The Therapy of Education Philosophy, Happiness and Personal Growth

by Standish, Paul; Smeyers, Paul; Smith, Richard

• ISBN13: 9780230247093
• ISBN10: 0230247091
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-02-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

In recent years ideas about therapy have found their way increasingly into educational practice: there is Circle Time in the elementary school and a new emphasis on self-esteem, there is assertiveness training and stress management for adults, and the bookshop shelves are heavy with volumes on self-help. In a different vein, and since ancient times, education has itself often been thought of as a kind of therapy, at minimum a cure for bad intellectual and moral habits, and sometimes a progressive working on the self with philosophy its essential ally. Yet formal education today, with its compulsive fixation on assessment and league-tables, seems, ironically enough, to need therapy of its own. This book examines the many connections between education and therapy, critically but sympathetically. It brings to bear on areas of confusion and mystification the philosophical attention that has sometimes been thought of as potentially therapeutic and conducive to personal growth and flourishing.

Author Biography

PAUL SMEYERS is Professor of Education at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium.

RICHARD SMITH is Professor of Education at the University of Durham, UK.
 
PAUL STANDISH is Professor of Educational Studies, University of Sheffield, UK.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
PART I: THE KINDLY APOCALYPSE
Self-Esteem: The Inward Turn
Diffidence, Confidence and Self-belief
What Can be Said, What Can be Shown
Reading Narrative
Learning to Change
PART II: COMING TO TERMS
Practising Dying
Room for Thought
The Thoreau Strategy
A State of Abstraction: Knowledge and Contingency
Unfinished Business: Education Without Necessity
PART III: REDEEMING PHILOSOPHY, REDEEMING THERAPY
Beyond Cure
Narrative and Number: What Really Counts
Learning from Psychoanalysis
Enlarging the Enigma
Expectation of Return
Notes
References
Index