach by positive action. But absent a distinct duty, omissions, per Honoré, are less culpable. They are mere failures to intervene and improve or rectify things, whereas actions are positive interventions which make things worse. And, thus, the law has good reason to differentiate between them. (shrink)

Epistemic trust is an unacknowledged feature of medical knowledge. Claims of medical knowledge made by physicians, patients, and others require epistemic trust. And yet, it would be foolish to define all epistemic trust as epistemically responsible. Accordingly, I use a routine example in medical practice to illustrate how epistemically responsible trust in medicine is trust in epistemically responsible individuals. I go on to illustrate how certain areas of current medical practice of medicine fall short of adequately distinguishing reliable and unreliable (...) processes because of a failure to systematically evaluate health outcomes. I conclude by articulating the devastating obstacles to the consilience assumption, which takes intellectual character as the standard for epistemic responsibility. (shrink)

As we know, the category of practice is a focal point in Marxist philosophy. The revolutionary upheaval in philosophy carried out by Marxism involves the interpretation of the essence of practice and its role in the process of cognition. In the fifty years of the development of Soviet philosophy, much has been done to clarify the nature of this problem, to render it concrete and work it out. The development of Marxist philosophical thought in other countries has also yielded much.

The work _De spiritu_ is an important but neglected work by Aristotle. It clearly shows for the first time that Aristotle assumed a special body as the ‘instrument’ of the soul. By means of this soul/body the soul forms the visible body of plants, animals and human beings.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Aristotle on the Etruscan Robbers:A Core Text of "Aristotelian Dualism"Abraham P. Bos (bio)1. A Non-Platonic Dualism in Aristotle's Lost WorksThe Soul of a Mortal on Earth is not "At Home," says Aristotle in his dialogue Eudemus. The story about the mantic dream of the expatriate Eudemus and his expectation that he "will return home"1 is well known. It makes clear that, in Aristotle's view, the death of the human (...) individual should be interpreted as the soul's "return to its homeland."2 This is strongly suggested by "the revelation of Silenus" which Plutarch (first century CE) passes down in a literal quotation from the Eudemus.3 It contains the theme of human life on earth as a punishment (timôria). The motif of human life as a punishment is central to two texts by Iamblichus (250-325 CE) and Augustine (354-430 CE), which are usually connected with Aristotle's Protrepticus.4 I want to examine these texts in more detail here. My intention in the following exposition is to propose a non-Platonistic explanation of these texts. In my opinion they have wrongly been read as testimonies of a "Platonistic" phase in Aristotle. The existence of such a phase in Aristotle's development has never been proved. Besides, the interpretation of these texts suffered from the fact that [End Page 289] Aristotle's De anima had also been explained in an unhistorical way since Alexander of Aphrodisias in the third century CE.2. Revising the Modern View of AristotleWe have to make a different assessment of Aristotle's contribution to the discussion on the soul compared with what was current until recently. For after W. Jaeger5 and F. Nuyens6, modern scholars became inclined to leave Aristotle's dialogues out of consideration, because they regarded them as "Platonizing." But a fundamental correction is necessary on this point.7 Jaeger led modern Aristotle studies in a wrong direction by assuming a sharp distinction between Aristotle's lost dialogue Eudemus and his surviving treatise De anima. Although nowadays Jaeger's theory for many scholars is something of a dead horse, nevertheless a real alternative has not been proposed. We still have to get rid of the consequences of the Jaegerian paradigm and develop a unitary interpretation of Aristotle's entire oeuvre. Even more consistently than O. Gigon has already done,8 we should assume that Aristotle's lost works and his surviving biological writings and De anima did not propose two (or more) different psychological theories but one and the same. Because this one Aristotelian psychology was a non-Platonistic but nevertheless dualistic psychology, we have much more reason than could be recognized in the past to assume Aristotelian influence on this discussion.On one essential issue Aristotle disagreed with his teacher Plato: the soul,9 more particularly the indissoluble bond of the soul with a body. Aristotle radically and [End Page 290] consistently argued for the distinction between nous and psychè.10 For Aristotle the nous-in-act is always wholly incorporeal. But he considered it characteristic of the soul that it cannot carry out its functions "without body."11However, the crucial question is: what body does Aristotle mean when he says that the soul cannot perform its specific activities "without body"? Jaeger and Nuyens were wholly convinced that Aristotle was referring to the visible, external body of a human being, animal, or plant. Hence they saw a yawning gap between Aristotle's views in De anima and his position in the dialogue the Eudemus. In the Eudemus Aristotle had clearly argued that the soul can perform its own functions very well, indeed better, without the galling and oppressive visible body.12 But in De anima II 1, in his famous definition of "the soul," Aristotle says that the soul is inextricably bound up with a "sôma physikon organikon."13 Jaeger and Nuyens, following an almost unanimous tradition since Alexander of Aphrodisias in the third century CE, interpreted this sentence in the sense that the soul is the formal principle or entelechy of an "organic body" or a "natural body equipped with organs," i.e., the visible body... (shrink)

The partitions of a given set stand in a well known one-to-onecorrespondence with the equivalence relations on that set. We askwhether anything analogous to partitions can be found which correspondin a like manner to the similarity relations (reflexive, symmetricrelations) on a set, and show that (what we call) decompositions – of acertain kind – play this role. A key ingredient in the discussion is akind of closure relation (analogous to the consequence relationsconsidered in formal logic) having nothing especially to do (...) with thesimilarity issue, and we devote a final section to highlighting some ofits properties. (shrink)

We apply an online optimization process based on machine learning to the production of Bose-Einstein condensates. BEC is typically created with an exponential evaporation ramp that is optimal for ergodic dynamics with two-body s-wave interactions and no other loss rates, but likely sub-optimal for real experiments. Through repeated machine-controlled scientific experimentation and observations our ’learner’ discovers an optimal evaporation ramp for BEC production. In contrast to previous work, our learner uses a Gaussian process to develop a statistical model of the (...) relationship between the parameters it controls and the quality of the BEC produced. We demonstrate that the Gaussian process machine learner is able to discover a ramp that produces high quality BECs in 10 times fewer iterations than a previously used online optimization technique. Furthermore, we show the internal model developed can be used to determine which parameters are essential in BEC creation and which are unimportant, providing insight into the optimization process of the system. (shrink)