The Question of Conscience: Higher Education and Personal Responsibility
Most of the claims about the purposes and achievements of higher education are irreducibly individualistic: it will change your life, through conversion or confirmation of faith, by improving your character, by giving you marketable “abilities,” by making you a better member of the community, or by being simply “capable” of operating more effectively in the contemporary world. All of these qualities scale up, of course, but in differing ways.

David Watson explores the question of what higher education sets out to do for students through a number of lenses, including the “evolutionary” stages of modern university history, the sense participants and observers try to make of them, and a collection of “purposes,” or intended personal transformations. The resulting combinations are clustered around major questions about the role of universities for their students, and in society at large. He concludes by testing claims about the role of higher education in developing varieties of personal responsibility. The Question of Conscience identifies and explores how varied these claims have been over the long history of the higher enterprise, but also how strong and determined they invariably are.
1117047272
The Question of Conscience: Higher Education and Personal Responsibility
Most of the claims about the purposes and achievements of higher education are irreducibly individualistic: it will change your life, through conversion or confirmation of faith, by improving your character, by giving you marketable “abilities,” by making you a better member of the community, or by being simply “capable” of operating more effectively in the contemporary world. All of these qualities scale up, of course, but in differing ways.

David Watson explores the question of what higher education sets out to do for students through a number of lenses, including the “evolutionary” stages of modern university history, the sense participants and observers try to make of them, and a collection of “purposes,” or intended personal transformations. The resulting combinations are clustered around major questions about the role of universities for their students, and in society at large. He concludes by testing claims about the role of higher education in developing varieties of personal responsibility. The Question of Conscience identifies and explores how varied these claims have been over the long history of the higher enterprise, but also how strong and determined they invariably are.
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The Question of Conscience: Higher Education and Personal Responsibility

The Question of Conscience: Higher Education and Personal Responsibility

by David Watson
The Question of Conscience: Higher Education and Personal Responsibility

The Question of Conscience: Higher Education and Personal Responsibility

by David Watson

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Overview

Most of the claims about the purposes and achievements of higher education are irreducibly individualistic: it will change your life, through conversion or confirmation of faith, by improving your character, by giving you marketable “abilities,” by making you a better member of the community, or by being simply “capable” of operating more effectively in the contemporary world. All of these qualities scale up, of course, but in differing ways.

David Watson explores the question of what higher education sets out to do for students through a number of lenses, including the “evolutionary” stages of modern university history, the sense participants and observers try to make of them, and a collection of “purposes,” or intended personal transformations. The resulting combinations are clustered around major questions about the role of universities for their students, and in society at large. He concludes by testing claims about the role of higher education in developing varieties of personal responsibility. The Question of Conscience identifies and explores how varied these claims have been over the long history of the higher enterprise, but also how strong and determined they invariably are.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781782770268
Publisher: UCL IOE Press
Publication date: 02/06/2014
Series: Bedford Way Papers , #43
Pages: 172
Product dimensions: 6.60(w) x 9.40(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

David Watson is Professor of Higher Education Management at the the Institute of Education, University of London.

Table of Contents

Foreword—Theodore Zeldin
Frontispiece: What does the university do?
Preface: 'My trade' and why it matters
1. What does higher education do? An historical and philosophical overview
2. The question of conscience
3. The question of character
4. The questions of calling, craft, and competence
5. The question of Citizenship
6. The questions of conversation and capability
7. Higher Education membership: Terms and conditions
8. Higher Education and personal responsibility
References
List of websites
Index
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