Adam Swift
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 264282 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Adam Swift |
| PRENOMES | Adam |
| SOBRENOME | Swift |
| ASSINATURA | SWIFT A |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of Oxford |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4116-176X |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 52 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 339 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 52 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1992 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2021 |
| ÍNDICE H | 10 |
The Political Morality of School Composition
This article presents a normative framework for the assessment of education policies and applies it to the issue of schools’ selecting their students on the basis of religious criteria. Such policies can be justified, and challenged, on many different grounds; public debate is not conducted in terms adequate to the task. The authors’ main objectives are to supplement with non-consequentialist considerations a recent, consequentialist, approach to…
Educational Goods Reconsidered
We gratefully reply to our five commentators, responding to their criticisms and comments under the following headings: parochialism and curriculum; rationality and truth; production and distribution; perfectionism, decision-making and disagreement; adultism and parents' interests; non-consequential educational goods; and self-education
Educational Goods
This is a brief summary of the book Educational Goods: Values, Evidence, and Decision-Making by Harry Brighouse, Helen F. Ladd, Susanna Loeb and Adam Swift. It provides the introduction to the present symposium on this book, which includes the ensuing contributions from Carey Bagelman, Randall Curren, Michael Hand, John Tillson and Winston Thompson, followed by a response from the authors
Distributive Values and Independent Values
This chapter introduces three distributive values relating to education: equality, adequacy, and benefiting the less advantaged; and introduces independent values -- such as childhood goods, and freedom of choice of residence and occupation -- which should be taken into account when making decisions about educational policy and practice.
School Autonomy and Parental Choice
This chapter looks at questions around school choice, and focuses particularly on charter schools and similar reform ideas. Three central questions are considered. Should policy makers deliberately keep the charter school sector small relative to the number of traditional public schools? Should most of the regulations that apply to public schools be waived for charter schools? And should the education system aggressively hold charter schools acco…
Achievement as an Educational Good
This chapter explains the idea of an achievement gap, and surveys the data available on how achievement is, in fact, distributed across various demographic groups. It also explores the place of the concept of achievement -- understood narrowly as performance on certain kinds of tests -- in the broader concept of educational goods.
Conclusion
The conclusion emphasizes the main themes of the book. The book aims to enrich the language and conceptual resources used by educational decision-makers; to alert decision-makers to difficult value trade-offs and help them think rigorously about them; and to help them understand better how careful consideration of values can improve the process of establishing what evidence is pertinent to a decision and how it is pertinent.
School Finance
This chapter illustrates the decision-making process by looking at three key decisions concerning financing: Should the central policy makers provide more funds to certain local governments than to others to compensate for differences in the cost of schooling or the needs of students? If so, how much more? Should local governments be allowed to supplement funds from the central government through taxes or other means? And should local governments…
Educational Goods
Combining Values and Evidence
This chapter outlines a process for responsibly combining values and evidence in educational decision-making: decision makers should identify the values in play, the key decisions relative to those values, assess the options in the light of the evidence and values, and establish the best policy in the circumstances.
School Accountability
Educational Goods
Dethroning Democratic Legitimacy
The chapter considers the contributions made by democratic legitimacy and social justice to the question of what may permissibly be enforced. According to the conventional view, democratic decisions forfeit their claim to permissible enforceability only when they are gravely unjust. That view is rejected here as unduly restrictive, with a “balancing” view proposed instead, according to which the two considerations need to be balanced on a case-by…
Family values reconsidered
It is wonderful to receive so much careful attention. But it’s also frustrating. Each paper poses important questions, and between them they cover a wide range of issues. It is challenging, on such big topics, and in so few words, simultaneously to set the record straight, to identify the various objections posed by our critics, and to respond to them in a way likely to advance our collective understanding of the issues. Still, here goes
Educational goods and values
This article articulates a framework suitable for use when making decisions about education policy. Decision makers should establish what the feasible options are and evaluate them in terms of their contribution to the development, and distribution, of educational goods in children, balanced against the negative effect of policies on important independent values. The article articulates a theory of educational goods by reference to six capacities…
Media Economics
Family Values
Engaging, Persuading, and Entertaining Citizens
This paper draws upon public sphere theories and the “mediatization of politics” debate to develop a mapping of the Australian political public sphere, with particular reference to television. It discusses the concept of a “political public sphere,” and the contribution of both non-traditional news media genres, such as satirical television and infotainment formats, to an expanded conception of the political public sphere. It considers these ques…
