The Culture of Violent Extremism in Universities of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa: Causes and Remedies

Violent Extremism and Radicalization is on the rise in the Universities of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). In the last decade, the crisis of students discipline has increased on campuses. Many incidents of violence and intolerance on campus are alarming for the higher education of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The education curriculum is insufficient to develop a mature and critical mind instead of making sectarian activists and extremists. To counter extremism, many laws and bills have been passed to control this social problem in our societies. The existence of such issues in the universities and education sector is very alarming because the youth is part of this sector. The education sector should be freed from such problems for the social, political and economic progress and development of the society. Thus this article highlights the issue and provides necessary recommendations to solve the problem.

A Review on Historical Aspects of Critical Pedagogy

This paper makes a review of inventory and application of critical pedagogy in education sector, in particular, and also in general practices of critical thinking, skepticism, decision making process, etc. Critical pedagogy as a concept originated and developed in academia, for development of critical mind of learners. Education broadens the students’ views of reality. Education is transformative, bringing all kinds of changes in human mind, as well as in the society and the nation. Education makes students critical and skeptical on the issues which are frequent in their daily life. Therefore, all kinds of social, cultural, economical and political issues are solved by critical mind of the learners. Education must be democratic in nature and system. People in power make education system in their own favour, dominating the powerless people. Therefore, education is political. Those who participate in critical pedagogy resist the constraints that those in power impose on them. Critical pedagogy can be applied in all faculties and subjects like music, economics, mathematics, sociology, political science, English language teaching, English literature teaching, and so on. Teachers also must be qualified with the critical pedagogy approach. They must be confident with the knowledge and skills for applying Freire’s methods of teaching effectively in the classroom. They must be critical thinkers, self-reflective, culturally conscious for the pedagogical situation to enhance students’ understanding of the world. The major purpose of this review is to point out the effectiveness of critical pedagogy in education and in general. After teachers’ role in critical pedagogy, knowledge of the language and of the world, consciousness or ‘conscientization’, power resistance, value judgments, perception of reality and truth, empowerment, transformation, decision making skills, critical thinking, skepticism, negotiation, problem posing and solving, and many other aspects of learning in critical pedagogy are explained in this review paper.

Satire, points de vue et déradicalisation dans Moi, Khaled Kelkal de Salim Bachi

, Khaled Kelkalevokes the trajectory of Khaled Kelkal, son of Algerian immigrants from the Lyon suburbs, radicalized in prison, and involved in various terrorist attacks in France in 1995. Although the novel takes the form of a testimony from Kelkal with a single voice,polyphony allows Salim Bachi to constantly make two points of view coincide within the narration, that of the radicalized and that of a skeptic Other, who gauges various speeches, and is sort of a double of the author. Points of view and intertextuality allow the reader to exercise their critical mind, making the novel both a pedagogical text on jihadist recruitment and a praxis of deradicalization.

Is it Permissible to Teach Buddhist Mindfulness Meditation in a Critical Thinking Course?

In this essay I set out the case for why mindfulness meditation should be included in critical thinking education, especially with respect to educating people about how to argue with one another. In 1, I introduce to distinct mind sets, the critical mind and the meditative mind, and show that they are in apparent tension with one another. Then by examining the Delphi Report on Critical Thinking I show how they are not in tension. I close 1 by examining some recent work by Mark Battersby and Jeffery Maynes on expanding out critical thinking education to be inclusive of cognitive science and decision making. I argue that their arguments for expanding critical thinking education ultimately lead to considering the relevance of meditation in critical thinking. In 2, I examine work on critical thinking by Harvey Siegel and Sharon Bailin in order to draw out different conceptions of critical thinking both from a theoretical point of view as well as a pedagogical point of view. In 3, I present criteria for selecting a form of meditation that should be taught in critical thinking courses; I argue that mindfulness meditation deriving from the Buddhist tradition satisfies the relevant criteria. I then present research from contemporary cognitive neuroscience and psychology about the benefits of mindfulness meditation as it relates to the prospects of including it in critical thinking. In 4, I consider a recent study by Noone and Hogan (2018) that suggests that mindfulness meditation does not improve a person’s ability to think critically. I argue that while the study is important, there are substantial reasons for thinking that further studies should be done, as the authors themselves conclude. In 5, I move on to the issue of how meditation can be useful for improving performance in one important area of critical thinking: mitigating stereotype threat. My focus here is on examining the hypothesis that stereotype threat effects performance in critical thinking, and that negative impacts from stereotype threat can be mitigated by meditation. In 6, I summarize my argument for including meditation into critical thinking education, and close by discussing three important objections.

