The chapter discusses the influence of utilitarianism on education. It begins by introducing the core principles of utilitarianism. The chapter then argues that it is possible to distinguish between two major strands within the utilitarian view of education: one that focuses on promoting the happiness of each individual, and the other on enhancing the happiness of the greatest number by creating facilitating social conditions for it. Each of these two strands is separately examined. The chapter also maintains that the second strand had a lasting impact on education that finds its clearest current expression in the emphasis on education’s role in economic development. Finally, the chapter suggests that reviving certain traditional forms of utilitarianism has significant potential to improve education.

This chapter is organized according to two complementary sections. The first examines ethical practice as an extension of liberal humanism, a series of operating assumptions that present select claims of discrete subjects and individualized responsibility. Liberal humanism colludes with capitalistic claims of value and a foregrounding of articulated rights over and above any semblance of collective justice. From this frame extend a series of research practices that “make sense” in particular ways and according to procedurized claims of ethical practice. Part two engages with an alternative ethical practice that is termed “relational materialism.” Relational materialism refuses the governing processes endemic to liberal humanism in favor of an affirmative ethical practice animated by transformative potential – the resistive assumption that we might become otherwise through generating a future yet unknown. Rather than solely describing or reconstituting the normative status quo (as is seen in conventional research), relationally materialist inquiry begins with an ethic of refusal such that we might experiment with alternative ways of living that are not governed by the ubiquitous claims of liberal humanism.

Considering the increasing privatization of public schools in the United States, the authors of this chapter utilize contractarianism to critique neoliberal practices. Textual evidence is drawn on to show the influence of contractarian arguments on neoliberal thinkers such as Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. After an explanation of the contractarianism of Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the authors show that the neoliberal versions of the social contract are both incompatible with the tradition writ large and internally inconsistent philosophically. Rather than a public characterized by privatization, and the undermining of public schools that results, the authors argue for a public in which responsibility, obligation, and freedom are not contradictory terms, and a vision of public schools in which teachers successfully bring about those ethical goals.

This chapter asks, How might racial justice be pursued in educational contexts? For example, do racial disparities in quality of treatment in schools require that all students experience the treatment previously reserved for the relatively (racially) advantaged, or should expectations be shifted toward some new standard for all? In order to better engage issues and appropriately address them with a mind to future interventions and continued progress, this chapter argues that it is necessary to clarify the confusions present in much of the discourse surrounding race and educational ethics.

In our contribution to the debate on African ethics and education, this chapter provides the reader with some insights into the interplay between African ethics and education through the fundamental principles of Ubuntu. Despite some of the criticism raised against Ubuntu as moral philosophy, this chapter shows how the principles of Ubuntu influence character formation in education in Southern Africa. It is through education that morally appropriate behavior is transmitted from one generation to the other. To avoid generalization on a culturally diverse continent like Africa, the chapter makes specific reference to the sub-Saharan countries of Zimbabwe and, to a lesser extent, Botswana and Zambia. The chapter claims that Ubuntu, as a conduit for moral development, has not been given adequate attention in the field of education. Ubuntu is important in creating the kind of citizens Africa needs, individuals who are critical thinkers, whose allegiance is to humanity rather than to personalities and localities. Transmitted through education, Ubuntu helps citizens to embrace democracy and diversity. Ubuntu principles of communalism, justice, love, humility, tolerance, and honesty can be used to address challenges besetting education in Africa and society in general and to promote national and human development.

In this chapter the author provides a summary of Colin Wilson’s new existentialism as distinguished from historical existential philosophies. Wilson’s “Outsider” becomes a prototype for freedom, in a heroic and individualistic vein. Next, the author examines Wilson’s emphasis on self-preoccupation and consciousness as a symptom of existentialism in general. Using the work of important Black existentialists, the author offers a relational rather than an individualist interpretation of new existentialism. By being concerned with social justice, the chapter utilizes what are known as pedagogies of discomfort and calls for critical action. In the third section, the chapter presents Whitehead’s rhythms of learning and radical empiricism of “style” as an alternative to Wilson’s outsider, who advances a mistaken Husserlian interpretation of Whitehead’s philosophy. Whitehead, alternatively, holds that experience is richer than consciousness achieved and accrued. Finally, in the last section, the author offers new existentialism’s revolutionary vision for a new university.