Rawls on Ideal and Nonideal Theory
Ideal and Nonideal Theory
This article begins by setting out Rawls's conception and defense of ideal theory as a necessary precursor to the kind of nonideal theory that can guide action in the real world. It then evaluates the critique of those, such as Amartya Sen, who insist that knowing what an ideally just society would look like is simply not helpful for that purpose. Having also addressed the complaint that the Rawlsian approach is ideological, and hence worse than …
The Promise of Computational Journalism
Computational journalism involves the application of software and technologies to the activities of journalism, and it draws from the fields of computer science, the social sciences, and media and communications. New technologies may enhance the traditional aims of journalism, or may initiate greater interaction between journalists and information and communication technology (ICT) specialists. The enhanced use of computing in news production is …
Do comprehensive schools reduce social mobility?1
This paper investigates the claim that the shift from a selective to a comprehensive school system had a deleterious effect on social mobility in Great Britain. Using data from the National Child Development Study, we compare the chances, for both class and income mobility, of those who attended different kinds of school. Where media attention focuses exclusively on the chances for upward mobility of those children from lowly origins who were (or…
Educational Equality versus Educational Adequacy
Some theorists argue that rather than advocating a principle of educational equality as a component of a theory of justice in education, egalitarians should adopt a principle of educational adequacy. This paper looks at two recent attempts to show that adequacy, not equality, constitutes justice in education. It responds to the criticisms of equality by claiming that they are either unsuccessful or merely show that other values are also important…
Legitimate Parental Partiality
Educational Goods
In Educational Goods, two philosophers and two social scientists address this very question. They begin by broadening the language for talking about educational policy: “educational goods” are the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that children develop for their own benefit and that of others; “childhood goods” are the valuable experiences and freedoms that make childhood a distinct phase of life. Balancing those, and understanding that not all of…
The Value of Philosophy in Nonideal Circumstances
Against the Odds? Social Class and Social Justice in Industrial Societies
What is the relation between social class and social justice? This is currently a matter of public as well as academic controversy. While nobody would deny that the distribution of rewards in industrial societies is unequal, there is sharp disagreement about whether this inequality can be justified. Some see existing patterns of social mobility as evidence of inequality of opportunity. Others regard them as meritocratic, simply reflecting the dis…
Legitimate Parental Partiality
The Problem of Order
Many Americans despair that the glue that once held American society together has since come undone. Yet, as Dennis Wrong shows, our generation is not alone in fearing a breakdown of social ties and a descent into violent conflict. Analyzing such thinkers as Hobbes, Rousseau, Freud, Mead, Parsons, Marx, Durkheim, and Weber, Wrong shows how their ideas about co-operation and conflict afford an illuminating perspective on our own efforts to create …
Social Class and Social Justice
ABSTRAC'I' This paper poses the issue of distributive justice in terms of the relationship between social class, social mobility and educational attainment, in contemporary Britain. Having discussed various conceptions of justice which might vindicate class inequality, the authors investigate empirically the specifically meritocratic defence, and report survey data suggesting that the effect of class origins on class destinations is only partiall…
Do comprehensive schools reduce social mobility?1
This paper investigates the claim that the shift from a selective to a comprehensive school system had a deleterious effect on social mobility in Great Britain. Using data from the National Child Development Study, we compare the chances, for both class and income mobility, of those who attended different kinds of school. Where media attention focuses exclusively on the chances for upward mobility of those children from lowly origins who were (or…
On the Meaning and Measurement of Inequality
This article offers a defence of the methods and findings of what some critics have referred to as the 'Nuffield school of class analysis'. In particular, we respond to the critique mounted by Hellevik and Ringen, whose most recent publication appeared in an earlier volume of this journal. We argue that these authors adopt an arbitrary and essentialist view of what constitutes inequality, and have either misunderstood or misrepresented the aims a…
The Promise of Computational Journalism
Computational journalism involves the application of software and technologies to the activities of journalism, and it draws from the fields of computer science, the social sciences, and media and communications. New technologies may enhance the traditional aims of journalism, or may initiate greater interaction between journalists and information and communication technology (ICT) specialists. The enhanced use of computing in news production is …
Merit and Mobility
Les AA. examinent les analyses de P. Saunders. Ce dernier avait propose une analyse de la societe britannique et s'etait interroge sur la nature meritocratique de celle-ci. Ils affirment que Saunders n'a pas etudie attentivement les travaux menes sur cette question. Ils montrent comment celui-ci definit la meritocratie comme liee a une situation sociale d'egalite des chances qui conduit a une inegalite des revenus. Ils soulignent qu'il met de cot…
Engaging, Persuading, and Entertaining Citizens
