Routledge Library Editions: Philosophy of Education, 21-Volume Set 9781138209022, 9781315457895, 9781138691889, 9781315533612, 0043701345, 0043701353

Table of contents :
Cover
Volume1
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Original Title Page
Original Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Dedication
Introduction
1: 'Mixed Ability' – What Do We Mean?
2: The Rationale
3: Justice and Equality
4: Fraternity
5: Grouping, Teaching Styles and Subjects
6: The Lessons of Experience
7: 'Going Mixed Ability' – Who Should Decide?
Notes on Further Reading
Select Bibliography
Index
Volume2
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Preface to the Re-issue
Original Title Page
Original Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Preface
1: Introduction
2: Truth
3: Knowledge
4: Opinion
Notes
Further Reading
References
Index
Volume3
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Original Title Page
Original Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Dedication
Introduction
1: Plato and Transcendental Reality
The Theory of the Forms
The Temporal Argument
The Recognitional Argument
The Relational Argument
The Process of Education and the Curriculum: Further Allegories
An Analytical Critique of the Theory of Forms
Conclusion
2: The Contemporary Curriculum and the Ghost of Plato
Newman and Barnes: Traditionalist and Student-centrist Proposals
Cardinal J. H. Newman and the Idea of a University
Douglas Barnes and the Role of Language in Learning
Hegel and Marx: Freire's Radical Curricular Proposals
Paulo Freire: the Alternative Curriculum of a De-schooler
3: Paul Hirst and Linguistic Intersubjectivity
Hirst's Theory of the Forms of Knowledge
The Structure of the Forms of Knowledge
The Empirical Form
The Mathematical Form
The Moral Form
The Religious Form
The Aesthetic Form
The Historical/sociological Form
The Logical Autonomy and Irreducibility of the Forms
The Curricular Deduction from the Forms
Knowledge, Objectivity and 'language Games'
The Impossibility of a Non-transcendental Justification of Forms
4: The Possibility of Transcendental Curriculum Judgements
A Non-transcendental Statement of the Theory of Forms
The Logical Impossibility of a Non-transcendental Version of the Forms of Knowledge
The Forms as Logically Primitive Organisations of Consciousness
The Indispensability of the Forms
Example 1: the Confusion of the Alchemist
Example 2: the Perfect Hypocrite
Differing Versions of the Forms of Knowledge
5: Conclusion: Teaching the Art of Making Truth Judgements
Index
Volume4
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Original Title Page
Original Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Dedication
1: Behaviourist Foundations and Approaches to Pedagogy
1.1 A Typical Characterisation of a Traditional
Classroom
1.2 The Behaviourist Perspective: General
Principles
1.3 Classical Behaviourism: Pavlov's Dogs
1.4 Operant Behaviourism: Skinner's Pigeons
2: Behaviourism and the Philosophy of Language
2.1 Locke, Universals and Innate Ideas
2.2 Quine's Logical Behaviourism and Classical
Empiricism
2.3 Quine and Objectivity: the Indeterminacy of
Translation
2.4 The Early Wittgenstein and Logical
Behaviourism
2.5 Quine and the Later Wittgenstein on
Universals
3: Skinner's Conflicting Paradigms of Science
3.1 Empiricist Approaches to Science
3.2 Empiricism and the Problem of Induction
3.3 Einstein's Probability and Skinner's
Determinism
3.4 Behaviourism and Evolutionary Theory
3.5 Hume's Problem of Induction and Einstein's
Revolution
3.6 Summary and Further Conclusions: Quine's
Weak Empiricism
4: Behaviourism: Curricular Deductions
4.1 Aims and Objectives: Bloom's Taxonomy
4.2 Teaching Science: the Taxonomy of Learning
Photosynthesis
4.3 Empiricist Historiography and the Jesus of
History
4.4 Behaviourist Historiography and Hitler's
'Final Solution'
4.5 Morals, Religion and Aesthetics: Bloom's 'Affective' Domain
4.6 Cognitive and Affective Aims and Classical
Empiricism
4.7 Conditioning, Reductionism and Exhaustive
Quantification
4.8 Indoctrination, Reductionism and Exhaustive
Quantification
4.9 Affective and Cognitive States: Concluding
Remarks
5: Marxist Alternatives
5.1 A Typical Characterisation of a Marxist
Alternative to the Traditional School
5.2 The Marxist Perspective: General Principles
5.3 Classical Marxism and the Nature of Reality
5.4 The Phenomenological Alternative to
Classical Marxism
5.5 Freudian Psychoanalysis and
Phenomenological Marxism
5.6 Freudian Reinterpretations of Classical
Marxism: Dialectical Solutions
5.7 Marxism and the Psychoanalytic Model:
Persistent Incoherencies
6: Classical and Phenomenological Marxist Pedagogy
6.1 General Features of a Marxist Critique of Schooling
6.2 Young's Critique of the Schooling of Science
6.3 Hand's Critique of the Schooling of English
6.4 Models, Reality and Curriculum Decisions:
Some Conclusions
7: Bernstein, Hirst and Rule-Following Models
7.1 A Typical Characterisation of the 'Consensus
Curriculum'
7.2 Bernstein's Durkheimian Model of
Educational Change
7.3 The Durkheimian Model: Some Criticisms
7.4 Hirst's Theory and the Durkheimian
Perspective
8: Forms of Knowledge, Categorial Concepts and Linguistic Universals
8.1 Chomsky and the Theory of Linguistic
Universals
8.2 Hirst's Thesis and Wittgenstein's Language-Games
8.3 The Basis for Objectivity and the Fact of
Change
8.4 'Truth' or 'Objectivity' as Meaning 'What is
Testable against a Given Social Backcloth?'
8.5 A Pre-Linguistic Form of Life as an Alternative
to Deep-Structure
8.6 Analogical Inference, Extension and Implicit
Knowledge of Rules
8.7 The Analogical Inference/Extension
Distinction
8.8 Freudian Examples and Unconscious
Knowledge-That
8.9 Rule-Following Reformulations of Freud and
the Role of Forgetting
8.10 The Coherence of the Postulate of Innate Endowment
9: Categorial and Substantive Concepts, Morphemes and Family-Resemblance
10: Conclusions: Multicultural Education and the Place of Religion
Bibliographical References
Index
Volume5
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Original Title Page
Original Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Proper Claims and Expectations
1: Criteria for Uses of Schooling
Inadequacy of the Replicative Criterion
Inadequacy of the Applicative Criterion
The Associative Use of Schooling
The Interpretive Use of Schooling
The Allusionary Base
2: General Education – Proper Claims and Expectations
Aesthetic Symbolism
Types of Associative Use
Schooling as an Associational and Interpretive Resource
Schooling Resources for Interpretive Use
3: The Search for Evidence
The Search for Research
Case Studies
Analysis of Responses
4: Tacit Knowing or Knowing with
On Knowing with
5: The Role of Imagery in Uses of Schooling
Aesthetic Properties
1 Sensory Properties
2 Formal Properties
3 Technical Properties
4 Expressive Properties
5 Phenomenological Objectivity
The Allusionary Base
Language and the Allusionary Base
Imagery and Judgment
Schooling in the Arts
6: The Curriculum and the Uses of Schooling
Symbolics of Information
Skills of Aesthetic Perception
Scanning
Basic Concepts
Developmental Studies
Cosmos — Developmental Studies I
Institutions — Developmental Studies Ii
Culture — Developmental Studies Iii
Exemplars
7: The Citizen's Use of Schooling
The School as a Community
Molar Problem Solving
Judgments of Truth
Judgments of Credibility
Value Norms
Criteria of the Good Society
The American Creed
Achievement, Justice, Compassion
Imagery and Credibility
Cognitive and Evaluative Maps
Notes
Index
Volume6
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Original Title Page
Original Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
1: Introduction
2: Consent and the Restriction of Freedom
3: Freedom and Democracy
4: The Right to Liberty
5: Children's Rights to Liberty
6: Paternalism
7: Paternalism Towards Children
8: Compulsory Education and the Freedom of Children
9: Freedom in Schools
10: Liberty, Democracy and Education
Bibliography
Index
Volume7
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Original Title Page
Original Copyright Page
Table of Contents
1: Introduction: The Problem and Why It Matters
2: Some Theories of the Inherent Worth of Knowledge
I Intuitionist Theories
II Naturalistic Theories of Justification
III Answers from the Nature of Knowledge
IV Religious Answers
V Views that Educators Cannot or Should Not Make Judgements of Educational Worthwhileness
3: Towards a Positive Answer
4: Suggestions for Further Reading
References
Index
Volume8
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Original Title Page
Original Copyright Page
Foreword
Table of Contents
Part I: Commonsense and the Curriculum
1: Curriculum Theory and Curriculum Reform
2: A Particular Case: The Classics and the Ancient World
3: Liberal Education Reconsidered
4: A Controversial Question: Compulsory Religion in the Public School System
Part II: Commonsense and Concepts
5: Facts, Beliefs and Values
6: Can We Work Together If Our Beliefs Differ?
7: The Concept of Rights in Education
8: The Concept of Equality in Education
9: Three Ways of Thinking About Education
10: The Concept of Research in Education
Notes and References
Index
Volume9
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Original Title Page
Original Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1: Knowing and Interpreting the World
Introduction
The Individual and the World
The Empiricist-inductivist Model
Theory and Concepts Precede Investigation
Theory, Concepts and Methodology
Gaining Data About the World
Mental Sets
Empiricism and the World
Ordering Data About the World
Chapter 2: Theory and Critical Preference
Introduction
Falsificationism
Lakatos and Methodological Falsificationism
Some Implications from Lakatos's Thesis
Ideology and Critical Preference
The Problem of Anomalies
Knowledge as Production
Evaluation of the 'knowledge as Production' Thesis
Conclusion
Chapter 3: Ideology
Introduction
Conspiracy and Self-delusion
Ideology: a Context of Theory
Repression
The Place of Institutions
Supportive Rhetoric
Ideology: a Context of Lived Experience
Chapter 4: Attacking Ideology
Introduction
Recognising the Ideological
Mystification
False Consciousness
Internal Contradictions
Dialectics
Conclusion
Chapter 5: Education
Introduction
The Value of Ignorance
Education as Political Manipulation (i)
Education as Political Manipulation (ii)
Education as Political Manipulation (iii)
Conclusion
Chapter 6: Possibilities
Introduction
The Obligation to Change
Must One's Programme Provide the Answers?
Consciousness-Raising
Needs, Power, Authority and Learning
Can Education Be Changed?
Possibilities
Notes
Index
Volume10
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Original Title Page
Original Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Preface
1: Aims of Religious Education
Introduction
1 the Practical Importance of Aims in Re
2 Meaningful Talk About Aims
3 The Functions of Aims
4 Four Kinds of Aim
5 Justifying Aims
6 Criteria of General Aims
2: Education, Conversion and Edification
Introduction
1 The Concept of Person
2 Induction and Conversion
3 Edification
4 Education
3: The Religious Dimension of Personal Life
Introduction
1 The Religious Dimension of Personal Life
2 The Formal Conditions of the Concept
3 Dimensional Criteria
4: Intellectual Understanding
Introduction
1 Individual Consciousness by Way of Social Determinants
2 An Interactive State of Creative Intuition
3 The Rich Diversity of Understanding
4 Breadth and Depth of Understanding
5 The Understanding and the Public Demonstration of Insight
5: Religious Understanding
Introduction
1 The Nature of Religious Understanding
2 Scholarly Understanding of Religion
3 Religious Understanding Without Religious Faith
6: Teaching Religion
Introduction
1 Practical Implications for Teaching
2 The Religiously Educated Person
3 Religious Education of Children of All Ages
4 Learning Which Aids the Provocation of Religious Understanding
5 Some Possible Objections to Such a Programme of Learning
6 the Justification of Religious Education
Notes
Name Index
Subject Index
Volume11
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Original Title Page
Original Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Dedication
Preface
Introduction
1: Philosophy of Education
2: Education
3: Teaching and Learning
4: Teaching and Related Concepts
5: Indoctrination
6: Autonomy, Community and Education
7: The Justification of Education
8: The Institutionalisation of Education
9: Neutrality in Education
10: Equality, Schooling and Education
11: Intelligence
12: Curriculum Choice
13: Competition
14: Assessment and Grading
15: Children and Rights
16: Education and Authority
17: Schooling, Education and Discipline
18: Education and Punishment
19: Moral Education
20: Religious Education
Indexes
Volume12
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Original Title Page
Original Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
1: The Meaning of Critical Thinking
2: Critical Thinking, Epistemology and Education
3: The Prevailing View of the Concept of Critical Thinking
4: Informal Logic and Critical Thinking
5: Edward de Bono and Thinking
6: Reading, Testing and Critical Thinking
7: Forward to Basics
Bibliography
Further Reading
Index
Volume13
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Original Title Page
Original Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
Part I: The Position
1: What Kind of Knowledge Will Transfer?
2: Three Competing Conceptions of Critical Thinking
3: Teaching Critical Thinking Through the Disciplines
4: Some Practical Guidelines for Teaching Critical Thinking
5: Problems of Evaluating Critical Thinking Programs
Part II: Critiques of the Position
6: Thinking About Critical Thinking: Philosophers Can't Go It Alone
7: Mcpeck, Informal Logic, and the Nature of Critical Thinking
8: Response to Stephen Norris and Harvey Siegel on the Analysis of Critical Thinking and Education
9: Mcpeck's Mistakes
10: Richard Paul's Critique of Critical Thinking and Education
Notes
Index
Volume14
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Original Title Page
Original Copyright Page
Preface
Table of Contents
1: Philosophy and Education
2: The Nature of Philosophy
3: The Justification of Value Judgments
4: Theories and Explanations
5: What is an Educational Theory?
6: Some Questions of Morals and Religion
Bibliographical Notes
Bibliography
Index
Volume15
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Original Title Page
Original Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Preface
1: Introduction
2: Practice as Applied Science
3: An Epistemology of Practice
4: Normative Theory of Education
5: Theory of Practice
6: The Nature of Teaching
7: The Practice of Teaching
8: Teacher Education
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Volume16
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Original Title Page
Original Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1: What Is Thinking?
2: The Educational Significance of Cognitive Psychology
3: Contexts for Developing Thoughtfulness
4: Thinking in Society
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Volume17
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Original Title Page
Original Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Preface
1: A Philosophical Approach to Problems in Religious Education
2: Religion and Knowledge
3: Is It Meaningful to Speak of the 'Religiously Educated' Person?
4: Theories of Religious Education
Part I: The Nature of Religion in Education
Part II: The Function of Religion in Education
5: Indoctrination, Commitment and Religious Education
6: Teaching Religion
7: Suggestions for Further Reading
References
Index
Volume18
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Original Title Page
Original Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Introduction
Part 1: Values Across the Curriculum — Specific Areas
Values in Art and Design Education
Values in the Teaching of English and Drama
Values in Geographical Education
Values in History and Social Studies
Values in Home Economics Teaching
Values in Mathematics Education
Use or Ornament? Values in the Teaching and Learning of Modern Languages
Values in Physical Education
Revaluing Science Education
Part 2: Values Across the Curriculum — General Issues
Aims, Problems and Curriculum Contexts
Values and the Social Organization of Schooling
Values Teaching: Some Classroom Principles
Index
Volume19
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Original Title Page
Original Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Introduction
1: The Philosophical Paradigm
Background
Pragmatism and Philosophical Hermeneutics
Relativism
Touchstone Theory
The Making of an Education Programme
Ideology
Conclusions
2: Lifelong Education
The Movement
Semantics and Programmes
Informal Education
Contingent 'Characteristics'
Theoretic Difficulties
The State of the Theory
Conclusions
3: Humanism
Background
In Search of a Definition
Science and Scientific Humanism
Manifestos and Consensus
Conclusions
4: Humanism in Current Educational Theory and Lifelong Education
Humanist Educational Theory
Existentialism
Lifelong Education and 'Romantic' Humanism
Lifelong Education and Existentialism
Can the Lifelong Education Programme be an Existentialist One?
Conclusions
5: Lifelong Education and Liberal Philosophy of Education
Background
John White and Lifelong Education
The Concept of the Educated Man
Upbringing
Conclusions
6: Lifelong Education and John Dewey
Background
Compatibilities with the Lifelong Education Programme
Control and Conformism
Conclusions
7: The Learning Society
Background
The 'Learning Society' as Community
Self-Realization
Socialization
Conclusions
Postscript
Bibliography and Further Reading
Name Index
Subject Index
Volume20
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Original Title Page
Original Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1: Historical Introduction
2: Intelligence, Language, and Learning
3: Class, Culture, and Interest
4: The Theory of Intelligence
5: Intelligence Quotient Theory and Education
6: A Critique of the Theory of Intelligence Quotient
7: Theories of Cultural and Verbal Deficit
8: Verbal-Deficit Theories: The Counterattack
9: Verbal-Deficit Theories: An Overview
10: The Educational Implications of the Verbal-Deficit Controversy
11: Literacy, Literate Culture, and Education
12: Equality, Culture, and Interest
13: Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Volume21
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Original Title Page
Original Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Dedication
Preface
Part I: Introduction
1: Aims: Who Needs Them?
2: A Framework for the Discussion of Aims
Part II: Aims and the Individual
3: The Limits of Happiness
4: Natural Growth, Needs and Interests
5: The Trouble with Rational Autonomy
6: Children into Workers
Part III: Aims and Society
7: Supporting Law and Order
8: Equality
9: Justice
10: Justice, Race and Gender
Part IV: Intrinsic Values
11: Liberal Education and Intrinsically Worthwhile Activities
12: The Centrality of the Cognitive
Suggestions for Further Reading
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION

Volume 1

MIXED ABILITY GROUPING

MIXED ABILITY GROUPING A Philosophical Perspective

CHARLES BAILEY AND DAVID BRIDGES

First published in 1983 by George Allen & Unwin (Publishers) Ltd This edition first published in 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1983 Charles Bailey and David Bridges All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: ISBN: ISBN: ISBN:

978-1-138-20902-2 978-1-315-45789-5 978-1-138-69188-9 978-1-315-53361-2

(Set) (Set) (ebk) (Volume 1) (hbk) (Volume 1) (ebk)

Publisher’s Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent. Disclaimer The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.

Mixed Ability Grouping: A Philosophical Perspective CHARLES BAILEY and DAVID BRIDGES

London GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN Boston

Sydney

©Charles Bailey and David Bridges, 1983. This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. No reproduction without permission. All rights reserved. George ADen & Unwin (Publishers) Ltd, 40 Museum Street, London WClA lLU, UK George Allen & Unwin (Publishers) Ltd, Park Lane, Heme! Hempstead, Herts HP2 4TE, UK Allen & Unwin, Inc., 9 Winchester Terrace, Winchester, Mass. 01890, USA George Allen & Unwin Australia Pty Ltd, 8 Napier Street North Sydney, NSW 2060, Australia First published in 1983.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Bailey, Charles Mixed ability grouping. l. Nongraded schools. I. Title II. Bridges, David 371.2'52 LB1029.N6 ISBN 0-04-370134-5 ISBN 0-04-370135-3 Pbk Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Bailey, Charles. Mixed ability grouping. (Introductory studies in philosophy of education) Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Ability grouping in education. I. Bridges, David. II. Title. III. Series. LB306l.B34 1983 371.2'52 83-3846 ISBN 0-04-370134-5 ISBN 0-04-370135-3 (pbk.)

Set in 11 on 12 point Plantin by Computape (Pickering) Ltd, North Yorkshire and printed in Great Britain by Billing and Sons Ltd, London and Worcester

Contents

1 2 3

4 5 6 7

Introduction 'Mixed Ability'- What Do We Mean? The Rationale Justice and Equality Fraternity Grouping, Teaching Styles and Subjects The Lessons of Experience 'Going Mixed Ability'- Who Should Decide? Notes on Further Reading Select Bibliography Index

page

Xl

1

11

27 38

46 61 65 71

74 77

To our wives, Joyce and Angela

Introduction It's becoming fashionable to say that the argument is no longer about why we unstream but how. I find this a disturbing view, because so often in educational innovation the way you do it depends on your reasons. It's fine at the beginning with perhaps a handful of teachers swept on to action by their enthusiasm and energy; the trouble begins when innovation has to be sustained by extending the original ideas and involving more and more staff ... Now more than ever, with money and staff getting scarcer, innovation needs to succeed and to gain the staffroom support of more than a few zealots. It needs to be done for the right reasons and in the case of nonstreaming I don't think they are all that obvious. (Holt, 1976, p. 55) Six years after Maurice Holt's contribution to a special issue of

Forum on mixed ability grouping, his reference to the increas-

ing scarcity of money and staff has a sharper significance than perhaps even he would have anticipated. In that same time, however, the enthusiasm for unstreaming has faltered, the pedagogic consequences and practical difficulties associated with the innovation have been seen in clearer perspective and even the principles underlying mixed ability organisation have come under renewed critical scrutiny. The time seems ripe, then, for a new treatment of the arguments underlying the practice of mixed ability grouping. In any case, we believe that, notwithstanding some admirable reports and research inquiries, the philosophical foundations of the case in favour of mixed ability grouping have never been adequately laid. Typically, arguments in favour of mixed ability grouping have included reference to some ill-defined 'social benefits' or to egalitarian principles which their proponents have made little attempt to define or to justify. Without a X1

INTRODUCTION

reasonably clearly worked out view of what they are pursuing and why, teachers, as Holt suggests, are poorly prepared to sustain innovation, to justify it to those who legitimately demand such justification, or even to appreciate the full practical implications of what they are doing. This book is written primarily in the hope that it will help teachers and interested persons outside schools to develop their understanding of the rationale of mixed ability grouping. It is not our intention simply to provide such a rationale all neatly worked out for deployment in staffroom argument or public debate. The argument invites, and we hope it will receive, the kind of critical attention which may lead some readers to conclusions contrary to our own. Whether the reader ends up supporting or opposing mixed ability grouping, we hope at least that that position will be based on a more thorough understanding of the principles which underlie it. The book has a second and complementary purpose which is linked to its appearance in this series of Introductory Studies in Philosophy of Education. We hope that it will serve to illustrate the kind of contribution which philosophy of education can make to the examination of a practical educational problem. In this sense it may usefully serve as an introduction to philosophy of education. With this in mind we have tried to avoid or explain any particularly technical terms and have not assumed any special familiarity with the philosophical literature. But though the approach of the book is largely philosophical in character, we have tried to relate philosophical considerations closely to practical and empirical perspectives and to teachers' experience of mixed ability grouping. We think it is nonsense, for example, to give an account of what mixed ability grouping 'means' without reference to the variety of practice which is picked out by teachers' actual use of the term (Chapter 1). We think it is useful to show something of the connection between more strictly philosophical arguments about equality, fraternity, and so on, and what teachers actually offer by way of rationale for mixed ability grouping (Chapter 2). We think it is perverse to construct a case in terms of the intended outcomes of mixed ability grouping without regard to the actual outcomes of different forms of school organisation (Chapter 6). Xll

INTRODUCTION

We believe that this approach is an appropriate one within philosophy of education and, more important, a necessary one if educational practices are to be rationally grounded. If we can do something to advance this last cause we will risk the accusation of 'impure' philosophy!

Xlll

1 'Mixed Ability'- What do We Mean? In asking what we mean when we talk about 'mixed ability groups' or 'mixed ability teaching' we are not announcing an attempt at close conceptual analysis. The concepts are in any case not sufficiently stable or firmly established to lend themselves readily to such analysis. What we do want to begin to identify is something of the range of practice whose logic and rationale it is the purpose of this book to examine. In this we are trying to avoid prescriptive or stipulative definition. We prefer to offer a relatively naturalistic account based on the existing literature and on the talk of practising teachers - to many of whom we are grateful for discussions which have gone to inform what follows. Mixed Ability Classes

One does not need to attend long to the literature or talk on this subject to discover both a variety of practice which goes on under the name of 'mixed ability', especially in secondary schools which have 'unstreamed' as a matter of policy, and a variety of practice which could well go under the name but usually does not, notably in small infant and junior schools which have never seriously contemplated any alternative. At secondary level few schools, if any, are organised in such a way that all classes from 11 to 16 are made up of groups

1

MIXED ABILITY GROUPING: A PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH

reflecting the full range of ability in the school. The mixed ability organisation is typically limited to the first, second, or third year, or restricted to particular subjects whose character is thought to lend itself to work in mixed ability groups or whose teachers are ideologically committed to this pattern of organisation. Given this variety of practice Her Majesty's Inspectorate sought to establish a set of minimal criteria by which to identify a comprehensive school which was significantly attached to mixed ability work. They proposed 'one in which, at least up to the end of the third year of the normal secondary course, the curriculum was taught wholly or mainly i.e. with not more than two subjects excluded in classes in which the span of ability ranged from significantly below to significantly above average' (Department of Education and Science, 1978, p. 9). The definition draws attention to the two variables already referred to - the number of year-groups and the range of subjects which are taught in mixed ability groups - but adds a third significant consideration- the range of ability encompassed in the groups. There are, of course, a number of factors which go to ensure that some classes include a much wider range of ability than others. It may be helpful to give these a brief mention. (a)

The Character of the Intake of a School

It is the constant complaint of some 'comprehensive' schools that they are not in fact fully comprehensive because of either the character of their catchment area or the presence nearby of another school which manages to 'cream off' the most able pupils. Some former secondary modern schools have barely extended the ability range that they used to receive in the days of formal selection. Equally, some schools have little experience of having to cope in their day-to-day work with, for example, pupils with only a limited command of English. A small rural primary school may arrange to accommodate within its ordinary classroom routine a child or children whose handicaps or disabilities would elsewhere lead them to be assigned to a special unit or a special school. The simple fact is that not all schools have to cope with anything like the

2

'MIXED ABILITY'- WHAT DO WE MEAN?

same range of abilities or disabilities (cf. Monks, 1968; ILEA Inspectorate, 1976). (b)

The Age-Range Encompassed in One Class

Secondary schools in Britain on the whole assume that their classes will contain pupils born within a twelve-month period. This naturally tends to limit the diversity of attainment that one might find in a group, as compared, for example, with the range of reading ability one might find in a family grouped primary school. Interestingly, of course, a decision to break away from the chronological grouping could be taken with a view to achieving greater homogeneity in the group, as in the United States grading system, or might have the effect of greater heterogeneity, as in the family grouping pattern. (c)

The Use of Special Provision in the School

Some secondary schools which have adopted a general pattern of mixed ability grouping nevertheless make special arrangements for remedial work with the less able, which effectively means that classes rarely include the full range of ability represented in the school. Indeed, some take this policy a stage further to the point that, as Gough and McGhee (1977, p. 43) argue: Where a school has a relatively small range of ability in its population and forms, a 'remedial' group and, as happens sometimes, an accelerated group- 'topping and tailing'one is led to ask questions about how 'mixed' are the groups in the middle, and how different this is from streaming. (d)

The Way in which Classes Are Formed

If you do not deliberately construct your classes on the basis of some assessment of ability, how do you do it? Typically perhaps schools may take into account considerations like maintaining an approximately even distribution of boys and 3

MIXED ABILITY GROUPING: A PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH

girls, separating trouble-makers, enabling friends to stay together. Beyond this they commonly resort to some apparently arbitrary measure like simply dividing up an alphabetical list. Such procedures do not, however, necessarily produce groups each of which contains the full spread of ability represented in the cohort of pupils. Schools firmly bent on achieving such a spread may need to employ some of the old tools of assessment to the new end of ensuring not homogeneous but heterogeneous classes. But even then there are problems. For just as a supposedly 'streamed' school can result in what are in effect mixed ability classes, if the criteria on the basis of which they are streamed do not apply across the board, so would-be 'mixed ability schools' may find that they have generated relatively homogeneous groups in some subjects in which the criteria on which pupils were mixed do not appear to operate to the same effect. Those in favour of homogeneous grouping resorted to setting as a means of fine tuning their group composition. We are not aware of any unstreamed schools that have taken their advocacy of mixed ability groups to this length. Why this is so may turn out to be revealing of some of the complex motives schools have for favouring mixed ability grouping. (e)

The Way the Curriculum Is Organised

Fairly or unfairly, some secondary school subjects enjoy a reputation for being more academically demanding than others. Some schools deliberately introduce options designed to be more intellectually accessible to students who are struggling with an apparently more demanding element of the curriculum - for instance, a largely descriptive 'French studies' as an alternative to a language-based course in 'French'. Even where such options are in principle both open to any taker, it is a natural consequence of this kind of alternative that the groups will tend to constitute themselves roughly on the basis of ability in the subject. The school which offers a wider range of such alternatives will tend (independently of other variables) to create for itself relatively homogeneous groups; the school which insists by and large on a common curriculum will tend (again, other considerations apart) to

4

'MIXED ABILITY'- WHAT DO WE MEAN?

retain a relatively wide range of ability in any particular teachmg group. These five sets of considerations combine to demonstrate that when we talk about a class being mixed ability we are talking about a wide range of 'mixes'. There is an educationally significant sense in which any group of children is a mixed ability group. Indeed, this is precisely the point which many advocates of mixed ability grouping want to make against those who, they believe, treat streamed groups as an homogeneous block. But clearly at the other extreme a particular combination of circumstances and policies could generate groups of children representing a range of ability that must surely defeat even the most dogged refusal to recognise the variety of individual needs. Mixed Ability Teaching

It is one thing to decide to organise a school so that each class in a given year group contains a full spectrum of ability (however assessed). It is another thing to decide how to teach and how to organise that group within the classroom. In our experience the teachers most deeply disillusioned with mixed ability grouping are those in schools which have taken the first of these steps without giving proper consideration to the second. The recent NFER study (Reid et al., 1981) reported head teachers' views to the effect that inflexibility in teaching methods represented one of the major constraints on the effectiveness of mixed ability grouping. As one head put it: 'We teach mixed ability groups but we do not do mixed ability teaching.' At the simplest level 'mixed ability teaching' is any mode of teaching operated with a mixed ability class. In practice this can mean a variety of strategies reflecting, among other things, different views of the point or purpose of mixed ability grouping and its attendant educational and social values. These include the following. (a)

Undifferentiated Class Teaching

Some teachers attempt to carry into the mixed ability class just 5

MIXED ABILITY GROUPING: A PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH

the same style of class instruction which they had previously employed with a relatively homogeneous group, in spite of the obvious difficulties of matching the manner, pace and content of the instruction to the diverse levels of achievement among the children in their care. (b)

Individual Work in Ability Groups

A second, perhaps essentially conservative, response to mixed ability groups is to introduce a micro streaming structure within the classroom. In primary schools in particular this is commonly associated with the grouping of children around tables, each group working individually on assignments related to their approximate level of ability. Where resources permit, a remedial group, for example, may receive special help from a teacher with time set aside for this purpose. (c)

Individualised Learning

Some teachers judge that the only proper response to the variety of individual needs, which is made especially evident in mixed ability groups, is a programme of individually tailored assignments. Most often this involves the use (sometimes ad nauseam!) of commercially or personally produced workcards. The HMI report Mixed Ability Work in Comprehensive Schools (Department of Education and Science, 1978) reported that this was the most frequent alternative to whole class teaching encountered during the survey conducted by HMI. It argued, however, that distinction needed to be drawn between 'individual' work and 'individualised' work. Individualised work involves personal assignments devised to meet the different needs, abilities and attainments of individual pupils. Individual work is activity on which the pupil is engaged by himself, at his own pace, but which is essentially the same as that being undertaken by the rest of the class. (p. 37) The report adds that most of the work seen other than class 6

'MIXED ABILITY'- WHAT DO WE MEAN?

teaching was individual rather than individualised in the sense which we are picking out here. (d)

Collaborative Mixed Ability Group Work

As we shall go on to explore in more detail (see Chapter 5 below), some teachers see a logical connection between a preference for mixed ability grouping in the school and an attraction to collaborative group work in the classroom. This collaboration may be based on the allocation of tasks related to different abilities (e.g. one child does the writing, a second does the picture and a third pastes the two on to some card and pins them on the wall). Alternatively, as with group discussion, team games, or choral singing, it can be based on the deliberate suspension of such discrimination. We are not at this stage concerned to be prescriptive as to which or what combination of these or other teaching strategies is most appropriate to mixed ability groups. For the moment we wish merely to observe that 'mixed ability teaching' refers to a variety of teaching styles used with mixed ability groups. Ability

We have so far left unquestioned the ready assumption that one of the things we have to take as given in contemplating different forms of educational organisation is that children are naturally distributed on some kind of hierarchy of ability (which then provides a sensible basis for their distribution into classes in school). This assumption is challenged by advocates of mixed ability grouping in a number of ways. One particular preoccupation which runs through much of the discussion about the principles of comprehensive education as well as mixed ability teaching concerns the distinction between attainment and potential. By 'attainment' is meant something like presently demonstrable achievement or realised capacities; by 'potential' is meant some supposed capacity which might have been realised by now had previous condi7

MIXED ABILITY GROUPING: A PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH

tions been more favourable or which could still be realised given the right conditions in the future. 'Ability' is a term which is used somewhat ambiguously to cover both attainment and potential. Of course, empirical judgements about people's potential require inferences which rapidly become fairly conjectural. Deale has suggested that 'in practice we have no useful way of assessing potential (or even defining it) with regard to an individual child' (1977, p. 88). Daunt is more hopeful (1978, p. 54): Assessment of a child's potential is a difficult task, but not impossible. It involves, certainly, a comparison of past with present performance, but not only that, since obviously such a comparison could not on its own tell us anything about whether a child's whole recorded performance, both past and present, was comparatively good or bad in personal terms. Other data must therefore be collected to build up a picture of each child's potential. This must include observation of whether a child's performance is erratic, and if so in what ways; of the child's demeanour and attitude to work, including what the child says about the pleasure or frustration he experiences; of any known specific impediments to personal success, whether in the environment of home or school. What is plainly the case, and this is a matter of logic which hardly requires empirical study, is that a child's potential cannot be established by mere mechanical comparison with present achievement. That a child cannot do something now implies neither that he could not have done it given more favourable circumstances hitherto nor that he could not do it given appropriate circumstances in the future. Part of the argument against streaming is that it creates conditions (including low expectations by pupils and teachers of likely achievement) which positively depress achievement in comparison with potential; part of the case in favour of mixed ability grouping is that it can remove at least this form of inhibition. At the level of logical principle there are really rather few 8

'MIXED ABILITY'- WHAT DO WE MEAN?

limits on what human beings in general or individual human beings, even those in the tenth stream, might not do, at least intellectually, in ideally adapted circumstances and in time. Not only this, but at the practical level it is sobering to reflect on the dramatic achievements of physically and mentally handicapped people for whom only a generation ago society would have had no higher ambition than they might through some mechanical skill contribute towards the cost of their own upkeep. Once we break out from our hidebound conceptions of when, where, in what conditions and with what human and technological assistance learning may go on, all sorts of new possibilities become open. As Jackson argues in one of the by now classical critiques of streaming (1964, p. 143): Excellence may have genetic limits, but we must alter circumstances a great deal before the genes finally stop our growth. Meanwhile our colossal technical resources can serve an imaginative approach to education, and rediscover what every great civilisation of the past stumbled on. In favourable circumstances, excellence is not static or severely limited. It multiplies. The teacher who reports that a child 'could do better' is reporting a safe and almost logically necessary truth. But what becomes particularly significant in the context of the egalitarian considerations which underlie some (though not all) of the arguments in favour of mixed ability grouping is that on this a priori argument we have no real reason to believe that the potential of the child who at present is a low achiever is necessarily less than that of the child who is at present a relatively high achiever. In any case the potential for both will almost certainly be both more varied and more extended than either will ever achieve. High on the list of human wastefulness is our unreadiness or inability to exploit the full richness of our own human talents. Not that we could or should wish to develop all human potentials equally. We have potentials which we may regard as destructive or evil and which we may seek to curb. We have potentials (e.g. for artistic invention) which we might very well value more than others (e.g. waggling one's ears). We 9

MIXED ABILITY GROUPING: A PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH

have potentials (e.g. for weight-lifting and long-distance running) whose pursuit makes conflicting demands on our time and our nature. The school that declares its aims as being 'to develop the fullest potential' of the children is obscuring the inevitable choices which have to be made in terms of the potentials which it will seek to develop and those it will not. However, the points remain that within that range of potentials which we do seek to develop in schools, first, the potential for any child is not commensurate with his achievement and secondly, somewhat more speculatively, the gap between the potential and achievement of any one child is probably significantly greater than the gap between the achievement of one child and another. We are not sure how this last conviction could be either established or refuted empirically. For the moment we can only record that it seems to be a significant article of faith among those who regard observable differences of attainment as indicators rather of relatively favourable or unfavourable socio-educational circumstances than of significant differences in personal capacity. Thus Crosland (1962, p. 173) argued (in phrases closely echoed by Sir Edward Boyle in his preface to the Newsom Report one year later): 'we have failed to create a social environment in which all children in their early years have an equal chance of acquiring measured intelligence, so far as this can be controlled by social action'.

