The authors have spent their lives in South Africa, are writing this book from and within a very particular context of compounded oppression, marginalisation and otherness. In many ways, apartheid has both damaged and provided us with the emotions and language through which to speak from and about harmful speech. That apartheid managed to succeed in its depravity for as long as it did, begins to provide some hint to the often-underestimated power and debilitation of speech and language. This book, therefore, is not only an interpretation and analysis of what a philosophy of education might have to offer in relation to the debate on free speech. Rather, it is also an attempt to make meaning of lived experiences – its encounters, it conflicts and its harms – so that this debate is extended beyond conceptual deliberations and into a realm of human and humane dialogue for the sake of seeing and knowing one another. The authors are intent upon understanding the arguments—both for and against freedom of speech—for the purpose of what makes educational sense. In short, the book questions whether constraining any form of speech would create conditions for control and manipulation that affect pedagogical encounters adversely. If encounters were to remain justifiable, ways should be found to undermine a restriction on free speech rather than encouraging the advocacy of constrained free speech within pedagogical encounters. The authors raise questions about whether an argument for free speech can ensure more durable and justifiable pedagogical encounters in which the rights of teachers and students to exercise their rights to uncensored free speech should and would never be violated.

This book examines how democratic education is conceptualised by exploring understandings of emotions in learning. The authors argue that emotion is both an embodiment and enhancement of democratic education: that rationality and emotion are not separate entities, but exist on a continuum. While democratic education would not exist if it were incommensurate with reason, making judgements about the human condition could not happen without invoking emotion. Synthesising Muslim scholarship with the perspectives of the Western world, the book draws on scholars such as Ibn al-Arabi, Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Fazlur Rahman to offer an enriched and expanded notion of democratic education. This engaging and reflective work will be of interest and value to students and scholars of educational philosophy and cultural studies.

This book argues for renewed understandings of academic activism, understandings that conceive of the ideas, arguments and scholarship of the academe as embedded within the practices of what the academy does. It examines why and how a renewed notion of academic activism informs a philosophy of higher education specifically in relation to teaching and learning. The book focuses on the theories and practices of teaching and learning, in particular how such pedagogical actions are guided by social, political and cultural influences outside of the university as a higher education institution. The authors advocate for a living philosophy of higher education that is commensurate with real actions and imaginary fictions of what constitutes higher education and what remains in becoming for the discourse. With a focus on South African social justice education, the book imagines pathways for academic activism to manifest in revolutionised pedagogical actions or actions that bring into contestation what already exists with the possibility for the cultivation of renewal.

This book extends liberal understandings in and about democratic citizenship education in relation to university pedagogy, more specifically higher teaching and learning. The authors’ argument is in defence of cultivating humanity through (higher) educational encounters on the basis of virtues that connect with the idea of love. Unlike romantic and erotic love, the book examines love in relation to educational encounters whereby humans or citizens can engage autonomously, deliberatively andresponsibly, yet lovingly. The rationale for focussing on the notion of philia (love) in educational encounters, the authors argue, is that doing so allows our current understandings of such encounters to be expanded beyond mere talk of reasonable engagements—autonomous action, deliberative iterations, and simple action—toward emotive enactments that could enhance human relations in educational encounters.

The Thinking University Expanded considers how the university can be extended and developed to an institution of play that becomes a gateway to new compositions and enactments of opportunities and happiness for university academics and students alike. A university of and in continuous play can shape the public sphere in ways that reimagine both the epistemological and political, and the metaphysical and the ethical. Without abandoning the university’s emphasis on thinking, the book examines the prospects of opening the university to ‘a new, possible use’. The singular outcomes-based lens of seeing higher education distorts the humane and ethical nuance of what a university can potentially do and aspire towards. For this reason, the book intends to find a new use for the idea of a university – one that is responsible and responsive in both its pursuit of the truth and being open to different kinds of truth, as made manifest in diverse contexts and life-worlds. This book will be of great interest for academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the field of higher education.

How do children determine which identity becomes paramount as they grow into adolescence and early adulthood? Which identity results in patterns of behaviour as they develop? To whom or to which group do they feel a sense of belonging? How might children, adolescents and young adults negotiate the gap between their own sense of identity and the values promoted by external influences? The contributors explore the impact of globalization and pluralism on the way most children and adolescents grow into early adulthood. They look at the influences of media and technology that can be felt within the living spaces of their homes, competing with the religious and cultural influences of family and community, and consider the ways many children and adolescents have developed multiple and virtual identities which help them to respond to different circumstances and contexts. They discuss the ways that many children find themselves in a perpetual state of shifting identities without ever being firmly grounded in one, potentially leading to tension and confusion particularly when there is conflict between one identity and another. This can result in increased anxiety and diminished self-esteem. This book explores how parents, educators and social and health workers might have a raised awareness of the issues generated by plural identities and the overpowering human need to belong so that they can address associated issues and nurture a sense of wholeness in children and adolescents as they grow into early adulthood.

This book explores the role of the university in upholding democratic values for societal change. The chapters advocate for the moral virtue of democratic patriotism: the editors and contributors argue that universities, as institutions of higher learning, can encourage the creation of critical and patriotic citizens. The book suggests that non-violence, tolerance, and peaceful co-existence ought to manifest through pedagogical university actions on the basis of educators’ desire to cultivate reflectiveness, criticality, and deliberative inquiry in and through their academic programmes. In a way, universities can respond more positively to the violence on our campuses and in society if public and controversial issues were to be addressed through an education for democratic citizenship and human rights.