This paper draws upon public sphere theories and the “mediatization of politics” debate to develop a mapping of the Australian political public sphere, with particular reference to television. It discusses the concept of a “political public sphere,” and the contribution of both non-traditional news media genres, such as satirical television and infotainment formats, to an expanded conception of the political public sphere. It considers these ques…
Class analysis from a normative perspective
Distinguishing between an explanatory and a normative interest in social stratification, this paper considers the relation between class analysis and the value of equality. Starting from the familiar distinction between (in) equality of position and (in) equality of opportunity, and noting the extent to which mobility research focuses on the latter, it suggests that class positions can themselves be characterized in terms of the opportunities the…
Meritocratic equality of opportunity
The relation between social class and social justice is currently a matter of public as well as academic controversy. Some analysts see existing patterns of social mobility as evidence of inequality of opportunity, while others regard them as meritocratic, simply reflecting the distribution of ability and motivation among the population. This article brings together some important developments in normative thinking about social justice with recen…
Class, Gender, and the Asymmetry Hypothesis
This paper reviews three interconnected issues that have been central to the controversial problem of describing the relationship between class and gender. First, the matter of taxonomy, and whether or not extant class schemes are suitable for the study of women's employment. Second, the question of how sex segregation in the occupational structure relates to regimes of class inequality and class mobility; more specifically, of the connections be…
Inconsistency in Beliefs about Distributive Justice
Defending liberalism in education theory
Educationists frequently either reject or neglect liberalism as a possible normative grounding for their evaluation of education reform. We argue that their reasons for doing so are usually grounded either in fundamental misunderstandings of liberalism, or misguided evaluations of some standard objections to liberalism. We show how five standard objections to liberalism fail, and display the richness of liberalism as a normative approach to educa…
Reply to Ringen and Hellevik
The Political Morality of School Composition
This article presents a normative framework for the assessment of education policies and applies it to the issue of schools’ selecting their students on the basis of religious criteria. Such policies can be justified, and challenged, on many different grounds; public debate is not conducted in terms adequate to the task. The authors’ main objectives are to supplement with non-consequentialist considerations a recent, consequentialist, approach to…
Family values reconsidered
It is wonderful to receive so much careful attention. But it’s also frustrating. Each paper poses important questions, and between them they cover a wide range of issues. It is challenging, on such big topics, and in so few words, simultaneously to set the record straight, to identify the various objections posed by our critics, and to respond to them in a way likely to advance our collective understanding of the issues. Still, here goes
Social Action and Power
Marx and the New Individual
Part 1 Individualism, political theory and the impact of Marx: humanism, theoretical anti-humanism and the individual individualism and social theory Marx and modes of individualism human nature, autonomy and history. Part 2 The individual and Marx's theory of change: sources of social change human nature and history thinking about human nature social change and individuality. Part 3 Pre-capitalist societies and the absence of individualism and i…
Educational Goods
This is a brief summary of the book Educational Goods: Values, Evidence, and Decision-Making by Harry Brighouse, Helen F. Ladd, Susanna Loeb and Adam Swift. It provides the introduction to the present symposium on this book, which includes the ensuing contributions from Carey Bagelman, Randall Curren, Michael Hand, John Tillson and Winston Thompson, followed by a response from the authors
Liberals and Communitarians
Marx and the New Individual
Part 1 Individualism, political theory and the impact of Marx: humanism, theoretical anti-humanism and the individual individualism and social theory Marx and modes of individualism human nature, autonomy and history. Part 2 The individual and Marx's theory of change: sources of social change human nature and history thinking about human nature social change and individuality. Part 3 Pre-capitalist societies and the absence of individualism and i…
Liberalisms and Communitarianisms
Inconsistency in Beliefs about Distributive Justice
Social Class and Social Justice
ABSTRAC'I' This paper poses the issue of distributive justice in terms of the relationship between social class, social mobility and educational attainment, in contemporary Britain. Having discussed various conceptions of justice which might vindicate class inequality, the authors investigate empirically the specifically meritocratic defence, and report survey data suggesting that the effect of class origins on class destinations is only partiall…
Liberals and Communitarians
Political Liberalism
Journal Article Book Reviews Get access Political Liberalism. By John Rawls. (New York: Columbia UP, 1993. Pp. xxxiv + 401. Price £20.00.) Stephen Mulhall, Stephen Mulhall aUniversity of Essex Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Adam Swift Adam Swift bBalliol College, Oxford Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 44, Issue 177, October 1994,…
Social Action and Power
Distributive Justice
Class, Gender, and the Asymmetry Hypothesis
This paper reviews three interconnected issues that have been central to the controversial problem of describing the relationship between class and gender. First, the matter of taxonomy, and whether or not extant class schemes are suitable for the study of women's employment. Second, the question of how sex segregation in the occupational structure relates to regimes of class inequality and class mobility; more specifically, of the connections be…
