Flourishing Through the Art of Living: Education for Twenty-First Century

This book develops the theoretical foundations and resultant implications of the idea that the primary purpose of school education is to support children in developing the art of living – helping them thrive as students and beyond. Flourishing Through the Art of Living is a theoretical study of school education which begins by questioning its purpose. The book provides an answer to this question that is grounded in a view of what “flourishing” means for humans living in the social order of high modernity, and outlines the implications on the institutional, curricular, and pedagogical aspects of school education. Education professor Thomas Falkenberg argues that school education has to address developmental aspects of flourishing as part of its mandate in order to contribute in a very substantial way to the developing political and societal concern for human flourishing. The book first explicates the specific demands that living in high modernity of the 21st century has on humans and then goes on to develop an understanding of the specificity of human existence and functioning. Next, the author expounds on an understanding of human flourishing as it is relevant to living in high modernity; and finally, proposes an approach to school education that supports such flourishing. Flourishing Through the Art of Living is an interdisciplinary investigation that advances a vision for school education that will infuse sustained meaning, purpose, and hope in the lives of students.