Education Ethics as Existential Dialectics

Democracy is only possible through people who freely choose to commit themselves to an ethical way-of-being which enables them to communicate dialectically with their inner desires and with other individuals. To help make this possible, teachers ought to become existential advocates to assist students to grow and to have their desires and choices “cultivated” in a self-determining manner. This is educational ethics – the advocacy that teachers extend to students to exercise their existential freedom to reflect, deliberate, choose, and act what is good for themselves and their communities, as will be explained throughout this entry.

Introduction: The Discourse of Education

Education discourse, according to Richard Peters (1966, p. 91), primarily consists of “notions such as ‘improvement,’ ‘betterment,’ and ‘the passing on of what is worthwhile.’” As such, Peters explains in his book Ethics and Educationthat education necessarily requires “ethical foundations” in order to guide its...