10

2 The Rationale In this chapter we shall be concerned to articulate and comment on what we see as the central arguments used by teachers and others in education in defence of mixed ability grouping. We recognise that this account must rest in part on empirical studies of what teachers actually say about their reasons, and to this end we shall be drawing on published surveys and case studies. But we shall at the same time try to give fuller articulation to arguments which receive somewhat fragmentary expression in the literature and, in conclusion, to comment on some of their implications and internal contradictions. We shall set out in the following four sections four arguments or sets of arguments which seem to us to have some rather distinctive features. (1) The Better To Select You By

Red Riding Hood mixed ability lives kinder and more thorough than the examinatorial wolf: 'What a lot of mixed ability you've got in the first year, headmaster.' 'All the better to set them with, later, my child?' (Davies, 1977, p. 31) Let us acknowledge first of all that schools (or more particularly secondary schools) have one interest in mixed ability grouping which is essentially conservative in character. What such schools are concerned to establish is essentially a more 11

MIXED ABILITY GROUPING: A PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH

sophisticated and perhaps fairer version of the old system of selection. Their pupils will rapidly move into streamed or setted groups but are placed in mixed ability groups for perhaps the first year so as to enable the school to make up its own mind about their abilities on the basis of sustained observation and the school's own tests. In theory at least the child is allowed to enter the competition with 'a clean slate', that is, he can put behind the disadvantages of past failure (as also, of course, the advantages of past success). Reid et al. (1981) observed that this desire to give children a fresh start 'and to avoid labelling' at the outset of a child's secondary career was in fact by far the most common reason cited in its favour by heads who were in office when their schools introduced mixed ability grouping. It came top too among teachers' perceptions of the advantages of mixed ability grouping in this NFER study. One dimension of this argument is the reluctance of secondary schools to place much reliance on the judgements made by their 'feeder' primary schools about their pupils' abilities. The study by the ILEA Inspectorate (1976) referred to the opinion of many secondary teachers that 'There is no clear correlation between primary school assessment and performance in the secondary school, and streamed or banded groupings based on a series of tests shortly after arrival at the secondary school would be suspect' (p. 14). Reid et al. (1981) refer similarly to 'the "known" inaccuracy of predictive tests' and quote the opinion of one headteacher that 'There wasn't enough information from primary schools to stream; in any case we didn't want to act on others' information' (p. 26). Davies (1977) gives a parallel example of someone he describes as a very experienced head in a comprehensive school with an intake strongly unbalanced towards the low-ability side, who thought: 'You can no longer rely on what in my time we called the mechanics of primary education ... That being so, I think that until they acquire the mechanics and come to see what they are being used for, it is rather wrong to label them in any special way on their arrival at school' (p. 28). These opinions invite, and indeed already have been subject to, a number of observations. Reid and her colleagues were prompted to ask, for example: 'What are secondary teachers

12

THE RATIONALE

really saying about the professionalism of their primary colleagues when they assert that they do not wish to accept "others'" judgement of pupils?' (p. 27) However, whatever condescension is or is not implied in the sentiments of secondary teachers, there are obvious practical difficulties involved in ensuring that the criteria against which a particular secondary school seeks to assess pupils accord with those of one primary, let alone the dozen or more that may feed a secondary school in a rural area or in an urban setting in which parents enjoy a wide degree of choice of school. Some groups of schools have gone a long way in developing a consensus around these criteria, but this is by no means universal practice. Meanwhile, one feature of the kind of 'professionalism' espoused by teachers in England and Wales is the degree of autonomy enjoyed by individual schools in the establishment of teaching objectives and hence criteria of assessment. The second question posed in the NFER report (Reid et al., 1981) concerns the concept of the 'fresh start'. How realistic is it to talk of children at the age of 11 having a 'fresh start' in their education? Again, what sort of a judgement is implied on the first six years of their schooling if their achievements or failings during this period are somehow supposed to be ignored? Different kinds of skill, knowledge and understanding will have been acquired. Different curricula will have been followed. Some will have one or two years' experience in French, science, computing; some will have none. Some will have done the Tudors to death, others will know nothing of history after the motte and bailey castle. Surely it is neither practicable nor desirable for a secondary teacher to ignore all this? Nor is it possible for children entering the secondary school to do so without the advantage or disadvantage of achievements drawn from their primary experience. The start can be 'fresh' only in the sense that the secondary teacher tries to allow children to demonstrate their strengths and weaknesses themselves rather than to come to the new school already 'labelled' by ('accompanied by the careful assessment of'?) their primary teachers. But this takes us back to some of the issues already indicated. The expressed concern for a 'fresh start' at 11 embodies nevertheless an important principle which we shall see devel13

MIXED ABILITY GROUPING: A PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH

oped more fully in some of the other arguments in favour of mixed ability grouping. It seems to represent at least a rather restricted version of the principle of justice or equality of opportunity. This kind of concern for justice or equality is fully compatible with a meritocratic and hierarchical social order in which goods are eventually distributed unequally in some sort of reflection of a pyramid-like structure of achievement. The principle of equality is applied in this context to ensure what is thought to be a fair or just competition for these social goods, and 'fairness' or 'justice' consists in ensuring that competitors start at some stage on what is seen as an equal footing- they have the same starting line. Now part of what teachers seem to be saying when they advocate a 'fresh start' at 11, mixed ability groups in the first year of secondary education, assessment and then streaming, is: 'The starting line is here! We shall treat you for twelve months without prejudice. Only on the basis of achievements which you demonstrate in that time will we make judgements about your ability and hence the curriculum and pace of work which you will follow henceforth.' At least this is what seems to be implied in this kind of practice and in what teachers say about it. Again, however, we have to note that even if teachers remove in this way what might be one handicap in the competition, misleading or prejudicial assessments by former teachers, they are certainly not removing all relevant advantages or disadvantages which have accrued from birth and before. If opportunity is made dependent upon achievement, equality of opportunity can only seriously be available where equality of achievement already exists. Moreover, what is not clear is why some of those who are so anxious about 'labelling', 'self-fulfilling prophecies', 'the halo effect' and 'writing children off at 11 are so ready to accept these consequences of assessment and streaming at 12 or 13. As we shall go on to see, some of those who advocate the postponement of any kind of selective grouping are concerned to put off for as long as possible the start of the race, to reduce perhaps the gap between the least and the most advantaged by the time of that start and even to dissociate as far as possible the business of education from the selection of young people for their different places in the social hierarchy. That this is a 14

THE RATIONALE

headier kind of egalitarianism than anything with which advocates of the diagnostic year of mixed ability grouping would normally choose to be associated is clear. Why they do not see it as a logical conclusion of their concern about avoiding labelling, allowing fresh starts and ensuring fair competition is less so. (2) Avoiding Some of the Worst Consequences of StreamIng

There is no dreaded 2c. (Head of department, quoted in ILEA Inspectorate, 1976) For many teachers the move to mixed ability grouping was not inspired by any very lofty social ideals but was a relatively pragmatic response to the immediate problem created by the reactions of groups of lower stream pupils for whom school represented a constant and humiliating reminder of what in educational terms had come to be defined as their own inadequacy or inferiority. 'The great common denominator', writes Davies, 'is a desire to get away from the worst features of streaming. These are most sharply focussed upon as the production of demoralized, demotivated, unteachable middleschool groups, bad for themselves, their teachers and other children' (1977, p. 27). The ILEA survey reported that all the schools in its sample referred to this factor. 'Elitist g.,.oups on the one hand produce "sink" groups on the other', explained one headteacher (ILEA Inspectorate, 1976). Similarly, the HMI study gave this as one of the main arguments offered in favour of mixed ability grouping (Department of Education and Science, 1978, p. 17): Pupils difficult to handle would be dispersed instead of being kept together to form anti-social groups. Undesirable feelings such as inferiority, superiority or aggression, and undesirable attitudes such as competitiveness, would tend to diminish, as would tensions between pupils and teachers. More cooperative behaviour would be developed, and good order maintained. Self

15

MIXED ABILITY GROUPING: A PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH

esteem, security and self reliance would be encouraged, as would good relationships among pupils and between pupils and teachers. At its simplest, then, mixed ability grouping may be seen as a means of dispersing rather than concentrating together those pupils whose failure (in school terms) is most likely to lead them into disillusionment and thence into disruptive behaviour. At very least this might make them easier to contain; at best it may help to avoid them developing a view of themselves, or avoid teachers too clearly identifying them, as the 'sink' of the school. The kind of optimism reflected in this argument is based in part on the judgement that the institutional arrangements might themselves be conducive to the sense of failure and frustration experienced by many less able pupils. We have already referred to the prominence given in responses to the NFER survey to teachers' concern to avoid the consequences of 'labelling' children. Research findings indicating the way in which children's own acceptance of a low ability identity, or teachers' acceptance of it in relation to a child, can operate as a self-fulfilling prophecy seem to have become established wisdom among teachers. Many teachers acknowledge too that lower streams in secondary schools have commonly been disadvantaged in terms of resources and facilities and taught by teachers, who, if they were not in fact inferior to their colleagues, often came to feel that they were. The 'less able' seemed to lose out all ways round. On some views this social-psychological analysis needs to be located within a broader sociological framework, though we have to acknowledge that teachers offering such analysis do not appear to be sufficiently numerous to feature centrally in the recent ILEA, HMI, or NFER surveys (either that or surveys do not encourage teachers to articulate more systematic and radical analyses of educational experience?). Briefly, and no doubt oversimplistically, what this broader argument draws attention to is the tendency of streaming structures in schools to reinforce the vicious circle of social-economic disadvantage ~ educational disadvantage ~ educational failure ~ social-economic disadvantage. 16

THE RATIONALE

Those who offer such analyses are rarely optimistic that the cycle can be broken simply by educational change. Indeed, studies like Stephen Ball's fascinating account of the change over to mixed ability grouping at Beechside Comprehensive are cited as examples of the way in which underlying structures are untouched by attempts at institutional change. 'The most striking aspect of the analysis of the mixed ability forms in this study is the absence of dramatic change' (Ball, 1981, p. 285). Nevertheless, they help to locate more specific discussion of the merits of streaming within the context of wider questions of social justice and injustice and remind us again that however practical or 'pragmatic' we try to be about grouping in schools, fundamental questions about social justice lie not far below the surface. (3)

Respecting Each Child as an Individual of Equal Worth

Mixed ability teaching takes place when a teacher tries to regulate his treatment of individual differences by the principle of equality. (Elliott, 1976, p. 4) One important argument in support of mixed ability grouping is based on the principle of equal respect for each child as an individual. One thread of this argument suggests that when we have streamed, banded, or setted classes we tend to rely on the process of selection to give us relatively homogeneous groups and thence to treat them as a block. As the ILEA report put it (1976, p. 15): Streaming or banding merely disguises and ignores differences in abilities and rates of progress and equally presents the problems (often unrecognised) of stretching the brightest pupils and maintaining the understanding of the less able in the class. Mixed ability classes force teachers to recognise these problems. Many of the comments made by teachers reflect the supposition that if you are teaching a mixed ability group you cannot help but recognise the range of different individual needs. 17

MIXED ABILITY GROUPING: A PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH

Daunt, for example, in perhaps the most eloquent and developed defence of the comprehensive principle (and thence directly and indirectly of mixed ability grouping), suggests that while 'the teacher of the streamed class or set is inclined to perceive the individual through the group . . through the fiction (on which streaming and setting depend) that the group is significantly homogeneous', the teacher of the mixed ability class 'is impelled to advance the authenticity of his knowledge and understanding of individual children and to promote individual learning as one of his predominant methods' (Daunt, 1975, p. 55). One of the teachers interviewed in connection with the NFER survey reported: 'I grew up and expanded as a teacher because I was thrust into talking face to face rather than as a class' (Reid et al., 1981, p. 74). This respect for the individual child has in some teachers' minds far-reaching implications for school organisation. The HMI survey, for example, starts with reference to the objection to the classification of children and thence their streaming and ranking. But it goes on to refer to teachers' expectations that 'curricula differentiated by ability would be avoided' and that 'mixed ability grouping would promote the matching of individual programmes to individual needs ... the allocation of the oldest teachers to the ablest pupils ... would be avoided ... they would be obliged to avoid uniform, whole-class teaching . . . new styles of learning, including small group and individual learning techniques, would be encouraged . . . resources for learning would have to be more diverse ... continuity with primary school styles would be ensured'; 'assessment of each pupil against his own potential would be encouraged' (Department of Education and Science, 1978, p. 18; our italics). What these aspirations indicate is something of the strength of the commitment to respect for the individual and individual differences which lies behind at least some people's espousal of the cause of mixed ability grouping - sentiments summarised perhaps in Caulfield's explanation of teachers' reasons for introducing mixed ability teaching at Bishop Douglass school (1977, p. 74): Our conviction rested on the simple conclusion that children even of the same family are human beings of differ18

THE RATIONALE

ent abilities, personalities and characters. We would argue that mixed ability teaching is a recognition of this individuality because the essence of the methodology is teaching the individual child and satisfying his educational needs. One interesting feature of Caulfield's argument, however, is his explicit disavowal of egalitarian concerns which others see as inextricably associated with this concern for individual development. 'We would have been astonished if anyone had thought we were engaged in egalitarianism or social engineering' (p. 74). Other writers in the individualist tradition, however, clearly recognise the importance of combining with the concern for the individual a principle requiring the equal distribution of that concern, respect, or value. Thus Elliott sees the teacher in the mixed ability class as seeking 'to regulate his treatment of individual differences by the principle of equality' (1976, p. 4). Similarly Daunt presents the kind of teacher who properly embodies the spirit of comprehensive schooling in these terms (1975, p. 15): He is egalitarian, not in the absurd sense of believing that all talents and aptitudes are equal, but yet in a stronger sense than merely advocating ... equality of opportunity: he wishes to see all members of society equally valued. The HMI survey makes similar reference in these terms (Department of Education and Science, 1978, p. 17) Mixed ability grouping would prevent the rejection of the less able implied in streaming, setting or banding; would tend to avoid putting pupils into rank order; or would even enable the avoidance of any classification of pupils at all. The equal value of all individuals would thereby be demonstrated, and there would be equality of opportunity, or equality as such, for all. What we seem to be presented with here, then, is a principle which would allow or even encourage different children to follow different curricula, in different ways at different paces. 19

MIXED ABILITY GROUPING: A PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH

(It would thus contrast with other principles which underlie defences of mixed ability teaching which link the practice with a common curriculum and common objectives.) But the principle is egalitarian in the sense that it demands equal concern, attention, respect and value for all children and (which may be more difficult to command) for what they do. (4) Expressing and Encouraging the Values of Fraternity, Community and Co-operation

Aspirations such as improvement in human relationships or social integration were more frequently cited than, for example, such aims as improving the attainment of the less able pupils. (Department of Education and Science, 1978, p. 15) The more recent NFER survey confirms the observation reported here that teachers attach considerable importance to the social benefits of mixed ability grouping, but it notes too that the nature of these advantages was frequently not articulated. The phrase "the usual social advantages" was employed by many teachers in their interview and this unquestioning expression of social benefits was reflected in an almost total lack of interest in exploring the social outcomes of mixed ability teaching in the subsequent group discussions (Reid et al., 1981, p. 73). There are, however, a sufficient number of phrases which recur in teachers' comments about these social advantages to give us some picture of their character. Reid's own report recorded references to children 'all getting on well together, respecting each other's individual differences and each other's work' and the suggestion that this led to 'an increase in tolerance of individual foibles within the group'. Mixed ability groups were valued for the 'concrete example' they provided of what some teachers believed to be the philosophy of the real world- 'showing that each person has something to offer'. By comparison, teachers working in streamed classes referred to this system as 'socially divisive' (ibid., pp. 72, 73). Among the arguments cited in the HMI survey are prominent references

20

THE RATIONALE

to the opinion that 'mixed ability grouping would help to counteract class differences, and would work against the continuance of a competitive, elitist and divided society'. This form of grouping was believed to encourage 'social integration and a sense of community'. And later, 'pupils would learn to help each other' (Department of Education and Science, 1978, p. 17). The social values or principles which underlie these and other similar references (see e.g. E. M. Hoyles' account of mixed ability grouping at Vauxhall Manor school in Kelly, 1975) seem to be distinguishable from the concerns to which we have so far referred. The fathers of the French Revolution were clear-minded enough to distinguish two principles which later social theorists and some advocates of mixed ability teaching have tended to blur. We refer to the principles of 'equality' and 'fraternity'. One thread of the argument in support of mixed ability grouping is opposed to the institutionalised segregation of different sections of the population not only because this is instrumentally associated with inequality but because it is itself intrinsically undesirable. The ideal society on this view is a community (a commune?) which is at least relatively unhierarchical in character; in which there is mutuality of concern and respect, and co-operation in the pursuit of collective and individual good; in which there is a willing acceptance of the principle that no individual or group interest will persistently be subordinated to another- for all of which a certain kind of equality of consideration will be a necessary but not a sufficient condition. Anthony Crosland observed and amplified the importance of the principle of fraternity (though he did not use this term) in his seminal essay 'Comprehensive education' (1974, p. 204): Now by selecting for a superior school children who are already well favoured by environment, we are not merely confirming, we are hardening and sharpening, an existing social division. This can surely not be thought desirable. I will not argue the point in terms of equality. But I will argue it in terms of a sense of community, of social cohesion, of a nation composed of people who understand each other because they can communicate. If the only 21

MIXED ABILITY GROUPING: A PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH

time we can, as a society, achieve this common language is when we go to war, than we are at a much less advanced stage than many societies which the anthropologists describe as primitive .. We have only to consider our industrial relations, and the lack of communication and mutual understanding reflected in them, to see the depth of social division in Britain today. Of course, education alone cannot solve this problem. But so long as we choose to educate our children in separate camps, reinforcing and seeming to validate existing differences in accent, language and values, for so long will our schools exacerbate rather than diminish our class divisions. Crosland went on to draw explicitly the implication that the considerations which applied to the elimination of separatism in schooling applied equally to separatism within a school (p. 204): Of course the elimination of separatism at 11-plus is only a necessary, and not a sufficient, condition of reducing the divisive effect of our school system. We should not much improve matters if selection gave way merely to rigid streaming within a strictly neighbourhood pattern of schools. This would re-create many of the old evils within a comprehensive system. Thus the talk, perhaps the rhetoric, of mixed ability teaching offers a picture of a (closely interrelated) set of social values which mixed ability grouping is expected to reinforce: social integration social cohesion community mutual understanding mutual respect mutual support tolerance co-operation equality and of their negation:

22

THE RATIONALE

segregation separatism social divisiveness the absence of mutual understanding, respect and support intolerance competitiveness inequality. It is the positive set of values which we take, roughly speaking, to be represented by or rooted in the traditional notion of 'fraternity'.

Summary, Some Distinctions and Some Problems

We have largely, though not exclusively, restricted ourselves so far to articulating some of the many arguments which seem to underlie teachers' support for mixed ability grouping. On our analysis they are rooted in one or more of the following principles or concerns:

justice or equality of opportunity in a weaker sense applied as a principle governing discrimination between courses and teaching styles in an (eventually) streamed school, and governing access to those streams; justice or equality of opportunity in a stronger sense applied as a principle governing children's capacity to compete for social (including further educational) advantages when they leave school - implying within practical limits an attempt to enable children to secure the same kind of educational advantages while they are at school (and hence approximating to the more radical egalitarian goal of equality of achievement); equality of respect (or value) for individuals, in which the principle of equality is invoked as a distributive principle governing the value which is to be placed on every individual and attempts to develop them, in all their diversity; fraternity, which extends the principle of equality of respect 23

MIXED ABILITY GROUPING: A PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH

into a representation of an integrated, mutually supportive, interactive community. Before we go on to look more closely at the nature and justi· fication of some of these principles let us note certain features of the argument(s) so far expressed. First, people often try to contrast what they call the 'educational' arguments in favour of mixed ability teaching with the 'social' arguments. The HMI report acknowledged the difficulty and to some extent the falseness of this distinction and then proved the case by getting into some confusion when it tried nevertheless to operate with the distinction. In our view, and this is well illustrated in the presentation of arguments in this chapter, identifiable social principles or values underlie all the major arguments in support of mixed ability groupmg. Our second observation, however, and this is easily supported again by reference to the preceding arguments, is that the social principles referred to in support of mixed ability teaching are not all of a kind and are not even compatible. They represent some distinctive and on the face of it conflicting concerns. There is a conflict, for example, between the principle that calls merely for a fair competition in school for educational success and hence (it is assumed) social advantage and the principle which requires schools to establish the conditions under which a more equal competition for social advantage can take place once children have left schools. There is a prima facie conflict (as the HMI survey itself observed) between the concern for individuality and the concern for equality. 'The notion of equality tends to be associated with a common curriculum and common provision to which all must have equal access, that of individuality is associated with variety and divergence' (Department of Education and Science, 1978, pp. 18-19). Similarly, and again this point is made by HMI, it is not easy to reconcile the aims of social and intellectual integration with that of each child pursuing his own goals, the groupy gregariousness of the commune with the private space and quiet self-examination which seem to belong with the cultivation of the self-sufficient individual. 24

THE RATIONALE

If it is possible to resolve some of these apparent conflicts, they serve nevertheless to warn us that the case in favour of mixed ability teaching is by no means all of a piece. Our third observation follows from the first two, for it is clear that the different arguments in favour of mixed ability teaching have some rather different consequences for the organisation of mixed ability teaching in practice. In particular, as David Bridges has already argued elsewhere (Bridges, 1976), the arguments seem to have different implications for the teaching of mixed ability groups in the classroom. Where mixed ability grouping is seen as having a largely diagnostic function it may be quite compatible with class teaching which allows an individual response that indicates the relative capacities of the group of children in question. (Though let us be clear that few serious advocates of the intrinsic merits of mixed ability teaching would defend this kind of practice.) For others who stress the principle of equal value or concern for each individual pupil, as we have already seen, mixed ability teaching is inextricably associated with individualised learning (i.e. differentiated programmes of work tailored specifically to individual needs). For others again, the concern to encourage social and intellectual contact and integration, understanding of individual differences, mutual respect and co-operation suggests the suitability of group projects, group discussion, or team work of one kind or another. Similarly, there is what the HMI report regarded as the most difficult division of principle and practice - and this concerns attitudes towards assessment. Some of the arguments which (perhaps somewhat contortedly?) oppose any kind of assessment on the grounds that this is bound to be unfair, that the subsequent 'labelling' is prejudicial to the less able, or that any such assessment is essentially dehumanising are difficult to reconcile with the concern which underlies other advocacies of mixed ability teaching, to match curriculum teaching style and/or resources to individual needs. How such matching is to be done without some form of assessment is difficult to understand. These differences in the practical implications of the arguments we have picked out go to support the view that there

25

MIXED ABILITY GROUPING: A PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH

are some significant differences between the arguments themselves. Conclusion

What we have done so far is to illustrate the way in which people have begun to justify an educational practice by reference to certain social principles. We have also shown certain tensions between the social principles invoked, such that it is difficult to see that they can be deployed in consort, so to speak, in support of mixed ability teaching. An adequate justification would have to rely on one or some of these arguments rather than the whole package. Apart from this, however, there are other conditions which would need to be satisfied before we could claim to have an adequate justification for mixed ability teaching. It is by no means enough to display a kind of prima facie symmetry between the educational practice and the social principles referred to. In particular we shall need to ask two questions. First, the question resolvable (in principle) by reference to further empirical evidence: does the practice (mixed ability grouping)

have in fact the desirable consequences (equality, fraternity, etc.) which it is hoped to have? Secondly, the question which invites closer philosophical scrutiny: are the social principles by reference to which the practice is justified (in particular equality and fraternity) themselves coherent and justifiable? We shall not in

this book, which is concerned with the social philosophy of mixed ability teaching, say very much about the empirical evidence - though we shall want to return to this at least briefly in Chapter 6 below. In the next two chapters, however, we shall comment in more detail on the philosophical arguments underlying the principles of equality and fraternity.

26

3 Justice and Equality In Chapter 2 we noted that different views of mixed ability grouping can often be seen to reflect attachment to different social principles, particularly to principles of justice and equality. In this chapter the intention is to examine rather more closely ideas of justice and equality and to see if any justifiable connection can be made between justice and/or equality on the one hand and mixed ability grouping on the other. The word 'justifiable' is worth emphasising since we do not find the problem of justification normally pursued as far as it might be in the available literature discussing possible rationales for mixed ability grouping. It is one thing to note, as we have done, the various ways in which views about mixed ability grouping appear to be rooted in ideas of justice and equality; it is quite another thing to present justifications for either the connections or the underlying ideas, and when such justificatory arguments are offered they are sometimes rather weak. An example of such a weak argument, offered as a positive rationale for mixed ability grouping, is to be found in a book by A. V. Kelly (1978). After rehearsing rather familiar arguments demonstrating the faults of streaming, which constitute for him a negative case for mixed ability grouping, he goes on to construct a positive rationale 'by reference to the changed and changing needs and ideology of both education and society'. It is reasonably clear, however, that this kind of argument, which takes it for granted that educational practice must simply reflect observable ideological changes in society, 27

MIXED ABILITY GROUPING: A PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH

will not do the justificatory job it claims to do. Such arguments simply analyse, more or less correctly, ideological change and attempt to show what kind of educational arrangements best suit such changes. They avoid entering the difficult area of argument about values presupposed in the ideologies discussed and therefore fail to provide any kind of real justification for the practices supported. We cannot, therefore, sympathise with these attempts to provide a rationale for mixed ability grouping. Some attempts have been made, however, to connect an underlying and presumably absolute value principle, which is not merely a part of an ideology, with mixed ability grouping. An instructive example, which we have already noted, comes from P. E. Daunt in asserting his Comprehensive Principle which claims that 'the education of all children is held to be intrinsically of equal value' (Daunt, 1975, p. 16). As indicated in the last chapter, this is one of the main ideas of equality and justice that teachers seem to have in mind when favouring mixed ability grouping - namely, respecting each child as an individual of equal worth. Now if such a principle is sound then certainly there are implications arising from it for mixed ability grouping, as we shall try to show later in this chapter. Unfortunately, however, although Daunt has extremely interesting things to say about the working out of this principle in the policymaking and teaching arrangements of comprehensive schools, and although he relates the principle very specifically to mixed ability grouping, he does not seem very confident in the grounding or justification of the principle itself. Indeed, he says 'clearly it would be perfectly possible rationally to reject the principle altogether ... perfectly possible, too, to substitute a different principle' (ibid., p. 16). If this is so, one is bound to ask why anyone should accept the principle or urge it upon others. Daunt himself sees the principle as a 'genuinely uncontaminated corollary' of his aims of education, which he gives as helping a person to 1(a) understand himself 2(a) understand his total environment

1(b) improve himself 2(b) improve his relations with his environment

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JUSTICE AND EQUALITY

but he appears equally unclear as to whether we are to take these aims as self-evident or not; and what it actually means for the principle to be a 'genuinely uncontaminated corollary' of such aims is certainly not obvious. However much we might like the principle - and we do - the justificatory account remains to be given. Suppose it to be asserted that children should be taught in mixed ability groups because it is more just than grouping them in any other way. To know whether the justification part of this claim is meaningful and really does constitute a justification or not we need to look at the idea of justice, and in looking at this idea we shall inevitably be looking at the idea of equality as well. The kind of justice and equality that we are concerned with in this context is to do with the treatment of persons by other persons: in this particular case the treatment of persons who are pupils by other persons who are teachers or school administrators. We need to ask whether there are any general and fundamental rules by which we can decide what is just, fair, or equitable treatment, and what is not. The first view to dispose of, necessarily so because even ministers of education still use it (Boyson, 1981), is the idea that egalitarians believe justice to lie in the exactly equal treatment of all people because people are exactly equal in all respects. This view is such patent nonsense that it enables non-egalitarians like Rhodes Boyson to reject egalitarianism without more ado. The truth, of course, is that this view is nonsense and bears no resemblance to what egalitarians actually say. They might say that all people are equal in certain respects, but that is a different argument, certainly not nonsense, which we shall come to in due course. For the time being let us be quite clear that it is not just to treat pupils as though they are exactly alike. Indeed, to do so would be unjust, as we have realised at least since the time of Aristotle. Defenders of mixed ability grouping cannot, and as far as we know do not try to, ground their case here. To treat people justly, equally, or fairly you do not have to treat them exactly alike. Justice does not require this, but it does require two other important things: first, that if people are the same in important respects then they should be 29

MIXED ABILITY GROUPING: A PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH

treated the same in so far as the treatment bears on those respects; and, secondly, that differences of treatments should be appropriately connected with some relevant differences to be found in the people concerned. The important point here is that in a number of cases differential treatment, providing one kind of thing for some people and different kinds of things for others, is exactly what fairness or justice demands. Difference of provision, treatment or allocation of resources is never in itself evidence of injustice. We always need to ask further questions about the nature of the differences and the relevance of those differences to the differences of treatment or provision before we can judge about possible injustice. This idea of distributive justice or fairness relates to Daunt's idea of the equal value of education for all children because here education is seen as a 'good' of which some persons could conceivably have more than others in terms of allocated resources, time spent in education, access to good teachers, and so on. The way education is shared out and organised is a problem of distributive justice. Education is particularly a problem of distributive justice because it is widely held by modern political, social and moral philosophers to constitute what is called a primary good. All sorts of things can be goods - for instance, things people might desire - but some things are necessary in a much stronger sense than just being wanted. Such goods are necessary in the sense that a person must have them in order to operate, now or eventually, as a purposive agent, that is, 'one capable of fulfilling purposes through action' (Gewirth, 1978, p. 244) and such things are usefully called primary goods. Most writers on these matters either include education as a primary good or see education as necessarily related to primary goods like freedom, knowledge, or self-esteem. Alan Gewirth, for example, in his book Reason and Morality, argues that both knowledge and freedom are necessities of what he calls 'unforced choice' and 'for the achievement of both knowledge and freedom education is a prime means' (ibid., p. 245). A further example of this kind of underlying moral argument is to be found in John Rawls's influential work A Theory

30

JUSTICE AND EQUALITY

of Justice (1972). Rawls talks of the essential primary good of self-respect and goes on to argue (p. 107): It follows that the confident sense of their own worth should be sought for the least favored and this limits the forms of hierarchy and degrees of inequality that justice permits. Thus, for example, resources for education are not to be allocated solely or necessarily mainly according to their return as estimated in productive trained abilities, but also according to their worth in enriching the personal and social life of citizens, including here the least favored. What follows from these kinds of argument is indeed something like Daunt's principle of the equal value of education to all children, but we now have the strong supporting basis that this is an equal right to children as persons, as human agents, quite irrespective of variations in ability or other characteristics of personality. The basic claim to equality of educational provision in some sense is therefore a strong one and not to be dismissed by pointing to the undeniable differences that exist among pupils. We must note, too, that the claim here is to equality of treatment and provision, and not just to the idea of equality of opportunity that has been so fashionable a conception in educational discussion. In Chapter 2 we noted both a weak and a strong sense of equality of opportunity discernible in some advocacy of mixed ability grouping. The weaker sense embodies the idea of giving children an equal chance to enter an essentially unequal system - a streamed school - by, say, enabling differences to emerge in a relatively short-lived mixed ability period. The stronger sense sees the period of equal treatment as extending throughout school so as to give the pupil an equal opportunity to cope with the unequal life struggle after school. The idea of equality of opportunity has been examined and criticised in a number of ways in recent years and it is now difficult to see how the notion can adequately serve an appropriately moral treatment of pupils in any continuous sense as actual or potential purposive agents. Rawls, for example, links the idea of equality of opportunity 31

MIXED ABILITY GROUPING: A PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH

with the idea of a meritocratic society, lacking in fraternity, and sees it as giving people 'an equal chance to leave behind the less fortunate in the personal quest for influence and social position' (ibid., pp. 106-7). Rawls himself, of course, propounds a principle of social justice in which differences, inequalities, in the provision of goods are only to be justified if such differences make the least well off better off than they would have been without the differences. Such a principle, in practice, would help to produce fraternity by means of its patent justice and non-arbitrariness. More to our present point, perhaps, is the fact that such a principle is rarely satisfied where differences of educational treatment or provision are very pronounced. It would have to be shown, on this argument, that the least well off pupils educationally gain more by the existence of differences of educational provision and treatment than they would by the absence of such differences. Other writers (Daunt, 1975; Williams, 1969) have pointed out the oddness of the notion of equality of opportunity, noting its concern to give equal chances to achieve unequal and necessarily limited rewards, as in a handicap race. Daunt points out that in the educational context, all too often, the alleged equality of opportunity is offered once only, as in the 11-plus selection procedure, after which all the evidence indicates an increasing lack of opportunity for the least well off. The more the actual equality of treatment extends throughout the pupil's school life, as in the stronger of our two senses, then the less of a distinction there is for educational purposes between equality per se and equality of opportunity. In any case, what is being talked about here, in an attempt to provide an underpinning justification for mixed ability grouping in terms of social justice, is not equality of opportunity, but rather some more ongoing and continuous form of equality of treatment and provision based on the idea of every pupil's claim to be treated as an actual or potential purposive agent who can only act as such if able to receive his or her fair share of primary goods which would include education. We must now consider whether a preference for mixed ability grouping necessarily follows from this kind of principle. In trying to relate ideas about the grouping of pupils to 32

JUSTICE AND EQUALITY

principles of distributive justice there are two difficulties to deal with. First, there is the difficulty of determining what would constitute the same treatment of provision in terms of grouping. This is necessary because we have to know what does constitute sameness of treatment or provision before we can investigate, secondly, what might constitute good and relevant reasons for deviating from it in some cases, few or many. It is thus well worth asking what kind of grouping would form a kind of datum sameness-of-treatment grouping of pupils in school if there were no question of treating any of them differently. To avoid complications that are probably unrealistic we shall assume that we are talking about arrangements of groups within overall year-groups of roughly comparable age. A useful heuristic device here is to imagine something like the state of ignorance posited by Rawls - that is, to imagine a group of rational agents ignorant of what actual differences of ability, intelligence and personality they might have, but knowing that they were to be grouped for learning and desirious of finding the most rational principles for such grouping. What this device does, in effect, is to make clear that the only characteristic of the individuals to be grouped that should be considered, in the first instance at least, is the characteristic of purposive agency which all persons have in common. Now such persons would not wish, could not rationally wish, special characteristics such as high intelligence, convergent thinking, or special abilities to be specially valued in such groupings as may be made, since they would not know whether, in particular cases, they would have these characteristics. To group according to ability, specific or general, is to group according to variable characteristics other than the nonvariable characteristic of purposive agency and would necessarily be rejected as a rational principle for grouping for sameness of treatment. The only way in which initial sameness of treatment can be accorded, and equal valuing plainly be signalled, is for each person to be in a group which is as mixed in tenns of abilities as any other group that he/she could be in. Some have argued, Daunt for example, that not only does such a principle of mixed ability grouping establish this kind of datum- a basic sameness, deviations from which have to be 33

MIXED ABILITY GROUPING: A PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH

justified in order to satisfy a principle of distributive justice but it ensures a kind of equal valuing of pupils as purposive individuals in a much more substantive sense: The teacher of a mixed ability class is impelled to advance the authenticity of his knowledge and understanding of individual children and to promote individual learning as one of his predominant methods. The teacher of the streamed class or set is inclined to perceive the individual through the group, and therefore to stress an interpersonal excellence, through the fiction (on which streaming and setting depend) that the group is significantly homogeneous; he is moreover committed to a system of promotions and demotions which require yet further emphasis on interpersonal success. (Daunt, 1975, p. 55) We encounter here again the mixture of empirical expectations and claimed logical connections characteristic of much educational discussion. Teachers do not, of course, necessarily teach mixed ability groups by individual methods, though perhaps they should, since we often see such groups being taught as if they were homogeneous as to abilities and other characteristics. Some teachers do give a great deal of individual instruction and concern even in streamed and setted groups. Nevertheless, there is strength in Daunt's arguments: the connection between setting and streaming and a system of promotions and demotions does appear to be a logical connection in that the latter would have no point without the former; and promotions and demotions, however glossed, imply a valuing of what one is promoted to and a devaluing of what one is promoted from, to say nothing of demotions. It does also seem to be the case that mixed ability grouping presents individual teachers with the appropriate social justice question in a way that neither streaming nor setting does- that question being: 'Given that these children are put into a mixed ability group as of equal value, what individual differences that they might have are relevant to differences of educational treatment that I might provide?' In setting or streaming situations the assumption is always that the social justice question has 34

JUSTICE AND EQUALITY

already been dealt with in the grouping arrangements, and the teacher can assume a homogeneous group in the respects relevant to his teaching. Our conclusion must be, then, that the appropriate datum, the position from which questions about relevant differences must start, is the mixed ability group, where 'mixed ability group' means not simply an ignoring of differences of ability but a deliberate mixing to ensure that all children work together in groups mixed in the same way as all other groups. It is important to emphasise that the establishing of this datum is nothing to do with teaching efficiency or teacher convenience but everything to do with the patent demonstration of the equal valuing of education for every pupil considered as a purposive agent. This brings us to our second difficulty: the establishing of the datum of what sameness of treatment means as far as grouping arrangements are concerned is only the start of the argument about social justice. We now have to ask whether there are any relevant differences that might justify deviation from the datum. Note that what has to be demonstrated is not only that certain differences justify differences of treatment, since many differences of treatment can be given within a mixed ability group, especially where individualised learning and teaching is the dominant method. What has to be shown is that the differences necessitate some form of grouping different from that of mixed ability. We must start by noting that there are some differences at least that do warrant differential grouping. A clear example of this would be children who are wholly deaf. Such children require special skills in teaching which could not without gross waste be generalised across all teachers of mixed ability groups on the chance that a deaf child might turn up in any group. The point here is that the deaf child would not receive sameness of treatment if put in an ordinary mixed ability group. It is not a case of positive discrimination in the ordinary sense of that phrase, but rather a case where sameness of treatment, basic social justice, can only be approached by the recognition that this gross difference of functioning necessitates specially differentiated teaching that can only be provided in special groups. The sameness of treatment principle, therefore, is

35

MIXED ABILITY GROUPING: A PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH

respected rather than diminished by departing from the normal datum, and it is this that requires demonstration in any claim for departure from the datum. The same kind of claim as for the deaf child might be made for children who are simply very difficult to teach or, to put it the other way round, children with severe learning difficulties. These difficulties might variously be classified as to their causes, but this is not really to the present point. The issue would hinge essentially on the degree of special teaching skill, knowledge, or expertise needed to teach such children. If the teaching skill required is so great or so specialised that the teacher of an ordinary mixed ability group is unlikely to have it, then such a child, placed in an ordinary mixed ability group, will simply not learn at all, and in such a case the principle of sameness of treatment is only to be met by differential provision and treatment in separate groups. Now this, of course, is an important example, since it looks like the case for accepting differences in ability as constituting relevant differences justifying departure from the datum and the arranging of education based on groups containing ability similarities. In other words, it looks like making a case for setting, rather than for mixed ability grouping. We should not rush to accept this, however. It is true that quantitative variations in the ability to learn can reach a point where a qualitative change in the teaching skill required is reached, as we have suggested above. But this does not alter the fact that across a wide range of ability ordinarily expected teaching skills should be sufficient to cope with the teaching required. Where this is the case, then to group in terms of ability similarities would sacrifice the demonstration of equal valuing for no good reason and therefore diminish the principle of sameness of treatment. Deviations from the mixed ability datum are only justified, it must be stressed, when not to deviate means that some pupils do not get equal valuing in terms of educational treatment if they remain in mixed ability groups. What we have tried to demonstrate in this chapter is that mixed ability grouping, defined as grouping where each pupil is in a group as mixed in terms of abilities as any other group that he/she could be in, in a peculiar way does not require

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justifying because it constitutes the datum 'equality of valuing' grouping that rational agents might reasonably expect who did not yet know what their individual differences might turn out to be. Such equal valuing is to be presupposed because all persons, whatever their differences, are agents with purposes requiring the primary means to pursue them, and should demonstrably be valued as such. What requires justifying, then, and can in some cases be justified, is deviation from the datum mixed ability grouping. Such justification is achieved by demonstrating that pupils with certain specific characteristics cannot possibly receive equal valuing as purposive agents within the basic mixed ability group, or that certain activities cannot take place in mixed ability groups because of the particular demands of the activity without patently devaluing the pupils in the groups; and it is attempts at such demonstrations that should inform school discussions about whether or not to group according to ability in specific cases. The practice of setting, as distinct from streaming, rests, of course, on claims about differences between subjects as well as differences between pupils, and this raises the question as to whether differences in the content or methodology of different teaching subjects are relevant differences for departure from the norm of mixed ability grouping. We discuss these questions in Chapter 5, but before doing so we shall look at possible connections between mixed ability teaching and the idea of fraternity.

