Education of Character
The Nobel Prize winner explores the role of early childhood education in building personal character.
In Education of Character, great twentieth-century philosopher Bertrand Russell goes beyond math or history and into the larger purposes of education. What do we want our children to be like as people? What kind of future community do we want to build? And what approaches are most likely to achieve the results we want?
Taking the discoveries of modern psychology into account, Russell notes that habits of mind are formed earlier than we may realize and represent a crucial part of children’s ability to cope successfully with challenges as they grow older. Beginning with the very first year of life and giving consideration to both home and classroom, Russell discusses such topics as fear, play, selfishness, sympathy, and truthfulness—offering parents and other caregivers a set of guiding principles that can help them develop virtue and good character in youngsters.
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, social reformer, and pacifist. Although he spent the majority of his life in England, he was born in Wales, where he also died. Russell led the British “revolt against Idealism” in the early twentieth century and is one of the founders of analytic philosophy along with his protégé Wittgenstein and his elder Frege. He co-authored, with A. N. Whitehead, Principia Mathematica, an attempt to ground mathematics on logic. His philosophical essay “On Denoting” has been considered a “paradigm of philosophy.” Both works have had a considerable influence on logic, mathematics, set theory, linguistics and analytic philosophy. He was a prominent anti-war activist, championing free trade between nations and anti-imperialism. Russell was imprisoned for his pacifist activism during World War I, campaigned against Adolf Hitler, for nuclear disarmament. He criticized Soviet totalitarianism and the United States of America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. In 1950, Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, “in recognition of his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought.”
Philosophical Library/Open Road
