scholarly journals Euthanasia in South Africa: Philosophical and theological considerations

2017 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mojalefa L.J. Koenane

Debates on euthanasia (or �mercy killing�) have been a concern in moral, philosophical, legal, theological, cultural and sociological discourse for centuries. The topic of euthanasia inspires a variety of strong views of which the �slippery slope� argument is one. The latter warns that the principle(s) underlying any ethical issue (including euthanasia) may be distorted. Scholars� views on euthanasia are influenced mainly by cultural, personal, political and religious convictions. In South Africa, the issue of euthanasia has arisen from time to time, but the question of whether it should be legalised was not seriously considered until it recently attracted attention because of a particular case, that of Cape Town advocate Robin StranshamFord. Although euthanasia is still illegal (this is because the Stransham-Ford ruling is confined to this particular case only), as stated in the ratio decidendi by Judge Hans Fabricius of the High Court in Pretoria, the Court granted leave to appeal its April 2015 judgement regarding euthanasia in the application lodged by Stransham-Ford. In considering the contentious nature of the issue of euthanasia, this article adopts a multidisciplinary approach which includes historical, legal, theological, philosophical, theoretical and analytic frameworks, discussing euthanasia from philosophical and theological perspectives, in particular. We conclude by recommending that the subject of applied ethics, which helps to educate citizens about contemporary moral problems such as euthanasia, be introduced at school level. Exposing young people to the debates around thorny issues such as this would familiarise them with the discourse, encourage them to engage with it and empower them as mature citizens to make informed, reasonable decisions, obviating confusion and conflict which might otherwise arise. The problems surrounding the issue of euthanasia are multidimensional and have the capacity to polarise the nation and destroy families.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The article challenges government tendencies to decide on its own to make policy decisions on which society does not have input; thus against the Batho Pele principle of participation. We suggest that applied ethics be introduced earlier at the school level and be carried onto tertiary education to ensure effective citizen participation.

Studi Arab ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 87-100
Author(s):  
Nisa Fahmi Huda

It feels familiar to us with one of the Arabic subjects. Moreover, Arabic learning has existed at the school level from elementary to tertiary education. Arabic learning must stand and cannot be separated from several kinds of language skills, such as listening, speaking, reading, and writing. However, apart from the four language skills, we must pay attention to one of the important aspects of language and this is also not separated because without this aspect, language will not be organized. These important aspects are the nahwu rules that we must learn and cannot be separated from the four skills of Arabic. The purpose of this study was to determine how effective the use of the spinning wheel media was in learning Arabic, especially in the subject of qawaid nahwu. Data collection methods used observation, interviews, tests, and documentation. The approach used is quantitative with the type of research Quasi Experimental One Group Pretest Posttest. The result of this research is that the use of the spnning wheel media can improve the qawaid nahwu learning process in the seventh grade training of the students of the Darul Qur'an Wal Islamic Boarding School, Wonosari, Gunungkidul, Yogyakarta.


2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 285 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Mouton ◽  
G. P. Louw ◽  
G. L. Strydom

The Education White Paper 3 on Higher Education aimed to transform the higher education system. Change within tertiary education included adjusting the size and shape of institutions, the meaning of autonomy and accountability, the nature of higher education, the character of student demographic distribution, management and governance, roles of student politics, models of delivery, the notion of higher education in terms of the relationship between free trade and public good, programme changes and the nature of the academic workplace. At this stage, transformation in higher education is leaping outwards to fulfil the criteria set by international competitiveness and related efficiency criteria that can be attributed to globalisation pressures and to deeper factors inherent in the nature of higher education, especially in terms of its resistance to change and modernization. In this regard, the tertiary higher education system in South Africa is faced with many multi-dimensional challenges that need to be addressed in this article. This includes stating whether Grade 12 results as the outcome of this exit point at school level are, internationally speaking, a reasonable predictor of first-year academic success at university. In South Africa, there is no benchmarking of the National Senior Certificate (NSC) examination; therefore, first-year students have difficulty in adapting to the university environment as they find themselves devoid of indispensable bases for the pursuit of their studies and the weakness of the level of education given at school level in a large number of instances. Furthermore, five universities were placed under administration in the 2011-2012 period because of appallingly poor levels of management, which adds extra layers of suspicion to the notion of the impact of higher education in South Africa. Many other challenges are facing the South African tertiary education system, which will be analysed and recommendations arrived at that will attempt to contribute to an enhancement of tertiary education in South Africa.


