This is a book that honors and celebrates the compassion of people who serve the needs of others in very positive, meaningful, and sometimes, life changing ways. Why do people who serve others open their hearts so freely? This book features sixteen stories of everyday, ordinary people who have become truly extraordinary by helping others. These people have extended themselves by helping vulnerable people in need not for glamour or glory but because they simply observed hurt and pain and felt compelled to take positive action. In this book, the experiences, events and circumstances of their lives are examined through the lens of Appreciative Inquiry-a strength based perspective that focuses our attention on the conditions and factors that enable us to act at our very best. Learn how you can use the process of 'Appreciative Life Reflection' to examine the Noble Path of your own life with all of its twists and turns and apply what you learn to the discovery of your Noble Purpose-Serving the Needs of Others.

This book sheds new light on early twentieth-century secularism by examining campaigns to challenge dominant Christian approaches to the teaching of morality and citizenship in English schools, and to offer superior alternatives. It brings together, for the first time, the activities of different educators and pressure groups, operating locally, nationally and internationally, over a period of 47 years. Who were these activists? What ideological and organisational resources did they draw on? What proposals did they make? And how did others respond to their views? Secularist activists represented a minority, but offered a recurrent challenge to majority views and shaped ongoing educational debates. They achieved some, albeit limited, influence on policy and practice. They were divided among themselves and by 1944 had failed to supplant majority views. But, with the place of religious and secular ideals in schools remaining a subject of debate, this analysis has resonance today.

Includes section "Book reviews."

Since the International Year of the Child in 1979, advocacy for children has intensified. The Convention on the Rights of the Child has propelled this advocacy decisively into the midst of the political debate over human rights. Attempts to construct and support the theoretical and empirical underpinnings for a fresh approach to children and childhood are also intensifying. Nonetheless, policies targeted at children continue to suffer from pervasive theoretical weaknesses. This is persistently constraining appropriate action. This book argues that for both theoretical and practical reasons children need to be understood in their own right. It asks fundamental questions about the perceptions we have of children and childhood and about the ways these perceptions emerge to influence and shape our assumptions, preferences and choices concerning children. It tries to deepen understanding and interest by clarifying the theoretical, ethical and pragmatic reasons for transforming the political neglect of children into recognition and action. The book is divided into two parts. The first part examines cultural and social variations in perceptions concerning children and the second part draws conclusions from the analysis. It concludes by proposing practical lessons which may be learned from the debate about children.