Bloomsbury Cherishing and the Good Life of Learning: Ethics, Education, Upbringing (Bloomsbury Philosophy of Education)

How can we make children better? Better learners, better human beings The question is as old as the hills and intensified by modernity: global terror, bullying and violence in schools, not to mention youthful insolence to which we lack a collective response. Be good? scoffs the young millennial. What for? Curricular reform, radical inclusion, scientific enhancement: the book opposes these fashionable solutions. With a word like better as our focus of concern, it is argued that philosophy in its original sense a devotion to the ideal of wisdom rather than policy imperatives is urgently needed. How should we live? asked Aristotle, and his ideas still resonate: not by a rule book but by virtuous tendencies and habits. But his focus on the well-raised child as a candidate for moral education betrays a limited understanding of the possibilities of emotional transformation. How can we help children for whom the education of habits has been neglected or gone awry? For help with this question, Ruth Cigman turns to post-romantic thinkers, literary and psychoanalytical as well as philosophical. These bring a vision of what she calls relations of cherishing, and the books central claim is that we must cherish people wisely if we wish to guide them towards good lives. Review "Ruth Cigman develops a style of thinking that attempts to get to the pith of what may be most at stake for children inside and outside classrooms. Her book will be of special interest to teachers and parents who are sensitive to the singularity of... children and the daunting difficulty that their lives often present to themselves and to others... Cigman deftly exposes the misplaced confidence driving several currently favoured reform agendas. And she shows why helping young people to thrive may require us not to ward off troubling intuitions but (in Iris Murdoch's words, which she quotes) to 'complicate, alter and deepen' them. This is a rare and welcome kind of philosophical writing... engaged and engaging, deeply humane and vividly persuasive." --Joseph Dunne, Cregan Professor of Philosophy and Education, Emeritus, Dublin City University, Ireland "At a time when 'caring' has become the name of an activity, with no emotional content, it is useful to have the concept of cherishing introduced, as that which should define the relation between teacher and pupil ... Ruth Cigman powerfully and often movingly argues that nothing less will do. Her book ... is highly original, in being centred on the 'conversation' which she regards as the essence of teaching." --Baroness Mary Warnock, philosopher and author of An Intelligent Person's Guide to Ethics (1998) "I often disagree with the author, but there is no questioning her wit, the lucidity of her writing and the originality of her insights. An exhilarating read, unmissable for all lovers of educational philosophy." --Kristján Kristjánsson, Professor of Character Education and Virtue Ethics, School of Education, University of Birmingham, UK About the Author Ruth Cigman is Senior Research Fellow in Philosophy of Education at the Institute of Education, University College London, UK.