37

4 Fraternity In section 4 of Chapter 2 we noted a wide range of ideas connected with a broad notion of fraternity which often appeared in the rhetoric, and indeed sometimes the argument, supporting mixed ability grouping. We suggested there that this cluster of ideas, though often confiated with ideas of equality and social justice, was actually about something else more to do with a positive valuing of social integration and feelings of community as things to be approved of in their own right. Thus, as we pointed out, segregation of pupils into groups based upon specific abilities was seen by some teachers as deplorable, not solely because such differentiation represented the injustice of unjustifiably different treatment, but simply because it acted to support social divisiveness and against the possibility of social cohesiveness and mutually supportive co-operation. Sometimes this idea is part of a wider socio-political spectrum in which present-day society is seen as damagingly competitive, divisive and alienating, and educational arrangements of a comprehensive school and mixed ability grouping kind are seen as means of combating this state of affairs. The quotations from Crosland given in Chapter 2 appear to embrace this range of considerations. Here was at least one protagonist plainly concerned to break down divisions between schools, and within them, with the avowed object of breaking down the divisions of social class in the wider society. Social philosophers, too, have valued the idea of fraternity. We noted in the last chapter, when discussing John Rawls's criticism of the idea of equality of opportunity, that

38

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such an idea was indeed to be criticised precisely because it acted against the idea of fraternity by making a fraternal society more difficult to achieve. There thus seems to be a kind of interplay, over a range of ideas and principles, between equality and social justice on the one hand and fraternity on the other, and it is quite clear that some supporters of mixed ability grouping and other nonselective arrangements attach great importance to the fraternity end of this complex of ideas. In order to make a clear justificatory argument connected with social justice, it was necessary to separate out principles of justice from ideas of fraternity more sharply than they often are in arguments about mixed ability grouping, and it will be necessary now to do the same in considering the force of arguments based on fraternity. We shall thus operate with a notion of fraternity perhaps somewhat narrower than the richness of considerations included under that heading earlier, in order to sharpen the argument. This in no way denies the complexity of ideas intuitively motivating teachers to support one educational arrangement rather than another, but it does indicate the necessity of trying to locate logical justification with some preCISIOn. Fraternity, of course, was one aspect of the great trinity slogan of the French Revolution: Liberty, Equality and Fraternity; but while the first two of these are still much discussed, the third has not in recent times received a great deal of attention in the literature of social justice. Indeed, inspection of the literature reveals some confusion on what the word is supposed to pick out. Although sometimes spoken of as a principle, the difficulty seems to be that fraternity really appears to indicate something about feeling. Liberty and equality are ways of talking about social rights and duties, but fraternity cannot be described in quite this way. It seems odd to talk about a duty to be fraternal or a right to be treated fraternally. We might applaud widespread feelings of fraternity in a society or deplore the lack of such feelings. We might, as does Bruce Ackerman in Social Justice in the Liberal State (1980), claim that fraternity can be overvalued in the liberal state which should go rather for liberty, equality and individuality. What we cannot do is command feelings of 39

MIXED ABILITY GROUPING: A PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH

fraternity any more than we can command feelings of love and friendship. To talk therefore of a principle of fraternity seems inappropriate since fraternity cannot be imperative in the way a principle has to be. The particular feelings that the term 'fraternity' picks out are clear enough. They are feelings of warmth, respect, affection and sympathy mutually felt by some persons for one another. The paradigm location for such feelings, and the true origin of the word, is in the family where it is supposed (not always correctly) that members of the family will have such feelings towards each other for no other reason than that they are members of the same family. The Christian idea of the brotherhood of man has the same etymological derivation, though here the denotation has clearly become extended. Thus the idea of fraternity picks out certain feelings attached to the idea of belonging, together with some positive valuation of such feelings. Now it is probably quite true that people have such feelings and that such feelings give pleasure and satisfaction. Similarly, it is also probably true that a lack of such feelings, or the lack of an appropriate object for such feelings, is a source of discomfort. That fraternity has become considered as a good thing in its own right probably has much to do with the straightforward pleasurableness of feelings of fraternity when focused into a reciprocating group as contrasted with the discomfort of lacking such a focus or such reciprocation. It is at this point that what we have so far discussed in terms of empirically observed feelings becomes tied up with considerations of social justice. If we start by taking fraternity as a good in some unqualified sense, then we can look for aspects of society likely to enhance or diminish opportunities for such fraternity. This is an important element in Marxism, for example. One of the criticisms of capitalist society made in important elements of Marxist thought is the alienating effect of a society in which the exploitation of one class by another, and individual isolation and competition, are encouraged by the very structure of that society. A strong emotional motivation in communist thought and action is the desire for a society in which shared ownership has removed causes for conflict and competition and replaced these disharmonies by what Plame40

FRATERNITY

natz calls 'closer ties of affection and goodwill' (1975, ch. XIII, p. 380). Again, an important strand in some Christian thought is to deplore the breakdown in widespread religious conviction at least in part because this removes an appropriate focus for man's feelings of brotherhood. The difficulty of following these lines of thought is simply that some points of focus for fraternal feelings have been a great deal less universal than the brotherhood of man. The force of nationalism, for example, gathers feelings of fraternity on one location only, all too often, to use such feelings destructively against other groupings outside the favoured group. Feelings of fraternity based on race, or on social class, can similarly engender hostility against those of other races or classes. Not only is this the case, but some ways in which feelings of fraternity can be directed actually distort our conceptions of freedom and justice. For example, as R. S. Peters points out in a relatively neglected section of his Ethics and Education (1966), an excessive focus of fraternal feelings on to the national state can lead to an individual's freedom being interpreted as service to the state; and justice or fairness can become interpreted as what best helps the state, or the political party, or the social class, or whatever the narrow focus of fraternity comes to be. Fraternity, in short, is not always good in itself, or necessarily productive of good instrumentally. If this is so, then we cannot really start by assuming fraternity to be good whatever its focus and however arrived at. What we must do is to ask questions about the appropriate focus of fraternal feelings. To avoid inappropriate direction of fraternal feelings, and to lessen the chances of what Peters calls these 'far-fetched and fanciful transmogrifications' of fundamental principles, what should be the appropriate focus of feelings of fraternity for the rational man? Peters, as might be expected by those who know his work, is quite clear about this (p. 225): It follows from this that there is one sort of kinship that must be appropriate for a rational being, whatever he feels about his loyalty to family, state, class, or club, and that is his kinship with other rational beings as persons. In so far as he is a rational being, and joins with other 41

MIXED ABILITY GROUPING: A PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH

rational beings in seeking to discover what ought to be done, his kinship to them as persons, with points of view to be considered, claims to be assessed impartially, and interests to pursue without unjustified interference must be considered important; for this minimal type of kinship is a precondition of the situation of practical reason. The feeling of fraternity must therefore at least be attached to the kinship of being a person. Peters is quick to point out, however, that this ideal and justifiable focus of fraternal feelings is a long way from the actual play of such feelings in concrete communities (p. 226): Indeed to confront another simply as a person is to conceive of him as detached from his status and roles and from his natural affinities and associations. This is, of course, true; but the danger does not lie so much in the unlikely occurrence of people coming to see one another simply as persons, but rather in the much more likely possibility that because of a too narrow focus of fraternal feelings they come to see others outside the focus groups of family, class, party, or state as somehow less than persons. The strong feelings engendered by the 'concrete communities' and their attendant loyalties actually act against the more universal feeling of kinship for all rational beings that is 'a precondition of the situation of practical reason'. In school pupils already have strong loyalties to at least some concrete communities. What they more often lack is the more generalised respect for persons as such and fraternal feelings to accompany such universal respect. Viewed this way we have a more coherent account of the connection between the idea of fraternity and other principles of social justice and morality. In particular, and to return to the main arguments of this book, we can begin to see that the intuitive feeling some people have about selective educational arrangements being unwarrantably divisive picks out something rather more than just a plausible idea. The way in which this intuitive idea might be developed can now be explored. We start from the idea, developed in Chapter 3, that each 42

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person is to be equally valued, not because all are equal in all or particular respects, but because all are at least purposive agents. Valuation of particular attributes, abilities, or skills should not be pressed, in education at least, to the point where educational arrangements for these particular attributes start to act against the demonstrable valuing of each person as a purposive agent. To this can now be added the idea that the most desirable focus for fraternal feelings is upon other persons as purposive agents, and that some educational arrangements of a selective kind would tend to misdirect or wrongly focus fraternal feelings upon particular attributes, in something like the destructive way already described when such feelings are focused upon nation, social class, or political party. The idea is that although people might be valued instrumentally for particular purposes because they are good at mathematics, good linguists, quick thinkers, or whatever, they should only be valued intrinsically as persons - purposive agents - and grouping should basically be mixed ability to make this equal valuing demonstrable. Additionally, mixed ability groups would at least not act against an appropriate or justifiable focus of fraternal feelings towards fellow pupils as persons rather than as mathematicians, linguists, quick thinkers, or whatever. To put this argument in its negative form: to set by ability of any specific kind, or to stream by some judgement of general ability, is to set up a structure where what seem to be valued are the particular or general abilities on which the setting or streaming are based. Thus the pupils suffer by being unable to perceive any valuing of themselves purely as persons, especially if in the lower sets or streams; and are also diverted from an appropriate and justifiable focus of fraternal feelings towards others purely as persons into a focus of such feelings towards those who share the presence or lack of particular or general characteristics that appear to be valued by those in authority. When talking about pupil perceptions of their own status and value we are not, of course, talking about logical necessities but only about reasonable suppositions. But to say that the suppositions are reasonable is to say a lot. To be very specific: if a girl is mainly in low sets in a setting system it is difficult to 43

MIXED ABILITY GROUPING: A PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH

see how she can feel other than devalued; but even for those in high sets it is also difficult to see why they should feel valued as persons, for what is being valued is their skill at French, physics, or whatever. Similarly, it is difficult to see how feelings of fellowship can be directed to others as persons if the basis of daily contiguity is to be more or less specific skills and abilities. Another way of putting all of this, and to refer back to our brief introduction to the idea of fraternity in section 4 of Chapter 2, is to say that there are indeed good grounds for favouring positive feelings towards social integration, social cohesion, a sense of community and mutual understanding and respect provided always that the society and community referred to is the general society and community of persons, and the mutuality to be fostered is that between persons generally. There is also good reason to suppose that such positive feelings will be best developed, or at the worst least hindered, in mixed ability groups. It might be argued, as against all this, that the groups in which children receive instruction in schools are not the only social features of their lives. This is, of course, true; but it does not follow that all the other groups that children find themselves in are likely to encourage the universal valuing and fellowship that we have been talking about. For most of us the wrench from egocentricity, and from what Fromm called 'the incestuous ties of clan and soil' (1956, p. 69), has to be an educational development. Surely the faith of liberal education drives in this direction: that in sociality as in the development of intellect the wider and more liberating perspective will take the place of the more narrow and the more binding. Such a widening of perspective is to be facilitated and not hindered, and the more particularities of personality that children are driven to share and find their loyalties and attachments in, the less is the facilitation and the greater the hindrance. Two further points need to be made. First, such arguments as we have used in this chapter, like those in the previous chapter, do not provide a case for making all groupings in a school mixed ability. What they point to is the desirability of having a basic presupposition of mixed ability grouping, divergence from which needs arguing. We have already tried 44

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to show that in some cases equal valuing of particular children can only be demonstrated by placing them in particular groups with teachers possessing peculiar skills, and further arguments for exceptions will be attempted in the next chapter. Secondly, however, although it is as true of the fraternity argument as of the equal valuing argument that it is not absolute, that exceptions might be made, it is not quite so easy to find them on the basis of the fraternity argument. Teachers often do try to engender feelings of loyalty and affection - fraternal feelings -towards teams, classes, houses, year-groups, subject groups, particular schools, and so on. Sometimes they succeed and often they fail, but in either case the justification for trying in the first place is rather dubious. The tacit understanding seems to be that to encourage such feelings towards a small group, like a team, somehow sows the seeds of the more desirable fraternity towards all persons as persons. The logic of this is doubtful since all these small-scale loyalties focus friendship within and, all too often, a concomitant enmity without. It thus does become a matter of some importance on what children are encouraged and enabled to focus fraternal feeling. In the small compass of the school, as on the greater canvas of history and politics, some foci of affections do more harm than good; and who would be bold enough to be sure that the two are not connected? It may not be the winning of battles so much as the starting of them that has its roots in the particularised loyalties of playing fields and the like.

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5 Grouping, Teaching Styles and Subjects In a recent discussion of mixed ability work in comprehensive schools a working party of Her Majesty's Inspectors noted two assumptions underlying policy decisions to adopt mixed ability grouping for all or most subjects for the first three years. One assumption concerned expectations about the skills of teachers and the other was to do with the nature of school subjects (Department of Education and Science, 1978). The assumption about the skills of teachers was that they could competently teach not merely all levels of ability, but all levels of ability together. Special skills were usually thought necessary, noted the HMis, only for teaching the very least able who had marked learning difficulties. If we add to this the necessity for special skills and training required to teach other special categories like the deaf, the blind and various levels of physical, mental and emotional handicap, then the assumption noted here accords with the conclusions of the last two chapters. On our argument, and for the reasons of justice, equality and fraternity given, normal teacher training should equip teachers to teach mixed ability groups. The assumption about the nature of school subjects was that all or most subjects on the curriculum can effectively be taught in mixed ability groups, and this, say the HMis, 'amounts to an assumption that all types of learning are equally well accomplished in one form of organisation, despite differences in the nature of the objectives, the resources used, the charac-

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teristic activities undertaken and the kind of sequencing of learning required'. The HMis clearly question this assumption, and, provided they recognise that it is an assumption also made by defenders of setting for all or nearly all subjects, they do well to question it. They echo arguments put forward by teachers in schools where not all subjects are taught in mixed ability groups, who defend their subjects from mixed ability grouping, and even from banding, on the ground that there is something special about the subject which makes it unsuitable for teaching in mixed ability groups. We acknowledged in the two previous chapters that there might indeed be reasons why some kinds of teaching might be excepted from the general case in support of mixed ability grouping arising from considerations of social justice and fraternity. It might be the case that considerations about the nature of subjects could provide such excepting arguments. Such an argument would have to be strong, however, since it would need to demonstrate either that teaching subject X in a mixed ability group was logically contradictory to the nature of the subject, or that the practical difficulties in the way of success were markedly greater than those acting against success in the teaching of sets or other allegedly homogeneous groups. Only in this way could it be shown that a pupil would inevitably suffer in respect of subject X if taught in a mixed ability group, and would therefore not be valued as a learner if placed in such a group. Three points that appear to us to be undeniable need to be made before taking up the claim for specific subject exception in more detail. First, although mixed ability groups certainly present teachers with practical problems of organisation and decision-making, it must not be thought that class teaching of setted or streamed groups is without its own problems. The connection here (that between class teaching as a method and setting or streaming as a grouping system) is not arbitrary: class teaching does appear to be a necessary accompaniment of setting or streaming. Unless this is the case, why is homogeneity of ability to be favoured as it is in setting or streaming? Why should homogeneity of ability be considered a virtue unless the intention is to teach pupils in some way in common? Indeed, what is often meant by saying that mixed

47

MIXED ABILITY GROUPING: A PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH

ability groups are difficult to teach is that pupils in such groups are difficult to teach together, in common, all at the same time. Class teaching, in its most typical form, aims at moving all pupils on together like a cohort of the old Roman Army. Indeed, it might be useful to refer to such an organisation of teaching as cohort teaching, where this is defined as teaching designed so as to move a whole group of pupils (considered to be similar in some respects) on from one thing to another at the same time. What the 'thing' is will of course vary: it might be a mathematical process, a scientific demonstration, an aesthetic experience, an attempt at a certain kind of expressive writing, a particular exposure to historical narrative, or whatever- but the whole group has the explanation, the practice, the experience, and so on, and then everyone moves on to another explanation, further practices, other experiences, and so on. Now the difficulties here are many. Most of them centre on the difficulty of organising and presenting explanations, practices and activities in such a way that all pupils will accept, understand and respond within the same space of time and with a reasonably similar output of work and a similarly timed readiness to move on to the next part of the teacher's plan. There are two direct consequences of the attempt to reach this ideal: some pupils are bored and some pupils fail. The bored, of course, are those who would have been ready to move on with less explanation and less practice than they have had to receive - ironically they are often given more practice because they finish the set amount quickly!- and the failures are those who never understand or complete in the time given. Somewhere in the middle, perhaps, is the pupil for whom the particular piece of teaching was ideal. Setting and streaming, of course, aims at minimising this difficulty, but since ability ranges are continua and not discrete steps, the difficulty always remains. Class teaching, then, is neither obviously successful nor without difficulties, and any difficulties of teaching mixed ability groups by other techniques must be judged against these. Our second and connected point is that empirical evidence 48

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clearly demonstrates a vast and complex range of individual differences among pupils. We have known for a very long time that across a very wide range of characteristics affecting learning pupils differ markedly one from another, that many of these characteristics are specific and unrelated, and that dynamic change in these characteristics also varies from individual to individual. It is the very existence of these differences that is sometimes advanced in support of setting or streaming, but in fact the outcome of their existence and their complexity is that no allegedly homogeneous group can actually be homogeneous in all respects affecting learning within the group. Individuals will differ in their ability to listen, concentrate and understand; they will vary as to their critical thinking, their sensitivity to criticism, their acuity of perception, their thresholds of anxiety and their tolerance of the tedious; they will differ as to their interests, their pleasures, their capacity to discriminate and to reason. No catchall concept like 'ability' or 'intelligence' can possibly hold all this without spillage. No group, however setted or streamed, can be without significant variety. The third of our points closely relates to the two already made. It is that understanding is only meaningful in the educational context when it refers to what goes on in an individual mind. Of course, interaction between individuals can assist understanding, and it could certainly be well argued that such social exchange is necessary for any relatively sophisticated understanding to develop at all. But this social exchange, however important, is only facilitative of understanding, and not what the understanding actually is. To put this more directly: if all but Freddy in Mr Baker's class have understood the mechanism of photosynthesis, Mr Baker may be tempted to say that his class has understood. This is wrong, not only because Mr Baker has failed to take account of Freddy, but because there is no sense in which a class can be said to have understood other than as a shorthand for Bob understands, Jane understands, Mary understands, and so on. This is not the trivial point it might seem, however obvious it is once stated. It is an important point because, in what we have called cohort teaching, there is always the assumption that each pupil will reach his or her own understanding at the 49

MIXED ABILITY GROUPING: A PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH

same time. This is a necessary assumption since the cohort must make the next cognitive advance together; but it is an assumption that is rarely satisfied in practice where, as we have already noted, the teacher all too often must judge between boring some individuals with unnecessary repetition or, more often, accepting that some individuals have not properly understood. With these three points in mind - the sometimes unremarked difficulties attaching to class teaching, the inescapable and wide variety of individual differences, and the necessity of understanding taking place in individual mindswe can now look more closely at the varied nature of different subjects and the way this might affect claims for exception from the norm of mixed ability grouping. Let us consider first the response made by some mathematics teachers when asked in the NFER inquiry whether they considered their subject suitable for mixed ability teaching: Approximately half of those interviewed considered [mathematics] totally unsuitable for mixed ability teaching largely because they perceived it as having a logical structure through which pupils must proceed in a prescribed way ... Frequent comments pertaining to the 'laddered', 'structured', 'sequential', 'linear' and 'cumulative' qualities of mathematics indicated the nature of perceptions held by a majority of teachers in the sample. (Reid et al., 1981, p. 130) Now if the nature of mathematics is correctly perceived here, and we shall accept that it is for the present, all it demonstrates is that each individual mind must advance in understanding through the necessary structure. It says nothing at all about any necessity for thirty or so pupils to advance in a 'linear' or 'laddered' way all at the same time. Indeed, it is easily seen that to attempt to make all thirty advance at the same time, to make the same progress, is the most likely way of ensuring strain and failure for some. What really follows from this perception of the nature of mathematics is not the cohort teaching that the teachers seem to suppose, but a teaching technique that will facilitate individual learning. Yet, although 50

GROUPING, TEACHING STYLES AND SUBJECTS

individual teaching techniques were used frequently by twenty-one out of forty-three teachers of mathematics in the inquiry, they were only dominant in the methods of three teachers. The general point to emerge from this brief consideration of mathematics teaching really applies to any subject area where the understanding and skills to be developed are essentially of an intellectual and individual kind. Many school subjects are like this: science subjects, mathematics, language learning, economics, geography, history, for example, all involve nonarbitrary frameworks of concepts and propositions which have to be grasped in particular sequences and/or patterns by individual minds. What is true about all of these subjects, and others more or less like them, is that since the important Mructures of understanding are non-arbitrary they have to be understood in some sense in the same way. Coefficients of expansion, quadratic equations, regular verbs, supply and demand curves, river formation and the consequences of wars are not the kinds of 'goings on' that can be understood in any old way: they have criteria of correctness. Indeed, and interestingly, the tighter the criteria of correctness seem to be, the more status the subjects appear to have, and the more generally such subjects are defended against mixed ability grouping, as the NFER inquiry shows. But, as with the mathematics example, the point about the non-arbitrariness of the understanding to be achieved, undoubtedly correct, is not the most important point when considering whether to arrange pupils for the teaching of these subjects in mixed ability groups or not. The important and relevant point is that the structured understanding must take place in individual minds and that the pace at which such understanding develops is almost certain to vary between individuals in any group, however it is organised. If this reasoning is sound, it means that teaching approaches to the kinds of subjects being considered here, those depending upon correctly structured and sequenced individual understandings, should largely be individualised. That is, teaching should be so arranged as to facilitate varying individual rates of learning and understanding. If this is so, then the main argument for defending these subjects from mixed

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ability grouping disappears, for the slight convenience to the teacher of doing her individualised teaching to a group of roughly similar abilities is not a sufficient counter to the arguments of justice and fraternity in favour of mixed ability grouping outlined in Chapters 3 and 4. There is, at the very least, no logical necessity for these subjects to be taught in classes that are setted, banded, or streamed. Before looking at some subjects that do, perhaps, come closer to demonstrating features that require more homogeneous ability groups for teaching, there are some general remarks that need to be made about individualised learning arrangements. Such arrangements are often attacked by criticising features that are not essential to such arrangements. For example, it is no necessary feature of individualised learning arrangements that pupils work in isolation, having no communication one with another. In fact, it is often more characteristic of such arrangements that children are encouraged to seek help from one another as well as from a teacher. Neither is it the case that a teacher is barred, as it were, from teaching a group of pupils or discussing something with a group of pupils where this becomes necessary and possible because of the stage the pupils have reached. Such groupings, however, would be opportunist and temporary conveniences rather than permanent arrangements. Another feature often attacked, for example by HMI's writing about mixed ability geography teaching (Department of Education and Science, 1978, p. 103), is the use of individual work sheets 'preceded by a precis of information supplied by the teacher'. Work sheets, or some ways of indicating individual assignments, do seem to be necessary in some form for individual work. Clearly, like blackboard work, OHP transparencies, or duplicated material used in class teaching, such work sheets or assignment materials can be good or bad in design and production; at least they do, or should, allow for variations in reading ability and other factors affecting learning, and we can see no reason whatsoever for attributing any essential or universal harmfulness to such materials. In the geographical example noted, it appears to be the precis of information supplied by the teacher that draws the critical fire. It is alleged that 'Pupils are thereby deprived of the opportun-

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ity of consulting a range of sources, of assessing one point of view against another, or of making a choice of what they perceive to be relevant and significant' (p. 103). But, again, why should this necessarily be so? Surely it all depends on what the teacher's precis actually says, and on what the pupils are asked to do. If any duplicated material given to pupils, in a mixed ability or a class teaching context, has this effect, then of course it is harmful; but this is true of all teaching arrangements, not only in individualised learning ones. Arguments directed against mixed ability grouping, individualised learning arrangements, or any other educational prescriptions must focus on the necessary features of such prescriptions if they are to be successfully countervailing. Practical difficulties of organising, directing and managing individualised learning in mixed ability groups is considerable, and comments directed to this have some point. These doubts only take on an Aunt Sally character when it is supposed, as it often is, that it is only individualised learning that presents difficulties. Teaching mixed ability groups by class teaching methods presents even greater difficulties, and yet is quite common; and as already mentioned, the successes claimed with class teaching methods in allegedly homogeneous groups in sets or streams are usually unjustified. That the practical difficulties of individualised learning and teaching can be overcome is indicated by the growing literature in which teachers report their experiences in this work (Cambridge Journal of Education, 1976; Sewell, 1980). There is another group of subjects, not usually thought of as 'intellectual', but where the skills to be developed are similarly individual. What is markedly different about this group of subjects is that teachers of them have long been used to teaching them in mixed ability groups in a relatively individualised way. We refer here to those subjects in which the pupil is required to develop individual practical skills. Such subjects include practical art, craft subjects like needlework, woodwork and metalwork, some approaches to design and technology which emphasise individual making, and office skills like typing. So far as we can see teachers of these subjects have always recognised that pupils progress in their acquisition of the skills at individually different rates. A

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normal lesson in these areas reveals pupils working at different things at different speeds with the teacher helping and teaching individually. On the whole it does not seem to matter if the groups taking these subjects are deemed to be mixed ability or not, as their teachers have always accepted them as being of mixed ability in the relevant aptitudes, skills and information, even if allegedly homogeneous in whatever measure of ability the school uses for its grouping. It is interesting to reflect, however, why differential abilities are more obvious in the teaching and learning of specific practical skills than in those areas, previously mentioned, where the intellectual understandings to be developed are no less individual. Could it be that the material objects being produced in most of the crafttype activities reveal very obviously the differential progress and the folly of supposing that pupils can start and finish everything at the same time? Could it be that materials must not be wasted and therefore projects must be brought to a finish? Would it were the case that the waste and distortion of minds, the incompleted conceptual framework, the as-yetungrasped logical relationship frequently occurring in the class teaching of the intellectual subjects could be similarly obvious, standing about the room for all to see! We come now to some activities and learnings distinguished from others by the fact that they necessarily involve pupils with groups in the sense that the activity just cannot take place at all unless pupils interact with one another. For example, while it is not at all odd to imagine a person learning and practising mathematics on his own, or on his own with a teacher, learning and practising football or discussion on one's own seems odd at least and is probably impossible. Where the activity necessarily involves a group, and individualised learning would be a nonsense, then the constitution of the group, that is, its homogeneity or heterogeneity as to the abilities, skills and information possessed by individuals within it, becomes a highly relevant consideration linked with teaching and learning requirements. The point here is that if we were to insist dogmatically that groups for the teaching of subjects necessarily requiring groups were to be of mixed ability, we might find that some pupils could not learn at all in such a setting. This would go against our principle of equal valuing, since you do

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not demonstrate your equal valuing of a person by placing her in a situation where she cannot learn. We need to be sure of our ground here because the kinds of subject we are now talking about are often considered by teachers to be quite suitable for mixed ability grouping. In the NFER study no teachers, for example, thought integrated humanities studies unsuitable for mixed ability teaching, yet this is an area where discussion is extensively used; and only some 11 per cent of teachers thought physical education unsuitable for mixed ability teaching even though, presumably, this includes team games. It is at least possible to argue that the rationales of these teachers have not been thought through clearly. Examples of the kind of learning that necessarily involves discussion are to be found in much of the study associated with the humanities and the social sciences. If we take the view of the Schools Council Humanities Curriculum Project, then discussion is certainly a necessary technique in these areas of the curriculum. But we do not need to go as far as this in order to suggest that an exchange of views, perspectives and understandings, going beyond those of the teacher, ought properly to be part of the learning experience of any pupil being introduced to the humanities or the social sciences. If we accept this, and if we want the discussion to be beneficial, then perhaps there would have to be some limit upon the differential mix within the group engaged in discussion. Beyond a certain point of differential ability or information the exchange of talk within the group ceases to be a discussion. People freely seeking others to engage in discussion normally seek those of at least relatively equal ability and information. That they are reasonable in doing so may well follow from the nature of discussion, so that we are making, as it were, a conceptual point. But anyone who has tried to get discussion going in school with a group of markedly diverse ability or information will be well aware of the practical nature of this difficulty. Groups formed primarily for discussion, it may be argued then, should be relatively homogeneous as to the ability and information possessed by the members, and this conclusion is to do with the nature and logic of the activity. There are other activities, necessarily taking place in groups, where it could be argued that similar considerations

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apply. Consider team games like football and hockey, the playing of music in small or large ensembles, and dramatic activities. In all these cases, and others like them, those freely seeking association in these activities seek out relative equals to play with and to act with and, in the case of team games, to play against. It may be that this is more of a logical matter than is sometimes supposed, but there is no need to press this point. Even if the matter is contingent it remains observable that there are satisfactions in all these activities only properly to be gained with those persons relatively equal to oneself in the relevant skills and information. Correspondingly, there are satisfactions to be thwarted and frustrated if the ability and information mix is too diverse. The teaching and organ~ isational problems of the teacher increase, and the likelihood of each pupil learning successfully diminishes proportionately to the degree of mix. Thus, again, it can be argued that to insist dogmatically on these activities taking place in mixed ability groups actually acts against the principle of equal valuing, since at least some pupils, and probably considerable numbers, would be deprived of proper opportunities for learning. This conclusion is strangely against the fashion, as briefly noted above. It is often in these particular activities that mixed ability grouping is advocated, either on the ground that it does not matter if they are mixed or, more strongly, that it is of positive advantage so to mix. The 'does not matter' attitude is worthy of note, since we might argue that what is going on here is more to do with the status than with the nature of the subject. The assumption often seems to be that for low~status subjects it does not matter if they take place in mixed ability groups, whereas for high-status subjects it does. Games, music, humanities subjects, discussion and drama are not considered high-status subjects by some people, and therefore are considered suitable for mixed ability grouping if mixed ability grouping there must be. This only makes sense on some covert assumption that mixed ability grouping is harm~ ful and that we only need to worry about protecting the important from harm! As against this it can be suggested that where mixed ability grouping might be harmful - that is, prevent pupils from learning properly and therefore not value 56

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them - is precisely in these areas where pupils need to work together in groups because of the nature of the subject. These are the activities that, at least arguably, need homogeneous groups to some extent. It is perhaps worth emphasising that the abilities, skills and information in which the group is held to be homogeneous must be relevant to the activity being engaged in. For example, in respect of football, the point is not that all the pupils in a group should be similar in respect of IQ scores or reading ability, only that they should have roughly equivalent football skills and information. There is a rather different argument to be noted which presents collaborative work by children in mixed ability groups as the paradigm form of mixed ability teaching. On this view mixed ability groups for discussion, drama and games are to be favoured because they provide exactly the opportunities for children to learn, first, that all children can make some kind of useful contribution to a group activity and, secondly, how to work so as to enable each of the group's members to contribute something worthwhile. This extract from E. M. Hoyles' account of mixed ability teaching at Vauxhall Manor school reflects this kind of view (1975, p.61): One of the main features of mixed ability classroom organisation is the numerous occasions on which children need to work in groups. The child has to learn how to use the group activity effectively from the beginning. First of all, she needs to learn how to play her own part in the group. . . In addition, she will need to grow in judgement of other people's ability and this can join the general teaching the school provides in respect for other people because, from an early stage, she will have to learn how to use other people's talents, not only for her own development but for the development of the group. It is important for her to learn how to apportion work to other members of the group so that when she becomes a leader she can use other people's talents to the full. In addition, there is a great need for learning tolerance since it will be impossible for every member of the 57

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group to fulfil exactly what the group expects and therefore, she will need to understand not only the abilities of others but also their failings and how they can best be helped. Teachers involved in the Cambridge DES Regional Course action research on mixed ability teaching suggested similarly that 'Excessive use of individual learning techniques, e.g. work cards, might be in danger of preventing social benefits arising from mixed ability grouping' (Elliott et al., 1978, p. 7). On this account it is thus group work itself, rather than individualised learning, that is seen by some at least as the paradigm of mixed ability teaching. The roots of this argument, like those of the argument already presented, are in the principles of equality and fraternity. What is stressed in this account, however, is not just the equal value of each child as a learner, but his or her equal potential value as a source of learning, as a contributor to group activity and, perhaps by extension, to society at large. Since this is clearly a position of uncertain empirical standing, it may be presented alternatively as an advocacy of the desirability of treating people as if they all had a worthwhile contribution to make. An argument in support of this act of faith is largely on the grounds of the power of such a conviction, or its negation, to become self-fulfilling (cf. the argument cited previously about labelling children). It arises out of a desire to extend the equal value principle beyond a perhaps rather grudging concession that all people share, however minimally, in some basic and common human attributes, to a more whole-hearted embracing of them as beings who can, if we enable them to do so, contribute positively to our society and to our lives. What perhaps is crucial to the question at issue here is the extent to which all members of a mixed ability group can in fact contribute, or can be enabled to contribute, to learning in a given field or style of activity. As the members of the Nottingham Teacher Education Project properly observed: 'Group work and oral work may either help the less able, or discourage them·, depending on how they are organised' (Dooley et al., 1977, p. 8). If, given the right support and

58

GROUPING, TEACHING STYLES AND SUBJECTS

encouragement, all members of a group can contribute usefully to a discussion or a game, then the demands of both our lines of argument are satisfied and the case in favour of mixed ability grouping for these subjects is made. If they really cannot, then the second argument, in favour of relatively homogeneous groups for these subjects, succeeds. The caution, which we should take seriously however, is not to dismiss the potential contribution which might be made to collaborative group work by 'the less able' before we have explored imaginatively the range of conditions which enable such a contribution to be made. In this chapter we have looked for arguments supporting the exception of subjects from the normal datum of mixed ability grouping and we have differed in some of our conclusions from those often advanced. We have argued that since 'intellectual' subjects, typified by mathematics and science, seek to produce understanding in individual minds and are not essentially group activities, they should be taught by methods which recognise the diversity of rates of individual understanding; and that the perhaps marginally greater difficulty of doing this in mixed ability groups does not constitute a strong enough argument to countervail the case for mixed ability grouping in terms of equal valuing and fraternity. The same argument, we have said, applies to subjects of an art and craft kind, where the skills to be acquired are largely practical but nevertheless still essentially individual; though we have noted here that teachers of these skills and arts have long operated with groups that are mixed as to the relevant abilities anyway. On the other hand, it has been suggested that there are some activities that are group activities of necessity, and in these cases the relative homogeneity of the group in respect of relevant abilities and information does seem desirable, since without it some pupils would find it difficult to acquire the appropriate skills, attitudes, or knowledge, and deliberately to put them in such a situation would not be to demonstrate equal valuing of them. Finally we have noted the argument which emphasises the collaborative nature of group work and the valuation of group members as contributors, and which would see the very diversity of these contributions in a mixed ability situation as a virtue.

59

MIXED ABILITY GROUPING: A PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH

Although these arguments do not all point in the same direction, leaving as they do room for judgement in particular cases, they do all rest on the same basic principle. Briefly stated, that principle is that the issue of whether to group on a basis of mixed ability or not is to be decided by asking what arrangement, in a particular teaching and learning activity, will most patently demonstrate the equal valuing of pupils as learners themselves and contributors to the learning of others.

60

6 The Lessons of Experience In our argument so far we have tried to show some kind of logical connection between certain fundamental values and premisses about human nature on the one hand and certain kinds of educational practices on the other. The precise character of the logical connections which we have drawn may deserve closer scrutiny in a more technical philosophical work than this one pretends to be. They are certainly not all of a piece. In some cases we have suggested that there might be quite a tight logical entailment, such that a commitment to principle A necessarily implied a commitment to practice X. In other cases the connection was looser - X might be one form of practice but perhaps not the only one which reflected or was consistent with the principle. Though we have from time to time referred to evidence of the actual consequences of one kind of practice or another, it has not in general depended upon such evidence. In slightly more technical terms our argument has been very largely a priori in character. Inevitably an argument of this kind will be an incomplete argument. There will be a number of questions of direct relevance to the issue at hand which remain unanswered. In particular, the question 'What are the actual effects of mixed ability grouping on children's social relations, educational careers, or classroom learning?' is not one which can be answered on the basis of a priori reasoning. This requires experience, observation and evidence. We can examine philosophically the reasons for seeking certain intended or hoped for effects, or the desirability or otherwise of other effects when known. We can even 61

MIXED ABILITY GROUPING: A PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH

observe logical features of practices of a kind which provide good (though perhaps not sufficient) reason to predict what their effects will be. But in the end philosophers overreach themselves if they try to prescribe educational (or any other) practices without consideration of the actual and not just the intended or anticipated outcomes of those practices. The arguments we have presented so far need, then, to be considered alongside empirical evidence available in other sources relating to the effects of different forms of grouping and different styles of group teaching. There have, of course, been literally hundreds of studies of grouping in schools, and we cannot do full justice to them here. However, certain trends do emerge fairly clearly. These are well summarised in one of the most recent and comprehensive studies which we have already referred to several times, the NFER research conducted by Reid et al. (1981). The conclusion that research leads to is that 'There are no certain outcomes, either positive or negative, which can be assumed to follow inevitably from mixed ability grouping or, probably, from any other form of organisation. What is achieved or not achieved for the pupil, in academic, social and personal terms, will depend on a complex array of circumstances' (p. 157). In an earlier paper which attempted to review research findings on teaching groups in secondary schools, Corbishley presented a similar picture. The three main conclusions which he drew are as follows (1977, pp. 2-4): (1)

'attainment as measured by standardised tests is not directly or consistently affected by variations in grouping practices' - i.e. success depends on their combination with other variables; (2) 'the social effects of particular grouping practices vary across time and across national boundaries'- again, other local features seem to be significant in combination with grouping practices; (3) 'the teacher in the classroom is shown, or presented as, or inferred to be the crucial factor in determining the "success" of any form of grouping. If teachers favour streaming it works, if mixed ability, then that too works.' 62

THE LESSONS OF EXPERIENCE

Now although these kinds of research finding are sobering and though they clearly indicate that 'going mixed ability' will in itself produce no instant miracle of educational or social change, they are not entirely discouraging to the line of argument presented in this book. What the research evidence suggests is that mixed ability grouping will not be sufficient by itself to realise the sort of values we have defended. More usefully, it points to some of the other conditions which will need to be satisfied if mixed ability grouping is to have the kind of effects that are hoped for. Among those are the followmg. First, the teachers responsible for mixed ability groups will need to understand and support the rationale of this form of organisation. We should hardly need research findings to tell us that innovation imposed on an uncomprehending or hostile staff stands little chance of achieving its hoped for benefits. Secondly, the teachers responsible for mixed ability groups will need to develop teaching styles and strategies appropriate to the variety of individual attainment, motivation, and so on, in the group. Again, it will hardly be surprising if the organisational change is ineffectual unless supported by appropriate pedagogy. Thirdly, and perhaps by extension of the first two points, to be effective the change to mixed ability teaching needs to be associated with a fairly radical change of attitude and perspective which runs through every aspect of school life. This last lesson is drawn particularly effectively in Stephen Ball's study of Beechside Comprehensive (1981). Ball tries to explain why it is that the most striking aspect of the analysis of mixed ability forms in his study is the absence of dramatic change. His message is clear (p. 286): Mixed ability is unlikely to involve radical changes in schooling while 'the organising notions' embodied in the teachers' attitudes and views of the classroom remain essentially unchanged. It is apparent that most of the teachers continue to behave in, and to think of, 'types' of children. At school level, as at classroom level, the old selective pro63

MIXED ABILITY GROUPING: A PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH

cesses continue to operate in spite of the pattern of mixed ability organisation, and so (p. 284 ): While school values are still essentially concerned with competition and the primacy of academic success, the mixed ability system continues to feed its pupils more or less 'efficiently' into examination courses of different status and different negotiable value further up in the school. It is illuminating to compare these three conditions- conditions of the success of mixed ability teaching, according to the evidence - with the actual circumstances in which schools have often reorganised their grouping. The picture presented by the ILEA and HMI reports, for example, suggests that all too often the innovation has been imposed on a staff which has had precious little part in the decision, is divided on its merits and is unprepared for the new pedagogic demands whose satisfaction is crucial to its success. What we can learn from the frustrations of this experience is that the promotion of the values which some people have seen as expressed in mixed ability grouping must rely upon a deeper appreciation of its rationale and its underlying values, and a wider appreciation of those aspects of pedagogy and school organisation which may support or conflict with that rationale and the values in which it is grounded. We hope that this book may contribute to the development of this appreciation.