2013 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Kretzschmar ◽  
Wessel Bentley

This article explores how Applied Ethics, especially Business Ethics, is taught at the University of South Africa (Unisa). This discussion refers to the content of a particular Unisa module, Theoretical and Applied Ethics, which serves as an introduction to Bio-medical Ethics, Business Ethics and Environmental Ethics. The fundamentals of this course are: defining ethics; providing methods for moral decision-making; describing the role of ethics in a particular field and addressing common dilemmas in a specific context. The intention is to empower students to identify issues they are likely to face in the workplace, and to grow in confidence in their ability to make sound moral decisions when required to do so. The aim of this article is to contribute to the ongoing discussion between tertiary institutions about how the teaching of Business Ethics can be promoted, how moral decision-making in the workplace can be encouraged and what role theological ethics can play in this regard.


Author(s):  
Nina Surya Rahman Nasution ◽  
Masitowarni Siregar

Writing, regarded as a thinking process enables language learners to explore and transform their ideas into words in accurate and appropriate ways. Although it has been taught from the Elementary school level up to the higher level of education, English teachers and students encounter various challenges. For students, they still get difficulties in writing a text even after being taught. For teachers, correcting students’ writing increases their workload. Therefore, how to reduce the load of teaching writing and to decrease students’ difficulties in writing have become important problem to solve. Through applying a technique in teaching writing, this research aimed to explore whether the application of peer review technique can improve students’ achievement in writing recount text. The method applied in this research was a classroom action research. The subject of the research was X-4 class SMA Negeri 21 Medan. The instruments of collecting the data were writing tasks as quantitative data while observation sheet, questionnaire sheet, diary notes and interview as qualitative data. The finding showed that Peer Review Technique gives contribution to improve students’ achievement in writing recount text. Keywords: Achievement, Writing, Recount Text, Peer Review Technique


2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (11) ◽  
pp. 11-15
Author(s):  
Gan N.Yu. ◽  
Ponomareva L.I. ◽  
Obukhova K.A.

Today, worldview, spiritual and moral problems that have always been reflected in education and upbringing come to the fore in society. In this situation, there is a demand for philosophical categories. One of the priority goals of education in modern conditions is the formation of a reasonable, reflexive person who is able to analyze their actions and the actions of other people. Modern science is characterized by an understanding of the absolute value and significance of childhood in the development of the individual, which implies the need for its multilateral study. In the conditions of democratization of all spheres of life, the child ceases to be a passive object of education and training, and becomes an active carrier of their own meanings of being and the subject of world creation. One of the realities of childhood is philosophizing, so it is extremely timely to address the identification of its place and role in the world of childhood. Children's philosophizing is extremely poorly studied, although the need for its analysis is becoming more obvious. Children's philosophizing is one of the forms of philosophical reflection, which has its own qualitative specificity, on the one hand, and commonality with all other forms of philosophizing, on the other. The social relevance of the proposed research lies in the fact that children's philosophizing can be considered as an intellectual indicator of a child's socialization, since the process of reflection involves the adoption and development of culture. Modern society, in contrast to the traditional one, is ready to "accept" a philosophizing child, which means that it is necessary to determine the main characteristics and conditions of children's philosophizing.


Author(s):  
Kevin Teise ◽  
Emma Barnett

South Africa (SA) has a decentralised education system. It is generally assumed that decentralisation improves the effectiveness and efficiency of education by responding to the needs, values, and expectations of both local and rural communities. A large part of SA could be described as rural and a large number of learners attend rural schools. This makes rural education a significant part of the South African education context. With education being decentralised, and with decentralisation being heralded as the panacea to the problems faced by rural communities as well as rural education, the assumption is that rural education should be of a high quality. This desk-top paper assesses the potential of decentralisation to improve the quality and effectiveness of South African rural education. This it does by locating decentralisation within neoliberalism which this paper argues is the impetus behind the decentralisation of South African education, and the reason for the decline in the quality and effectiveness of rural education. The paper also highlights certain tensions between the various decentralised spheres of governance, namely the central and provincial Departments of Education and school-level governance structures. The paper further indicates how these tensions potentially hamper the effectiveness and efficiency of rural education. The paper concludes with some recommendations aimed at improving rural education.


