Kevin Gary

This chapter is concerned with the moral significance of boredom. Boredom is a problematic mood state that is causally correlated with several troublesome behaviors. While omnipresent in schools, boredom is seldom addressed explicitly. Schools do, however, offer a latent curriculum vis-à-vis boredom. Confronted with boredom, students are conditioned to do one of two things: first, escape boring circumstances, as much as possible, or second, resign themselves to boredom as an inevitable part of life. Both responses are problematic and avoid meaningful reflection on and engagement with this troubling mood state. In the chapter, I explore the nature of boredom (both situational and existential). I then turn to Albert Borgmann’s notion of a focal practice as a promising antidote to boredom. In Borgmann’s phenomenology of focal practices, I find resources for a pedagogy that begins to constructively address the perilous mood state of boredom.

Although the educational and psychological hazards of boredom are well documented, an increasing number of researchers have argued that boredom may be a helpful, rather than harmful, emotion for the growing individual. In this paper, we engage with this re-conception of boredom and explore its implications for contemporary education: Can boredom enhance student learning, or support certain forms of it? Can it be put to use in the classroom? What are the risks involved? In addressing these questions, we show that boredom can fulfil several important psychological functions under certain special conditions. At the same time, we argue that careful attention to the moral psychology of boredom reveals that it has significant disadvantages for helping students to develop a meaningful and fulfilling relationship to subject matter in the classroom. Against the backdrop of this analysis, we discuss the concept and experience of aspiration as a potential way of tempering and eventually obviating the psychological pitfalls of boredom. In the final section, we draw out several principles of an aspirational approach to grappling with boredom in education.

Moral education is an enduring concern for societies committed to the value of justice and the wellbeing of children. What kind of moral guidance do young people need to navigate the social world today? Which theories, perspectives, values, and ideals are best suited for the task? This volume offers educators insight into both the challenges and promises of moral education from a variety of ethical perspectives. It introduces and analyses several important developments in ethics and moral psychology and discusses how some key moral problems can be addressed in contemporary classrooms. In doing so, Moral Education in the 21st Century helps readers develop a deeper understanding of the complexities of helping young people grow into moral agents and ethical people. As such, researchers, students, and professionals in the fields of moral education, moral psychology, moral philosophy, ethics, educational theory, and philosophy of education will benefit from this volume

Though sensitivity to pedagogy infuses all of Søren Kierkegaard’s writings, Kierkegaard’s voice in education, and moral education specifically, is scant. This is striking considering the range and depth of his influence in philosophy and theology. Given the ethico-religious telos that animates Kierkegaard’s project, and the amazing variety of texts that illuminate and enact the existential journey into lived virtue, Kierkegaard offers a wealth of resources for pedagogies that aspire to cultivate virtue. Yet Kierkegaard does, as his pseudonym Johannas Climacus intends, create difficulties. Specifically, he exposes how difficult it is to become and remain virtuous. Moreover, he reveals how difficult it is to teach others how to become virtuous, all the while enacting a pedagogy that intends to do just that. In this essay I make a case for Kierkegaard’s indispensable contribution to a pedagogy that aims to impart virtue. Specifically, I examine the challenge the aesthetic sphere poses for virtue ethics, noting the interior moves that precede, undergird, and sustain the transition from the aesthetic to the ethical sphere. I then explore Kierkegaard’s pedagogical approach that aims to reach the aesthete.

At present liberal education is generally understood and justified as the acquisition of critical thinking skills and individual autonomy. Traditionally, however, the ultimate purpose of liberal education has been leisure. Freedom, it was thought, was not simply the result of critical thinking but also required the cultivation of leisure that involved a vigilant receptivity - a stillness from the busy world of work and the restive probing of a discursive mind. In this essay, Kevin Gary argues that the cultivation of leisure has been and ought to be an essential part of what constitutes a liberal education. Focused on interior freedom, leisure offers a valuable way of learning that ushers in an authentic freedom that a critical approach to learning and liberal education does not. Accordingly, it offers a valuable defense against the hegemonic world of work that defines and appraises one's value exclusively in terms of one's doing.