64

7 'Going Mixed Ability'Who Should Decide? We have presented in the preceding chapters something of a case in support of mixed ability grouping in schools. We think it is a fairly plausible case and one which rests upon rational argument rather than crude assertion, unexamined prejudice, or mistaken inference. To that extent we might expect that anyone who followed the argument carefully would be drawn to roughly the same conclusions as ourselves. Nevertheless, we have to concede that this will in practice be an unlikely outcome. The issue of mixed ability grouping is now and is likely to remain a controversial one, even among those who have examined the arguments carefully. There may be a number of points at issue which can account for this controversy. People will assess differently the cost, in terms of manpower, time and resources, of a change in the pattern of school organisation. They will take different views of the actual effects of mixed ability grouping in particular schools (as distinct from the general effects as revealed by wide-ranging surveys). They may draw different implications from the ones we have drawn from the translation of prin~iples or values into educational practice. They may dissent from one or other of the basic values or principles which underlie our whole argument, or at least wish to weigh in the same scales other values with contrary implications. For these and no doubt other reasons our contribution to the literature on mixed ability grouping may add fuel to the controversy but is unlikely to resolve it.

65

MIXED ABILITY GROUPING: A PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH

If, then, the question whether or not to have mixed ability teaching in a school is one on which there is unlikely to be a consensus either among the teaching profession or in the wider community, we are faced with the problem of how a decision on this aspect of school policy is to be arrived at, or more plainly, who should decide. One approach to the question of who should decide rests upon an analysis of the nature of the decision to be made. This is to say, we can consider, first, what sort of a question it is, what sort of knowledge, understanding, or judgement is required to answer it, and on this basis consider who would be best equipped or qualified, who would have the relevant expertise, to answer it; who, on this criterion, should determine whether schools or a particular school should or should not 'go mixed ability' or indeed return from a mixed ability pattern of organisation to one based on streams, bands, or sets. Examination of this question does not point clearly in one direction. Certainly some of the considerations which are relevant seem to relate to matters which one might judge to be within the special expertise of teachers or headteachers. These might include, for example, knowledge of the abilities, including the span of abilities, of children in a particular school; knowledge of the resources available within the school, including the pedagogic skills of teachers and their ability to take on different styles of teaching; understanding of the logical structure of different subjects and of styles of pedagogy appropriate to that structure (see Chapter 5 above); understanding of the actual response of a given population of children to one or more patterns of school organisation. Teachers are perhaps not always as well informed on all these matters as one might wish them to be, but nevertheless we suggest that they are generally better informed about them than most people outside schools - and this provides some basis for the claim that they (i.e. the teachers) should make decisions on such questions as the form of grouping adopted in a school. It doesn't seem to me that streaming is the concern of groups in society other than teachers. Streaming hasn't

66

'GOING MIXED ABILITY' - WHO SHOULD DECIDE?

anything to do with anything- except efficiency in teaching. (Headmaster quoted in Jackson, 1964, p. 43) The issue is not, however, as straightforward as this Northampton headteacher would make out. For, if it has done nothing else, this book must surely have given ample illustration to the observation that questions about how to group children in schools rest upon fundamental judgements about the moral, social and political principles and values which are to be served by that grouping structure. Those arguing for or against mixed ability grouping refer with different emphasis and different enthusiasm to such principles as equality of opportunity, equality of achievement, equality of value, fraternity, individual excellence, respect for people as individuals or as persons, the intrinsic value of competitiveness, social cohesion, and so on. The argument about mixed ability grouping is, quite unavoidably, an argument rooted in judgements about the application of, and the weight to be given to, these values. But who has special authority or expertise in judgements of this kind? Here it is much less easy to accept that teachers have special knowledge or wisdom which sets them above the general population. Indeed, it is a feature of a democratic society that it is sceptical of the claims of any particular sector of that society to have special expertise or authority on what is good for society as a whole. It prefers instead to allow such questions to be resolved through the emergence of some kind of consensus, through the competing demaLds of individual preferences, or, if the worst comes to the worst, by majority vote. These are the procedures demanded by a morally sceptical or morally pluralistic democratic society. Our consideration of the nature of the judgement involved here does not, then, point clearly to a single category of people with exclusive qualification to pronounce on the question. It indicates rather that it is the sort of question which teachers might claim to have special but not exclusive competence to judge, the sort of question which might appropriately be determined not by teachers alone but collectively by, or on the basis of consultation between, teachers and other people in a community whose interests are affected by the decision. 67

MIXED ABILITY GROUPING: A PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH

We believe that we reach the same kind of conclusion if we approach the question 'Who should decide?' in a different way - if we consider, for example, the practicality of leaving the issue to be decided exclusively by teachers in a particular school or, more radically, by the schools, parents and/or the local community. We have already referred to empirical evidence (see Chapter 6) which points to the unproductive consequences for a school whose teachers adopt mixed ability grouping without a fairly thoroughgoing commitment both to its principles and to its implications. Even worse is the frustration and resentment engendered where mixed ability organisation is imposed on an unwilling staff by a zealous head or by a crusading minority (though it is sometimes overlooked that teachers obliged to work in a streamed school against their better judgement may be just as frustrated and resentful). It is difficult to accept, therefore, that it would be very productive to locate the decision about school grouping entirely outside the school, even if in terms of wider political entitlement this seemed justifiable. Parents and others in the wider community require the positive co-operation of teachers, and not just their grudging acquiescence, if social values and social policies are to take life within the structure of a school. But, equally, as one report after another has emphasised in recent years, the task which schools face is too demanding for them to undertake without the support of, let alone in the face of, opposition from parents and others in the wider community. The Taylor Committee, for example, concluded: To sum up, teachers need informed support. The society of which schools are a part can and does question their performance, but schools in turn need the understanding and help of society in their difficult task. Only a working partnership can meet these needs ... (Department of Education and Science, 1977, p. 52) Teachers can expect to succeed only very rarely in promoting among children a view of themselves, attitudes towards each other and a set of social values which are constantly negated by 68

'GOING MIXED ABILITY' - WHO SHOULD DECIDE?

the contrary pressures of those outside the school. Practicality therefore demands that if teachers wish to promote a particular set of values or attitudes among their pupils, and particularly perhaps if they want to change existing attitudes and values, then they will need to ally to their own efforts all the support they can get from those outside the school. But support is not support if it is not firmly grounded. Joan Sallis expresses the basic argument here and its implications in a succinct equation (1977, p. 25): The case [for wider participation in school affairs] is essentially that the job schools now have to do cannot be done adequately without more support from parents and the community in general. Support means consent; consent means understanding; true understanding can only come from responsibility. Once again we come to the conclusion that a policy decision about the form of grouping to be adopted in a school is one that should not be taken exclusively either by a school, by teachers, by the parents or community who have a stake in its affairs, or, if it comes to that, by their political representatives. It is pre-eminently the kind of issue which is properly and best resolved through a process of collaborative discussion and negotiation. 'Mixed ability teaching is an appropriate topic on which to begin dialogue between teachers and society' (Elliott, 1976, p. 13). If this seems a modest conclusion, it nevertheless appears to represent a radical departure from recent practice. The 1981 NFER study, for example, reports that in none of the twenty-nine schools involved in its research had parents' views been sought concerning the grouping practices to be adopted. Indeed, in a number of cases schools seemed almost to be deliberately obscuring their policies on this issue from parental inquiry. What precisely is a parent to understand, for example, by this information from the school brochure? 'The school does not practice [sic] a rigid policy of streaming at any level except where it is appropriate.' (All classes in the first two years in this school were in fact mixed ability.) In half the schools studied by Margaret Reid and her colleagues 'there 69

MIXED ABILITY GROUPING: A PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH

were even fewer clues as to how teaching groups were organised, the topic being either not mentioned at all or sparse and general information given' (Reid et al., 1981, pp. 43-44). Almost certainly among the motives of heads who chose to be so discreet about their grouping practices was a concern to protect what they believed to be an important progressive innovation from the ill-informed criticism of a reactionary or narrow-sighted set of parents. If we have some sympathy for their concerns we have little hope for their long-term success. Indeed, we are tempted to offer as partial explanation of both the limited achievements of progressive developments in education in the 1960s and early 1970s and the more recent wobble of confidence in the education system the failure of schools to ensure the understanding and support of parents or the wider society for the innovations upon which teachers were engaged. The reorientation of values and attitudes which is embodied in mixed ability grouping is, we believe, too radical to succeed without the understanding and support of the teachers and the parents of the children whose lives and educational careers they are designed to shape.

70

Notes on Further Reading For the general reader there are two articles in particular which provide a useful review of the considerable quantity of empirical research on mixed ability grouping. Those are Esposito's article 'Homogeneous and heterogeneous ability groupings: principle findings and implications for evaluating and designing more effective educational environments' in the 1973 Review of Educational Research and, slightly more up to date, Corbishley's 1977 contribution to the collection of papers edited by Davies and Cave. These two articles give ample reference to the many more specific studies which have been conducted. The even more recent NFER study by Margaret Reid and her colleagues, Mixed Ability Teaching: Problems and Possibilities (1981), is a work to which we have made considerable reference in our text. It is a particularly useful source for information about how and why mixed ability grouping has been introduced in secondary schools. Its focus is on teachers' perceptions of the advantages and disadvantages of this pattern of organisation rather than on any attempt to test independently its consequences, but is no less illuminating or indeed credible for that. Stephen Ball's study of Beechside Comprehensive school ( 1981) provides empirical evidence of a different kind - this time based on a detailed case study of one institution. Its focus is on the problem of institutional change in a school which is attempting to 'go mixed ability'. Two official reports provide an interesting, though not always clearly distinguished, mixture of information and com71

MIXED ABILITY GROUPING: A PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH

menton mixed ability grouping. These are the 1976 report by the ILEA Inspectorate, Mixed Ability Grouping, and the HMI report - Number 6 in the Matters for Discussion series Mixed Ability Work in Comprehensive Schools (1978). The HMI report in particular raises many of the issues which we have tried to develop in this book. Most of the works which begin to develop critical consideration of the principles underlying mixed ability grouping are collections of articles. The best of these, though it includes some pretty diverse material, is Mixed Ability Teaching in Secondary Schools, edited by Davies and Cave. Brian Davies's own contribution to the collection is both sane and provocative. A. V. Kelly has contributed substantially to the literature both as editor (Case Studies in Mixed Ability Teaching, 1975) and writer (Mixed Ability Teaching: Theory and Practice, 1978). His own writing is always clear and straightforward, but we have not found much in the way of original thinking in these books, which tend to stop short of the more fundamental questions. One of the most thoughtful books we found on the subject was Pat Daunt's Comprehensive Values (1975). This is an admirable attempt by a headmaster of substantial intellect and humane instinct to articulate a philosophy of comprehensive education. While its subject is much wider than mixed ability grouping, there is both direct reference and indirect application to this issue in much of what is written. We have tried to relate the fundamental argument laid out in Chapters 3 and 4 to some recent writing in moral, social and political philosophy. This literature is perhaps more heavygoing than much of the literature on mixed ability grouping, but is helpful to explore it if the really important underlying issues and justifications are to be considered. Alan Gewirth's Reason and Morality (1978) is a good example of work in this area of philosophy, and much of our argument derives from the characteristics of freedom, knowledge and self-esteem that Gewirth deems to be necessities for any purposive agent. John Rawls's A Theory of Justice (1972) has already proved one of the most influential books on political philosophy in recent years and cannot really be neglected by educators wrestling with problems of distributive justice. Another work, not mentioned by us specifically in the text, but one which contributes 72

NOTES ON FURTHER READING

significantly to recent philosophical discussion of liberal ideas, is Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia. Bruce Ackerman's Social Justice in the Liberal State (1980), which has a twenty-three-page chapter on liberal education, discusses fraternity, as does Rawls; but the most perceptive treatment of fraternity is probably still to be found in Richard Peters's Ethics and Education (1966). Fraternity can be considered in relation to the idea of alienation much discussed by Marxist writers. A good discussion of both of these concepts and their relationship is to be found in John Plamenatz's work Karl Marx's Philosophy of Man (1975). There are at least three works which provide starting-points for those thinking about mixed ability grouping from the point of view of particular subjects. Teacher opinion on this, resulting from one particular inquiry, is displayed in the 1981 NFER report by Margaret Reid and her colleagues. More positive descriptions of what some teachers do with mixed ability groups in various subject areas are to be found in the special edition of the Cambridge Journal of Education, vol. 6, nos l/2 (1976), and in the interesting collection of articles on Mixed Ability Teaching edited by C. Sewell (1980). The value of these two sources lies especially in their demonstration by practising teachers of what can be done even in subject areas often considered difficult for mixed ability teaching.

73

Select Bibliography This bibliography contains all the works directly referred to in the text along with a small number of additional references which are particularly relevant to the argument in this book. Ackerman, B. A. (1980), Social Justice in the Liberal State (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press). Bailey, C. H. (1976), 'Mixed ability teaching and the defence of subjects', Cambridge Journal of Education, vol. 6, nos 112, pp. 24-31. Ball, S. J. (1981), Beechside Comprehensive: A Case Study of Secondary Schooling (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Boyson, R. ( 1981 ), 'The curse of the comprehensive', Daily Mail (London), 25 June 1981. Bridges, D. (1976), 'The social organisation of the classroom and the philosophy of mixed ability teaching', Cambridge Journal of Education, vol. 6, nos 112, pp. 15-23. Bridges, D. (1979), 'Why curriculum planning should not be "left to the experts'", Journal of Philosophy of Education, vol. 13, pp. 159-64. Cambridge Journal of Education (1976), vol. 6, nos 112. Caulfield, M. (1977), 'Mixed ability grouping at Bishop Douglass school', in Mixed Ability Teaching in the Secondary School, ed. B. Davies and R. G. Cave (London: Ward Lock), pp. 69-79. Corbishley, P. (1977), 'Research findings on teaching groups in secondary schools', in Mixed Ability Teaching in the Secondary School, ed. B. Davies and R. G. Cave (London: Ward Lock), pp. 1-17. Crosland, C. A. R. (1962), The Conservative Enemy (London: Cape). Crosland, C. A. R. (1974), 'Comprehensive education', in Socialism Now and Other Essays (London: Cape), pp. 193-210. Daunt, P. E. (1975), Comprehensive Values (London: Heinemann). Davies, B. (1977), 'Meanings and motives in "going mixed ability"', in Mixed Ability Teaching in the Secondary School, ed. B. Davies and R. G. Cave (London: Ward Lock), pp. 18-40. Deale, R. N. (1977), 'Assessment in the mixed ability group', in Mixed Ability Teaching in the Secondary School, ed. B. Davies and R. G. Cave (London: Ward Lock), pp. 80--98. Department of Education and Science (1977), A New Partnership for our Schools (London: HMSO). Department of Education and Science (1978), Mixed Ability Work in Comprehensive Schools, HMI series Matters for Discussion, No. 6 (London: HMSO). Dooley, P., Smith, A., and Kerry, T. (1977), Teaching Mixed Ability Classes (Nottingham: University School of Education).

74

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Elliott, J. ( 1976), 'The problems and dilemmas of mixed ability teaching and the issue of teacher accountability', Cambridge Journal of Education, vol. 6, nos l/2, pp. 3-14. Elliott, J. (ed.) ( 1978), Hypotheses about Mixed Ability Teaching (Cambridge: Cambridge Institute of Education). Esposito, D. (1973), 'Homogeneous and heterogeneous ability groupings: principle findings and implications for evaluating and designing more effective educational environments', Review of Educational Research, vol. 43, pp. 163-79. Ford,]. (1969), Social Class and the Comprehensive School (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul). Fromm, E. (1956), The Sane Society (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul). Gewirth, A. (1978), Reason and Morality (Chicago: Chicago University Press). Gough, B., and McGhee, J. (1977), 'Planning for mixed ability', in Mixed Ability Teaching in the Secondary School, ed. B. Davies and R. G. Cave (Londor/: Ward Lock), pp. 41-54. Hargreaves, D. (1967), Social Relations in a Secondary School (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul). Holt, M. (1976), 'Non-streaming and the common curriculum', Forum, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 55-7. Hoyles, E. M. (1975), 'Vauxhall Manor school', in Case Studies in Mixed Ability Teaching, ed. A. V. Kelly (London: Harper & Row), pp. 49-63. ILEA Inspectorate (1976), Mixed Ability Grouping (London: ILEA). Jackson, B. (1964), Streaming: An Education System in Miniature (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul). Kelly, A. V. (1975), Case Studies in Mixed Ability Teaching (London: Harper & Row). Kelly, A. V. (1978), Mixed Ability Teaching: Theory and Practice (London: Harper & Row). Madgwich, S. (1980), 'Mathematics', in Mixed Ability Teaching, ed. C. Sewell (Nafferton: Nafferton Books), pp. 169-98. Monks, T. G. (1968), Comprehensive Education in England and Wales (Slough: NFER). Morrison, C. M. (1976), Ability Grouping and Mixed Ability Grouping in Secondary Schools (Edinburgh: Scottish Council for Educational Research). Newbold, D. (1977), Ability Grouping - the Banbury Enquiry (Slough: NFER). Nozick, R. (1974), Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books). Peters, R. S. (1966), Ethics and Education (London: Allen & Unwin). Plamenatz, J. (1975), Karl Marx's Philosophy of Man (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Postlethwaite, K., and Denton, C. (1978), Streams for the Future (Banbury: Pubansco). Rawls, J. (1972), A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Reid, M., Clunies-Ross, L., Goocher, B., and Vile, C. (1981), Mixed Ability Teaching: Problems and Possibilities (Windsor: NFER/Nelson).

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MIXED ABILITY GROUPING: A PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH

Sallis, J. (1977), School Managers and Governors: Taylor and After (London: Ward Lock). Sewell, C. (ed.) (1980), Mixed Ability Teaching (Nafferton: Nafferton Books). Williams, B. (1969), 'The idea of equality', in Philosophy, Politics and Society: Second Series, ed. P. Laslett and W. G. Runciman (Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 110-31.

76

Index equality of access 24 equality of opportunity 23, 27-37, equality of respect 14, 21, 23, 58 equality of valuing 17, 19,27-37,45, 54, 56, 59, 60 Esposito, D. 71, 75

ability, homogeneity of 47 ability, ies 7-10, 33, 43, 49, 57 Ackerman, B. 73, 74 age-range 3 a priori argument 61 attainment 62 authenticity 34

football 54, 56, 57 Ford, J. 75

Bailey, C. H. 74 Ball, S. 63, 71, 74 Boyson, R. 29, 74 Bridges, D. 25, 74

Forum x

fraternity 20, 21, 23, 26, 32, 37, 3&-45, 58, 59 Fromm, E. 44, 75

Cambridge DES regional course 58 Caulfield, M. 18, 19, 74 Christian thought 41 class teaching 5, 6, 47, 48, 50 cohort teaching 48, 50 community 20, 21, 44,69 cooperation 20, 2l Corbishley, P. 62, 71, 74 Crosland, C. A. R. 21, 22, 74 curriculum 4, 20

geography 51, 52 Gewirth, A. 30, 73, 75 Gough, B. and McGee, J. 3, 75 groupwork 57-9 groupwork, collaborative 7 Hargreaves, D. 75 history 51 HMI 18, 19, 34, 35, 46, 47, 72, 74 hockey 56 Holt, M. x, 74 homogeneous groups 4, 34, 35, 53, 54, 55,57,59 Hoyles, E. M. 21, 57, 75

datum grouping 33, 35 datum grouping, deviations from 35-7 Daunt, P. E. 8, 18, 19, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 72, 74 Davies, B. II, 74 Davies, B. and Cave, R. G. 71, 72, 74 Deale, R. N. 8, 74 DES 18, 19, 20, 21, 46, 74 discussion 54, 55 distributive justice 30 Dooley, P., Smith, A. and Kerry, T. 58,74 dramatic activities 56

ILEA Inspectorate 17, 72, 74 individual assignments 52 individual differences 7-10, 49 individual needs 17, 19, 25 individualised learning 6, 34, 35, SO, 51, 52, 53, 58 Jackson, B. 9, 75 justice 14, 23, 27-37, 41 justification 26, 27, 28, 29

economics 51 effects of mixed ability grouping 62-3 egalitarianism 19, 29 Elliott, J. 17, 69, 75 empirical evidence 62-3, 68, 71 empirical judgment 8, 34

Kelly, A. V. 27, 72, 75 knowledge 13 language learning 5 I

77

INDEX liberal education 44 Madgwich, S. 75 mathematics SO, 51, 59 Marxism 40, 73 Monks, T. G. 3, 75 Morrison, C. M. 75 music 56 nationalism 41 Newbold, D. 75 NFER Inquiry 12, 13, 18, 20, 51, 55, 62, 69, 71, 73, 75 Nottingham Teacher Education Project 58 Nozick, R. 73, 75 organisational change 62-3 parents 68-70 Peters, R. S. 41, 42, 73, 75 Plamenatz, J. 40-1, 73, 75 Postlethwaite, K. and Denton, C. 75 potentialS, 9, 10, 59 practical difficulties 48-53 practical subjects 53, 54, 59 primary goods 30, 31 primary schools 12, 13 rationale for mixed ability groups 11-16

Rawls, J. 31, 32, 33, 73, 75 Reid, M. eta!. 12, 13, 18, 20, 62, 71, 73, 75 remedial groups 3 Sallis, J. 69, 76 Schools Council Humanities Curriculum Project 55 science 51, 59 self-esteem IS, 16, 30, 31 setting 12, 17, 34, 37, 43,47 Sewell, C. 53, 73, 74 skills of teachers 46 social class 41 streaming 8, 12, IS, 17, 34, 37, 43,47 subjects 46--60 subject status 56 Taylor Committee 68 teacher attitudes 63 teacher expectations 8 teacher training 46 teaching styles 46--60 team games 56 understanding 13, 49, SO, 51, 59 who should decide 65-70 Williams, B. 32, 76 work sheets 52, 58

78

ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS: PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION

Volume 2

DO TEACHERS CARE ABOUT TRUTH?

DO TEACHERS CARE ABOUT TRUTH? Epistemological Issues for Education

E. P. BRANDON

First published in 1987 by Allen & Unwin (Publishers) Ltd This edition first published in 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1987 E. P. Brandon All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: ISBN: ISBN: ISBN:

978-1-138-20902-2 978-1-315-45789-5 978-1-138-69230-5 978-1-315-53265-3

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Preface to the Re-issue

This little book was first published in 1987. What I saw as my task then was to point to issues in philosophy that might be of use to teachers when they faced questions relating to truth and knowledge. While no doubt much has changed in the decades since, I would still think that this is a reasonable way to approach this area of philosophy for education. The choices I made then were to rely much more on issues in philosophy of science – broadly logical questions of the relations and status of the claims we make – than to talk about the questions of central concern to epistemology or the theory of knowledge generally. One pleasing consequence of that choice is that, if what I said was on the right lines in 1987, it remains so: logic, at least at the simple level I was using, doesn’t change much. And I still think that emphasis remains defensible. Epistemology has of course changed considerably – there has been much interest in ‘virtue’ epistemology, and the whole field has been upended by Timothy Williamson’s Knowledge and Its Limits (Oxford University Press, 2000) which argued against the almost universally accepted notion that our concept of knowledge could be broken down into other components (often justified true belief plus we-know-not-what to avoid Gettier problems, or some version of non-accidentally true belief) and advocated a ‘knowledge first’ agenda in which knowledge would remain unanalysed. These and other developments in general epistemology, however fascinating they are for philosophers, have not, so far as I can see, provided much that teachers can exploit either in their teaching or in their own understanding of what it is they teach. Philosophy of science likewise has not stood still. Popper’s light has somewhat dimmed, though A.F. Chalmers’ What Is This Thing Called Science? has now reached its fourth edition (Open University Press, 2013) and retains its modified Popperian perspective. Its revisions reflect the growth of Bayesian approaches to the dynamics of belief-

change, greater attention to the role of experiments and the reproducible phenomena they often exhibit, and a more nuanced and selective approach to questions of realism in the interpretation of scientific theory. I might now say something on each of these, and also on the place of models in our scientific attempts to grasp the world, and I might try to counter the exclusive focus on physics – biology is now much more prominent as a source of ideas and examples – but I don’t think these developments undermine anything I said before. To the extent that many educators hope that what is taught will enhance students’ ability to reason correctly and avoid fallacy, Bayesianism and probability theory in general have much to contribute (think of the frequency of base-rate fallacies, for which, and for many other failures to think straight, see Stuart Sutherland, Irrationality, Pinter & Martin, 2007). But to take up these issues would shift the book’s focus to the promotion of critical thinking, rather than a deeper grasp of the nature of the subject-content that is being taught. If I were writing it now, what I would stress is something about the tools I used, the distinctions made, the logical and other philosophical notions employed. These were treated too reverentially – I would now offer philosophical insights much more explicitly in the style of bricolage, provisional approaches that may clarify an issue but which are not the last word (see my contribution, ‘Philosophy as Bricolage’ to What Philosophy Is, edited by Havi Carel and David Gamez, Continuum, 2004). This is an extension of Popperian fallibilism to philosophy itself – if any induction is reliable, a pessimistic induction to the supersession of any philosopher’s position must be near the top. But just as we continue to use Newtonian conceptions to get us to the moon, although we know they are ultimately inadequate to the nature of things, so I think we can continue to find insight in philosophical notions, such as perhaps the synthetic a priori or the fact/value distinction, while recognising that they have their limitations.

Do Teachers Care About Truth? Epistemological Issues for Education

E. P. BRANDON

London ALLEN & UNWIN Boston Sydney Wellington

©E. P. Brandon, 1987 This book is copyright under the Berne convention. No reproduction without permission. All rights reserved.

Allen & Unwin (Publishers) Ltd, 40 Museum Street, London, WClA 1 LU, UK Allen & Unwin (Publishers) Ltd, Park Lane, Heme! Hempstead, Herts, HP2 4TE, UK Allen & Unwin, Inc., 8 Winchester Place, Winchester, Mass. 01890, USA Allen & Unwin (Australia) Ltd, 8 Napier Street, North Sydney, NSW 2060, Australia Allen & Unwin NZ Ltd, 60 Cambridge Terrace, Wellington, NZ First published in 1987

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Brandon, E. P. Do teachers care about truth?: epistemological issues for education. (Introductory studies in philosophy of education) l. Knowledge, Theory of I. Title II. Series 121 BD161 ISBN0-04-370174-4

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Brandon, E. P. Do teachers care about truth? (Introductory studies in philosophy of education) Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Education- Philosophy. 2. Truth. I. Title. II. Series. LA132.B715 1987 370'.1 86-28714 ISBN0-04-370174-4

Set in 11 on 12 point Plantin by Fotographics (Bedford) Ltd and printed in Great Britain by Billings and Sons Ltd, London and Worcester

Contents

1

2 3 4

Preface Introduction Truth Knowledge Opinion Notes Further Reading References Index

xi

1 8 28 63 78 79 81 84

Preface This book attempts to set out some ideas about the nature of our knowledge and to make a few suggestions about what they might mean for teachers. In the context of the series in which it appears, it is intended as a survey of general issues in the theory of knowledge that might have implications for education. This task is made somewhat awkward by the need to explain and defend the claims about truth and knowledge that are made, while still keeping space for their possible pedagogical implications. Since I think the main implication concerns getting the status of our knowledge right, I have devoted most of my space to trying to explain the philosophical issues. But of course a great deal has had to be left unsaid or undefended. The theory of knowledge and its specialities such as the philosophy of science are extremely large areas of philosophical inquiry. I have had to choose topics that seem to me to be relevant to at least some teachers, but many of their questions will here go unanswered. The book owes its existence to the kindness of various people. I would like to single out John Gingell, Phil Snelders, the staff at Allen & Unwin and my Head of Department, Marlene Hamilton, whose zeal for moving us into the twentieth century produced the word-processing facilities without which this volume would never have been finished. Its contents have benefited from the comments ofZellynne Jennings, Jacquie Moriah and Graham Webb. The philosophical position sketched here derives in large part from the teaching and writings of the late John Mackie. But he not only -influenced my philosophical views; he also exemplified that passion for truth which underlies the view of education taken here. In this connection, I should also like to invoke the memory of two other men who, in very different ways, were fired with the same passion: Don Carter and Bryan Matthias. To write of education one must have met educators; I am privileged to have known these teachers. xi

1 Introduction Praestat opes sapientia 1

Education and Truth The question I have chosen to answer is 'Do teachers care about truth?' Many of you might well react to such a question by saying that it is not worth asking: of course teachers care about truth! All of us do, at least most of the time. We don't set out to mislead other people or lie to them. And when teachers are teaching they will probably be particularly scrupulous. They would emphatically reject what they saw as the teaching of falsehood, error or misunderstanding. And so you might say it is obvious that they do care about truth. My supposition that many of you would react in this way can in fact be given a good measure of empirical support. Julian Haes ( 1982) recently asked a group of teachers whether it was important for curriculum content to be true and he found that 'there is a consistently maintained view ... that, though not necessarily clearly defined, truth is in some way important for the curriculum' (p. 69). The quotations he gives exemplify both the general belief that truth matters and the difficulties teachers have with the notions of truth and knowledge. I hope our later discussions will help you to find a path through these difficulties. For now I just want to say that the issues we consider should also show you why I think my question is worth asking and why the educational establishment may not come out of the examination as well as might be hoped. Before illustrating some of the fundamental problems that arise when we start to think about truth and knowledge, let me also admit that it is not only ordinary teachers who profess a concern for truth 1

DO TEACHERS CARE ABOUT TRUTH?

but also educational theorists and others who pronounce on the aims of education. To take one of the most widely known, it is crucial for Hirst's (1974) account of a liberal education that what people are initiated into should be the different forms of knowledge we have come to recognize. Hirst's reasons for thinking that his forms are forms of knowledge and not something else are none too clear, but it is obvious that this supposed status gives them a much easier entree into the curriculum than they might otherwise have. And it is precisely a lingering doubt about the status of religion as knowledge that has made him hesitant about its place in the curriculum ( 197 4, ch. 12). While Hirst may be taken as representative of the erstwhile liberal consensus on education, radical reformers and de-schoolers are equally concerned that people acquire knowledge and grasp the truth. Though Illich (1971), for instance, puts great stress on the acquiring of skills, his learning webs would also facilitate less practical learning; the crucial thing is that people learn what matters to them and what they can use in their struggles to liberate themselves. Similarly it is no accident that Freire's advice to agricultural extension workers is largely an exposition of a theory of knowledge (1974, esp. pp. 119-27). Nor is it only self-confessed educationalists who put a premium on truth: Finnis, a philosopher with special interests in morality and law, has recently tried to argue for the classical Aristotelian view that 'truth and the knowledge of it is a good objectively worthy of human pursuit' ( 1977, p. 250). Educators honour truth and knowledge, but in their more sublime moments they are likely to talk of understanding, rationality, or even wisdom. But it is arguable that these goals centrally involve truth and knowledge. Peters (1981) at least has asserted that 'to be rational is to care about truth' (p. 75). While understanding may be mainly a matter of putting things into a wider framework, seeing the way they connect with other things, we are surely concerned that this wider context of belief be true, or, at least, the best supported we can currently find. Once we recognize that the general schema we are using to grasp something is false, we can no longer claim a proper understanding, however illuminating our false beliefs may have been. Similarly, I would have thought, wisdom flourishes with true beliefs rather than false ones, although it is by no means clear what exactly wisdom involves. Rationality is perhaps somewhat clearer; it is certainly a current favourite as an educational aim. But there are certain difficulties 2

INTRODUCTION

with rationality which make it necessary for us to dig a little deeper. Many people fmd it easier to deal with rationality by deliberately restricting it to the context of choosing a means to a given end. In this context, rational choice is a matter of choosing the means that maximizes, or at least satisfies as well as available alternatives, one's values in the light of one's beliefs about how the world works. Given an end, given beliefs about the world's working, and given a set of values that associate pluses and minuses with various outcomes, rationality becomes simply a matter of choosing consistently. One problem with this deliberately simplified conception is that it does not require us to question the truth of the beliefs about the world, nor the sensibleness of the values or the end to be pursued. But at least given all these, it yields a fairly straightforward answer. Many critics, however, want a stronger conception of rationality that does entail an assessment of the truth of empirical beliefs and the acceptability of the values involved. One way of moving in that direction without abandoning the clarity of the simplified conception is to note that ends do not exist all on their own; rather they are woven together in a very complicated pattern. One consequence is that crazy ends will very often impinge disastrously on other more sensible ends that a person may have. What is an end for one problem can be criticized in its turn as part of the means for another end (and not necessarily some more general end). In a similar way, false beliefs about the way the world works are in some cases likely to frustrate one's pursuit of a goal. Maximizing one's values on more occasions will then depend on correcting such false beliefs and on revising the more crazy aims. So, at least to some extent, we can say that rationality can only be promoted if we do attend to such critical tasks and, in particular for our present purposes, to the correction of a person's false beliefs about the world. Simple, isolated rationality is too easy; what matters for education is more rationality and the greater overall satisfaction it may bring. And so once again we can fmd a central place for truth and knowledge underneath the educator's explicit concern for rationality. I have suggested so far that teachers, educational theorists and ordinary people do give truth and knowledge a central place in their thinking about education. And whatever relations schools may have to education, it is true that much of what goes on in them is the inculcation of varied kinds of knowledge, or of what passes for it. 3

DO TEACHERS CARE ABOUT TRUTH?

Problems with Truth Teachers have many problems, but it might seem that worries about the nature of truth or knowledge are not among them. Curiosity may be innate, but it is not given to many of us to wonder whether some of the answers we are given are more reliable than others, or to puzzle over what is involved in something being true. We may ask questions but on the whole we are avid swallowers of answers; the habit of sorting out better from worse answers and of wondering what makes a good answer has not marked a large part of human history, even in literate societies. It is probably less common than we like to imagine even in our own practice. Even so, teachers do sometimes have to face questions about truth and knowledge because in our societies the problematic nature of at least some sorts of belief is widely recognized. It is easy to come upon serious difficulties once we begin to reflect on curricular realities. In our everyday thinking we are familiar with the distinction between what a person really does know and what he only thinks he knows. This is not an obscure, philosophically motivated distinction but rather part of our ordinary conceptual resources. But what happens when we look at curricula in these terms? Anyone aware of the history of the subjects they teach will know that much of the 'knowledge' taught in 1900, not to mention 1100, would hardly be accepted nowadays. And since there is nothing cognitively special about the present moment, this reflection must give pause to anyone who believes what one of Haes' teachers claimed: 'we shouldn't disseminate something which has to be corrected later or admitted to be false' (Haes, 1982, p. 70). Nor, of course, is it only at other times that our 'knowledge' is different. Different groups both in our own societies and in others hold incompatible views about a vast variety of factual matters, from the intelligibility of classical mathematics to the existence of angels, not to mention differences on evaluative issues. As another of Haes' teachers wrote, 'what may be "true" in one country may not be regarded as true in another' (p. 69). Another everyday distinction which can cause problems when we apply it to the curriculum is that between factual matters and matters of opinion or of taste. The thoughts that cockroaches lay a lot of eggs and that cockroaches are repulsive are both expressed in grammatically the same sort of sentence (what we shall later call 4

INTRODUCTION

'indicative' sentences); both invite assessment in terms of truth or falsity; but many of us would be inclined to say that while the first is simply either true or false the second expresses something that is really only a matter of opinion- although in this case an opinion that is widely shared. With this distinction in our hands, what becomes of the literature taught in school or of the moral and social values promulgated in civics or 'family life education'? Of course, some will not accept these applications of the distinction, but they can probably point to other cases of curricular material they would wish to relegate to the opinion side of the fence. Aesthetic and moral values are one area widely regarded as matters of opinion. But many people also consider religious beliefs similarly as not to be taught as knowledge. Here talk of taste or opinion may yield to talk of faith, but the message for the schools is the same: don't teach these things as straightforward truths such as you find in maths or elementary geography. And this attitude can carry over into scientific or historical theorizing, especially when it abuts on matters dealt with in religion. So evolutionary theory in biology or Marxist theorizing in history or sociology may be regarded as more a matter for individual choice than the structure of DNA or the historical origin of windmills. These two familiar distinctions, real knowledge versus merely supposed knowledge and real knowledge versus mere opinion, can easily undermine one's confidence in the centrality of truth for education when they are turned on the actual contents of the curriculum. It is tempting, at this stage, to retreat hastily to some form of relativism: to say we teach what we, or the dominant social group in our society, currently hold to be the truth and that is all we can do, that is all there is to truth. Or if we are more impressed by the examples of opinion, we may begin to talk of some things being true for me while others are true for you or for them. This is a temptation that many fall for. We shall see some of its technical problems in the next chapter, but for now it is important to see that such moves take a great deal of the force away from the educational commitments we looked at earlier. If there is nothing more to truth than social endorsement, how can we save any notion of there having been cognitive progress? Put another way, what cognitively good reasons can we give for preferring our present society's version of things? Of course, there can be a prudential reason - if you started invoking Zeus or phlogiston, you would

5

DO TEACHERS CARE ABOUT TRUTH?

certainly fail your exams and might even find yourself in an asylum - but few relativists are so hard-bitten as not to want a more pertinent reason for belief in today's theories. Again, if one falls for the 'true for you, not true for me' line it is very difficult to preserve a usable distinction between getting things right and getting them wrong; how are mistakes possible if all we can claim is that things are or are not true for individuals? The educational commitment to truth and knowledge is a selective commitment (perhaps any commitment must be selective), but these kinds of relativism seem likely to let everything through. Relativized truth or knowledge seems unable to issue any non-arbitrary exclusions, and so it gives us no guidance about what education should be seeking to achieve. So far I have been trying to sketch some of the main general problems about truth and knowledge that might occur to any reflective teacher. But within more specialized areas there are plenty of questions that raise awkward issues about knowledge of the kind that philosophical inquiry ought to be able to address. How does 'guided discovery' relate to the real work of scientists? What can sensibly go on under the rubric of 'integration' and how does it relate to more traditional 'subjects'? What is at stake in correcting such things as spelling or grammar? What stand should one take in the recent disputes between 'positivist' and 'humanist' geographers? I cannot hope to address, let alone answer, these more specialized questions here, but this book is intended to offer a framework in which to think about such problems. We shall look directly at the general problems I have mentioned and that, I hope, will give you tools to move on to any of the more detailed questions that interest you.