Merit and Mobility
Les AA. examinent les analyses de P. Saunders. Ce dernier avait propose une analyse de la societe britannique et s'etait interroge sur la nature meritocratique de celle-ci. Ils affirment que Saunders n'a pas etudie attentivement les travaux menes sur cette question. Ils montrent comment celui-ci definit la meritocratie comme liee a une situation sociale d'egalite des chances qui conduit a une inegalite des revenus. Ils soulignent qu'il met de cot…
Social Justice Revisited
This chapter discusses the issues of merit in relation to social justice. It suggests that the justification of class-related inequalities that appeals to the necessity of incentives can be distinguished from the justification that appeals to the idea that people born into different classes are unequally deserving of class-related rewards. It outlines the possibility of an alternative defence of meritocratic justice. However, it should not be und…
Against the Odds
What is the relation between social class and social justice? This is currently a matter of public as well as academic controversy. While nobody would deny that the distribution of rewards in industrial societies is unequal, there is sharp disagreement about whether this inequality can be justified. Some see existing patterns of social mobility as evidence of inequality of opportunity. Others regard them as meritocratic, simply reflecting the dis…
Meritocratic equality of opportunity
The relation between social class and social justice is currently a matter of public as well as academic controversy. Some analysts see existing patterns of social mobility as evidence of inequality of opportunity, while others regard them as meritocratic, simply reflecting the distribution of ability and motivation among the population. This article brings together some important developments in normative thinking about social justice with recen…
The Problem of Order
Many Americans despair that the glue that once held American society together has since come undone. Yet, as Dennis Wrong shows, our generation is not alone in fearing a breakdown of social ties and a descent into violent conflict. Analyzing such thinkers as Hobbes, Rousseau, Freud, Mead, Parsons, Marx, Durkheim, and Weber, Wrong shows how their ideas about co-operation and conflict afford an illuminating perspective on our own efforts to create …
Against the Odds? Social Class and Social Justice in Industrial Societies
What is the relation between social class and social justice? This is currently a matter of public as well as academic controversy. While nobody would deny that the distribution of rewards in industrial societies is unequal, there is sharp disagreement about whether this inequality can be justified. Some see existing patterns of social mobility as evidence of inequality of opportunity. Others regard them as meritocratic, simply reflecting the dis…
Public Opinion and Political Philosophy
On the Meaning and Measurement of Inequality
This article offers a defence of the methods and findings of what some critics have referred to as the 'Nuffield school of class analysis'. In particular, we respond to the critique mounted by Hellevik and Ringen, whose most recent publication appeared in an earlier volume of this journal. We argue that these authors adopt an arbitrary and essentialist view of what constitutes inequality, and have either misunderstood or misrepresented the aims a…
Reply to Ringen and Hellevik
Class analysis from a normative perspective
Distinguishing between an explanatory and a normative interest in social stratification, this paper considers the relation between class analysis and the value of equality. Starting from the familiar distinction between (in) equality of position and (in) equality of opportunity, and noting the extent to which mobility research focuses on the latter, it suggests that class positions can themselves be characterized in terms of the opportunities the…
How Not to be a Hypocrite
How not to be a hypocrite: the indispensable guide to school choice that morally perplexed parents have been waiting for.Many of us believe in social justice and equality of opportunity - but we also want the best for our kids. How can we square our political principles with our special concern for our own children? This marvellous book takes us through the moral minefield that is school choice today.Does a commitment to social justice mean you h…
Defending liberalism in education theory
Educationists frequently either reject or neglect liberalism as a possible normative grounding for their evaluation of education reform. We argue that their reasons for doing so are usually grounded either in fundamental misunderstandings of liberalism, or misguided evaluations of some standard objections to liberalism. We show how five standard objections to liberalism fail, and display the richness of liberalism as a normative approach to educa…
The Morality of School Choice
Summarising the arguments of How Not to Be A Hypocrite: School Choice for the Morally Perplexed Parent (Routledge Falmer 2003), the article discusses three questions. The first is whether parents who disapprove of elite private schools to such an extent that they would vote to ban them are acting hypocritically or inconsistently with their principles if they send their children to such schools. My answer is that they need not be. The second is wh…
Fashion as Aerial
Clynes and Kline's (1995 [1960]) conception of the cyborg sees a technologically augmented human designed for the adverse conditions of space travel. Despite alterations through artificial and self-organizing biochemical, physiological, and electronic modifications, the paramount piece of technology enabling human non-terrestrial flirtations was the “exogenous device” of the spacesuit.In this instance, the incorporation of high-tech textiles and …
Parents’ Rights and the Value of the Family
Equality, Priority, and Positional Goods
Political science (35 obras) · Sociology (34 obras) · Law (27 obras) · Psychology (24 obras) · Economics (21 obras) · Political Philosophy and Ethics (20 obras) · Computer Science (19 obras) · Epistemology (16 obras) · Philosophy (16 obras) · Positive economics (15 obras)