Faculty Events

Past events

Public Lectures

Prof. John Haldane Lecture
Flourishing as an aim of Education: Opportunities and Challenges

Hosted by the Faculty of Education and Arts in collaboration with the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Ethics) and Faculty of Theology and Philosophy

One need not hold a religious view to think that as well as equipping pupils with knowledge and skills, education might seek to give or enable them to form some conception of the meaning or significance of life. Conjoined with notable failures to provide a credible alternative to traditional forms of moral education such considerations have contributed to a series of movements away from rules and principles, to values clarification, to a focus on character and virtue, and most recently to seeing the role of virtue as relating instrumentally and constitutively to leading a flourishing life. This approach offers the opportunity to give ethical formation a wide and integrative role in education, but it also faces significant challenges which need to be addressed before it can hope to be adopted across a range of educational contexts but particularly within schooling. These relate to the form and content of statements concerning human flourishing. The appeal to flourishing as an educational aim is difficult first and most abstractly because flourishing is a more complex and substantial notion than is generally recognised; and second, because in the context of contested ends and purposes appeals to flourishing face some of the same challenges as do older educational schemes.

Speaker Bio

John Haldane is Professor of the Philosophy of Education at ACU, and Professor of Virtue Theory in the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtue at the University of Birmingham. He is also Professor of Moral Philosophy Emeritus at the University of St Andrews, and Distinguished Affiliate Professor of Philosophy at Baylor University, Texas.

Event Details

When: Tuesday 15th of November from 4.20pm - 6.30pm AEDST
Where: The Peter Cosgrove Centre, Level 18, Tenison Woods House, Australian Catholic University North Sydney Campus (8-20 Napier St)
Attendance: In person

Drinks and light refreshments will be served from 5.45pm