This chapter provides a rationale for, and outlines of, a democratic ethical framework for defining the moral responsibilities of school leaders working within political conditions of growing inequality, authoritarian state governments, and populist parental-rights movements. Facing these conditions, many leaders are tempted toward a position of liberal neutrality, a (false) removal of politics designed to minimize anger or retribution by parents and legislatures. A democratic, communal ethic orients the responsibilities of the school leader around democratic values, and the educational interests of the students. Moral responsibility requires leaders to embrace liberalism’s pluralism but also its strong egalitarianism, by educating students in both the hopeful and the tragic forms of knowledge and shared social existence that constitute the national democratic project.

African American teachers are in high demand in urban schools. Presupposing these spaces as operating within a matrix of domination for African Americans in the United States, in this chapter, two African American scholars of differing genders model womanist thinking as politic educational ethics and praxis. hooks, Fanon, and Lorde elucidate the Black subject’s ontological condition as a problem of spectatorship. Womanist theory responds to sociopolitical forces devaluing the self as minoritized subject. Through critical self-reflexivity that acknowledges the debilitating white normative gaze and the inner turmoil of its subjugation, womanist thinking offers a normative syntax of freedom. A womanist praxis of radical subjectivity and a pedagogy of love excavates one’s inner visions for oneself and for one’s students that engenders self-authorship.

Ireland's 30,987 Traveller population was officially recognised as an ethnic minority on 1 March 2017. It was the culmination of a long campaign by Travellers to have their identity, culture and unique social position recognised by the Irish state as constituting a separate ethnic group. Public recognition was a mark of respect towards an ethnic minority that has long experienced discrimination and racism in Irish society. While it was symbolically a historic moment, it did not resolve the problems of poverty and social inequality that are at the core of the marginalised status of Travellers in Ireland. Nor did recognition as a minority ethnic group represent a qualitative change in the Traveller community's social status. Travellers and Roma continue to experience discrimination and racism in their everyday lives, as the comment by Maria Quinlan (following) clearly illustrates. There are no official statistics regarding the number of Roma in Ireland but the population is estimated to be between 3,000 and 5,000 people.

The president of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, in a message for Traveller and Roma Day, 8 April 2021, declared:

Maria Quinlan (2021: 60), in a report entitled Out of the Shadows, quotes ironically:

Child-focused education programs have been developed in efforts to prevent child sexual abuse and to provide children who may already be experiencing abuse with strategies for seeking help. The design and delivery of these programs must be based on empirical evidence rather than ideology. Program evaluations have demonstrated that prevention education can provide children with knowledge and skills for responding to, and reporting, potential sexual abuse. Preschool and school-based programs are typically delivered to children in class groups via a series of lessons that convey core concepts and messages, and are best taught using engaging pedagogical strategies such as multimedia technologies, animations, theatre or puppet shows, songs, picture books and games. This chapter outlines the key characteristics of effective child sexual abuse prevention education and identifies directions for future research and practice.

The purpose of this chapter is to connect human movement theory with practice. Thus, the chapter answers the questions: What does human movement theory look like in practice? How can it be optimised for all children? Why is it vital for the advancement of health and wellbeing in childhood? The physical dimension is significant within children’s learning because it offers powerful and meaningful connections across all learning and development areas (Lynch, 2019). The socio-cultural perspective suggests that the curriculum ought to be connected to the child’s world and everyday interests (Arthur et al., 2020). Since children have a natural play structure, learning through movement heightens their interest.