Acta Juridica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 141-176
Author(s):  
F Brand

The role of abstract values such as equity and fairness in our law of contract has been the subject of controversy for a number of years. In 2002 the Supreme Court of Appeal took the position that these values do not constitute self-standing grounds for interfering with contractual relationships. Despite this being consistently maintained by the SCA in a number of cases, some High Court judges deviated from this position on the basis that they were permitted to do so by some minority judgments and obiter dicta in the Constitutional Court. The uncertainty thus created has fortunately now been removed by the judgment of the Constitutional Court in Beadica v The Trustees for the Time being of the Oregon Trust.


Author(s):  
Elena Nikolaevna Yarkova ◽  
Abdusalam Abdulkerimovich Guseinov ◽  
Ruben Grantovich Apresyan ◽  
Igor' Mikhailovich Chubarov ◽  
Sergei Mikhailovich Khalin ◽  
...  

The subject of this research is the works of Tyumen ethicists: the founder of the concept of rationalistic ethics that was a milestone in the history of Soviet ethics Fedor Andreevich Selivanov; the pioneer of the applied ethics in Russia Vladimir Iosifovich Bakshtanovsky; the author of the original anthropocosmist concept of morality Yuri Mikhailovich Fyodorov; the developer of the concept of regional ethos Mikhail Grigorievich Ganopolskyl; the adherent of dialogical ethics Nikolay Dmitrievich Zotov, and others. The article discusses the scientific justification of studying the works of Tyumen ethicists as a uniform ethical-philosophical intellectual tradition. The article reviews the fundamentally different opinions on the topic. An attempt is made to create a specific field of research dedicated to the Russian regional intellectual traditions. The novelty of this article consists in examination of methodology of studying the regional intellectual traditions, as well as raising the question on the degree to which the idea of regional intellectual traditions corresponds to reality, is it false, or made up, or links the unlinkable. The author also articulates the problem of whether the research of the Russian regional intellectual traditions contributes to cultivation of such phenomena a “provincial science” and “native science”; what brings the study of the Russian regional intellectual traditions in the context of representations on the points of growth of the human capital in the country and development of the Russian science?


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 174
Author(s):  
Herizal Herizal

This community service activity aimed to strengthen students’ understanding of  the combinatorics concepts in facing the regency-level of National Science Competition (KSN) in field of mathematics in 2021. The activity was carried out in March-April 2021 for six meetings in the form of training/coaching. The training used both discovery and drilling methods. The location of the activity was at SMAN 1 Muara Batu, North Aceh Regency with four students as the subject who have been selected at the school level and selected to participate in the KSN at the regency level. Data analysis was carried out qualitatively by direct observation to observe the improvement of the students’ comprehension during the learning process. The result obtained was an improvement of the students’ understanding of combinatorics topic. It can be seen in solving problems, the students are able to determine what concepts will be used and able to solve several KSN questions on combinatorics topic.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-101
Author(s):  
Bakhtawer Nasrullah ◽  
Ghulam Fatima ◽  
Dur e Nayab

This qualitative study was planned to identify the curiosity enhancing strategies (CES) and explore the challenges faced by teachers during the use of strategies at primary school students in the subject of science. Curiosity is the desire to acquire new knowledge through exploration in order to grow and expand understanding. Curiosity refers to the tendency of children to ask, investigate, and find out the new knowledge obtained from their environment. The researchers did not find a study in the literature that specifically examined identification of curiosity related strategies used by teachers in Pakistan. This research study was conducted to identify the curiosity related strategies used by the public sector school teachers in teaching Science to students enrolled in primary classes in Lahore. Purposive sampling technique was used for selection of the participants of the study. Data was collected from teachers and students of primary school (5th grade) level in science subject. Data from teachers was collected personally and on telephone. Data from students was collected through interviews by visiting the respective schools and after taking consent of the school principal. Two semi structured interview protocols were developed for taking responses at primary school level teachers and students. Data was analyzed by using thematic analysis technique. Findings of the study reflected that primary school teachers of the study were using different strategies for enhancing curiosity in students in the subject of Science. During the use of these strategies public sector primary school teachers faced many challenges like lack of resources, large strength of students in a classroom, lack of students attention, lack of parents cooperation. This study recommended that teachers and parents may use these strategies for enhancing curiosity in students.


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