Amid a summer of remarkable and compelling professional sporting action, last week, Amanda Spielman, the Ofsted Chief Inspector, called on the government to do more to increase sport provision in schools. This call comes amid concerns across England that sport and physical education are being cut out of the school curriculum, as schools focus budgets... Continue Reading →
It is gratifying for us working in the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues to see how the newly-published Summary Report by the Department for Education on ‘Developing Character Skills in Schools’ (August, 2017) cites our work repeatedly as providing leading theoretical insights into character education in UK schools. Kudos for work well done is... Continue Reading →
It is often claimed that the world in which we live is full of cruelty, ruthlessness and violence. Media reports on violence among students often paint a bleak picture of teachers and the school environment struggling to cope with manifestations of aggression among young people. It was such a news story, which reported on an... Continue Reading →
Traditionally, moral or other virtues have been considered aspirations to personal excellence: to have cultivated a virtue – albeit imperfectly – is to have attained some higher human state. While regarding virtue and the virtuous in this normatively exalted way, however, it has also been common to esteem people for their so-called ‘spirituality’ or spiritual... Continue Reading →
During the week of 16th May 2016, the Jubilee Centre was delighted to welcome Blaine Fowers as a Distinguished Visiting Professor for 2016. Blaine, who is Professor of Counseling Psychology at the University of Miami, focuses his work on the contributions of Aristotle's ethics to a richer understanding of research and clinical practices in psychology... Continue Reading →
In the war to end all wars, it was the battle to end all battles. The date the offensive began, 1 July, was etched on to the collective memory for generations. Now 100 years have elapsed and other battles and place names associated with extraordinary British military endeavour have become engrained in the popular consciousness,... Continue Reading →
Role-modelling, especially of the kind that moral philosophers, moral psychologists and moral educationists define as learning from moral exemplars or exemplarity, has been achieving renewed prominence. The reasons for this development are probably varied, but it seems likely that they stem from declining trust in the ability of pure reasoning principles to enact lasting changes... Continue Reading →
Almost every week there is a story in the national press about the Internet that has moral implications. For example, in the last week, there have been stories about people facing criminal prosecution if they set up fake social networking accounts for abusive purposes (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-35712772); and police being unable to cope with levels of cyber-crime... Continue Reading →
In this blog posting, I will be asking you for your views and stories on a phenomenon that intrigues me: dramatic and sudden (in other words, ‘epiphanic’) moral conversions. On the road to Damascus, Saul – the rabid persecutor of early Christians – reportedly went through an experience that had a profound effect on his... Continue Reading →
virtue insight 