The Importance of Mother Tongue to the Cultivation of Values and Personality Development: A Philosophical Aspect

The author of the article examines the relation between language and values from the perspective of a native speaker who finds in his or her mother tongue a linguistic articulation of those values that are prevalent in the speaker’s community and are shared by all or most of its members.Language is a unique medium where values are presented, examined and constantly re-evaluated by members of a linguistic community. Especially the native speaker’s mother language, much better than any other language learned later in life, reveals its special role in the process of a person’s moral growth and overall personal development. The mother tongue shared by certain linguistic community plays the leading role in forming one’s world view, and this linguistically created world outlook is imbued with specific moral and aesthetic values characteristic of that linguistic community. The mother language not only emerges as a bridge that connects the native speaker to his or her ancestors and the entire cultural legacy created by former generations, but also reveals itself as the most rewarding medium for the expression of the native speaker’s personal experience and personal creative insights.The author of the article is of the opinion that the appreciation of one’s mother tongue and the recognition of its privileged status should not be viewed as leading to linguistic and cultural isolation, but as opening the gate to other languages and linguistic world views. What is even more important is that, in the author’s opinion, the appreciation of one’s mother tongue enhances one’s ability to appreciate the linguistic medium as such and to celebrate language as such, not only one’s mother language. Respect for our mother tongue also enhances our capacity to creatively and respectfully encounter other languages and other linguistically construed world views.Yet it is also argued that we should not view our mother tongue as the only, albeit very authoritative, guide in the sphere of values – our own critical mind and critical reflexion on the nature of values should go hand in hand with the received collective wisdom that we find crystalized in our mother tongue, in language as such, as well as in all forms of traditional culture.

In Search of a Theory of Everything

In Search of a Theory of Everything takes readers on an adventurous journey through space and time on a quest for a unified “theory of everything” by means of a rare and agile interplay between the natural philosophies of influential ancient Greek thinkers and the laws of modern physics. By narrating a history and a philosophy of science, theoretical physicist Demetris Nicolaides logically connects great feats of critical mind and unbridled human imagination in their ambitious quest for the theory that will ultimately explain all the phenomena of nature via a single immutable overarching law. This comparative study of the universe tells the story of physics through philosophy, of the current via the forgotten, in a balanced way. Nicolaides begins each chapter with a relatively easier analysis of nature—one conceived by a major natural philosopher of antiquity—easing readers gradually into the more complex views of modern physics, by intertwining finely the two, the ancient with the new. Those philosophers’ rigorous scientific inquiry of the universe includes ideas that resonate with aspects of modern science, puzzles about nature that still baffle, and clever philosophical arguments that are used today to reassess competing principles of modern physics and speculate about open physics problems. In Search of a Theory of Everything is a new kind of sight, a philosophical insight of modern physics that has long been left unexamined.

Legal Comparison of Freedom of Expression and Freedom of the Press in the Republic of Armenia and in the Republic of Poland

<p>Freedom of expression and freedom of the press form guarantee and emphasize the democratic character of a state. The dissemination of information and opinions is a prerequisite of democracy, which essentially requires that citizens be guaranteed the possibility to participate in public affairs. An opportunity to learn some information and opinions is of paramount importance for broadening knowledge, sharpening the critical mind, shaping one’s own views and making rational and informed choices. For full access to information and opinions circulating in the public, it is necessary that it should be made public and media and their journalists will make it in the best way. The aim of this study was to compare constitutional legal solutions concerning freedom of expression and freedom of the press and the way they are effectuated in practice in theRepublicofArmeniaand in theRepublicofPoland.</p>