The Therapy of Education: Philosophy, Happiness and Personal Growth

In recent years ideas about therapy have found their way increasingly into educational practice: there is Circle Time in the elementary school and a new emphasis on self-esteem, there is assertiveness training and stress management for adults, and the bookshop shelves are heavy with volumes on self-help. In a different vein, and since ancient times, education has itself often been thought of as a kind of therapy, at minimum a cure for bad intellectual and moral habits, and sometimes a progressive working on the self with philosophy its essential ally. Yet formal education today, with its compulsive fixation on assessment and league-tables, seems, ironically enough, to need therapy of its own.

This book examines the many connections between education and therapy, critically but sympathetically. It brings to bear on areas of confusion and mystification the philosophical attention that has sometimes been thought of as potentially therapeutic and conducive to personal growth and flourishing.