Pleasure versus Virtue Ethics in The Light of Aristotelians and the Utilitarianism of John Stuart Mills and Jeremy Bentham

The question of the end of morality is certainly as old as moral speculation itself. It is this question that prompted Aristotle speculating on moral or character virtue. Moral question is properly a human question since only human beings are expected to act in a given way and are subject to praise and reward or blame and punishment. We should remember that also God and angels are expected to act in a given way, but that would, strictly speaking, be the subject of moral theology and revelation, since without revelation depending only on reason, we cannot examine the acts of God and angels in order to determine how they should act. In short, it is only human beings who can be judged to act morally or immorally if we depend only on human reason, without the support of revelation. In the whole work, Stuart Mills and Jeremy Bentham stick on happiness, though each differ in approaches. Consequentialists are after the greatest happiness of the greatest number, by advocating on the struggle to that which may make man happy and avoid evil by all means. Aristotle on his side is on eudaimonism, where man is found to be happy but moral happy. Happiness for Aristotle should be reasonable, morally good and means should be maintained. This research is analytical by nature, where both qualitative and analytical methods have been implemented throughout the work. The work has been successful though some challenges could not be avoided. Finally, in doing or acting, man should observe virtue; and this is always doing good and avoiding evil.  

Notion and Practices of Secondary School Head Teachers Towards School Improvement

The study was conducted in two private high schools in district Gilgit of Gilgit-Baltistan to find out headteachers? perceptions and practices about school improvement, their leadership strategies to lead the school improvement initiatives and also the challenges they face to this end. I used a qualitative paradigm with an interpretivist epistemology. Semi-structured interviews, document analysis/review, focused group discussion/interview and participant observations were used as tools for data collection to triangulate the findings. Researcher adopted a thematic approach to data analysis, which helped me to identify the major themes and then to add the sub-themes from across the data. The findings show that the headteachers perceive school improvement as a sustained data-driven process to improve the schools? academic, administrative affairs and the holistic development of the children. To this end, they applied various strategies starting from developing a joint purpose for school improvement to leading the schools by examples, effective school development plan, capacity building of teachers, regular assessment of students? learning, headteachers? instructional role, parental involvement and changes in school culture and effective monitoring of the schools? affairs, which are equally workable in all context and thus seemed universal in their application for school improvement. The study, however, also found that school improvement initiatives are not like swimming in placid water rather than it is a complex process and therefore, the head teachers face lots of challenges such as, teachers? retention, uncooperative parents, absence of teachers? induction programme, poor economy of parents and lack of residential facilities for non-local teachers. The findings of the study confirmed most of the school improvement studies carried out in Pakistan and abroad. However, two of the findings of this study, i.e., (a) Child holistic development as one of the important elements of school improvement and (b) the headteachers? sustained monitoring mechanisms of school improvement seen value addition to the research studies about School Improvement.