Plan of Attack Part of the difficulty in facing these kinds of question is that people are often unwilling to do here what they do elsewhere: to tidy up and distinguish issues and recognize the need for a modicum of technical terminology or at least the regimentation of everyday expressions. It seems to be assumed that the most profound philosophical problems can continue to be fruitfully discussed without any real attention to the discipline of philosophy; so at least it would appear in the training of most teachers, since the philosophy of 6

INTRODUCTION

education (at least in English-speaking countries recently) has been largely concerned with charting out its own peculiar area rather than applying the lessons of the rest of philosophy to problems faced by teachers. I do not think this attitude can be sustained. Clarification of the general questions about truth and knowledge we have raised requires that we make distinctions, and insist on such distinctions, rather than attempt to carry on with the imprecisions of everyday discussion. In the rest of this book I shall begin by trying to clear up and dispose of the issue of truth. I say 'dispose of' deliberately since I shall be arguing that the real problems of truth are problems raised by the things that are true, whether or not we try to start pontificating about truth in the abstract. When we look at these things in more detail we shall first see how the attempt to uncover explanations leads to the revision and replacement of a lot of our common sense. Schools in general underplay this breach with ordinary everyday beliefs. We shall also see why at least most of what we consider knowledge is logically provisional so that we cannot help passing on things that may well be revised or rejected later. Here too schools, whether deliberately or not, pass on untenable views about the nature of knowledge. We shall also look at some of the limitations we inevitably face in our attempts to understand the world so that we can see what we can and - perhaps as importantly - cannot expect of our knowledge. Then in the final chapter we shall look at the way our values are intertwined with our other conceptions and how this makes questions of truth or falsehood in many important areas somewhat complicated. At the very end I shall return to our initial question and try to draw the main morals that have arisen from our investigations.

7

2 Truth On a huge hill, Cragged, and steep, Truth stands, and hee that will Reach her, about must, and about must goe2 John Donne's claim applies most forcefully to our halting attempts to reveal the truth, to seek after knowledge; but it applies also to my procedure in this chapter. Before we can say clearly what truth is, we must make several preliminary points.

The Links between Truth and Knowledge In the previous chapter I continually joined truth and knowledge together in a way that should hardly have caused any surprise. They are different concepts but in the context of educational debate they point us in the same direction. On the one hand, any truths that education is concerned with will be items that don't just turn out to be true by good fortune, but rather items for which teachers or others can produce some defensible reasons to accept as true, which is to say items that are more or less certainly known to be true, though perhaps only to a small group. The truths education deals with are then items of knowledge. On the other hand, anything that really is an item of knowledge is ipso facto true. If it is false that Walter Rodney was murdered then no one can know that he was murdered, however vehemently they may believe it. So if anyone 8

TRUTH

says he knows that Rodney was murdered then he is committed to its being true that Rodney was murdered; and if you say of John that he knows Rodney was murdered then you also are committed to its being true that he was. One problem with these last remarks is that strictly speaking they are not true! You can find competent English speakers saying things like 'The ancient Greeks knew that Zeus lived on Mount Olympus' without themselves endorsing any beliefs about Zeus. If philosophy were simply reduced to recording what people do with their language we would have a very hard time of it. While we need not trouble ourselves with an exact account of what is going on here, I hope it is clear to you that this kind of usage, often called an inverted commas usage from the way it would normally be written, and indeed was written by me in the previous chapter, is secondary or parasitic. It is a way of making a point that could be more straightforwardly made by saying that the ancient Greeks thought they knew that Zeus lived on Olympus, but they were wrong. There is a clear sense in which it is false to say they knew; they only believed. It is false to say they knew because it is false that Zeus lives or lived on Mount Olympus. We have already seen in the last chapter this distinction between what someone really knows and what they only think they know. It might be worth noting now that it does not just apply to other people. In general we do not in fact know all that we claim to know. And this is one of the facts about ourselves that we can come to know. But there is nothing paradoxical in this- there is no fact that we know and that we don't know at the same time -since in knowing that there are some things we falsely claim to know we do not know which things they may be.

Abbreviations Before moving on to our next preliminary point, I want to introduce some abbreviations. So far I have been talking about someone knowing something, but this sort of idiom is not very convenient if one wants to talk about the somethings that are known. I shall therefore make a few borrowings from logic and linguistics to let the discussion flow more freely. First of all I want something that can stand for any indicative sentence (we shall look more closely at what 9

DO TEACHERS CARE ABOUT TRUTH?

an indicative sentence might be in a short time) and I shall use little italic letters starting with p. So if I write 'John knows that p' you can replace the p with something like '2 + 3 = 5' or 'Mary loves Tom' or any indicative sentence you like. Such ps and qs function in fact just like the names 'John' or 'Mary' in those examples, since I am not thinking of any particular people; I could equally well have replaced the names with letters and said 'A loves B'; but Mary and Tom make it sound more homely and make it look less like algebra. But if you can see that in saying 'If John knows that p, then p' I am not making a special point about someone called John, but a general claim about knowing something, then I think you should see the point of the ps and qs. If I shall ever want to abbreviate names of people, places or things I shall do as I have just done and use italic capital letters. Besides whole sentences and simple names it will also prove useful to be able to abbreviate two types of phrase, noun phrases (the Queen of England; the way to boil an egg; ... ) and verbal phrases (boil an egg; sing sweetly; ... ). I shall use NP for noun phrases, VP for verb phrases.

Truth and Being True We can now move on to our second preliminary point about truth. Philosophical questions are often framed in terms of abstract nouns such as 'truth' or 'justice'. Such abstract nouns give us a way of raising general questions about properties or relations. If someone says that this is a spaniel but that isn't, and we want to ask what is involved in being a spaniel, we are not likely to inquire 'What is spanielhood?', rather we would ask 'What are spaniels like?'; but if someone says that this social set-up is just but that isn't, and we want to ask what is involved in being just, the obvious question the language offers us is 'What is justice?' This would not be a problem but for the fact that people are easily misled into thinking that nouns, even abstract ones, must somehow behave like proper names. And since justice or truth are not concrete things of the sort we meet with in everyday life, there is a tendency to suppose that they must be things we meet with in some extraordinary sphere. Put baldly like that, such an error might seem unlikely but it is safer not to let the danger arise. So we should ask, not 'What is truth?', but 'What is it for something to be true?' 10

TRUTH

Putting it grammatically, we transform the nominalization, 'truth', back into the simple verbal phrase, 'is true'. The philosophical claim underlying this move is that the nominalization is simply a way of talking generally about whatever is conveyed by the simple verbal phrase; there are no other weird entities to be considered.

What Things Are True? There is yet a third preliminary point before we try to say what is involved in being true. That is to decide which uses of the word we are really interested in. The word 'true' is used in a variety of ways. What someone says can be true, or false, but so can a friend or a horizon. The use I am interested in is, however, the first of those mentioned rather than the others. When we are able to specify what someone has said or believes or hopes or imagines or whatever, we can paraphrase our talk of truth by saying 'It is true thatp.' It is this use of'is true' that I am concentrating on. We need a way of talking about the things that people could say or imagine, about possible contents of thought. I shall use the word 'proposition' to talk about such possible contents of what is said, thought or believed. One very important thing to notice about thinking or believing or the other activities I have alluded to is that if we want to report what is going on we have to use sentences (our ps and qs) to do it. While you can say things like 'Green!' or 'How ghastly!', if we want to report what you are thinking we would have to say something like 'You think that the green wallpaper clashes horribly with the sofa'. And notice that what comes after the 'think that' could stand on its own as a sentence. My claim is that the same goes for every case in which people think or believe something: thinking or believing is always thinking or believing that p, to use the abbreviation we introduced a while ago. I have said that propositions are always going to require sentences to express them. But only some kinds of sentence can do the job. 'How ghastly the wallpaper is!' is a perfectly good English sentence, as is 'Will you please pass a cucumber sandwich?', but neither of them could report the content of a person's belief. To do that, we need what are often called 'indicative' sentences, not exclamations or questions or imperatives or optatives. The test or criterion I would offer you for indicative sentences (from Hodges, 11

DO TEACHERS CARE ABOUT TRUTH?

1977) emphasizes the link between propositions and truth. The test is: can you grammatically enclose your sentence with 'Is it true that ... ?'? If you can, it is an indicative sentence; if you can't, it isn't. (If it isn't, there are often ways of converting it into indicative form -'The wallpaper is ghastly'; 'You are requested to pass a cucumber sandwich'- but we need not worry about this now.) I have used both sentences and propositions because there are many occasions when we fmd that the same sentence can be used, sometimes to say something true, sometimes to say something false; but I want propositions to be true once and for all. If we count sentences in an obvious way, the sentence 'It is raining' can be used one day to say something true (that at 1.30 p.m. on 3 March 1984 it was raining at Mona, Jamaica) and another day (such as 31 January 1985 at 3.30 p.m. at Mona) to say something false. One way to deal with this familiar situation is to say that 'It is raining' is one sentence type which has very many instances or tokens; each time the sentence is used someone produces a sentence token of that type; and each token could be used to make a different statement or, in the terms I am using, to express a different proposition. To talk both of sentences and propositions allows us to count sentences by types and proposition by tokens. This may sound somewhat confusing, but it is really something we all know in our bones; anyway I shall rely on your mastery of the language to allow you to make any similar adjustments to the sentences used to express propositions.

Some Things That Are Not True More important for our own purposes than the intricacies of propositions and sentences is to be clear about the simple fact that propositions are expressed by complete sentences not just by bits of sentences. When people talk of concepts they are usually thinking of items that would be reflected in language by words or phrases, not by whole sentences. A person may be said to have a concept of a horse, or of equality, but not so felicitously a concept that all men are created equal. A person's use of a concept will be reflected in large part by how he uses 'horse', 'unicorn', 'fraternity', and kindred words. Very roughly, then, we can tie concepts to parts of a sentence, propositions to the whole sentence. What my earlier claim 12

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now amounts to is that there is no sense in which concepts can be true or false, since concepts are not themselves propositions. It is important to see that concepts cannot be true or false. But we should explain why many people have mistakenly thought that they are. In the first place they may have been confusing a proposition's being true with a concept's applying to something. The concept, horse, applies, to something, the concept, unicorn, does not; which is to say, there are horses but there are no unicorns. Take any concept, F, when the proposition that there are Fs is true the concept, F, applies to something; so there is a close link between truth here and the applicability of a concept; but they are not quite the same notions, and it is better to keep them distinct. In the second place, we have to admit that language is very flexible and that what is said in one way can often be said in what is logically a very different way. In the present case, a concept can subsume a proposition or a set of propositions: to talk of the concept of human equality may not be very different from talking of the proposition that all men are created equal, and the concept of evolution usually subsumes for us a complex theory. While this is so, clarity is served by attending to logical niceties, and so we shall continue to insist that concepts are not the sort of things to be true or false. In this book we must leave aside most of the complex problems that arise in the theory of meaning, but it might be worth making one remark here. People often think of the meaning of their words as fairly precise and specific - the sort of thing they could produce as a 'definition' if requested. Such accounts will often make explicit mention of currently accepted theory - educators, for instance, have a penchant for talking of learning in terms of behaviourist psychology. Now if the meaning of such terms were tied to theories in this way, the meaning of words would change as theories change, and it might be difficult to see how people using different theories were still talking about the 'same things'. One plausible response to this problem is to suggest that many of our concepts are not so specific; putting it in terms of words, one might say that the word 'gold' means whatever it is that underlies features such as the malleability, colour, chemical behaviour, and so on that we associate with the substance we call 'gold'. Such an agnostic rendering of the meaning of a term leaves plenty of room for alternative theories and for alternative ways of putting features together (so some observable features might end up being attributed to impurities in actual 13

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specimens rather than to the substance itself) while allowing us to say that these different views are all attempts to delineate the same objective reality. Such less specific accounts of the meaning of terms also square rather better with the diversity of the existing usage of the words associated with particular concepts - it is all too easy to offer an account of a concept while thinking only of a very restricted range of linguistic usage. Just as I have been insistent that constituents of sentences cannot be true or false, so I want to insist that one kind of structure made up of sentences cannot be true or false either. And that is an argument. An argument is a sequence of sentences (or propositions), some of them making up the premisses of the argument, some of them (usually just one) being the conclusion. For a sequence to be an argument, the premisses must be intended to support the conclusion in some way. We can regiment an argument into a structure like this: p, q, ... so r. (Here p and q stand for premisses, and r for the conclusion.) The kind or degree of support given by the premisses to the conclusion can vary. The strongest kind, found in deductive arguments, gives a guarantee that if the premisses are true, the conclusion will be true as well. When an argument actually gives the kind of support its user claims to provide, I shall say that it is a valid argument. (Many people restrict this term to deductive arguments.) One of the first things a student oflogic has to learn is that there is a difference between the validity of an argument and the truth or falsehood of its constituent statements, i.e. its premisses and conclusion, even though one explains validity in terms of the truth, or likely truth, of the conclusion being conditional upon that of the premisses. There may be valid deductive arguments with false premisses and false conclusions; there may be invalid deductive arguments with true premisses and true conclusions. The actual truth or falsehood of the constituents of a deductive argument is in general irrelevant to its validity; what matters is the possibility of certain combinations of truth and falsehood. Of course, if the premisses are known to be true and the conclusion to be false, that suffices to show the argument to be deductively invalid; but in most cases we do not have this knowledge. So in these cases we must be sensitive to the difference between truth and deductive validity. At the moment my only concern is to stress that difference, and the linguistic stipulation that goes along with it, to the effect that we cannot give a sense to arguments being true or false (arguments can 14

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be valid or invalid) nor can we interpret the claim that a statement or proposition is valid or invalid (they are true or false).

Simple Truth Having gone about and about through these various preliminary matters, we are now in a position to say what it is for a proposition to be true, to offer an analysis of truth. Philosophical analyses can include several different things, so I shall indicate what I think I am offering you at the moment. It is intended to be an account of what we are trying to convey when we say that a proposition (or, more colloquially, what someone said, or someone's belief) is true. It should be another, rather longer and more explicit, way of saying the same thing. It is not an attempt to explain how we can legitimately mean what we mean, nor is it an account of what we should be trying to say, nor does it tell us how we can know that what we mean is so. It does not try to raise or answer doubts about what we mean; it simply sets out to report what we do mean. To adapt one of Mackie's formulations ( 1973, p. 50), the view I am endorsing is that to say that a proposition is true is to say that things are as they are stated to be in the proposition. If I say that Parkinson's Law is true I am saying that things are as Parkinson's Law says they are. If! say that Nixon's public statements were false I am saying that things were not as Nixon's public statements said they were. If I say that 'Roseau is the capital of Dominica' is true I am saying that things are as 'Roseau is the capital of Dominica' says they are, viz. Roseau is the capital of Dominica. For accuracy's sake, it is worth noting that I am not, however, directly saying that Roseau is the capital of Dominica; my remark is saying something directly about a statement or proposition, that it is true, not about Roseau or Dominica; but given what I do say about that statement you can infer my commitment to the simple claim about Roseau as well. Mackie called his account a 'simple' theory of truth, and I hope you can agree with him. It may well seem a startlingly unsurprising account to be given after so many pages of preparation. It is simple, but as we proceed I hope you will see that it isn't trivial. Mackie's other label for his account is a 'comparison' theory, since the fundamental point about truth is that it involves a comparison 15

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between how things are and how they are said, or believed, or imagined, etc., to be.

One Truth The word 'truth' is potentially ambiguous (this is another reason for our preference for looking at 'is true'). It can refer to things that are true, propositions as we have decided to call them. So we can say that there are only four truths in the whole of a book, or we can distinguish the truths of chemistry from those of history. On the other hand, 'truth' can be used as we have been using it to talk of the relation between how things are and how they are said to be. I have just given the account I accept of what that relation is like. And in this sense, I think there is only one relation to be accounted for. But people sometimes talk about different kinds of truth in ways that suggest that they might be thinking that there are different kinds of relation, not just different sorts of true proposition. (For a few writers who can reasonably be interpreted in this way, see Waismann, 1953, Hirst, 1974, ch. 6, or, for a non-philosopher, Hillery, 1984.) It is logically possible that a word like 'true' could cover two or more distinct relations. The term 'sibling' could be said to cover biologically distinct relations such as identical twins, 'ordinary' brothers or sisters, half-brothers or sisters, and possibly others. So it is possible that what is involved in p being true is different from what is involved in q being true. It is possible; but I do not think it is actual, at least in unpremeditated language use. I think that when people use language unself-consciously 'true' means what I have set out above. But sometimes people tell us that what they mean by truth in mathematics or in religion or in literature is different from what it means elsewhere; and perhaps they consistently use the word in their idiosyncratic way. But if they do, I think we can say that they are in danger of confusing themselves and the rest of us, because they are in each case talking about a distinct property or relation which should be given its own name. This is especially so when the other relation lacks the essential comparative content of simple truth. Thus in mathematics, some people will say that truth is a matter simply of being deducible from a set of axioms (e.g. Hirst and Peters, 1970, p. 63). That is an important property, but it is 16

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clearly distinct from truth (and can be shown to be distinct even in mathematics by Godel's theorems) and no good purpose is served by conflating the two.

Simple Truth and Complex Meaning We can, however, see why some people are inclined to think there are different sorts of truth. (While I shall look at some reasons for making an honest mistake here it is possible that in some educational debate the confusion is more a matter of evading difficult issues such as the nature of mathematical truth or the justification for teaching certain subjects such as literature or religion.) When we say that pis true, we are saying that things are asp says they are. But what this amounts to depends, of course, on exactly what p is saying, on what it means. When, as often happens, that is complex, it may not be an easy matter to answer the question 'Is p true?' A good deal of this complexity is pretty obvious: 'Clive Lloyd is standing still' is a lot simpler than 'Clive Lloyd is Lb. w.', which involves an appeal to a set of rules; 'The Jones family has three children' is simpler than 'The average family has two point two children.' But there are cases in which the complexity may not be so apparent, and in which philosophical doubts can lead to a 'Yes and No' type answer to the question oftruth. Consider two plausible claims: 'Daffodils are yellow' and 'Socrates died courageously.' In the case of the daffodils, I think it is also plausible to claim that what we intend to convey is that daffodils are intrinsically yellow; the property as we see it in normal light is an inherent feature of them. If this is part of what we usually mean, then we are mistaken; there is no such intrinsic property (though there are, of course, various complex intrinsic properties that bear some relation to what is seen in normal light). But in that case, is the original claim true? At one level, it obviously is: daffodils are not red or purple. But in so far as part of what is being said is that they have an intrinsic yellow-as-it-is-perceived, then the claim is in error, as in this pervasive way are most claims about the colours of things. In the case of Socrates, to do something courageously requires certain things to be true of the action (if he had simply died in his sleep it would hardly have been a courageous death), and we can agree that 17

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those things did hold of Socrates. But I think we intend rather more than this in talking of courage; the action is held up for admiration, we should take this attitude rather than that towards it. But its being admirable is something over and above its having the required properties and relations for a courageous death; is it also a fact about Socrates' death? If, as I shall later argue that one should, one says that it isn't, one has the same two-part reply to the question of truth. And even if one says that it is a fact, one has still to acknowledge the complexity hidden within the simple term 'courageously'. Both these examples are controversial, as almost any example in philosophy will be, but if they are allowed they may suggest that our ordinary statements of the truth may not be 'nothing but the truth'. They may on the contrary involve claims, or at least a set of assumptions, that are to be rejected. Our language has not been fashioned for the purpose of telling the plain unvarnished truth, but it is the only language we have, and in judging some of the things we say by using it we have to make allowances for its inaccuracies. To put the matter another way, I think we can say that every indicative sentence offers itself as making a true or false claim (that is the meaning of the linguistic structure, indicative sentence) but that philosophical analysis often reveals that what is really going on is either something different from making true or false claims or, as in the two cases cited above, a conflation of different claims, some of which are acceptable while others may not be. Here, of course, · philosophical analysis is not only reporting what we intend to convey; it is describing what is really going on when we use the language. As a matter of simple logic, if you conjoin two claims, one of which is false, your combined claim is false. So strictly speaking, in the cases cited all such claims are false. But we normally treat them rather as we do claims about mythological beings: Zeus lived on Olympus, not Mount Ararat, though we know that strictly speaking both claims are false because there is no such being as Zeus to live anywhere. (The other possibility I have just mentioned, where we are not really making true or false claims although we are using indicative sentences, is also controversial, but to see the sort of analyses that have been offered, consider the two indicative sentences: 'I promise to pay you five dollars' and 'If Mabel is a peeress, she is not allowed to vote.' In the first example, some philosophers have wanted to say 18

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that the sentence does not make a true or false statement; it is simply the performance of an action. In the second example, other philosophers have wanted to say that what is really going on in 'ifp, then q' sentences is 'suppose p, then q', which is a rather more involved matter of asserting q within the supposition that p. We cannot go into the merits of these proposals here, but they perhaps serve to indicate further possibilities in which questions of whether a claim is true or false become rather involved, although truth itself remains as simple as ever.) Before we move on from the explanation of why people have thought there are different kinds of truth, one last set of points should be made. I have said what it is for a proposition to be true. I have not said what is involved in a proposition being verified, i.e. being shown to be true, nor in its being proved, nor in its being certain. These are all somewhat more complex notions than the notion of truth that I have described, and it is clear that what is involved in verifying or proving one sort of proposition may be very different from what is involved in verifying or proving some other proposition. Truth is too simple for some people; they are more interested in questions of verification, or degrees of certainty, but they are inclined to stretch the notion of truth to include these more complex concerns. If they do so, and if these other matters do differ among different kinds of proposition, then they will fmd it natural to think in terms of different kinds of truth. But my point now is that truth is distinct from these other notions and that we should not confuse them. It may be true that I drank Yquem on New Year's Day, 1978, although there is no way now of verifying or falsifying that claim, nor any way, indeed any clear sense, in which it could be proved; and obviously no one need be at all sure of it for it still to be true. However important these other notions are, they are not the same notion as truth; and it is truth we are currently dealing with. Perhaps in passing we should also note that truth is not the same as universal agreement. People may all agree on something, even on the truth of some proposition, without that proposition being true. Of course if you do decide to let 'true' mean what a group of people agree upon then your kinds of truth multiply and conflict with one another. But there is no reason to choose that meaning.

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Absolute Truth I have been trying to say what we mean by the notion of truth. Truth is a matter of comparison between how things are and how they are said or imagined to be. I have suggested that this is the only notion of truth that we have. It is not, however, a notion that some people find easy to accept. It is an ambitious notion. It claims an external standpoint from which to judge our thinking. Here we are, with various thoughts or beliefs; there the world is; and the notion of truth seeks to say how it is between these two. Either our thinking has captured something of how the world is or it hasn't. Truth goes beyond our thinking and judges it. Judgements that something is or is not true are not judgements from one perspective that might be countered by different judgements from some other perspective; they are absolute claims. Things are as we say they are, or they are not. But once we begin to reflect about truth in these ways, it can seem an impossibly ambitious notion. Our judgements that propositions are true are, after all, our judgements; they involve our thinking; they are not the verdict of some omniscient god who has direct access both to what we think and to how things are and can weigh them up. How could our thinking arrive at a standpoint beyond our thinking, from which to judge? And so we are immediately thrust into some of the deepest problems of the theory of knowledge. If one assumes that these problems are insoluble, one is likely to conclude that whatever its pretensions to absolute status the notion of truth has to be relativized in some way or other. As we shall see in a moment, it would be better to give up any talk about truth at all, since relativized notions cannot deliver the goods we want the notion of truth to provide. But before we look at some alternatives, the point to grasp at the moment is simply that the notion of truth we do use does have this pretension to absoluteness. It does seek to compare how things are with how we think they are. It is worth being a little more precise about the sort of comparison we require. Hirst (1974, ch. 5), for instance, has argued that traditional views of truth are impossible because they require a comparison of what we think with the world, presented neat, as it were, and unconceptualized. But that is not the sort of comparison we require; if it were we would indeed be in a hopeless state, since, as Hirst says, most, if not quite all, of our experience of the world is mediated by our conceptions of it. But we can still distinguish our 20

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thought, say, that pineapple juice curdles milk from our observation of what happens when we mix pineapple juice and milk. Our observation is indeed imbued with concepts, but it is quite distinct from the thought we are testing. Our thought can either be as observation reveals or other than observation reveals; we have two distinct items and can make the requisite comparison between them. If we had allowed earlier that concepts themselves could be true or false, then Hirst's objection might have been somewhat stronger: observation is usually shot through with concepts so we would not be able to get outside our concepts to see whether they are true. But we did not allow that concepts could be true; it is what we do with concepts, the statements we make employing them, that are true or false, and so we do not have the sort of problem that Hirst supposed. I have been rather short with this deep problem of how we can achieve simple absolute truth. We shall look at some aspects of it again later when we consider what our experience is like. For the time being, I have only wanted to show that some of the comparisons we need are available to us.

Sceptical Theories ofTruth As we have noted, many philosophers have doubted our ability to arrive at the simple but challenging notion of truth as set out above. Instead, they have suggested more modest notions that are within our powers and whose application matches, fairly well at least, what we want to do with truth. One such idea is that the most we can hope from truth is merely coherence with other beliefs; when we say that p is true all we are really claiming is that p is consistent with other claims we accept, or is not inconsistent with any such claims. Another idea that ordinary people often find attractive is that a true claim is one that can prove its worth in use; that truth is a matter of pragmatic utility. An even less specific account is offered by those who insist on speaking only of 'truth for' people; little is usually said about the 'true' portion, but the insistence is that we can only judge of truth for this person or group of people versus truth for that person or group: 'Lafite is better than Bull's Blood' is supposedly true for me, but not perhaps for the promoters of Hungarian wines. Each of these competing views has a certain plausibility. Co21

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herence with other accepted claims is a sine qua non for any proposition to be accepted, and inconsistency is a major reason for rejecting claims. A good number of claims are useful in practice, and this may seem a more important aspect of them than their strict truth or falsity. After all, we get by in many fields with theories that are known only to be approximations to the truth, that is to say, that are known to be strictly speaking false; and many people think religious belief is necessary for our sanity, or at least our morality, and use this to justify its place in schools, irrespective of its simple truth. Again, as my example may suggest, there are a good number of claims which it is plausible to regard as true for some but not for others. All the same, none of these views captures what it essential for truth, and so they should not be accepted as adequate explications of that notion. I have already tried to ward off some of the sceptical doubts that can encourage these alternative accounts of truth. Here I want to show briefly how they fail to measure up to our ordinary demands on the notion of truth. Some of my arguments may appear to be attacking 'straw men' since I shall attribute to people views they are unlikely to espouse in cold blood. The point, however, is that if their views are seriously held they must in consistency accept these claims. Their failure to do so testifies to their good sense, but it is fatal for the views they maintain. A proposition, p, can be consistent with a set of beliefs that A accepts but inconsistent with another set that B accepts; but p is either true or false, it cannot be both. Even if we know that q is true, the fact thatp is consistent with q does not show thatp is true too; all we can say is what we said above that if we know that q is true, then we know that pis false if it is inconsistent with q. But consistency is a quite different matter from truth. So too is pragmatic utility. A false claim can be useful, and a true claim can be of no use at all. Two incompatible claims could both serve equally well in all our practical pursuits, but they couldn't both be true. Finally, as we noted in the previous chapter, the general strategy of making truth relative undermines one of the main practical points of having the terms 'true' and 'false', viz. being able to distinguish mistakes. If 'true' can only be 'true for', we do not aeem to have any way to distinguish cases where A thinks that p, and p, from those where A makes a mistake. Similarly we have no obvious way of

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acknowledging disagreements between people: when I say p and you say not p it looks to us that there is a disagreement, but on the relativistic notion of truth we seem forced to say thatp is true for me but not p is true for you, and there is no disagreement left. One might prefer a world with no mistakes and disagreements, but this is rather too easy a way of achieving it. The relativist can of course acknowledge a difference: I accept p, you do not. His problem is to characterize this difference as a disagreement without any implicit appeal to notions of simple truth. The extreme difficulty of avoiding the ordinary absolute notion of truth can be shown by a kind of turning of the tables upon proponents of the views we have mentioned. They say: truth is coherence, or utility, or relative to the speaker. Are we to take these claims themselves as true? Presumably we must, unless the theorists are lying or wasting our time. But then in what sense of 'true'? The ordinary simple absolute sense, or the sense they are each offering us of what truth really is? The obvious way of taking their remarks is the former, the ordinary simple absolute sense. But then the theorists have straightforwardly refuted themselves. They try to tell us that truth can only be coherence, utility, or what-have-you, but they want us to accept that claim itself as true in the ordinary sense they have rejected. If there are no simple truths, then 'truth is coherence' cannot be one either. If it is to be understood as a simple truth, there can be simple truths: so the various theories are in general wrong. (They may be salvaged as limited accounts of some bits oflanguage or thought, but they had pretensions themselves, as general accounts of truth, and those pretensions have been shown to be vain.) The unobvious way of taking what the theorists say is that these claims are true only in their sense of truth. I am inclined to say then: so what? I'm interested in the truth about truth, not some poor relation. But such a reaction looks rather too much like begging the question against the theorist. So let us persevere with the unobvious interpretations. Take coherence first: it is coherent with our accepted beliefs that truth is coherence with our accepted beliefs. But unfortunately it isn't. I have just presented some reasons for thinking that that view is not consistent with my accepted beliefs about some fundamental but elementary logical matters. (And in saying that, I am obviously falling back into the simple notion of truth; but that is precisely what I meant in saying it was inescapable.)

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Let us try utility. It is useful to work with the thought that truth is a matter of practical utility. It is hardly obvious that it is. The cardinals who opposed Galileo were satisfied with stories about the heavens that did useful things like predicting eclipses and fixing the date of Easter; clearing away usable but utterly misguided theories such as Ptolemy's was a precondition for the advances made possible by Newton, with all the good, and ill, they have brought us. And once again, in disputing the acceptability of the pragmatist's social or historical claim, I am dealing in matters that can only be understood as simply true or false. The problem with the relativistic notions of truth is to get a clear enough idea of what they involve. If statements are only true for individuals, then I deny that 'statements are only true for individuals' is true for me. If truth is said to be relative to something more subtle than individuals, then I think we should seek to uncover the confusions that lead to such claims, rather than pursue these types of reflexive argument. As we have seen, there are cases where it looks plausible to say that truth is relative, but this a misleading way of describing what is going on, because fundamentally there is no truth of the matter at all. When we acknowledge the complexity of many common propositions we may be able to restate in acceptable terms most of what people are getting at when they talk of relative truth.

Do We Need a Theory of Truth? One of the basic ideas that underlies what I have been saying is that any problems there might be for talking about truth already infect the ordinary things we say. If'It is true thatp' creates a problem for you, so must the simple p itself. Talk about truth is a reflective, second-order activity, and easily encourages us to perceive problems; but the hubris we may discover inheres in our simple first-order statements themselves. The point can be made in terms of assertion: in asserting anything, we are asserting it as true. So if we cannot mean what we think we mean by saying 'It is true that p,' we cannot mean what we intend to mean simply by assertingp on its own. In the course of this exposition of Mackie's 'comparison' theory 24

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of truth, we have briefly glanced at some other 'theories' of truth: coherence, pragmatist, and relativist theories. The point I have just been making is the grain of truth in another such theory, the redundancy theory, which goes on, falsely, to say that 'It is true that p' means the same asp. My earlier account denied that equivalence, but I have now endorsed the associated idea that talk of truth is always eliminable, which is to say that any problems with it are to be found in the propositions themselves. There are other theories of truth discussed in philosophy which have not got quite the popular appeal of those we have looked at. But perhaps the most famous theory has not been mentioned so far, namely the correspondence theory. Here the fundamental idea is that a proposition is true when it corresponds with the facts. That may seem to cover Mackie's account (though, as he says, being simply as things are is a pretty strong kind of correspondence) but its distinctiveness can be seen when we ask exactly what kind of correspondence is envisaged. Typically people have wanted to find a point by point mirroring of bits of the world by bits of the sentences used to express true or false propositions. Such a story might be plausible for maps, or perhaps for pictograms, but ordinary language works in very different ways from such things. And again, even with maps, it is extremely difficult to distinguish the kinds of correspondence required for truth from those that result in systematic error, without some tacit appeal to the simple comparison notion of truth I have offered. So while an unspecified correspondence may be innocuous, let us admit that what we want is to get things simply right, as the comparison account says, and let us note that we do not have to make false assumptions about one-to-one mappings between words (or components of propositions) and the world.

Truth, Logic and Education Whether or not we go in for judging propositions true or false, truth matters vitally to us. In the previous chapter I illustrated educational concern for truth, and in this I have suggested in passing that inadequate conceptions of truth can distort or disable educational thinking. But more generally, learning, inquiry and criticism can all be regarded as activities centrally concerned to augment the number of true propositions or to sift out false ones from among our stock of

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beliefs. As such, these activities could do with a mechanism that transmits truth or falsehood. Such mechanisms exist. They are the forms of valid deductive argument. As I briefly mentioned earlier, an argument is a sequence of statements consisting of premisses, conclusion, and the link of support between them. In a deductive argument the support is such that if the premisses were true then the conclusion would have to be true too. When you have such an argument, truth is transmitted from the set of premisses taken together to the conclusion; but, conversely, falsehood is transmitted from the conclusion back to the set of premisses taken together. If we have some truths, ¢en using them as premisses in a deductive argument may yield a new truth; if a deductive argument yields a false conclusion we can be sure that at least one of its premisses is false too. These two facts about deductively valid argument structures are continually being used in the enterprise of knowledge, both on the large-scale social side and in our individual attempts to refashion the web of our beliefs. Experimentation or theoretical criticism is very often a matter of deriving a prediction by valid argument from what has been proposed and looking to see whether that prediction holds; if it doesn't this is pretty damning for the theory in question. Similarly in our own personal grasp of the world around us we are constantly expecting things on the basis of what we already believe and correcting those beliefs when expectations are falsified, and these processes often mirror what explicit deductive argument would yield. As we shall see in more detail later, investigation in real life is complex and this picture of the trouble-free transmission of truth or falsehood is somewhat oversimplified, but simplifications have their uses. No map captures everything, but the existence of tides does not detract from the value of knowing what the coastline looks like. Given both the fact that these mechanisms for the transmission of truth or falsehood exist, and that they are so pervasive in our cognitive lives, one might well think that the study of deductive logic should have a central role in any initiation into the cognitive enterprise. Schools, however, do not seem to see it that way. They often claim to teach people to reason better by teaching them particular subjects, but it seems that such teaching serves mainly to improve reasoning in the restricted areas in which it is taught. This is not so surprising, since no one ever draws students' attention to

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the general patterns that are the focus of deductive logic. It may also be true that some forms of non-deductive reasoning are peculiar to different subjects, but that is no reason for not doing what one could about those aspects that are general. As I have acknowledged regarding real life investigation, real life arguments are not so easy to handle as the disinfected simplifications of formal logic, so the subject of deductive logic as an aid to reasoning would not be so cutand-dried as it might appear; but again this is hardly a reason for not tackling it. Whether or not you are finally convinced that the notion of simple truth is one that it would be worth introducing to students in school in the hope of forestalling the confusio1,1 we can see around us, I do think we have here the beginnings of a case for much more serious consideration of the proper place of reasoning in the curriculum (cf. Brandon, 1985b). Besides transmitting truth, we might like a mechanism for discovering truths in the first place. The possibility, or rather the general impossibility, of such a mechanism is one of the main themes of the theory of knowledge and since it is not really part of my brief to argue for a place for logic in schools, let us move on to consider knowledge.

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3 Knowledge Considerate la vestra semenza: Fatti non fosse a viver come bruti Ma per seguir virtute e conoscenza3

The preceding reflections on truth should suggest that while a concern for truth is a concern that may well stir up much of what is taken for granted by most people, it is one that will focus our attention on the various different sorts of proposition that we claim to know. Truth is a simple and sharp-edged weapon, but it is not itself a notion that we need to dwell on. Rather we have to turn to the different things that we claim to know.

