Matthew Hayden
Currently an Associate Professor and the Director of International Programs in the School of Education at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. Completed dissertation titled "Cosmopolitan Education as Moral Education: Forging Moral Beings Under Conditions of Global Uncertainty" for Ph.D. in Philosophy and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.
My research focuses on the ethical beliefs and moral obligations found in all forms of human activity. I have explored such beliefs and obligations in education, schooling, teaching, assessment, testing, and teacher evaluation, and my work with cosmopolitan philosophy and international education reflects these inquiries in a global context. For instance, what does it mean to produce a global citizen through schooling? What would that look like (both process and product)?
My current research interests trend toward experimental philosophy wherein empirical data, primarily from psychology and sociology, is used to reveal collective (i.e. socio-political) ethical and moral character. In other words, what do our actions (as individuals) and policies (that guide our actions as a group) reveal about our ethical beliefs and morality? Additionally, to what extent does passive political acceptance or non-participation translate into personal moral obligation and culpability? I have also been interested in trying to uncover the ethical beliefs behind and the moral implications of reform efforts in schooling, particularly those surrounding high stakes testing and teacher evaluation.
I am currently developing research to discover how our schooling and reform efforts frame the ethical worldview of adolescents and to what extent adolescent schooling causes psychological harm. In light of high stakes testing and value-added models of assessing teacher quality, what are the moral implications of our efforts? Are we subjecting both student and teachers to immoral processes? Is schooling itself harmful to students and teachers?
Lastly, I am also interested in political manipulation of education and the ethical issues that result, and the willful ignorance seen in conscious choices to NOT learn in both schools and in daily life (largely through a socially and individually cultivated incuriosity) and the resulting civic and moral implications.
Address: Des Moines, IA
My research focuses on the ethical beliefs and moral obligations found in all forms of human activity. I have explored such beliefs and obligations in education, schooling, teaching, assessment, testing, and teacher evaluation, and my work with cosmopolitan philosophy and international education reflects these inquiries in a global context. For instance, what does it mean to produce a global citizen through schooling? What would that look like (both process and product)?
My current research interests trend toward experimental philosophy wherein empirical data, primarily from psychology and sociology, is used to reveal collective (i.e. socio-political) ethical and moral character. In other words, what do our actions (as individuals) and policies (that guide our actions as a group) reveal about our ethical beliefs and morality? Additionally, to what extent does passive political acceptance or non-participation translate into personal moral obligation and culpability? I have also been interested in trying to uncover the ethical beliefs behind and the moral implications of reform efforts in schooling, particularly those surrounding high stakes testing and teacher evaluation.
I am currently developing research to discover how our schooling and reform efforts frame the ethical worldview of adolescents and to what extent adolescent schooling causes psychological harm. In light of high stakes testing and value-added models of assessing teacher quality, what are the moral implications of our efforts? Are we subjecting both student and teachers to immoral processes? Is schooling itself harmful to students and teachers?
Lastly, I am also interested in political manipulation of education and the ethical issues that result, and the willful ignorance seen in conscious choices to NOT learn in both schools and in daily life (largely through a socially and individually cultivated incuriosity) and the resulting civic and moral implications.
Address: Des Moines, IA
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Cosmopolitanism is grounded in the fact of shared humanity and recognizes what Arendt calls the human condition of plurality. From the individual, brimming with natality and moral possibility, to the collective embedding of culture, language, tradition, and religion, human plurality results in many moral forms and actions. In cosmopolitanism the search for understanding requires “a capacity for agonistic respect” wherein people to see themselves as actors within a larger group of actors, all of whom have the same right of participation. ‘Agonism’ comes from the Greek word agon—a contest in which excellence is sought. In Agonism one’s adversary is actually a partner in finding that excellence. The combination of agon with a cosmopolitan orientation to others and human moral plurality results in moral agonism.
In moral agonism the fact of moral pluralism precludes final, immutable answers to moral questions, but it does not preclude the possibility of civility. Moral agonism converts zero-sum competition of winners and losers into collaboration in which all participants ‘win’ when the presumptive excellence is found and shared. ‘Antagonism’ as conflict between enemies is converted into ‘agonism’ as conflict between adversaries and takes place within a political and moral relationship. Agonism is “in fact [democracy’s] very condition of existence,” by virtue of limitless plurality and possibility for dissent.
Whatever the process produces, however, is not final since pluralism necessarily frustrates the unreachable goal of final or permanent consensus. Any consensus reached through agonism is a temporary stabilization of power that “always entails exclusion.” Thus pluralism survives, ‘the political’ re-engages, and the domesticating services of ‘politics’ are engaged yet again. In moral agonism, a decision will “always be open to question and answer, demand and response, and negotiation.”
Deliberations in moral agonism take place in a context in which judgments can be made, but are understood as judgments ‘for now,’ subject to future alteration, and maintains the processes of democratic deliberation, collaboration, and contestation. Adversaries collaborate to contest each other’s ideas, enriching both the processes in deliberative morality and the outcomes produced. The need for constant engagement with each other is vital to social deliberation in morality and is ensured by both agonism and cosmopolitanism, which give action to the moral obligations of shared humanity.
Cosmopolitan education, based in cosmopolitan philosophy, is posited as a possible answer to this question. Beginning with cosmopolitanism’s grounding in the principle of shared humanity I show how cosmopolitan education might offer a more mutually beneficial response to evolving global conditions. This project uses conceptual analysis to examine the concepts of an education in morality and Hannah Arendt’s work on natality, thinking, action, and the public space of politics to show that an education in morality is public and political. As a result, cosmopolitan education can use the processes found in Thomas Nagel’s epistemological restraint, Jürgen Habermas’s discourse ethics, and Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic pluralism to help students acquire a disposition that both promotes active and flexible engagement in moral inquiry, as well as in other educational experiences, and embraces plurality and diversity by recognizing the positive contribution that others can make in one’s life. Shared humanity emerges as a collective possession of what Arendt calls ‘the human condition,’ which is essentially a collection of the human conditions of plurality, natality, action, and one that I add, the condition of uncertainty. Through a cosmopolitan lens, these conditions frame the way political processes can be utilized in an education in morality to encourage the development of a disposition that I call ‘moral agonism,’ which equips students to inquire into and participate in the development of morality in the face of constantly evolving and uncertain conditions in the world.