Education, Value, and the Art of Living event

14 November 2014, St Michael’s Cornhill, City of London, 10pm to 5pm

This one-day event aims to prompt discussion about the meaning and purpose of education in the context of its perceived instrumentalization in the United Kingdom at present. Exploring the topic from a host of perspectives—contemporary and historical, political and cultural, personal and institutional, at home and away—the colloquium will open up a set of arguments about teaching, learning, value, and the ‘art of living’. In contradistinction to any conception of education as merely a service industry for advanced capitalism, the papers offer a bracing challenge to prevailing orthodoxies in the search for a more adequate understanding of what education can be for human flourishing.

Twenty-minute papers will include the following and there will be plenty of opportunity for discussion (paper titles subject to confirmation).

The Joys and Dangers of Distinctiveness
The Revd Dr Matt Bullimore

Union and Division: Irish Education around 1801
Professor Claire Connolly

More value than many sparrows?
Marius Carney, English Martyrs Catholic School, Leicester

Education and the Common Good
Lord Glasman

On forgetfulness
Professor Francis O’Gorman

The liberal tradition and human flourishing
The Rt Revd Dr Stephen Platten

Teaching Contested Pasts: the Educative Value of the History of Empire
Professor Andrew S. Thompson

JOINING DETAILS: Waged: £17; unwaged £13: lunch (included) will be provided by the Drapers’ Company in Drapers’ Hall. To reserve a place at the colloquium, please send a cheque made out to ‘St Michael’s Cornhill P.C.C.’ to Kay Norman, St Michael’s Cornhill, St Michael’s Church Vestry, Cornhill, London, EC3V 9DS or email kay@st-michaels.org.uk by 1 November 2014.