Epistemological Questions While some of the questions we looked at in the first chapter were phrased in terms of truth, what is common to virtually all ofthem is the question of the nature of our knowledge: what is it like and where is it to be found? The teachers Haes questioned differed on these issues: some thought that knowledge is fixed and certain, others said it was provisional; some thought that science and mathematics are our paradigm cases of genuine knowledge, but many other people would wish to include moral or religious claims as equally reliable. We can see large parts of the philosophical tradition as answers to such questions. Many philosophers have told us what knowledge is like- how it is based, or what its logical relations are to other concepts such as belief. Again a great deal of philosophy

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focuses on the reliability of knowledge -in some cases, philosophers have questioned virtually everything we believe: 'stage' philosophers are still often shown wondering whether they are indeed standing on a stage. But most philosophers have in fact accepted many of the beliefs they found around them. Their scepticism has been partial, a matter of querying or rejecting some of the beliefs in common currency, not all. Lucretius praised Epicurus for freeing mankind from the terrors of superstition; Locke sought to free science from 'pretenders to a knowledge they had not' ([1690] 1961, III, viii, 2); and modern philosophy is full of the same concern for cognitive health. As I said earlier, I cannot here go into particular cases such as psychoanalysis or Marxism or theism. Nor do I think there is much for you to gain from an extended discussion of the logical links between our concept of knowledge and our other concepts. But we can usefully survey the fundamental logical structure of our knowledge itself. This will yield insight into its status and so help in deciding what would be the most appropriate attitudes for teachers to adopt towards the transmission of our knowledge. While we shall not be able to discuss any of the more detailed questions fully you will see that the general survey of the structure of knowledge does provide a suggestive framework in which to take those discussions further.

The Word 'Know' Before beginning with that task, however, I must indicate some of the restrictions on the scope of the discussion. I am concerned with the sort of knowledge that involves truth; the sort that when you know something, you know the truth, or at least a bit of the truth. In English we use the word 'know' and its cognates much more widely. One crude classification of our usage distinguishes between (1) (2) (3)

knowledge by acquaintance: know NP; practical knowledge: know how to VP; propositional knowledge: know thatp.

As is commonly the case, virtually the same information can often be conveyed in what are logically or linguistically very different

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ways. We could report that Tom knows Pythagoras' theorem, or that Tom knows how to calculate the area of the square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle, given the squares on the other two sides, or that Tom knows that the square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides. In other cases, such as 'Fred knows London like the back of his hand', it is not so easy to find these alternative paraphrases. But my main concern at the moment is for you to realize that I am only going to talk about the third of the kinds of knowledge, propositional knowledge.

Empirical and A Priori Knowledge Restricting ourselves to propositional knowledge there is an important prima facie distinction to be made between items of knowledge that can be established simply on the basis of reflection or calculation and items of knowledge that require some sort of experience or observation. Pythagoras' theorem, or more strictly the fact that Pythagoras' theorem is deducible from certain sets of geometrical axioms, is something that can be established simply by reasoning. The area of the cricket pitch at Sabina Park is something you would have to go and look at to find out. The fact that all bachelors are unmarried is again something that can be established (assuming certain restrictions on the sense of the word 'bachelor') simply by reflecting on the standard meaning of the words used, whereas the claim that all such bachelors are generally more contented with life than their married counterparts is something whose truth or falsity requires extensive and complex investigation of the world, after one has clarified the senses of the words it contains. Traditionally philosophers have used the terms 'a priori' to label the first sort of knowledge, the sort that can be established by reason alone, and 'a posteriori' or 'empirical' to label the other sort. (Notice that this is a much wider use of the word 'empirical' than the one with which you may be familiar, and that it has no evaluative connotations.) I said above that the distinction is a prima facie one because there is a great deal of involved argument in modern philosophy about whether there really is such a distinction, although everyone can agree about where many items of knowledge would go if there were. In terms of school subjects, a priori 30

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knowledge is represented pre-eminently by mathematics (to which we may add logic), while everything else that is clearly propositional knowledge would count as a posterion·- chemistry, history, etc. As far as we are concerned, it is not necessary to enter into the debates about the distinction; again my only concern is that you recognize that I am talking about a posteriori or empirical knowledge. I have nothing to say about mathematics or logic. ( I suspect a lot of what I do say could be applied without much revision to those subjects, but the issues are very complex and controversial, and anyway I do not think they raise problems for teachers in the way that empirical knowledge does.)

Empirical Knowledge and Experience So our concern from now on will be with empirical knowledge. That is a big enough field. It includes items like 'Hydrogen has three isotopes', 'Mozart wrote forty-one symphonies', 'I have a feeling that I'm going to sneeze', 'Rewards promote learning more than threats', and so on and so on. As was obvious from the account I gave above, empirical knowledge has got something to do with our experience or observation. Our reasons for accepting particular items of empirical knowledge will often be a matter of sensory experience, although in practice we both take a lot on trust and would anyway be unable to have direct sensory inputs - neither the past nor the hidden structures of physical or some sociological theories are directly observable. But let us pause a moment to consider those cases where we do have fairly direct sensory input. Perhaps the main point to be made is that we can distinguish between thinking that p and having an experience that p. For us, having an experience usually combines these two aspects: sensory experiences and judgements about the kind of experience it is. This point cropped up earlier when we glanced at one of Hirst's arguments about truth. You can think that the cat is on the mat and you can see that the cat is on the mat (and you might be able to hear or feel by touch that the cat is on the mat). And these are distinguishable things, even when they are bound together in reflective selfconscious experience. All of them involve the employment of 31

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concepts, as we say. Thinking about cats on mats involves the use of concepts of cats, mats and spatial relations, and experiencing cats on mats similarly employs one's conceptual resources. Experience only rarely comes unconceptualized, and when it does what have been called 'raw feels' do not tell you anything; we have to start thinking to get anywhere with them. I hope those last remarks sounded plausible. We easily talk about concepts, but it is by no means clear what that talk really amounts to. In the case of thinking, and in the human case, we can get a long way by replacing talk of concepts with attention to how people use language; but the two things are not the same. And in the case of perception or sensory experience it is by no means clear how what we call concepts relate to language or how they develop. While much epistemological work has tried to solve this problem of the origin of concepts, we can afford to leave it aside. The point to remember is that we don't really meet with unconceptualized experience, so concepts of some sort are a given of our story. But as I said earlier, the main point I want to stress is that there is a difference between an experience and the thought (knowledge) that is associated with it. There is then a gap between seeing and believing, in logic if not in our too credulous practice.

Public Knowledge There is, however, one aspect of the question about the origin and development of our concepts that is worth a brief mention. Even though each of us has to acquire our concepts somehow, they are not our private creations. This is patently obvious when we translate talk of concepts into talk about the languages we use. Children have to learn their mother tongue, but they don't invent it; it is there already, publicly available and publicly learnable. Languages, and by extension our concepts, are social facts, not purely personal. While it is important in general philosophy to ponder precisely what this implies, and what it doesn't imply, I am concerned now to make an analogous point about our knowledge. Most of our stock of knowledge is not derived from our own unaided investigations. We take it on trust; we take it over from other people, books, and other sources. While schools still insist on individuals cramming their heads full of diverse scraps of information, in the rest of real life

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what often matters much more is what is known rather than what John or Mary knows. Popper ( 1972) has appropriated the popular but unclear contrast between subjective and objective matters to label this impersonal knowledge stored in libraries and data banks 'objective knowledge'. Perhaps it is safer to call it 'impersonal knowledge'; but the point remains that whatever you call it such knowledge is what matters most, both to institutionalized science and to bureaucracies. This fact reflects one important aspect of the social basis of our knowledge; another that we shall meet later is the tradition of criticism or testing. In both respects, the progressive development of knowledge is not usually a solitary pursuit, but a social one. It flourishes in certain kinds of social environment and not in others; indeed it has flourished in a very unusual context, though one that has now become so entrenched for most of us that we may have difficulty in realizing its peculiarity. These facts underlie one aspect of this discussion that may be worrying you. We have plunged right in to the middle of the cognitive enterprise. We have not tried to find some specially reliable starting point or foundation. In philosophy the idea that we must have such foundations has been very influential; but it does not correspond to most people's engagement with knowledge. Rather we start from where our peers are. Most people, most social groups, stay there, but we are focusing on the procedures of groups who are committed to criticizing and revising their starting points. The facts that the crucial kinds of knowledge are impersonal and that changes are socially produced do not make some kinds of concern for 'personal' knowledge irrelevant. While it is more sensible to go to the metereological office to find out whether the sun was shining on 16 July 1982 in Kingston than to rely on one's memory, that is not the end of it. Knowledge gets into the impersonal stores from people, or instruments. And the knowledge in the data banks is only as reliable as the 'personal' knowledge of those people or machines when they fed it in. If one learnt that the person making the records was incompetent, or that the machine taking readings was malfunctioning, then out goes that impersonal knowledge. · So the importance of impersonal knowledge or, more generally, the pervasiveness of our reliance on testimony, does not mean that we should ignore some traditional concerns for reliability. We have procedures for checking whether machines are working properly, 33

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we have rough guides for deciding when to accept and when to doubt what other people tell us. Later on I shall say a little about how I would prefer to see these caveats about the move from evidence or testimony to our conclusions; for the time being the point is that they do not cease to be important because it does not matter which of us, if any, carries the knowledge in our heads. What does drop out is the philosophical doctrine that genuine knowledge carries some special 'inner' mark or feeling of certainty.

Knowledge and Authority I have just said that we have guidelines to tell us when to accept and when not to accept what other people report. Different groups have different guides. To put it another way, different groups recognize different sorts of authority in their dealings with knowledge. Many people require claims to be consistent with the 'testimony' of their own senses. Many people allow claims made in certain special places to override all other considerations - so what it says in the Bible, or in Aristotle, is accepted, whatever other reasons there are against it. On the account I shall be giving of the structure of knowledge, none of these moves is acceptable. But of course I am making a normative claim, I am saying that you ought not to give authority to these kinds of factor; I am not describing what you do, since I have just acknowledged that many people do things that I regard as irrelevant if knowledge is their goal. But that doesn't mean we have an arbitrary choice here. Rather the account I give is meant to be an accurate description of the logical structure of at least a central part of the knowledge all of us have; the normative claims arise from my belief that this description applies to all the knowledge we could have and that therefore the kinds of authority I am rejecting have no reasoned basis in the nature of knowledge, however useful they might fortuitously have been.

Singular and General With these preliminaries briefly mentioned, let us move on to giving this description of the logical structure of our knowledge. First we need to grasp a logical distinction. It is, if you like, a numerical distinction: between one and more than one. A proposi34

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tion can tell us about one individual- a place, person, or thing- or it can tell us about more than one individual. Part of a proposition can pick out one individual- a definite description such as 'the present Prime Minister of Jamaica', or a proper name in context such as 'Edward Seaga' -or it can introduce more than one into our thinking, like plural noun phrases such as 'capitalist running-dogs'. We can label these contrasts, 'singular', on the one hand, 'general' on the other. When we are dealing with whole propositions we can go on to distinguish several sorts of general statement, or generalization. So we can have a series starting with a logically singular proposition such as 'Today is sunny', and then move through various generalizations from the weakest, 'existential' generalization, 'At least one day is sunny' (this is the precise content that modern logic gives to English sentences such as 'Some days are sunny'), through various proportional generalizations such as 'A few days are sunny', 'Many days are sunny', 'Most days are sunny', or their more sophisticated statistical counterparts like '84 per cent of days are sunny', to the strongest, 'universal' generalization, 'All days are sunny'. Here you can see that the singular statement picks on one particular day; the other statements do not in that way focus on one particular day, since even the existential generalization doesn't tell you which day or days it is talking about. I have indicated the different kinds of generalization we can form and the names I would call them, but for this discussion the two most important kinds are the existential and the universal generalizations. One small point which is worth getting out of the way is the fact that we can generalize in two contexts, which can be called 'open' and 'closed'. The sentences I have used above about sunny days might well be used in a conversational context in which it was clear that only the last five years at one particular place were in question. They would then be talking about a limited set of just over 1,800 days, and one could go through every day to check on their truth. This sort of context yields closed generalizations; what is called the 'universe of discourse' is finite and enumerable. But in many other cases we generalize about an unlimited set which we could not go through one by one. If we say that aspirins relieve headaches we are talking about a potentially endless stream of aspirins and we are prepared to say of other things that if they were aspirins they would relieve headaches too. In such cases we are using open generalizations; and these cases are the norm.

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Concepts, Generality and Revision Having got the distinction clear, we can now see the first important point that our concepts are, at least in most cases, general. We have a concept of fraternity or of sugar or of a whale. These do not introduce individuals into our thinking but rather kinds of relation between people, or a kind of stuff, or a kind of animal. There can be many such animals or many lumps of the stuff, and the use of the concept is not tied to any one particular animal or lump. We can say that the use of such concepts is tantamount to accepting some implicit generalizations about different individual animals or lumps of stuff all having certain properties in common. (This might be an oversimplification, but we are always having to simplify to make progress.) A very important aspect of the pursuit of knowledge is the attempt to make explicit these sorts of generalization embedded in the use of concepts. This attempt almost always leads us to change our use in some respects. It is well known that whales were once classified as fish, but are now grouped under mammals. You might want to say that we changed our concept of fish or of whales or perhaps of both; the point is that such a change, however described, was encouraged by our attempts to arrive at perspicuous generalizations about the animals in question. In fact, revision of the network of concepts and making statements using those concepts go hand in hand; it is usually fruitless simply to set out a taxonomy without at the same time using it to make new and better generalizations. As Whewell said, 'the establishment of a right definition of a term may be a useful step in the explication of our conceptions; but this will be the case only when we have under consideration some proposition in which the term is employed' (quoted in Mill [1843], 1886, IV, ch. 4; see also Flew, 1975, ch. 5, for some trenchant and sensible remarks about definitions). And so one may wonder, for instance, whether anything is gained by arguing about the class structure of a society if nothing more is to be said about that society and its workings. Similar doubts arise about the ritual 'definitions of terms' students are often encouraged to put at the beginning of their essays. I have said that it is typical of the advance of knowledge in any area to revise the conceptual scheme that common sense provides. Of course, common sense doesn't stand still, and for some people in 36

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some areas it is more sophisticated, more up to date, than for other people or in other areas. But the general point is obvious enough, and no one could deny its applicability at least to the natural sciences and mathematics. In other areas it may not seem so clearly relevant, but I suspect that this is due to the greater complexities of such areas and our general lack of success in developing theoretical understanding of them. But whether or not general agreement is achieved, it is clear that people do seek to revise and stipulate technical meanings for terms like 'revolution' or 'learning' or 'social class'. All this transmuting of ordinary language into technical terms does, however, create a general problem for teachers. People do not normally like to revise their conceptual inheritance. What is implicit takes a lot of painful extracting, and so it tends to remain undisturbed as long as possible. It is also, of course, what is learnt first. I suspect that by no means enough is done to make students face the fact that they are being required to change their concepts, to learn a bit of new language, if you like (cf. Holton, 1984, esp. p. 103). Teachers are often encouraged to make new learning appear 'relevant' to the learner and this is also likely to underplay the discontinuities between the learner's common sense and the actual content to be learnt. In any case there is plenty of evidence that students do not learn what they are expected to learn in such cases of conceptual revision. It has been found, for instance, that high-school students of physics think about everyday problems in the pre-Newtonian implicit physics of our ignorant common sense rather than in the somewhat more accurate terms of their school specialization (McCloskey, 1983). And, to mention a case I have observed, some students in maths are determined to believe that division by zero is a possible operation, even if it doesn't yield any answer, rather than grasp the stipulation of the subject that such an operation is simply undefined. In these and many other cases, it seems that students persist in thinking in terms that common sense allows rather than face the fact that they have to uproot and destroy these bits of their inheritance.

Aiming at Understanding I have said that typically conceptual or taxonomic revision proceeds hand in hand with the reformulation, correction or discovery of

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generalizations. Typically, again, we seek such generalizations in order to understand more of what is going on. This is true, I think, even in areas that may seem preoccupied with taxonomy such as some parts of biology, but it is perhaps more obvious in subjects like chemistry. You find two lumps of stuff that look and smell alike and that you initially classify as the same substance, but then you discover that one lump behaves one way in a certain solution while the other does something different. You are likely to reclassify your lumps into at least two substances so that you can get a firmer grip on understanding these and other reactions. And when you have a generalization, you want to understand it too in its turn. So you are likely to put forward further generalizations to do so, since understanding, as I briefly mentioned earlier, is in large part a matter of seeing how things connect and can be unified. The fact that disparate items can be unified in this way is in turn one of the main reasons for thinking that the explanation is on the right lines. If you want to understand why acids turn litmus paper red you have to do something to link acids and litmus paper and colour changes and all these to other things you know. The strategy that we have found to be of enormous value in doing this is to postulate initially hidden levels of structure - so now we would talk of molecules, or ions, or shells of electrons surrounding the nucleus, and these notions serve to link the odd case of litmus paper to a vast range of other phenomena. We can see the same sorts of connections in a quite different case: we want to understand why poorer families tend to have more children, and we may seek to show how children are a more sensible investment for poor people than for more affluent groups. Whether or not this is the correct account in any particular case, it exemplifies the way we try to put the phenomenon to be explained into a wider picture: in this case, of means-end rationality. Here we may not be going to a different level of structure as we did in moving from everyday substances to their molecular structure, but we are at least moving to a more general factor, something that can be seen at work in other instances besides family size.

Explaining Away One central purpose then in our cognitive endeavours is to get hold of explanations and the understanding they bring. But as I have said, 38

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many of our successes here have involved moving away from the way things appear to us to be towards underlying structures or mechanisms that certainly do not appear on the surface. Accompanying these moves we also very often fmd that the appearances are 'explained away'; the deeper explanatory picture we arrive at allows us to do without notions that might have been suggested by the surface appearances. Just as we can successfully explain away the strong impression we all have that the earth is standing still and go on to endorse a theory which says that it is moving in a very complicated and, by our ordinary standards, remarkably rapid manner, so we can equally well see how to dispense with many of the appearances around us, from intrinsic colours-as-seen to the equal opportunities many people imagine they have. Our best explanations do not need to postulate these items; the story they tell is, then, in conflict with our unreflective common sense. This suggestion relies, of course, on the idea that you should get rid of what you do not need. Such an injunction is not logically forced upon us, but it would seem to be the only reasonable course to adopt. Once one has given up any belief that merely being inherited as part of one's conceptual resources bestows any authority upon a concept or a proposition then it seems nothing remains to justify using such resources but their contribution to one's cognitive tasks. Once again we have a problem that schools seem not to face. While they are prepared to bemoan supposed moral decadence in the surrounding society, in most other respects schools like to think they are in harmony with their clients, or at least their clients' parents. But if they were to set out to inculcate the best understanding we have of the world, they would continually be running up against and denying beliefs which these parents hold, at least implicitly. For the same kind of reasons as I mentioned in connection with conceptual revisions, school subjects often seem to underplay their differences from what their students think. Or they are distorted in related ways. Thus a lot of science teaching is bifurcated, with one aspect focusing on limited things that can be done in a school laboratory and observed without much sophistication, and another, apparently quite unrelated aspect, in which the teacher reports on what the theorists are saying (or, rather, were saying some years before). Eddington's or Russell's success as popularizers of science

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owed a lot, I think, to their insistence on the challenge science offers to our ordinary views: you think you are sitting at a solid table, but really it is mostly empty space. I suspect our teaching of science in the schools could benefit from a return to such challenges, rather than pretending that they do not exist. And of course it is not only science where the pursuit of knowledge undermines popular prejudice. History does not leave much of nationalistic or patriotic belief standing secure, and the social sciences rarely agree with the claims of politicians or the spokespeople of the status quo. (I am here talking simply about the facts of the matter, for example what a country's war aims were, or whether certain people are being discriminated against; not about disagreements on which policies to pursue.) And perhaps one of the most controversial cases is the problem of religion. But for the moment, the point has been made that explanatory knowledge challenges popular belief rather more than schools seem willing to acknowledge.

The Asymmetry ofVerification and Falsification We have been looking at the ramifications of the fact that our concepts can be seen to involve implicit generalizations. We can now move on to the second major logical point about our knowledge. There is a simple logical fact at the root of our reflections about human knowledge of the world: logically singular claims can falsify but not verify open universal generalizations. To take a popular and simple example, 'That swan is not white' (which is logically a singular statement) falsifies, is logically incompatible with, the open universal generalization, 'All swans are white'; but however many different claims like 'This swan is white', 'That swan is white', 'The next swan is white', etc., you collect, they do not serve to verify, they do not logically force upon you the universal generalization, 'All swans are white.' And a good thing too, since we know a few swans that are not white. To put it in terms oflogical entailments, 'This X is not Y' entails 'It is not the case that all Xs are Y' whereas any number of claims like 'This X is Y' do not entail 'All Xs are Y'. The singular claim entails the negation of a universal generalization, but no collection 40

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of singular claims ever entails a universal generalization itself. It is worth noting that the negation of a universal generalization only amounts to an existential generalization: 'It is not the case that all Xs are Y' is equivalent to 'At least one X is not Y'. So much is a simple matter of logic. How does this relate to the human predicament? We have already noted that empirical knowledge connects in some way with observation and experience. We cannot discover or intuit how things are simply by thinking about them; we are forced to investigate; we are forced to rely at some point on the evidence of our senses or of our machines. And when we do so, what they reveal is something that is logically singular. We see that today is sunny or we smell that room 12 has got hydrogen sulphide in it or we hear that the baby is crying or the seismograph records a particularly strong tremor. The judgements we make on the basis of this sort of evidence are about what is happening at a particular place and time, or at least they would be if we were scrupulous about them. You might boil mercury and report what the boiling point of mercury is; your report would be logically a universal generalization to the effect that mercury always boils at such and such a temperature (in certain standard conditions of pressure, etc.); but strictly speaking what you are really in a position to report is that one sample of mercury boiled at such and such a temperature, and that is logically singular. And in other contexts, you would be less inclined to jump from your observations to general claims - if you see people demonstrating in the street, you are not likely to claim that all people, or even all people looking like those you can see, spend their time demonstrating. So what observation or experience reveals is singular. But as we saw above, what we want is explanatory understanding, and that requires strong generalizations. People argue whether proportional or statistical generalizations can really explain things, but I think everyone is agreed that some sorts of what I have called 'universal' generalization can do that job. If it is true that unlike magnetic poles attract each other, then, given various standing conditions, you have an explanation why a magnetic compass keeps pointing north, and why this one does, and that one, and the next one. We shall return to generalizations that are weaker than universal ones; for the time being let us simplify and sharpen our problem by restricting ourselves to universal generalizations. We can now see the relevance of the logical fact to our 41

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knowledge. We want universal generalizations, but what we have to use can only produce singular claims. The logical fact tells us that no matter how many singular claims we can collect, they will never logically entail one of the universal generalizations we want. We cannot get a logical guarantee that our generalizations are as safe as our evidence. We cannot have a device for generating the true premisses we referred to at the end of the previous chapter.

Methodological Responses There are two things we can do in this predicament. We could try to find ways of making our generalizations as safe as possible, given our evidence. We might hope to discover some sort of 'inductive logic' that could guide us in moving from singular claims to the sorts of generalization we want. People differ on the cost effectiveness of this reaction. We know that any such inductive logic will be unable to guarantee success; we know also from the attempts made along these lines that it will be a pretty complicated affair; and we know, from a consideration I shall come to later, that there are very important areas where it can hardly hope to guide us. But despite these difficulties, most people think there is something to be done here - some moves from evidence to conclusion seem a lot more sensible than others, and we ought to be able to say why and to organize such reasons into a fairly neat system. But there is another reaction to the situation. So far we have been stressing what we logically cannot do- we cannot derive universal generalizations validly from our singular claims. But the logical fact has another side to it: we ..can validly deduce the negation of universal generalizations; we can throw out generalizations, even if we cannot rule them in. So instead of concentrating on arriving at generalizations, we could focus our attention on rejecting inadequate generalizations. We can then be as reckless as we like about coming up with generalizations, so long as we are careful to test them rigorously, that is to say, to test them in such a way that they are likely to be falsified if they are false. If we follow this path, we will not need to seek any sort of guarantee for our generalizations; we will instead seek to be as harsh as we can with them so that we can weed out inadequate ones. In the terms that Popper has made famous (1959, or, more 42

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generally accessible, 1969), we can see the history of knowledge as a matter of conjecture and refutation. Or, in more familiar terms, we can see in this reaction an endorsement of the centrality of a kind of trial and error to our knowledge of the world. It is worth noting that these two reactions are not mutually exclusive. We can think it worthwhile to take care about the formulation of new generalizations and we can hope for an inductive logic to help us in this task, while still acknowledging the comparative strength of refutations. But there is another consideration that makes the second, Popperian, reaction seem much more pertinent.

Depth of Understanding I have already mentioned the fact that one of the most powerful means of achieving explanatory understanding has been to postulate new structures. This profoundly changes the logical situation we looked at above. In the simple case of the swans, the terms occurring in the singular claims and in the universal generalizations were the same ('swan' and 'white'); it is intuitively obvious how the universal claim is a generalization of the various singular claims we mentioned. But when, for instance, we explain the distribution of eye colour in different generations by reference to different genes, we now have quite different terms in the singular claims from those in the generalizations ('blue eyes', 'brown eyes' in the singular claims; 'gene 1', 'gene 2' and talk of dominant and recessive genes, etc. in the generalizations). Putting it crudely, the two sides of the fence are now 'This X is Y' and 'All Z are W'; and there are no direct logical linkages left: neither verification nor falsification. There is simply no way to move logically from talk of X and Y to talk of Z and W, or vice versa. But of course, that is putting it too crudely. The explanations we offer do bridge this gap, and they do it in various and often complex ways; but in the simplified terms of our logical schema, what these links amount to are claims such as 'All Z are X', and 'All Wand Y'. But while we can reinstate logical links between our singular claims and our explanatory generalizations, the main thing to realize is that talk about our Zs and Ws is not directly suggested to us by what we start from, the talk of Xs and Ys. Someone has to invent the idea, of molecules or genes or rules of transformational grammar, or what-

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ever, and of how these 'new' things behave. None of this is given directly by the phenomenon to be explained, and it is very difficult to see how general formal rules, such as an inductive logic might aspire to offer, could ever begin to help in finding such ideas. But, as I've said, it is these ideas that have proven explanatorily powerful; and they can apparently only come as creative conjectures. So perhaps we should put most of our eggs in that basket. One lesson of all this is that cognitive revision involves both creative conjectures - 'divergent' thinking in Hudson's ( 196 7) terms - and critical testing, which requires careful 'convergent' thinking. To the extent that schools cultivate only one kind of thinking, people are not being helped to participate fully in our cognitive life. Again, while both sorts are necessary it would be salutary not to confuse them as so often happens. Students are asked to 'deduce' things in a comprehension exercise or in a laboratory experiment that can only be hypothesized, while there are other things that can in fact be deductively inferred. Not to see that different skills are involved can only hinder fruitful teaching here. The issue we have just been looking at is often portrayed as the existence of a distinction between observational and theoretical terms. I have tried to explain it without making that connection explicit, though it may well have occurred to you: we observe blue eyes, we don't observe genes. But of course, there's a problem with this way of putting the issue: some people these days do observe genes, just as other people observe muons and other sub-atomic particles. I have mentioned already that in some cases you will be likely to claim that you have seen or measured the boiling point of mercury in general, when what you have actually seen or measured is only a singular occurrence of this sample of mercury boiling at this place and time. But since we think this measurement is reliable, your report incorporates a lot of these assumptions of reliability; you stick your neck out, without even noticing it on many occasions. And similarly with so-called theoretical terms: if someone grasps the theory and thinks it sufficiently reliable, he will report his observations in terms of that theory, rather than redescribe them in less ambitious ways. We can always move down towards more generally accepted claims if we have to; but in general we try to stay with the most powerful and informative ways of expressing them, and these will be the ones incorporating what we currently deem to be reliable theory.

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The Role of Background Assumptions I have said that the most important point here is that the ideas incorporated in the generalizations are conjectures going beyond anything in the singular data. Another crucial fact is that the logical links are now between singular data and a set of generalizations, many of which are usually left pretty unspecific. When we only had 'This swan is not white' and 'All swans are white', the former directly refutes the latter so if you accept the former you cannot accept the latter. But when schematically the situation is 'This X is not Y' on the one hand and 'All Z are W, and all X are Z, and all W are Y' on the other then the first claim only shows that there is error somewhere in the set of generalizations, in the theory; it doesn't tell us where. The only way we can now chalk up a refutation of the theoretical claim, 'All Z are W', is to assume that the other generalizations, the ones that link theory to observation, are all correct. And that is obviously a pretty large assumption. We can in fact go back to the simple example and fmd similar difficulties. We took as a given of that elementary situation the singular claim, 'This swan is not white'. But, to be strict with ourselves, our evidence may be less ambitiously stated as 'Jim observed that this swan is not white'. The claim about the swan is itselfbased on visual evidence available to Jim. But to get from the visual evidence to the claim about the swan in the objective world, or vice versa, we similarly would need various linking claims. We assume things about the way light behaves, we assume things about Jim's normality as an observer. We certainly cannot infer validly from the report of what Jim saw that what he reported to have seen was in fact the case. (This claim may need some qualifications in the light of how we sometimes use our language here, but my point could have been made equally well by retreating yet further down the line to the very weak, but perhaps most honest, claim that it appeared to Jim that he saw a swan that was not white: nothing follows from this about what colour the swan was; there might not even have been a swan at all.) So we can now see that even in the apparently simplest cases, we make a lot of assumptions in using singular claims to weed out our generalizations. Of course, we still cannot verify any of our universal generalizations, but we can now see how provisional even our refutations have become. They are at the mercy of these varied assumptions that bridge the various gaps we have uncovered. 45

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It should be noted that in talking of assumptions or background knowledge here I am not suggesting that these items have any particularly privileged position. They are not immune from critical examination. Our position is that any claim to knowledge can be examined, but that it is not possible to test all of them at once. To examine a claim you must take other claims for granted, for the time being. Of course many of the assumptions referred to in the preceding discussion are so deep-rooted and inarticulate that it may be misleading to call them 'theory', but this does not affect the logic of the situation. A different way of describing the situation, in terms of observational terms, is that our use of observational terms is logically no more secure than that of theoretical terms. The provisional, conjectural status we have seen in theoretical generalizations inheres equally in the singular observations we make, though in practice we rarely notice this, since we take a great deal of our knowledge as finally settled. Few people realize that they are making a theoretical leap in talking about the sun yesterday and today. But it is a theoretical, non-observational claim that there is one persistent object that 'rises' each day (or at least it was until very recently), and it is a theoretical claim that has occasionally been rejected, as in Xenophanes' cosmology. A much more pertinent area in which to see the provisional status of singular observations is that of scientific measuring techniques. One important achievement in the natural sciences (and one of their differences from much of our study of ourselves) is to have gained an understanding of how their measuring instruments work. But of course that understanding is a matter of conjectural theory, and there are occasions when we have had to revise singular measurements because we have come to revise the theories built into the measurement techniques. Thus when it was realized that the concentration of radio-carbon in the atmosphere has not been constant we had to revise a large number of radiocarbon dates, and with them our provisional theories of European prehistory (Renfrew, 1976). We have only taken the first steps in complicating the account of cognitive revision. It might be more realistic to see change in terms of Lakatos' (1970) 'research programmes' rather than isolated claims; and one should acknowledge that there are several ways in which history has been a lot messier and a lot more lucky than my picture suggests. In making these admissions it is important, I 46

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believe, to tread a path between the tendency to think in terms of a framework within which people operate (which is a reasonable description of what we do) and the logical point that propositions belonging to such frameworks are no different from those within them, so that frameworks are not immune to criticism.

The Falsification of Less than Universal Generalizations In the preceding section we have seen that the neat asymmetry between verification and falsification with which we started has been radically modified, since falsification is now only relative to assumed background knowledge. While I have been avoiding the complexities of open proportional or statistical generalizations, it is worth noting here that they also involve a similar relativizing of falsification. (Verification remains as impossible as ever.) In this case, falsification is only possible given some decisions about sampling and about how unlikely one wants errors to be. The reason can easily be seen. While one black swan refutes the universal generalization, 'All swans are white', how many do we need to refute the weaker 'Most swans are white'? You have to make some choices about the kind of sample you will allow to exclude the generalization in question. Given some such decisions, observing 73 per cent non-white swans in a large random sample would be taken to rule out the generalization; but it cannot do so absolutely. Even if most swans are white, it is still possible to get a random sample that is mostly non-white; it is just rather unlikely.

Description or Recommendation? I have presented a picture of our knowledge that may well seem unfamiliar to you. Even if you are prepared to accept it for some specialized and perhaps peripheral areas, you are not likely to think that it is a correct description of most of what we all claim to know. What reply can I make to such criticism? In the first place, we have to distinguish here, as elsewhere, between what we think we know about our knowledge and what, if anything, we really do know about it. Knowledge is as hidden by

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ideology as the rest of our social being; you should not be surprised if knowledge turns out to be somewhat different from what you unreflectively imagine. In the second place, I would claim to have delineated the fundamental logical structures inherent in the propositions we believe or claim to know. If I am right, it doesn't matter that we do not recognize these logical structures; they are there, and put their limits on what we can, as a matter of logic, achieve. Our untutored thinking bears often only a tenuous relation to what the science of logic reveals. So in saying that I am talking about the logical structuring of our knowledge, I am not committed to any claims about how in practice we think or go about revising our beliefs. Given the largely negative achievements logic allows us, I would not even claim that what I have said tells us how we ought to proceed, except perhaps in criticizing others. We might well come upon the truth by ignoring everything I have said. Since no method can guarantee success, to that extent Feyerabend's 'Anything goes!' strategy (Feyerabend, 1975) might do as well as any other; though few would think we should be so carefree in the pursuit of knowledge. But in the third place, I would want to say that a lot of our actual thinking does in fact reflect the logical principles I have been discussing. You think that if it has rained recently the lawn will be wet and when you find the lawn bone dry you conclude that despite the dark clouds it didn't rain. You may not have arrived at this conclusion by any process that involves what logicians call modus tollens the principle that if p then q and not q together entail not p -but it is certainly as if you had. You are playing around with a new machine and find that pressing a particular button always seems to produce a recognizable result, a beep for instance, so you begin to call it a beep button; that description incorporates the hypothesis you have to some extent tested in your interactions with the machine. These are deliberately trivial examples, but they are meant only to show that some of the processes I have been discussing are in fact pervasive features of our everyday thinking. Although our ordinary thinking does in fact mirror a lot of the epistemology I have been expounding, it may often, as I have admitted, not in any sense be based upon it. And of course your objection started from the fact that much of our thinking does not seem to fit the picture. This is one reason why the revision of knowledge is in fact so social a matter. Each one of us may have the 48

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most diverse and logically unsupportable views about what we believe but the social institution of inquiry produces outcomes somewhat more in accordance with the picture I have sketched. So whatever individuals may think about their particular views, the institution by and large takes the tentativeness of claims for granted. It keeps rewriting its history, as Kuhn (1970) stressed, to make the present contenders look virtually inevitable; but in another generation the picture will be redrawn. (I must acknowledge that this discourse too is part of such a history- what epistemology can do for teachers will no doubt look very different to other philosophers or at other times.) Rivalry between scholars or scientists may often degenerate into mud-slinging or other unfortunate forms, but it can also serve as a public embodiment of logical canons, however partisan the individual participants might be.

Representation, Realism, and Scepticism In the preceding discussions I have been taking one crucial matter for granted: that the whole enterprise I have described is justifiable. But as we saw in the first chapter and later, once one begins to ask simple questions about our knowledge and its reliability, it is very easy to think it all factitious, a social construction without solid foundations. And what I have said may not seem to make it any easier to discern such solidity. Indeed, many philosophers would say that my account invites extreme scepticism, since it allows that on the one hand there is our conceptualized experience of the world and on the other there is what the world itself is like. How can we successfully make the leap across from the experience to the world it represents? Since these questions arise naturally, and have indeed already been mentioned, I ought perhaps to say a little about how I would answer them, though this answer may not have any direct repercussions on the conduct of schooling in the way that some of the other points we have looked at probably do. The account I have offered is indeed a 'representative' theory of perception: we have experiences of what presents itself directly as a spatio-temporal world outside ourselves, but I have denied that we can simply regard the world as presented as in fact the world as it is. I have 49

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endorsed Locke's view that much of how the world appears to us is merely our contribution- whatever daffodils are like, they are not yellow-as-perceived. I have allowed that virtually all our experience comes imbued with concepts, but I deny any special authority to those concepts, and to the experiences themselves. However we acquire the elements of experience, this account makes the fundamental question of justification the question of whether we should regard experience as revealing anything at all beyond itself. In other words, the question of scepticism about an external world. I do not pretend that such scepticism is easily answered, but I would say that once one seeks to move anywhere beyond the most attenuated interpretation of experience (for instance, filling in the gaps between blinking your eyes) then the only plausible explanatory account is the ordinary commonsensical one that there are independent objects 'out there'. It is possible to tell other stories- it is always possible to tell other stories- but none of them have the plausibility of the ordinary one. Note that I have made explanation crucial, even at this very basic, taken-for-granted level. It is then not difficult for me to continue to insist on explanatory power with respect to the elements of the total picture presented to us by untutored perception. And so the Lockean account offered above fits smoothly into the whole strategy. That there are real daffodils out there explains our intermittent experiences of them; but we do not need to postulate that those real daffodils have the yellow-as-perceived that those same experiences endow them with. In both cases, what is needed for explanation is what counts. To insist on explanatory power does not guarantee convergence on one theory of the world, but in fact at the levels and areas we have currently reached there is only one overall plausible theory, that embodied in the comparatively settled 'findings' of scientific inquiry. That is the picture technology unhesitatingly looks to. I am thinking here of a fairly general picture of things. For reasons we shall note later, and no doubt for others too, some of the more detailed claims made in the sciences may deserve alternative interpretations. In some cases, we know that an account is only a useful picture that distorts almost as much as it reveals. It is not therefore to be taken literally. All I have claimed is that realism, the taking literally of what theories say, is the obvious line to take, the one that makes the fruitfulness of those theories intelligible. 50

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I am also thinking of the more settled, larger-scale levels of the world. Fundamental physics operates with ideas that often seem incredible, and certainly upset the comparatively straightforward view we have at a more homely scale. While I do not pretend to understand such physical theories, what their popular interpreters say creates a problem for the view I am endorsing. There are various alternatives: we might concede that the more settled picture is in fact false on its own terms. Quantum indeterminacies may characterize everything, and the world may be a much stranger place than we imagine. Alternatively, we may allow that at the scale of microphysics things are indeed as strange as the popularizers suggest, but that the 'settled' picture remains true at a larger scale. This would presumably entail a certain incompleteness in the physical theory, but we certainly cannot rule out further developments of such theory. This possibility allows also for another scenario in which present theory is replaced by a somewhat less mysterious account, or given a less mysterious interpretation - just as we now recognize that a lot of the 'relativity' of Einstein's celebrated theories was exaggerated by early interpreters. Perhaps as much as anything else, the lesson to be learnt from the unintelligibility of popular versions of quantum mechanics is a general modesty regarding our achievements to date. Socrates, at least, would not have been surprised that we should learn how little we know about the cosmos, and indeed ourselves.

