The value of classical language education is subject to a fierce dispute, waged continuously and internationally. While some dismiss Classics as useless or elitist, others herald its extraordinary formative value and the many benefits that await pupils. This article aims to give a novel overview of the public debate regarding classical language education, which is defined as follows: the controversy about the instruction of Latin and/or Ancient Greek at the secondary educational level, as it emerges from Western traditional media in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The reader is provided with historical insight into this debate that many classicists find themselves in the middle of, as well as with a logical and coherent framework of the various arguments pro and contra. The arguments are embedded in the history of classical language education, classified into categories, analysed and discussed at length. The classification of arguments hinges on the two main lines of criticism towards the study of classical languages, which are inspired by egalitarianism and utilitarianism respectively. As a backdrop to the analysis, we rely on the sociolinguistic theory of language ideology. The general conclusions of this paper are that the value of classical language education is indeed a highly ideologically charged matter, and that the surrounding public debate has known a remarkably high level of continuity.

Public debates structure election cycles, feature in news media, and are privileged as a form of academic exchange. Yet, public debate is poorly understood from the perspective of political theory. While theorists often talk about “public debate,” they usually mean diffuse discussion on a topic in the public sphere. This article considers how literal public debates—multisided, publicly accessible and publicly oriented performances of reason-giving—may be normatively distinct from other forms of rhetoric. Drawing on the “constructivist turn” in the scholarship on representation and the philosophy of Gadamer, I offer a hermeneutical approach for assessing public debates. I argue that public debates do not merely provide a platform for opinions to be broadcast, they also purport to provide a representative spectrum of opinions. In so doing, they help to construct the borders of the public sphere itself. I conclude by considering the significance of protest to public debate.

Farm animal welfare has now been studied, within a scientific framework, for several decades. The framework does not include ethical issues, but unless measurements of animal welfare at farm level are embedded in an ethical context, there is a danger that these measurements will not be properly utilised. This paper considers the relationship between ethical questions and animal welfare assessment. In it, the following four key ethical questions are identified. What is the baseline standard for morally acceptable animal welfare? What is a good animal life? What farming purposes are legitimate? What kinds of compromise are acceptable in a less-than-perfect world? The authors suggest that animal welfare scientists need to reflect carefully on these questions if welfare assessments are to be properly interpreted and put to practical use. Such reflection will lead to a more transparent appreciation of the values underlying welfare assessment. In this way, it will both offer welfare scientists a greater awareness of their own value-assumptions and enable the same scientists to communicate effectively with the wider audience — farmers, consumers, pressure groups, policy-makers and so on — for which the results of animal welfare assessments are of concern.

In the public debate played out in the media, the financial crisis in Italy is often depicted through a culturalist frame; the country’s difficulties are traced deterministically to an ethos, supposedly widespread among Italians, of amoral familism and a limited sense of civic engagement. This paper illustrates three issues that exemplify the country’s financial problems, and which are often seen through this type of culturalist lens: i) a lack of discipline in managing public finances; ii) a lack of interest in co-operation caused by the excessive importance given to family ties; iii) a lack of agency from the people involved, symbolised by a reluctance to leave home and to adopt an intense pace of work. Considering the relevant literature and various statistics, we show that a culturalist approach helps to spread a stereotyped and misleading view of these three issues. Instead, we suggest that a more accurate reading of the situation, and more stimulating when it comes to public debate, can be obtained by observing the way individuals adapt to the limitations and opportunities of the context in which they operate.

This paper is concerned with the bottom-up hierarchical system and public debate model proposed by Galam (2008), as well as a spatial version of the public debate model. In all three models, there is a population of individuals who are characterized by one of two competing opinions, say opinion −1 and opinion +1. This population is further divided into groups of common size s. In the bottom-up hierarchical system, each group elects a representative candidate, whereas in the other two models, all the members of each group discuss at random times until they reach a consensus. At each election/discussion, the winning opinion is chosen according to Galam's majority rule: the opinion with the majority of representatives wins when there is a strict majority, while one opinion, say opinion −1, is chosen by default in the case of a tie. For the public debate models we also consider the following natural updating rule that we call proportional rule: the winning opinion is chosen at random with a probability equal to the fraction of its supporters in the group. The three models differ in term of their population structure: in the bottom-up hierarchical system, individuals are located on a finite regular tree, in the nonspatial public debate model, they are located on a complete graph, and in the spatial public debate model, they are located on the d-dimensional regular lattice. For the bottom-up hierarchical system and nonspatial public debate model, Galam studied the probability that a given opinion wins under the majority rule and, assuming that individuals' opinions are initially independent, making the initial number of supporters of a given opinion a binomial random variable. The first objective of this paper is to revisit Galam's result, assuming that the initial number of individuals in favor of a given opinion is a fixed deterministic number. Our analysis reveals phase transitions that are sharper under our assumption than under Galam's assumption, particularly with small population size. The second objective is to determine whether both opinions can coexist at equilibrium for the spatial public debate model under the proportional rule, which depends on the spatial dimension.

Origin of referendum discussion in the Convention. The national debate on referenda. The crucial role of the liberal party. Referendum bill private members initiative. Referendum Act an ad hoc consultative referendum. Referendum the first opportunity for a broad political debate on the EU. Complacency and disorganised arguments of the ‘yes’ campaign. First analyses of referendum.