Cherishing and the Good Life of Learning

Ruth Cigman is Honorary Senior Research Associate in Philosophy of Education at IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society, University College London, UK.

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.

• Series Editor’s ForewordAcknowledgementsIntroductionPart I: We Need to Talk About Children1. 1. A Sense of Moral Crisis2. 2. Ministering to the Good Part II: Enhancing Children3. 3. Should We Try to Make Children Happy? 4. 4. Should We Equip Children for Twenty-First-Century Life? 5. 5. Should we Promote Flourishing through Virtue? 6. 6. Should we Foster Respect through Inclusion? Part III: Cherishing Children7. 7. Humanness and the Difficulty of Reality 8. 8. Aristotle and the Transformation of Emotion9. 9. An Ethic of CherishingBibliographyIndex