Pedagogical Relevance We have been looking at the logical structure of our ordinary claims to knowledge of the world and of the theoretical explanations we offer of them. You might well think that by now there is not much structure left, since we have uncovered gaps all over the place. Be that as it may, the discussion so far has brought up several factors that would seem to have consequences for passing on our knowledge. Perhaps the most obvious is that all this knowledge is logically provisional. We simply cannot hope for items that will have a logical guarantee that they need never be revised. I have avoided saying much about what our concept of knowledge involves; if it does commit us to having logically unchangeable items then it is shot through with error. I don't think it does so commit us, but that may 51

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be because I am convinced of the truth of what I have said about the nature of our knowledge; I may have adjusted my concept of knowledge to fit. Some people certainly seem to think that knowledge must be final if it is the real thing. One way of taking this is fair enough: if you know some proposition then that proposition is true, and in that sense final. But our predicament is that whatever we know and whatever we know that we know could yet turn out to be false. It cannot be denied, however, that the picture of conjectural knowledge I have presented does not sit easily with our linguistic habits. On my view we think we know a lot that we don't know. One could choose to speak differently, but any choice is likely to lead to awkwardness somewhere. Thus Bernard Williams ( 1985) prefers to speak of knowledge within a perspective, so that, to take an example from an earlier chapter, from one perspective we can know that daffodils are yellow and from another we can know that there is no such intrinsic property. But he then has to admit that cognitive advance can result in the loss of knowledge, which does not seem to me to be a very happy way of characterizing the situation. The general point is that the language we use has not been framed to express these sorts of truth and so it is not surprising that it does an inadequate job. That is one reason for not discussing the 'logic' of knowledge, and for recommending that you don't let yourself become preoccupied with verbal puzzles about knowledge. It is important to note that I have been talking about logical guarantees, logical finality. The lack of this sort of logical conclusiveness does not necessarily mean that we cannot be sure, for all practical purposes, that we have got hold of some truths. I am as sure as I ever could be that I am now sitting in front of a wordprocessor in Mona on a fairly windy day. We are all equally certain that if we stepped out of a window on the thirtieth floor of a skyscraper we would fall to the ground rather disastrously. And of course there are a vast number of similar propositions that we all claim to know and claim to know that we know. The logical gaps we have been looking at do not require us to deny any of this. All they show is that being to all intents and purposes sure of what we believe falls short of a perfect guarantee. It is logically possible that I am suffering from some massive hallucination; it is logically possible that things will stop falling towards the centre of the earth. But these are logical possibilities that we do not regard as worth 52

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considering in our normal dealings with the world. If all our supposed knowledge were as reliable as my beliefs about where I am or our acquaintance with what happens when we drop things, making all this fuss about logical gaps would be an impertinence to would-be teachers, at least. But our knowledge isn't all like that. We may well be pretty sure about what is going on around us (in a superficial way, at least) and about some general and unspecific facts about the world we live in, such as that it has got things and people in it. But in between these particularities and extreme generalities there are a host of general beliefs about how things work and what influences what, the business of the natural sciences and human studies, which show very considerable historical divergences and where the future revision of our currently bestsupported beliefs is virtually guaranteed, rather than the reverse. And it should be obvious that schools, at least at the secondary level, deal almost entirely with knowledge from this intermediate band historical interpretations, chemical theories, biological taxonomies, etc., etc. So in most of what we do in fact teach, the logical points are not just philosophical niceties. Rather they are reflected in the actual histories of the subjects concerned. So in those subjects, we simply cannot avoid facing the actual tentativeness of our best-supported claims to knowledge. To avoid passing on a false picture of its status, teachers should fmd ways of transmitting such knowledge that both concedes its impermanence and reveals why it is yet to be learnt. It is no good getting students to see only that our present views in history, science and so on are going to be superseded with the result that they think that they needn't bother to learn what those current views are. They must be brought to see also that it is only on the basis of some views that we can test others and thereby hope to make progress. They are being initiated into a social tradition of criticism which is aimed at weeding out inadequate views and testing new conjectures. Such a tradition has proven remarkably successful in some fields at coming up with views that work well enough - technology can be based on false views but successful theory-based technology suggests very strongly that the views it relies upon are at least approximations to the truth. The tradition can only do better by the students' active participation in the social dialogue of conjecture and refutation. Teachers should therefore convey a feeling for theoretical

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impermanence, and for the way that provisional status can infect our reports of data. But as Freire ( 1978) notes, 'the impatient educator often transfers knowledge like a package while discoursing volubly on the dynamic nature of knowledge' (p. 64). To put the issue in terms of authority, I have denied the relevance of most types of appeal to authority in evaluating claims to knowledge. What remains is a question of whether a claim explains what is to be explained and a question of how it fits logically with other claims we tentatively accept. Explanation may not be entirely a logical matter, but it involves logical relations, and the consistency of claims is totally a logical issue, so that a large component in what is authoritative regarding knowledge is logical. The authority the teacher can appeal to is then the authority of the logical 'rules of the game' - not so much the authority of facts but rather the authority of the consistency or inconsistency between one claim and another.

Evidence and Explanation Connected with the preceding points is a very important reorientation of one's view of the relation between evidence and explanation. Most people conceive the relation as one of evidence or testimony pointing towards a conclusion; the data give one reasons for a conclusion, or for accepting a theoretical explanation. Teachers who have been taught methods of educational research may well have been reinforced in such views by the typical procedures of feeding raw data into statistical programmes and coming out with theories of a kind: factor analyses or regression equations. Some writers have recognized how distant these procedures are from the kind of cognitive growth sketched here where ideas are formulated before evidence is collected to test them, but they seem still to be voices crying in a wilderness (cf. McDonald, 1985; Mulaik, 1985). We have seen already that data cannot entail a theory. The Popperian view we have been sketching would suggest that we adopt a different approach and consequently different intellectual strategies. Instead of hoping to argue from the data to an explanation, we should look for alternative explanations of the data. We should not expect that the data will leave us with only one 54

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conclusion (unless we can rule out all but one of the explanations we can think of) but we can ask how well different explanations account for the data. This immediately gives us an important strategy that is not encouraged by our usual view of the matter, viz. searching for alternative explanations. You offer me some evidence for a particular conclusion; we could debate how well it supports that conclusion; but it might well be salutary to note that the existence of the data is much better accounted for in some quite different way. This could save us all a great deal of futile speculation. It is important to note the phrase 'the existence of the data' in what I have just said. Connected with our tendency to try to reason from data to a conclusion is a willingness to treat a lot of data as 'transparent'. It says in a document that John Smith married Ann Baker so we immediately assume that John Smith married Ann Baker; or a dial reads '40 amps' and so we immediately assume that it is measuring 40 amps. But in all such cases, strictly speaking our evidence is the fact that this document or machine says something. (This is the same point we noted earlier in connection with the boiling point of mercury - we put the fullest interpretation we reasonably can on our evidence.) It requires further assumptions that things are as the document or machine says they are. If we are instead looking for alternative explanations of our data it is, I think, a little easier for us to step back from the usual trusting attitude and see the fundamental thing to be explained as the fact that the document or the machine says what it says. Once that shift is made, we need not be so inclined to take the evidence at face value. While some teachers do now try to inculcate such attitudes to historical sources or to other kinds of data, the pressures of the normal presentation of school subjects do not make it easy for them to succeed. Evidence is in fact very rarely presented for any of the claims that are made. And for the kind of reasons sketched above relating to the cumulative build-up of theories it would in very many cases be incredibly difficult to present this evidence. So as we have seen already, school science is split between extremely simplified experimentation and the more sophisticated theorizing that has to be taken simply on trust. School history likewise in many countries still spends most of its time offering 'facts' with very little leisure for the critical examination of documents or other sources. For both, a large part of the problem is that real work in these

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subjects depends on a vast array of background assumptions. These have to be told to students if they are to participate properly in the enterprise, but that is going to take up too much time. So the rigged procedures of 'guided discovery' arise (see, for instance, Driver, 1975, or Atkinson and Delamont, 1976). Or history teachers tack on an unintegrated lesson about how to examine a document critically. While I do not pretend to have solutions to most pedagogical problems, it does seem to me that if we want to engage students in something approaching real work in these sorts of subject it might be better to take circumscribed topics in which they can be genuinely immersed rather than hoping to cover vast chunks of material as well as getting an inkling of real 'discovery'. Or it might be better to give up trying to include discovery (which involves an unteachable creativity) and concentrate on the other side of the enterprise: the critical testing of ideas. In many areas there is no real need for students to know most of the 'answers' if they have grasped how proposed answers are to be evaluated.

The Structure of Explanation One of the main claims I have made is that one important motive behind our search for knowledge is to have explanations, or to be able to understand things, or to find them intelligible. It is not just a matter of data gathering. As I mentioned in passing earlier, these notions are not totally clear. People argue about how much a statistical generalization can explain anything, and there are many other problems in giving a clear account of the requirements for explanations. But for our purposes we do not need the final and complete story about explanation. There are several very important points we can see with the aid of a simplified model. In terms of the logical distinction we met earlier, there are two main sorts of thing we might want explained: singular claims or generalizations. (As before I shall stick in this simplification to open universal generalizations.) We might want to know why Reagan was re-elected, for instance, or we might want an explanation of the fact that gold does not dissolve in water. Typically an explanation will involve some other claims of the same logical type. If you want to understand why Reagan was re-elected you will be told other singular facts about the situation at the time. If you seek under56

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standing of the properties of gold you will be given generalizations about the particles that make up gold molecules. But in the case of singular claims it is also very common for people to invoke various generalizations as well. In our example, you may be told about how people, or people in the USA, react to certain facts, how they seek to achieve certain goals. Even if such general claims are not made explicit, it is very plausible to say that any explanation of a singular item must implicitly rely upon some such generalizations. And it is clear that a great deal is omitted from virtually all explanations, though it must be assumed to be there if the explanation is to work. So, putting it very crudely, all explanations will involve generalizations, and explanations of singular items will also involve some other singular items. From these facts it is obvious that we will never be able to explain everything. In any explanation there will be some claims that are not explained in that explanation. We can of course always ask for another explanation, in which these things that have been taken for granted before are themselves explained. But even this process will always stop somewhere at any particular stage of our knowledge. We may be able to ask why sub-atomic particles obey the laws we think they obey, but we may not be able now to answer that question. We may be able to take some sequence of singular occurrences a long way back, but they will still be preceded by other occurrences, whose explanation we may be unable to give. This doesn't mean that we will never be able to give such explanations; I'm not saying that there is anything whose nature is such that it cannot be explained. I'm simply saying that we will never be able to explain everything all at once (cf. what we said earlier about criticizing claims to knowledge).

How Not to Complete Explanations One common reaction to these thoughts is that while ordinary naturalistic explanations must stop somewhere religious explanations can carry on to give some more profound and final explanation. But this is a confusion. It is in the nature of explanation that we can always ask for an explanation of anything used previously as part of an explanation. So if a divine being or intention were offered as an explanation of anything, we could always ask for an explanation of that being or intention in its turn. Put otherwise, 57

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nothing is self-explanatory. It is true that some things may appear self-explanatory in that we wouldn't normally bother to ask for their explanation, but that is a matter simply of what happens to satisfy our curiosity; it doesn't reflect some intrinsic self-explanatoriness. There is, then, a subtle but important difference between the modesty of naturalistic science and the presumption of religion. The former simply says that we can explain up to this point, but as of now we simply have to accept that these are how things work and that this was how the universe was at some earlier time; we do not currently have any explanations of why these things are as they are. The latter is willing to agree with most of this, but it tries to add that it does have a further explanation. My point is that while that further explanation might even be true there is no reason to suppose it has the finality its supporters usually pretend to. They tend to denigrate naturalistic explanation for its incompleteness, but any explanation is going to be incomplete in that manner, so we should stop hoping otherwise. It is perhaps worth noting that our present scientific cosmology does talk about the beginning of the universe in the 'big bang'. As far as I understand this talk, it does not alter what I have said about the necessary incompleteness of explanations since any use of the equations for the big bang has to adopt certain values for their variables, and these values are not derived from any deeper theory. They are simply brute facts. In fact one way of estimating some of them is to work backwards from our present situation by asking what initial distribution would yield what we see around us. But what we see around is just what it is; it doesn't have any selfexplanatoriness built into it. And of course, the equations used to work out how the big bang developed are equally non-selfexplanatory. And equally obviously, most of our knowledge in other subjects stops a long way short of the beginning of the universe! In rejecting the feasibility of religious explanations it might seem that I have overlooked one frequent feature of such explanations. They are often answers to the question 'Why?' understood, not as asking for an account of the mechanisms involved, but rather as asking for a reason, as one asks for a reason for performing a particular action. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with such questions, but it must be recognized that there is equally nothing wrong with answering by saying that there is no such reason for something. Typically such questions presuppose an agent with 58

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purposes, so one pertinent answer is to deny the presupposition, just as one hopes one can do in response to questions like 'When did you stop beating your wife?' This point is relevant when there are in fact purposes around, since at some point an explanation of the existence of the purposes will be unable to retreat to some further purposes: I may boil water to make coffee, and I might want to drink coffee to quench my thirst and get my daily dose of caffeine, but at about this point explanations in terms of intentions or purposes are likely to stop.

Coincidences and Closed Systems I have argued that putative 'deeper' explanations offered by religion cannot do what they pretend to do. There is another area in which some religions seek to offer explanations that go beyond what a scientific naturalism would accept, an area that points up some very important aspects of scientific explanation. I have kept saying that understanding typically involves simplifications. In a lot of the sciences we deliberately simplify our problems; we abstract from the enormous complexity of the real world, and consider only what would happen in some isolated system. So in thinking about how unsupported objects behave, we start by ignoring the resistance of the air and we claim that all objects fall towards the centre of the earth with a constant acceleration. Having worked out how it would be in this fictitious situation, we can then move on to complicate the story. But the basic point is that this sort of abstraction from real complexity is typical of our attempts to understand the world. What results are a set of theories about idealized, simplified situations. One important and very common idealization is that nothing interferes with the system under consideration, that is to say, we have a theory for 'closed' systems. We can now calculate the motions of the planets to a very high degree of accuracy, on the assumption that there won't be any large and hitherto undetected object interfering with them. But of course that is an assumption, and one that may well not be true. Since so much of our knowledge concerns the workings of closed systems, it is perhaps not so surprising that we can say very little about what will actually happen in the real world, outside of our 59

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laboratories. In that real world, we encounter open systems and so Popper's remark, 'we are very far from being able to predict, even in physics, the precise results of a concrete situation' ( 1961, p. 139), is not so exaggerated as it may sound. (Compare this remark by two physicists on a related theoretical deficiency: 'even the simplest system undergoing vigorous convective motion cannot be given an exact mathematical description' (Velarde and Normand, 1980, p. 79), though the difficulty in describing boiling water is due to interactions rather than to outside interferences.) People are disheartened by the inability of economists to predict what is happening, but to expect that anyone could is perhaps to ask for much too much. What then often happens is that we can explain events in terms of their place in relatively closed sequences. But when two or more such sequences converge on one event, we cannot explain the 'coincidence', however fraught with significance it might be. So, to take a mundane example, we might explain why John Smith was standing under a particular building at a particular time by reference to his intentions, beliefs, etc. We might also be able to explain why that building was struck by lightning at a particular time (or at least we know the sort of factors necessary for such an explanation). But we·have no further explanation of why John Smith should have been standing underneath it at the same time as it was struck. These two aspects ofthe event of his death are each explicable, but the coincidence is not; it is an irrelevance from the standpoint of the comparatively closed systems of explanation. But it is obviously the coincidence that has much greater significance for us, and that we would like to have explained. Here again many religious systems would offer explanations (witchcraft, perhaps, or inscrutable providence) where naturalistic science can only refrain from the attempt. For our present purposes, the other important aspect of this kind of case is that it reveals a basis for some of the subject divisions we find around us. It has proved fruitful to isolate some properties of things or to attend to their constituents at some particular levels. Slicing up the world in these ways has allowed us to generate powerful theoretical explanations. We also need ways oflinking the levels or aspects we have found it useful to distinguish, but these linkages may be very messy. Thriving subjects occupy the slices, less fruitful speculation, and perhaps philosophy, focus on the linkages. So, for example, historical linguistics has made progress 60

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without any serious attention to the questions of the physiology and psychology of speech production that presumably somehow underlie its results; thermodynamics is carried on to a considerable extent in isolation from the statistical mechanics that we know in principle explains it (Sklar, 1976). And a whole branch of philosophy concerns the relations between mind, or our conceptualizations of mental life, and our attempts to theorize the matter in which it is manifested. I think it is important to stress these limitations on the power of our best supported explanations. People in general expect too much. They want knowledge that is more than the provisionally best account we can give; they want 'everything to be explained'. Instead, as we have seen, our knowledge of the world is inherently tentative, and a great deal of the most interesting is clearly provisional. Our best explanations typically involve simplifications or idealizations- they cannot then predict what normally happens in the rough and tumble of ordinary life. And simply as a consequence of their logical structure, our explanations will always leave some facts and laws of working unexplained, though not in principle inexplicable. To use two metaphors that are often invoked, Neurath's ship at sea (or Putnam's fleet of ships), any part of which can be repaired but not all at once, or Popper's city built on piles in a swamp; we should remember that both circumstances are insecure and require makeshift expedients. I have said I wouldn't talk about mathematics, but it is worth saying that the picture people have of mathematics as secure and tightly bound knowledge can mislead them into expecting a similar security elsewhere. We simply don't have it and in many respects cannot achieve it.

Concluding Remarks To sum up the pedagogical implications of this fairly lengthy survey of the nature of our knowledge, we can see that teachers should find ways of genuinely presenting its provisional status. They should seek also to acquire and pass on a reoriented conception of the relation between evidence and explanation which stresses much more the way that explanations account for data rather than thinking of data as determining explanations. Further, they must recognize the way the development of knowledge depends on 61

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assumptions or background knowledge and a backbone of logical relations that are more permanent than the provisional data and theories we employ. They must also be prepared to recognize the ways in which knowledge revises our common-sense picture of the world and so clashes with what people are otherwise brought up to believe. The enterprise of knowledge can easily lead to what Weber called the 'disenchantment' of the world, a loss of its cosiness and its apparent endorsement of our values: an issue we shall take up in the ne:xt chapter. The search for understanding reveals a lot of common sense as ideological obfuscation. Finally we have just been looking at some of the things our knowledge and our best explanations cannot do. These limitations are equally important for teachers to pass on; exaggerated expectations can lead to exaggerated disillusionment.

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4 Opinion A bundle of conjectures is not a habitable world 4

Facts and Values In the preceding chapter we looked at the simplest points about the structure of our knowledge. The knowledge I was primarily thinking of was that contained in the various sciences. But people are inclined to think that the sciences are somewhat specialized; most of our active knowledge relates to the more diffuse, less specialized context of our ordinary life. The sciences are, however, convenient for my purposes because the claims we make there are usually meant to be simply factual. They are attempts to say how things are, how they work, without any other ideas or attitudes impinging on them. But much of our less specialized thinking is shot through with such attitudes or opinions. We can sometimes describe the world about us in a disinterested way - we can repon that the wall has been painted pale green - but most of the time our repons reflect somewhat more involvement or engagement with the issues - we might say that the wall has been painted a pleasant shade of green, or we might indicate by some other feature, intonation or gesture perhaps, how we felt about the matter. The distinction I am alluding to is usually discussed as a distinction between facts on the one hand and values on the other. It is not very easy to find an uncontentious way of making this distinction, partly because in our linguistic practice there is no distinction: factual and evaluative matters are tightly intertwined. Another reason is that there is serious disagreement among

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philosophers and other people about whether there really is an important difference. There is some difference, however, and perhaps the simplest way to see what it might be is to say that factual claims try to say how things are while evaluative claims add something about how people feel about things, about how they think we should act or choose, about which directions we should go, or about how we should judge. If you think these extra things are equally factual, then you will not think that there is an important difference between saying 'The wall is pale green' and saying 'The wall is a beautiful shade of pale green'; but even so you can admit that the second remark adds something to the first, viz. a suggestion about how people should respond to the colour. Talking on the one hand of pale green and on the other of a beautiful shade of green is, as I have said already, somewhat untypical. A great deal of our ordinary language is not so explicitly factual or evaluative. It incorporates both aspects. If I say that someone told a lie I am saying something descriptive about what he said, that it is not true and was known or believed by him not to be true, but I am not making a neutral report of the fact that these things were the case; I am condemning the action. The word 'lie' incorporates the two things; it has descriptive truth-conditions (if we discovered that the person honestly believed what he said, we should withdraw the claim that he lied) but it also points us towards a particular judgement, it tells us to condemn rather than acquit or applaud. And the word 'lie' is by no means unusual; rather it is typical of the vocabulary of ordinary life. The variety of notions which are involved here is worth some brief mention. We have just been looking at concepts like lie here, and in a previous chapter we noticed a similar complexity in the notion of courage. There are other cases in which the factual element is somewhat closer to the surface. One important category consists of grading terms. Eggs and vegetables, as well as examination candidates, are often graded in quite detailed ways. Typically what is involved in such grading is the comparison of individuals with a standard, either another existing individual or an ideal set of features. Such comparisons are as straightforwardly factual as you can get (although it may not always be easy to make the standards explicit, and no doubt there are cases which pretend to an accuracy and factual basis which they lack) though ascribing the grade to the individual is usually taken to be also endorsing this 64

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kind of grading scheme: choose eggs by size, rather than putative taste, for instance. A somewhat similar comparison of what exists with a standard is involved in many judgements of fairness or justice. It is a factual matter whether someone has broken the rules of a game, though whether anything should be done about it is not. Similarly, it is a factual matter whether the accepted procedures have been followed in a trial or in appointing someone to a job, though again the decision that these procedures should be followed is an evaluation. But given agreement on such matters, these questions of fairness or justice are, from within the institutions involved, purely factual issues. In saying that factual and evaluative matters are intertwined in much of our language I am trying my best not to commit myself to any particular theory of how this is done. One popular but crude picture involves a factual core of meaning with a free-floating evaluative appendage. You can then predict that the same factual core could be joined to quite different evaluations. There are plenty of examples where such would seem to be the case, as suggested by Hobbes: there be other names of Government . . . as Tyranny and Oligarchy: But they are not the names of other Formes of Government, but of the same Formes misliked. For they that are discontented under Monarchy, call it Tyranny; and they that are displeased with Aristocracy, called it Oligarchy: So also, they which find themselves grieved under a Democracy, call it

Anarchy.

([1651] 1929, Pt 2, ch. 19; italics in original)

and see also Flew (1975, ch. 5) for pertinent discussion. But we need not assume that it is universally true. When people do want to evaluate the same factual situation in radically different ways, then we can expect them to create the words to do so. But when such diversity is not so pressing, there need be no parallel but evaluatively different concept. The main point, however, is that even here reflective analysis can uncover the two aspects that have been welded into one. We have no excuse for avoiding the philosophical examination of the factual status of evaluations simply because of the unavailability of concepts or vocabulary. 65

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The Logical Structure of Evaluation Evaluative claims are, then, made by sentences that usually make straightforward descriptive claims as well. The logical relations of such sentences are identical with those we have already examined. The singular claim, 'It was wrong for John to say what he believed false' is covered by but does not entail, even in company with many analogous claims, the open universal generalization, 'It is always wrong for people to say what they believe to be false.' But given that, for whatever reasons, we have accepted some such generalization, it is built into the terminology we use so that we would now more naturally say, 'It is always wrong to tell a lie.' Just as evaluative theory (formulated as principles rather than hypotheses) is built into reports of what is going on, so the generalizations we use are equally provisional, though people are often unwilling to recognize the fact. But as in the case of our scientific knowledge, reflection on history can bring home to one just how provisional our evaluative beliefs actually are. We often pride ourselves in fact on the amount of moral progress that has been achieved; but that is to admit that what were once thought to be acceptable principles are now seen to have been inadequate. In saying that there have been many changes, I am not of course saying that every evaluative belief has changed. Similarly our evaluative beliefs are not overwhelmingly weighted in favour of either side of the logical fence: singular judgements or general principles. Rather, in sophisticated thought at least, there is what Rawls ( 1972) has called a 'reflective equilibrium': judgements of individual cases qualify principles, but principles and reflection on their applications can lead us to revise judgements on particular cases. Of course, some people, blinded by false views of the status of evaluations, can think that some particular set of principles is unrevisable; but so can they think about empirical knowledge. It is, however, often more dangerous for other people when they have such views about their own evaluations.

The Factual Status of Evaluations While I suspect that a very great deal of what we have said about the structure of knowledge can be carried over virtually unchanged into 66

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the topic of evaluations, the most important philosophical question for us to deal with is whether evaluations are themselves true or false; whether there can be evaluative knowledge. The question is, then, whether evaluations are objectively given or whether they are only subjective. It is worth noticing that this is not the question of whether human beings agree on certain evaluations. Clearly they do, and it is even more clear that they do when we restrict ourselves to particular social groups. Equally clearly there are other evaluations on which there is not universal agreement, but the mere fact of different opinions tells us nothing. There are different opinions about a lot of straightforwardly factual matters too; people can be wrong, and everybody could be wrong about something. So agreement or lack of it tells us nothing on its own. Again, we are not dealing with the question of whether it is good for us to think that some values at least are objectively given. It is simply the question of whether that belief is true. I have suggested that what is often known as the argument from the relativity of values is not persuasive, at least as it is usually put. People notice quite correctly that we do things one way, the Romans do them another, and conclude that therefore there is no right way to do them. But that conclusion doesn't follow. All that follows is that at least all but one of us has got it wrong. (It is logically possible that we are all right, if the objective facts are simply that we should do things our way and they should do them theirs; but most people who want objective truths here want something less arbitrary than that - they usually think that moral principles, at least, apply to people qua people and not to pretty arbitrary groups of people.) But notice that this common argument proceeds in the way I suggested we reorient. It moves from evidence or data - the diversity of values - to a general conclusion about the status of values. But we have seen that no such argument is deductively valid, and that it is often better to view the matter the other way round. What do we need to postulate to explain the data in a way that fits into our other explanations of other data? If we approach the diversity of values in this way it immediately seems that the subjectivist line about their status is in a very strong position. It says people differ because there is no fact of the matterdifferences are to be expected in fact. Since moral values are part of the machinery for getting people to do or accept things they might 67

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not otherwise want to do or accept, these values portray themselves as objectively given, but this is an ideological disguise. If one takes other areas of purely factual concern where there is also considerable diversity of opinion, it is usually the case that one's explanation of that diversity will itself involve some account of how the facts are: people have differed over the shape of the earth, but you will tend to explain this by reference to what visual evidence was available to them, and this explanation will involve the way light behaves and the actual shape of the earth and the relative positions of the sun and the earth, etc. You will have to say that the earth has a certain shape in explaining why people have differed over it; but in the case of values, we do not need to postulate any such correct values. Objective values are yet another hypothesis we can well do without. The preceding argument is very crude. Its claims about the social role of morality are highly oversimplified and incomplete, but it should indicate the way a more adequate argument would be mounted. It should also show the fruitfulness of the reorientation I argued for in the previous chapter. But if its conclusion is accepted, we must say that a very large amount of what is taught, especially in the human and social fields, is only partly knowledge, at best. A lot of history or civics or the kinds of diluted psychology that gets into the schools is not simply factual data and theorizing, but is much more a matter of transmitting socially held values. There is now an extensive industry committed to uncovering the value commitments of large chunks of the official curriculum of schools (and not just in the human and social fields), and of virtually the whole of the so-called 'hidden' curriculum. None of this aspect of schooling can be said to be the transmission of knowledge. It is merely socially entrenched opinion. The doubts that usually fester into relativistic claims about truth are to that extent fully supported. A lot of what people are brought up to think of as truth or knowledge is a fraud. It is not true for some but not for others; it is rather not true at all for anyone. As I claimed in the discussion of truth, simple truth gives one a sharp cutting edge, which is blunted by facile talk of relative truths.

Disenchantment In these last remarks we are focusing upon a very important aspect of the 'modern' world. In most societies, and indeed in parts of our

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own, social arrangements are underwritten by beliefs about the nature of things. In some form or another, societies have what anthropologists call 'charter myths'. The structures of human life, and much of its petty detail, connect with grand theorizing about the cosmos. In saying that evaluative pushes and pulls are not part of the natural world at all, but only something that we misrecognize as being there, I am endorsing that disenchantment of the world which Weber saw as central to secular modernity. A central part of education, as I conceive it, is this debunking, or at least uprooting, of many of our values. As Bourdieu and Passeron note in passing (1977, p. 12), this creates a pedagogical problem: you cannot start by teaching the cultural relativity of cultural values, although you can hope to end up by passing on this bit of anthropological wisdom. To take a related case, you must learn some language or other in order to formulate the true belief that it doesn't matter which language you learn. Similarly, you must be given some food or other while your teacher is bringing you to an awareness of the arbitrariness of food taboos. While this is so, it should not blind us to the facts that it is possible to end up with the beliefs we are discussing and that societies vary considerably in their self-awareness of these matters.

Truths of the Heart In this brief examination of what properly should be considered merely matters of opinion rather than knowledge, I have focused on the evaluative aspects of much ordinary thinking. But there are other aspects, of considerable importance to us as people, if not central to schooling, in which it is by no means clear that we have much that can be called 'knowledge'. Much of our thinking about ourselves is, for various reasons, in this predicament. These questions deserve extended treatment, but perhaps we can look at one or two points now. Part of our problem comes, I think, from a misapprehension of what meaning is like. Earlier I noted that we may think the meaning of what we say is a lot more precise and definite than it actually is. We are inclined, for instance, to think that talk of emotions or motives must refer to actual determinate psychological states when it is possible that we really use such language not on the basis of internal happenings, but

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rather as a way of unifying complex patterns of behaviour. This possibility may seem somewhat more plausible if you consider how prone to alternative interpretations are our judgements of such matters. I may judge that A loves B while you think A is indifferent to B; both of us are tying together disparate bits of behaviour; and the question may not be resolvable by reference to what A 'feels'she may well be deceiving herself. What then is the truth of this matter? I do not have an answer to this question; but I raise it now to suggest that one possible answer might be that really there is no more truth here than in the evaluative case we have examined. The terms we use about each other are designed for our purposes, but as we noted long ago, telling the sober truth is not a very high priority, so they may not be contributing very much to such an aim. The truth here might not be so anthropomorphic as we would like to believe. In general I would urge you not to make too much of a common contrast between matters of fact and matters of interpretation, since what are called 'interpretations' are often only factual accounts at a higher level of abstraction or explanatory power. But in some areas of inquiry the best we may be able to achieve is to pit one interpretation against another, without hope of any rationally persuasive resolution becoming available. This situation might arise because our concepts are not really suitable for the facts in question, or are simply too indeterminate to permit more definite progress. The concepts we use to characterize each other may well exemplify these possibilities. Another example of misrecognition of meaning occurs in the case of abilities and aptitudes. What we have in these parts of 'folk psychology' are terms that we can use to make true or false claims on the basis of observed behaviour but which carry with them ideas that seem to refer to properties hidden from view. We use them but without having any idea of what we are really talking about. Consider different cars with different gearing: one may be ideal for driving up moderate hills, another may be very awkward. We could say the first was apt for such roads, and we would know what it is about the car that makes it so. But when we talk of a person's aptitude for foreign languages we usually have no idea whatever of what it is about that person that gives him or her that aptitude. We can also engage in debates about whether one aptitude is or is not 70

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identical with another, but since the licence to talk of aptitude carries with it no knowledge of the psychological reality, these disputes are usually insoluble. We make claims that are to some extent testable and which may be useful for various purposes, but their greatest utility for us is that we can remain in ignorance of what is going on. Again, I think people tend to suppose that they must be meaning something rather more solid than this airy emptiness, but that is virtually all analysis can uncover (cf. Brandon, 1985a).

Subjectivity and Arbitrariness What I have been talking about is the simple truth of our evaluations, or more precisely of the evaluative aspects of the evaluative claims we make. I have argued briefly that there are no such objective evaluations or prescriptions, so that our ordinary thinking is pervaded by a kind of error here. But while I think this is a significant claim to insist upon, it must not be confused with other claims that people are often inclined to make. As I said in the first chapter, the normal conception of what is rational or sensible or appropriate for human beings is a fairly complex one. It certainly isn't exhausted by the notion of truth. So while I have argued that our evaluations are not true or false, that claim alone should not be read as saying that our evaluations are irrational or non-rational, arbitrary, pointless or gratuitous. Some of them might be all or any of these things, but the argument so far has not impugned evaluations generally in these ways. All I have said is that, in Williams' words, 'there is no moral order "out there" ' ( 1973, p. 29) to back up our evaluations in the way that our ordinary empirical claims to knowledge are backed up by the way the world is. At a superficial level we can see that these other charges need not be justifiable by returning to the fact of the intertwining of factual and evaluative matters in so much of our language. Since the use of this language is partially governed by truth-conditions, we can and do carry on lengthy and perfectly rational disputes about whether or not what someone said was a lie, or whether an action was courageous or a person saintly. If we use ordinary language, we cannot escape using such vocabulary and the descriptive claims it brings with it; and there is no other language for us to use. As we 71

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have seen, our ordinary terms for grading or ranking things or people or their performances, our ordinary talk of justice and fairness in relation to rules, as well as these less specific descriptions of character or action, all crucially and centrally involve factual matters. It is partly for this reason that some apparently 'verbal' disputes are not so silly, and why it is worth protesting at some cases of the appropriation of ordinary words for technical use when evaluative aspects are treated as easily dispensable (thus one might well think Bourdieu somewhat disingenuous in claiming that his talk of 'symbolic violence' is purely descriptive (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977, p. x) or applaud Kleinig's (1982, p. 232) complaint that behaviourists have misused the word 'punishment' in talking of unpleasant stimuli). But while it is important to see that we cannot use all this vocabulary in any way we happen to want, it is clearly not the fundamental issue. Using the vocabulary is normally to endorse the evaluations built into it, but the deeper question is whether we should endorse those values, and here again some people want to claim that they are arbitrary. But if 'arbitrary' includes in its meaning some idea that we could equally well do things differently, then it is very difficult in many cases to see how our in-built evaluations could be radically changed. We have an extensive vocabulary that incorporates a rejection of gratuitous violence between members of a social group. There is no objective moral law that tells us that such violence is wrong and to be abhorred, but it is difficult to see how social groups could survive or reproduce themselves if such a value were not fairly generally endorsed. (Notice that I am not supposing, falsely, that we totally reject violence, but that we reject what we label 'murder', if not capital punishment or the killing involved in warfare.) Again, to take a much more rarefied example, earlier on we noted the distinction between valid and invalid deductive arguments. I briefly explained the factual basis for this contrast, but it is obvious that an evaluative assessment is tied to the normal use of the terms as well. We want our deductive arguments to be valid, not invalid. But given what the factual basis is, and what our aims in rational argument and criticism are, it is not feasible for us to switch these evaluations around. Of course, if persuasion were our aim, the distinction and its associated values might well not matter; but given a particular 'form of life', the values have precious little freedom for variation. 72

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Of course, there are many 'forms of life' available; and to the extent that they are up for choice their values are equally to be chosen or rejected. The peculiar deep-seatedness of our moral values perhaps arises from the fact that some of them, at least, arise out of features of every 'form oflife' accessible to human beings. As I argued above, the condemnation of gratuitous violence among group members is likely to be an unavoidable feature of any human existence; a passion for rational criticism is clearly pretty idiosyncratic. The values in the former case are then not arbitrary, while it must be admitted that many people have got by without endorsing the values enshrined in our conceptualization of deductive argument. I have been trying to counter the crude argument from subjectivism to arbitrariness. In many instances there is, however, one aspect of the situation that is worth a further comment. In suggesting that certain sorts of violence would be universally condemned, I didn't state precisely which kinds, or which factors would be thought relevant to excusing such violence. To take another and somewhat clearer case, let us consider family arrangements. All human groups have institutionalized some sort of family structure in which children are expected to be brought up (although many children will in fact be brought up in different circumstances in a lot of cases). But it is equally obvious that these kinds of institution vary considerably. Various pervasive biological and social facts about human beings may provide the basis for an argument that all human groups will necessarily have some such family arrangements; but those general facts cannot guide us as to which sort of family arrangement it will be. We must have some arrangement; but we cannot say which. It is perhaps even more obvious with language. All human groups speak a language, and perhaps they wouldn't be human if they didn't; but that doesn't force any particular language upon any group. When we are faced with this sort of situation, we have an interesting sort of arbitrariness: it is arbitrary which language or family institution we have, but it is not arbitrary that we have some language or institutionalized family structure or other. Of course, we might be able to go on to other considerations that incline us to favour some such arrangements over others, so we might want to qualify the first claim about arbitrariness; but I think the general situation is very common and gives rise to many people's 73

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belief that the way things are done is fundamentally arbitrary. They may be at least half right in thinking so. We should also acknowledge that we tend too readily to assume that our present way of satisfying the non-arbitrary demand for some arrangement or other is clearly the best that can be done. While I have been trying to counter a too easy move from the philosophical claim about the status of our evaluations to a premature rejection of their claims upon us, it is this last point with which I think it is salutary to conclude. Subjectivism's refusal to underwrite our evaluations allows it to recognize more easily than would other views the degree to which our values cannot be given the kinds of rational support we have been looking at. Socially entrenched evaluations are often simply a disguise for brutal and exploitative power relations; they are often based on blatant falsehoods. A view that tells us that our evaluations have no more authority than the facts of our situation and our own choices give them encourages us to hope that these sorts of atavistic prejudice and disguised oppression can be rejected and replaced. A concern for the truth about these matters of opinion might well then be a liberating force, even as it proclaims that they themselves are not matters of truth or falsehood at all.

The Teacher's Stand While a great deal more needs to be said about these matters, we have at least the outline of a position that prompts the question: what should it mean for teachers? I have argued that a tremendous amount of what is transmitted in schools is not knowledge but socially entrenched opinion; should this fact affect the way teachers handle it? This book takes its stand within certain assumptions that make truth, accuracy, and the strength of argument central to education. So my question becomes one concerning the educator's response to the kind of points made about values and our self-image in this chapter. People who only wish to initiate children into their preexisting societies need make no changes. In looking at knowledge I suggested that teachers should seek not to misrepresent it, at two levels: in terms of its repudiation of common sense, and in terms of its provisional status. Another

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outcome of that discussion was some support for popular pressure to stress process rather than product, the strategies of critical inquiry rather than the transient results thereof - though I insisted that one cannot have the former without assuming the latter. An important feature of the processes here is that there are not really alternatives on offer: while there may not be a simply describable 'scientific method', there is a set of overlapping critical strategies applicable to any field, and there are general aims of more comprehensive understanding in terms of which inquiry can be evaluated. So while teachers here need to be careful not to mislead, they can feel reasonably confident in appealing to the 'rules of the game' as their authority for fostering the skills and understanding they teach. When we turn to evaluative matters, things are not so straightforward. Several writers correctly note the distinctiveness of, say, moral or aesthetic thought, and assume that no more is needed to justify initiation into it. If such distinctive thought also embodied simple truth, perhaps they would be right (the truths would be ones that obviously matter to us). But if it does not, we need, I think, at least to be able to establish its uniqueness or unavoidability. Just as there is really only one, albeit general, way to make cognitive progress, so we should need to be persuaded that there is only one way to play the 'moral' game. But this is very far from being obvious. Even if we allow that some components of moral thought are required by any conceivably worthwhile social life, the recent discussion of arbitrariness illustrates how little can be sustained by such considerations. Using typically rooted moral considerations, and, even more, letting one's action be influenced by such thought, would seem options rather than necessities. And so by what right can teachers initiate children into them? My point is not simply that the aim should not be to inculcate particular evaluative views (which it almost always is in 'hidden' fact if not in theory) in favour of standard evaluative ways of thinking; but rather that in these areas there are alternative ways of thinking and that one of the main alternatives is not to indulge at all in the kind of thought in question- just as one important option with respect to religious thinking is to reject it as confusion. Choosing among alternative courses of action, choosing among virtually unlimited ways of doing things (cf. Scruton, 1980) are no

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doubt inescapable features of human life. We should therefore give children access to possible principles to guide such choice. But just as we should not conceal unresolved disagreements about the cognitive status of such principles as components of a moral or aesthetic system (cf. Barrow, 1981, ch. 5), so we should not ignore the dispensability of such systems themselves. We may still offer some such system because we prefer it, but let us not suppose we have any better warrant than that preference. So whereas the teacher can make a stand on the methods of cognitive inquiry on the grounds that they are the only way to participate and contribute to the growth of knowledge, no such basis exists for insisting on any particular version of moral or aesthetic thinking. Our cultural imperialism may well be such that teachers will continue to do so, but they are going far beyond anything an appeal to simple truth could justify.

Conclusion So do teachers care about truth? Do you? We saw that the problem is not so much with truth in the abstract but with whether the things we teach are simply true. We also saw then, and have been considering again in this chapter, the way that what we mean can in fact be a complex mixture of different elements, some perhaps simply true, others perhaps false, or perhaps not even trying to be true. So simple answers to our question are not likely to be available. Once we distinguish truth from what our fellows accept and press the notion of comparison built into it, it is not so easy to agree that what goes on in schools has much to do with passing on the truth. We have traditions of inquiry that have met with some success, but their tentative fmdings are often in conflict with common sense. This conflict is not in general stressed in schooling; it is perhaps something many of us would wish to repress. Similarly, the logical status of knowledge is often misrepresented. So schools hardly succeed in general in transmitting a defensible view of the world or of our cognitive dealings with it. Again, despite some awareness of the distinctiveness of some evaluations, the extent of their entanglement with our ordinary concepts for characterizing ourselves is not recognized. Much is taught that represents value orientations rather than simple facts. 76

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And even when the cognitive problems of evaluations are recognized, many writers assume too readily that such ways of thinking are somehow inescapable. Once again the desirable masquerades as the inevitable. I have suggested that educators should at least present a defensible view of the status of our knowledge and values. The views I have presented here are of course not the only ones defended by philosophers, but they indicate limits to what can be transmitted as settled. Thus one cannot correctly teach that our scientific knowledge is fixed, or our moral beliefs straightforwardly true. A concern for truth should not misdescribe the state of debate about itself. I have indicated some possible reorientations of our thinking and teaching about evidence or testimony and what we normally think of as the conclusions based thereon. Perhaps students can be encouraged to seek more actively for plausible alternative explanations and to take a more probing attitude to data. One can see these suggestions as yet another plea for giving a greater role to disciplined imagination in our educating. They may not be any more successful than earlier calls, but they do at least have respectable philosophical support. I have acknowledged that a concern for truth may not be altogether comfortable; it will clash with received opinion and the guardians of the status quo; it will force choices into the open. But it may thereby promote liberation as much as it spreads misgivings. Education, as its prophets understand it, has never been a particularly comfortable or comforting process. No doubt there is much else that schools should reasonably be doing, but I think one lesson of our discussions is that when they turn to education they should be prepared for conflict.

77

Notes 'Wisdom [philosophical understanding] excels wealth.' This is the motto of Hampton Grammar School. Like the mottoes of other institutions to which I have been indebted later, it testifies to the ideological significance of understanding for education, and by its doubtful Latinity perhaps also to the fragility of our grasp of the requisite knowledge. 2 This passage comes from John Donne's Satyre: Of Religion. 3 Consider your race: You were not made to live like animals, But to follow after virtue and knowledge.

4

The original is from Dante's Inferno, XXVI. The words are put in the mouth of Ulysses; Dante consigned him to Hell, but did not conceal a certain sympathy for his supposed motivation. Gellner(1985),p.l26.

78

Further Reading No philosophy is easy. Elementary introductions to the philosophical topics touched on here are few and far between. One of the best is W. V. Quine and J. S. Ullian, The Web of Belief ( 1978). A modern, easily available classic in the theory of knowledge, and one slanted more to traditional philosophical issues, is A. J. Ayer, The Problem of Knowledge (1956). A much more recent discussion, full of analytical wizardry but with a broader perspective, can be found in Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations ( 1981 ). Bernard Williams, Descartes: the Project of Pure Enquiry ( 1978) has some very suggestive discussions of our cognitive predicament, with particular attention to the role of the notion of certainty. The views adopted in the text often derive from J. L. Mackie. His most accessible work touching on knowledge is Problems from Locke ( 1976); for truth and other logical notions, Truth, Probability, and Paradox (1973); for the issues raised by religion, The Miracle of Theism (1982); and for morality, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977). Karl Popper's views can best be sampled from Conjectures and Refutations ( 1969) or Objective Knowledge ( 1972); Bryan Magee, Popper ( 1973) is a simple introduction. Philosophical writing on truth is usually very unappealing. Besides Mackie, a good starting point is an essay in A. J. Ayer, The Concept of a Person (1963). A detailed account, close to Mackie's but which plays down the notion of comparison, can be found in C. J. F. Williams What is Truth? (1976). But like most modern discussions this book is forbiddingly technical for a beginner. I have stressed the notion of explanation. A fairly technical classic here is C. G. Hempel, Aspects of Scientific Explanation (1965). Kitcher has a useful article ( 1981) on explanation as unification. A good discussion of understanding in an educational context is provided in a long essay by R. K. Elliott, 'Education and human being' (1975). I have also tried to note some of the social aspects of cognitive endeavour. Here J. Kleinig, Philosophical Issues in Education 79

DO TEACHERS CARE ABOUT TRUTH?

( 1982) is good; an outstanding contribution has been made by Ernest Gellner in, for instance, The Legitimation of Belief (1974). He has also produced a spirited example of philosophical criticism of a branch of supposed knowledge in The Psychoanalytic Movement ( 1985). For philosophical discussion of the physical sciences, W. Newton-Smith, The Rationality of Science ( 1981), provides a guide to the philosophical scene, while R. N. Giere, Understanding Scientific Reasoning (1984), sets out the logical issues very clearly. I. Hacking, Representing and Intervening ( 1983) is good on observation and experimentation. A particularly good discussion of values, sensitive to the issues touched on here, can be found in Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy ( 1985). Educational reflections on truth and knowledge have in general little to recommend them. Much recent debate has centred around Paul Hirst's 'forms of knowledge' basis for a curriculum, conveniently available in Knowledge and the Curriculum (1974). Of Hirst's commentators, Robin Barrow Common Sense and the Curriculum (1976) has the distinction of provoking my further commentary in 'The two forms, the two attitudes, and the four kinds of awareness' (1984).

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References Atkinson, P., and Delamont, S. (1976), 'Mock-ups and cock-ups: the stagemanagement of guided discovery instruction', in M. Hammersley and P. Woods (eds) The Process of Schooling (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul), pp. 133-42. Ayer, A. }. ( 1956), The Problem of Knowledge (Harmondsworth: Penguin). Ayer, A. J. (1963), The Concept of a Person, and Other Essays (London: Macmillan). Barrow, R. (1976), Common Sense and the Curriculum (London: Allen& Unwin). Barrow, R. ( 1981), The Philosophy of Schooling (Brighton: Wheatsheaf). Bourdieu, P., and Passeron, }.-C. ( 1977), Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture, (trans. R. Nice) (London: Sage). Brandon, E. P. (1984), 'The two forms, the two attitudes, and the four kinds of awareness', Educational Philosophy and Theory, vol. 16, pp. 1-11. Brandon, E. P. ( 1985a), 'Aptitude analysed', Educational Philosophy and Theory, vol. 17, pp. 13-18. Brandon, E. P. (1985b ), 'On what isn't learned in school', Thinking, vol. 5, no. 4, pp. 22-8. Driver, R. (1975), 'The name of the game', School Science Review, vol. 56, pp. 80(}-5. Elliott, R. K. (1975), 'Education and human being 1', inS. C. Brown (ed.), Philosophers Discuss Education (London: Macmillan), pp. 45-72. Feyerabend, P. K. ( 1975), Against Method (London: New Left Books). Finnis, }. ( 1977), 'Scepticism, self-refutation, and the good of truth', in P. M. S. Hacker and J. Raz (eds), Law, Morality and Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press), pp. 247-67. Flew, A. G. N. (1975), Thinking about Thinking(London: Fontana). Freire, P. (1974), Education for Critical Consciousness (New York: Seabury). Freire, P. ( 1978), Pedagogy in Process: the Letters to Guinea-Bissau (New York: Seabury). Gellner, E. (1974), The Legitimation of Belief(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Gellner, E. (1985), The Psychoanalytic Movement: the Coming of Unreason (London: Paladin). Giere, R. N. (1984), Understanding Scientific Reasoning (New York: Holt Rinehart & Winston). Hacking, I. (1983), Representing and Intervening: Introductory Topics in the Philosophy of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Haes, J. (1982), 'Conceptions of the curriculum: teachers and "truth" ', British Journal ofthe Sociology of Education, vol. 3, pp. 57-76.

81

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Hempel, C. G. (1965), Aspects of Scientific Explanation and other Essays in the Philosophy of Science (New York: Free Press). Hillery, G. A., Jr (1984), 'Gemeinschaft verstehen: a theory of the middle range', Social Forces, vol. 63, pp. 307-34. Hirst, P. H. ( 1974), Knowledge and the Curriculum (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul). Hirst, P. H., and Peters, R. S. (1970), The Logic of Education (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul). Hobbes, T. (1929), Leviathan [1651] (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Hodges, W. ( 1977), Logic (Harmondsworth: Penguin). Holton, G. (1984), 'Metaphors in science and education', in W. Taylor (ed.) Metaphors of Education (London: Heinemann), pp. 91-113. Hudson, L. (1967), Contrary Imaginations: A Psychological Study of the English Schoolboy (Harmondsworth: Penguin). Illich, I. ( 1971), De schooling Society (New York: Harper & Row). Kitcher, P. (1981 ), 'Explanatory unification', Philosophy of Science, vol. 48, pp. 507-31. Kleinig, J. ( 1982), Philosophical Issues in Education (London: Croom Helm). Kuhn, T. S. (1970), The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Lakatos, I. ( 1970), 'Falsification and the methodology of scientific research programmes', in I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave (eds) Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 91-195. Locke, J. (1961), An Essay Concerning Human Understanding [1690], ed. J. W. Yolton (London: Dent). McCloskey, M. (1983), 'Intuitive physics', Scientific American, vol. 248, no. 4, pp.l22-30. McDonald, R. P. (1985), Factor Analysis and Related Methods (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum). Mackie, J. L. (1973), Truth, Probability, and Paradox (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Mackie, J. L. ( 197 6), Problems from Locke (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Mackie, J. L. (1977), Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Harmondsworth: Penguin). Mackie, J. L. ( 1982), The Miracle of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Magee, B. (1973), Popper (London: Fontana). Mill, J. S. (1886), A System of Logic [1843] (London: Longmans, Green). Mulaik, S. ( 1985), 'Exploratory statistics and empiricism', Philosophy of Science, vol. 52, pp. 410-30. Newton-Smith, W. (1981), The Rationality of Science (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul). Nozick, R. (1981), Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press). Peters, R. S. (1981), Moral Development and Moral Education (London: Allen & Unwin). Popper, K. R. ( 1959), The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London: Hutchinson). Popper, K. R. (1961), The Poverty of Historicism (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul).

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REFERENCES

Popper, K. R. (1969), Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, 3rd edn (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul). Popper, K. R. ( 1972), Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Quine, W. V., and illlian,]. S. (1978), The Web of Belief, 2nd edn (New York: Random House). Rawls,]. (1972), A Theory ofJustice (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Renfrew, C. (1976), Before Civilization: the Radiocarbon Revolution and Prehistoric Europe (Harmondsworth: Penguin). Scruton, R. (1980), The Aesthetics of Architecture, 2nd edn (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press). Sklar, L. ( 1976), 'Thermodynamics, statistical mechanics and the complexity of reductions', in R. S. Cohen, C. A. Hooker, A. C. Michalos and ]. W. van Evra (eds) PSA 1974, (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 32) (Dordrecht: D. Reidel), pp. 15-32. Velarde, M. G., and Normand, C. ( 1980), 'Convection', Scientific American, vol. 243, no. I, pp. 78-93. Waismann, F. (1953), 'Language strata', in A. G. N. Flew (ed.), Logic and Language (Second Series) (Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 11-31. Williams, B. (1973), Morality: An Introduction to Ethics (Harmondsworth: Penguin). Williams, B. (1978), Descartes: the Project of Pure Enquiry (Harmondsworth: Penguin). Williams, B. ( 1985), Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (London: Fontana). Williams, C. ]. F. (1976), What is Truth? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

83

Index arbitrariness, see values, arbitrariness of arguments, see validity Aristotle 2, 34 Atkinson, P. 56 Ayer, A. J. 79 Barrow, R. 76, 80 beliefs 2-5, 8-9, 11, 20, 22, 26, 29, 48-9, 53 Bible, the 34 Bourdieu, P. 69, 72 certainty 19, 34, 52, 79 coincidences 60 concepts (see also meaning, propositions, sentences) 12-14, 20-1, 32, 36-9, 49-50, 62, 70, 76 revision of 36-9, 46, 50, 62, 76 criticism 3, 25-hill (1960), Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968; commentaries in M. Lawson (ed.), Swrmerhill: For> and Against, Sydney: · Angus & Robertson, 1973; R.L. Hopkins, 'Freedom and Education: the Philosophy of Summerhill', Educational Theory, XXVI, 2 (Spring 1976), 188-213. P. Goodman, Compulsory Miseducation (rev. edn., 1964), Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971. J. Ohliger & C.Mccarthy, lifelong Ieaming orLifelongSchooling, Syracuse University Publicatio~9 in Continuing Education 279

and ERIC Clearing House on Adult Education,1971. L. A1thusser, 'Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation)', in Lenin and Philosophy, ET, London: New Left Books, 121-72. J. Holt, What do I do Monday?, London: Pi tman, 1971 ; also Freedom and Beyond, New York: Dutton, 1972; Instead of Education: Ways of Helping PeopZe to do Things Better, New York: Dutton, 1976. A. Graubard, Free the Chi Zdren: Radical, Reform and the FreeschooZ Movement, New York. Pantheon, 1972. E.B. Nyquist & G.R. Hawes (eds.), open Education :A Sourcebook for Parents and Teachers, New York: Bantam, 1972. R. Hutchings, 'The Great Anti-School Campaign', in Great Ideas Today, 1972, Chicago: Encyclopedia Brittanica, 1972. P. Freire, Pedagogy of the oppressed, tr. M.B. Ramos, New York: Herder & Herder, 1970; also CUZturaZ Action for Freedom, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971 ; Education for critical Consciousness, New York: Seabury, 1973; Education the Practice of Freedom, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976. C.J. Troost (ed.), Radical, SchooZ Reform : Critique and Alternatives, Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1973. P. Buckman (ed.), Education Without SchooZs, London: Souvenir Press, 1973. A. Gartner, C. Greer & F. Riessman ( eds.) , After DeschooZing What?, New York: Harper & Row, 1973. I. Lister ( ed. ), Deschoo ling , Cambridge U. P. , 1974. R. Sharp & A. Green, Education and SoaiaZ Control, : A Study in Progressive Primary Education, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975. W.K. Richmond, Education and Schooling, London: Methuen, 1975. D. 'Nyberg (ed.), The Philosophy of open Education, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975. S. Bowles & H. Gintis,, SchooUng in Capitalist America, New York: Basic Books, 1976. R. Barrow, Radical, Education: a critique of preschooUng and deschooUng, London: Martin Robinson, 1978. Chapter 9: Neutrality in Education H.C. Hand, Neutrality in Soaial, Education: an aspect of the educator's world of make-believe, Los Angeles: College Press , 1940. R.H. Ennis, 'The "Impossibiity" of Neutrality in Teaching', Harvard EduaationaZ Review, XXIX, 2 (1959), 128-36; reprinted as 'Is it Impossible for the Schools to be Neutral?' in B.O. Smith&R.H. Ennis (eds.), Language and Concepts in Education, Chicago: Rand MeNally, 1961 ,

;zao

pp.102-11; reply by D.C. Hoffman, Eduaational Theory, XIV, 3 (July, 1964), 182-85; also an interchange between R.H. Ennis and M.A. Raywid, in Studies in Philosophy and Eduaation, II, 1 (Winter, 1961-62), 86-96, 96-103. E.L. French, D.P. Derham, D.H. !'lbnro, E.J. Stormon, & J .D. McCaughey, Symposium: 'Objectivity and Neutrality in Public Education', in E.L. French (ed.), MelbouPne Studies in Eduaation 1963, Melbourne U.P., 1964, pp.3-80. J.E. McClellan, 'The Politicising of Educational Theory: A Re-evaluation', in G.L. Newsome, Jr. (ed.), Philosophy of Eduaation 1968, Proceedings of the Twenty-fourth Annual Meeting of the Philosophy of Education Society, Edwardsville, Ill.: Philosophy of Education Society, 1968, pp.94-105; reply by R.D. Heslep, pp.109-13. L. Stenhouse, 'Open-rUnded Teaching', New Sodety, XIV (24 July), 1969, 126-28; also 'Controversial Value Issues in the Classroom', in W.G. Carr ( ed.), Values and the CUrriaulum, A Report of the Fourth International Curriculum Conference, Washington, D.C.: National Educational Association Center for the Study of Instruction, 1970, pp.103-15; 'The Idea of Neutrality', Times Eduaational Supplement, 2959 (4 February, 1972), 2; and 'Neutrality as a Criterion in Teaching: the Working of the Humanities Curriculum Project', in M. Taylor (ed.), Progr>ess and P!'oblems in Mor>al Eduaation, Slough: National Foundation for Educational Research, 1975. R.P. Wolff, The Ideal of the Univer>sity, Boston: Beacon Press, 1969, pp.69-76. J. Eckstein, 'Is it Possible for the Schools to be Neutral?' Educational Theory, XIX, 4 (Fall, 1969), 337-46; reply, by R.H. Ennis, 347-56. Schools Council/Nuffield Foundation, The Humanities Pr>ojeat: An Intr>oduation, London: Heinemann, 1970,Sect. 4. J. Elliott, 'The Concept of the Neutral Teacher', Cambl'idge J our>na l of Eduaation , I, 2 (Easter, 1971 ) , 60-67; reply by C. Bailey, 'Rationality, Democracy and the Neutral Teacher', 68-76; updated versions of these papers appear as J. Elliott, 'The Values of the Neutral Teacher' and C. Bailey, 'Neutrality and Rationality in Teaching', in D. Bridges & P. Scrimshaw (eds.), Values and Authol'ity in Sahools, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1975, pp.103-19, 121-34; see also C. Bailey, 'Teaching by discussion and the Neutral Teacher', Proaeedings of the Philosophy of Eduaation Soaiety of Gr>eat Bl'itain, VII, 1 (January, 1973), 26-38; reply by J. Elliott, 'Neutrality, Rationality and the Role of the Teacher', 39-65. 'Open-ended Discussion: Procedural Neutrality', in Religious Eduaation in Secondary Sahools, Schools Council Working Paper 36, London: Evans/Methuen Educational, 1971, Ch.XII, pp.88-91. W.P. Metzger, 'Institutional Neutrality: an appraisal', in F. Machlup et al., Neutmlity or> Par>tisa:nship: a dilemma

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of aaademic institutions, New York: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1971, pp.38-62. R.L. Simon, 'The Concept of a Pol i.tically Neutral University', in V. Held, K. Nielsen & C. Parsons (eds.), Philosophy &Political Action, New York: O.U.P., 1972, pp.217-33. J. Hipkin, 'Neutrality as 8, Form of Commitment', Trends in Education, 26 (Apri1, 1972), 9-13. I.A. Snook, 'Neutrality and the Schools', Educational Theory, XXII, 3 (Summer, 1972), 278-85. B. Crittenden, Education and Social Ideals, Ontario: Longman Canada Ltd., 1973, Ch.IV. R.L. Holmes, 'University Neutrality and ROTC', Ethics, LXXXIII, 3 (April, 1973), 177-95. K. Strike, 'The Logic of Neutrality Discussions: Can a University be Neutral?' , Studies in Philosophy and Education, VIII, 1 (Summer, 1973), 62-91. M. Warnock, J, Norman & A. Montefiore, Symposium: 'The Neutral Teacher', in S.C. Brown (ed.), Philosophers Discuss Education, London: Macmil1an, 1975, Part IV. S.E. Nordenbo, 'Pluralism, Relativism and the Neutral Teacher', Journal of Philosophy of Education, XII (1978), 129-39. M.A. Oliker, 'Neutrality and the Structure of Educational Institutions', in J.R. Coombs (ed.), Philosophy of Education 19?9, Proceedings of the Thirty-fifth Annual Heeting of the Philosophy of Education Society, Normal, IlL: Philosophy of Education Society, 1980, pp.252-259; reply by J. Palermo, pp.260-63. R.F. Dearden, 'Education and Politics', Journal of Philosophy of Education, XIV, 2 (November, 1980), 149-56; idem, 'Controversial Issues and the Curriculum', Journal of Curriculum Studies, XIII, 1 (1981 ).

Chapter 10: Equality, Schooling and Education R. Wollheim & I. Berlin, Symposium: 'FquaJity', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, LVI (1955-56), 281-300, 301-26. 1. Bryson et al. ( eds.), Aspects of Human Equality, New York: Harper, 1956. G.L. Abernethy (ed.), The Idea of Equality: an Anthology, Richmond, Va: John Knox Press, 1959. B.P. Komisar & J.R. Coombs, 'The Concept of Equality in Education', Studies in Philosophy and Education, III, 3, (Fall, 1964), 223-44; reply 'Equality and Sameness', by C.J.B. Macmillan & 'Equality as Uniqueness', by P.H. Phenix, III, 4 (Winter, 1964-65), 320-32, 332-35; rejoinder, 'Too Much Equality', IV, 2 (Fall, 1969), 263-71. J.R. Lucas, 'Against Equality', Philosophy, XL (October, 282

1965), 296-307; 8lso 'Equality in Ftiuc8.tion', in B.R. Wilson (ed.), Equ4lity, Education and Society, London: Allen 8· Unwin, 1975, ann 'Against EquaHty Again', Philosophy, tii (,July, 1CJ77), 255--80. J. Wilson, Equality, London: Hutchinson, 1966. A.F. Kleinberger, 'Reflections on Equality in Education', Studies in Philosophy and Education, V, 3 (Summer, 1967), 293-340; reply by J.R. Perry, V, 4 (Fall, 1967), 433-45; rejoinder by Kleinberger, VI, 2, (Sprine, 1968), 209-25. J.S. Coleman, et al., Equality of Educational Opportunity, Washington: U.S. Dep8rtment of Healt.h, Education and Welfare, 2 vols. 1968; also J.S. Coleman, 'Rawls, Nozick and Educational Equality', The Public Interest, 43 (Spring, 1976), 121-28; see further F. Mosteller fl· D.P. r1oynihan ( eds.), On Equality of Educational Opportunity, New York: Random House, 1972 (reviewed by G.E. Grant in Ha1'1Jard Educational Review, XLII, 1 (February, 1972), 109-25). G.W. Mortimore, 'An Ideal of Equality', Mind, LXXVII (April, 1968) , 222-42. Special Issue: 'Equality of Educational Opportunity', Harvard Educational Review, XXVIII, 1 (Winter, 1968). J. Charvet, 'The Idea of Equality as a Substantive Principle of Society', Political Studies, XVII, 1 (1969), 1-13. T.F. Green, 'Equal Educational Opportunity: the Durable Injustice', in R.D. Heslep (ed.), Philosophy of Education 1971, Proceedings of the Twenty-seventh Annual Heeting of the Philosophy of Education Society, Edwardsville, Ill.: Philosophy of Education Society, 121-43 (reply by M. Greene, 144-149); also 'The Dismal Future of Equal in T.F. Green (ed.), Educational Opportunity', Educational Planning in Perspective, Guildford, U.K.: IPC Science and Technology Press, 1971. H. Bedau (ed.), Justice and Equality, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971. C. Jencks, et al., Inequality: a reassessment of the effect of the family on schooling in America, New York: Basic Books, 1972; see also review issue Harvard Educational Review, XLIII, 1 (February, 1973); and D.M. Levine & M.J. Bene (eds.), The 'Inequality' Controversy Schooling and Distributive Justice, New York: Basic Books , 1975 . Special Issue: 'Equality and Education', Oxford Review of Education, I, 1 (1975); see also R.M. Hare, 'Opportunity for What? Some Remarks on Current Disputes about Equality in Education', III, 3 (1977), 207-16. B. Crittenden, Education 'and Social Ideals, Ontario: Longman Canada Limited, 1973, Ch. VI; also 'Equality and Education', in J.V. D'Cruz & P.J. Sheehan (eds.), The Renewal of Australian Schools: a Changing Perspective in Educational Planning, Melbourne: A.C .E.R., ·1978, pp.225-41.

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R.H. Ennis, 'Equality of Educational Opportunity', Educational Theory, XXVI, 1 (Winter, 1976), 3-18; reply by G. Harvey, XXVIII, 2 (Spring, 1978), 147-51. J. Raz, 'Principles of Equality', Mind, LXXXVII (July, 1978) , 321-42. N.C. Burbules & A.L. Sherman, 'Equal Educational Opportunity: Ideal or Ideology?', in J.R. Coombs (ed.), Philosophy of Education 1979, Proceedings of the Thirty-fifth Annual Meeting of the Philosophy of Education Society, Normal, Ill.: Philosophy of Education Society, 1979, pp.105-14; reply by T.F. Green, pp.115-20. Chapter 11: Intelligence L. Terman & M. Merrill, Measuring Intelligence, London: Harrap, 1937. A.E. Heim, The Appraisal of Intelligence, London: Methuen, 1954. P.E. Vernon, Intelligence and Attainment Tests, University of London Press, 1960; also Intelligence: Heredity and Environment, San Francisco: W.H. Freeman & Co., 1979. w. Mays, 'A Philosophical Critique of Intelligence Tests', Educational Theory, XVI, 4 (October, 1966), 318-32. S. Vandenberg, 'The Nature and Nurture of Intelligence', in D.C. Glass (ed.), Genetics, New York: Rockefeller U.P. & Russell Sage Foundation, 1968, pp.3-58; replies by I.I. Gottesman, pp.59-68; and D. Rosenthal, pp.69-78. R. Cancro (ed.), Intelligence: Genetic and Environmental Influences, New York: Grune & Stratton, 1971. H.J. Eysenck, Race, Intelligence & Education, London: Temple Smith, 1971 (published in the U.S. as The I.Q. Argwnent: Race, Intelligence & Education, New York: Library Press, 1971 ). K. Richard son & D. Spears ( eds. ) , Race, CUlture and Intelligence, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972. A.R. Jensen, Genetics and Education, New York: Harper & Row, 1972; also Educability and Group Differences, New York: Harper & Row, 1973; Educational Differences, London: Methuen, 1973. Jensen's major paper, 'How Much Can We Boost I.Q. and Scholastic Achievement?', reprinted in Genetics and Education, was the subject of replies in two issues of The Harvard Educational Review, XXXIX, 2 & 3 (Spring & Summer, 1969). H.J. Butcher &D.E. Lomax (eds.), Readings in Intelligence, London: Methuen, 1972. R. Herrnstein, I.Q. in the Meritocracy, Boston: Little Brown & Co., 1973. L. Kamin, The Science and Politics of I. Q. : Potomac, Md.: Erlbaum Associates, 1974. M. Martin, 'Equal Education, Native Intelligence and 284

Justice' , Philosophical Forum (Boston), VI, 1 (Fall, 1974), 29-39; and N. Daniels, 'I.Q., Intelligence and Educability', 56-69. F.L. Jones, 'Obsession Plus Pseudo-Science Equals Fraud: Sir Cyril Burt, Intelligence, and Social Mobility', Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology ,

U'larch, 1980) , 48-55.

XVI,

1

Chapter 12: Cur>ricu lwn Choice H. Taba, Cur>riculum Development, Theory and Practice , New York: Harcourt Brace & World, 1962. P.H. Phenix, Realms of Meaning, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964; for criticism, see C.E. Goss, 'A Critique of the Ethical Aspects of Phenix's Curriculum Theory', Educational Theory , XVII ( 1967) , 40-4-7. R.S. Peters, Ethics and Education, London: Allen & Unwin, 1966, Ch.V; for criticism seeK. Robinson, 'Worthwhile Activities and the Curriculum', British Journal of Educational Studies, XXII (1974), 34-55. H.S. Broudy, D.P. ~er &B.S. Crittenden, 'PhilosophY and the Curriculum', in B.S. Crittenden (ed.), Philosophy and Eduaation, Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 1967, pp.59-77. J .R. Martin ( ed.), Readings in the Philosophy of Education: A Study of Curriculum, Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1970; see further, Martin's paper 'Needed: A Paradigm for Liberal Education', in J .F. Soltis, Philosophy and Education, Eightieth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Chicago: NSSE, 1981, Part I, pp.31-59. M. Levi t ( ed.), Cur>riculum, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971 . D.C. Phillips, 'The Distinguishing Features of Forms of Knowledge', Educational Philosophy and Theory, III, 2 (October, 1971 ), 27-35. H. Sockett, 'Curriculum Aims and Objectives: Taking a Means to an End', Proceedings of the Philosophy of Education reply Society of Great Britain, VI, 1 (January, 1972); by M. Skilbeck, 62-72; also Sockett, Designing the Curriculum, London: Open Books, 1976. J .Holt, Freedom and Beyond, New York: E. P. Dutton, 1972, Ch.6. A. Truefitt & P. Newell, 'Abolishing the Curriculum and Learning Without Exams' , in P. Buckman ( ed. ) , Education Without Schools, London: ,Condor, 1973, pp.75-83. D.R. Olson, 'What is Worth Knowing and What Can be Taught?', School Review, LXXXII, 1 (November, 1973), 27-43. a J. P. White & K. Thompson, Curriculum Development : Dialogue, London: Pitman, 1975; for criticism of White 'Authenticity, Autonomy and" the see M. Bonnett, Compulsory Curriculum' , Cambridge Journal of Education, 285

VI, 3 (Michaelmas, 1976), 107-21; reply by White, 122-26. E.W. Eisner & E. Vallance (eds.), Conflicting Conceptions of Curriculum, Berkeley, Calif.: McCutchan, 1974. M.E. Downey & A.V. Kelly, Theory and Practice of Education: An Introduction, London: Harper & Row, 1975, Ch.6. W. Pinar, Curriculum Theorising, Berkeley, Calif.: McCutchan, 1975. R. Pring, Knowledge and Schooling, London: Open Books, 1976. D.I. Lloyd (ed.), Philosophy and the Teacher, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976, Chs. 6, 1. 'Cognitive Structures and Forms of Knowledge', in I.S. Steinberg (ed.), Philosophy of Education 19??, Proceedings of the Thirty-third Annual Meeting of the Philosophy of Education Society, Urbana: Ill.: Philosophy of Education Society, 1977, pp.203-14 (reply by 1. Waks, pp.215-21 ). C. Jencks, 'Forms of Knowledge & Knowledge of Forms', in Rationality, Education and the Social Organisation of Knowledge, London: Routledge &Kegan Paul, 1977. K. Harris, Education and Knowledge the Structured ~srepresentation of Reality, London: Routledge & Kegan

Paul, 1979. M. Matthews, Epistemology and Education, Harvester, 1981.

Sussex,

U.K.:

Chapter 13: Competition W.W. Willoughby, 'The Ethics of the Competitive Process', American Journal of Sociology, VI, 2 (September, 1900), 145-76. J. Harvey et al., Competition: a Study in Human Motive, London: Macmillan, 1917. F.C. Sharp, 'Some Problems of Fair Competition', International Journal- of Ethics, XXXI, 2 (January, 1921), 123-45. F.H. Knight, The Ethics of Competition, London: Allen & Unwin, 1935, see also C.E. Ayres 'The Ethics of Competition', International Journal of Ethics, XLVI, 3 (April, 1936) 364-70. M.A. May & L.W. Doob, Competition and Co-operation: A Report, Bulletin No. 25, New York: Social Science Research Council, 1937. Anonymous, 'Competition', Times Educational Supplement (27 July, 1951 ), 640; replies: 10 August, 640. C.A. Bucher, 'Must there always be a Winner?', Education Digest, XXI, 2 (October, 1955), 25-27. R. :cynn, 'The Value of Unhappiness', Times Educational Supplement (8 February, 1957), 154; replies: 15 February, 205; 22 February, 238; and rejoinder: 8 286

March, 311 . M. Mead (ed.), Co-operation and Competition among Primitive Peoples, enlarged edn., Boston: Beacon Press, 1961. c. Weinberg, 'The Price of Competition', TeachePs College RecoPd, LXVII, 2 (November, 1965), 106-14. C. Fink, 'Some Conceptual Difficulties in the Theory of Social Conflict', Journal of Conflict Resolution, XII, 4 (December, 1968), 412-60. G.B. Thompson, 'Effects of Co-operation and Competition on Pupil Learning', Educational ReseaPch, Y::Y, 1 (November, 1972), 28-36. L.R. Perry, Competition in Education, Montefiore Memorial Lecture, Froebel Education Institute, 16 May, 1972; also 'Competition and Co-operation', BPitish JouPnal of Educational Studies, XXIII, 2 (June, 1975), 127-34. W.E. Brownson, 'The Structure of Competition in the School and its Consequences', in M.J. Parsons (ed.), Philosophy of Education 19?4, Proceedings of the Thirtieth Annual Meeting of the Philosophy of Education Society, Edwardsville, Ill.: Philosophy of Education Society, 1974, pp.227-40. C. Bailey, 'Games, Winning and Education', CambPidge Journal of Education, V, 1 (Lent, 1975), 40-50; replies by D. Aspin, 51-61, K. Thompson, V, 3 (Michaelmas, 1975), 150-52, and F. Dunlop, 153-60. F. Dunlop, 'Competition in Education', CambPidge Journal of Education, VI, 3 (Michaelmas, 1976), 127-34; reply by M. Fielding, 134-38. Chapter 14:

Assessment and GPading

D.A.T. Gasking, Examinations and the Aims of Education, Melbourne U.P. 1945. B. Hoffman, The TyPanny of Testing, New York: Macmillan, 1962. J. Holt, How Children Fail, London: Pitman, 1964; also The UndePachieving School, New York: Pitman, 1969, pp.53-70; Whatdo IdoMonday?, New York: Dell, 1970, Ch.27; Instead of Education : Ways to Help people Do Things BetteP, New York: E.P. Dutton, 1976. National Union of Students (U.K.), Executive RepoPt on Examinations, submitted to November Conference, London: NUS, 1968. B.S. Bloom, 'Some Theoretical Issues Relating to Educational Evaluation', in R.W. Tyler (ed.), Educational Evaluation: New Roles, New Means, Sixty-eighth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Chicago: NSSE, 1969, pt, II, pp.26-50; R.L. Thorndike, s.v. 'Marks and Marking Systems~, in R.L. Ebel ( ed.), Encyclopedia of Educational ReseaPch 4 , New York: Macmillan, 1969, pp.759-66; also (ed.), 287

2 , Washington: American Council on Education, 1971. D. Mcintyre, 'Assessment and Teaching', in D. Rubinstein & C. Stoneman ( eds. ) , Education for Democraey, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970. K.R. Conklin, 'Educational Evaluation and Intuition' , Educational Forum, XXXIV, 3 (March, 1970), 323-32; also 'Due Process in Grading: Bias and Authority', School Review, LXXXI, 1 (November, 1972), 85-95. R. Cox, 'Traditional Examinations in a Changi~ Society', Universities Quarterly, XXVII, 2 (Spring 1973), 200-16. A. Flew, 'Teaching and Testing', in B. Crittenden (ed.), Philosophy of Education 19?3, Proceedings of the Twenty-ninth Annual Meeting of the Philosophy of Education Society, Edwardsville, Ill.: Philosophy of Education Society,- 1973, pp.201-12; replies by J. Soltis, 213-16; and L.J. Waks, 217-24. W. Gcy & P. Chambers, 'Public Examinations and Pupils Rights', Cambridge Journal of Educatim, III, 2 (Easter, 1973), 83-89; reply by C. Wringe, III, 3 (Michaelmas, 1973), 169-73; rejoinder, IV, 3 (Michaelmas, 1974), 47-50. Australian Union of Students, Examination Papers , Melbourne: Australian Union of Students, July 1974; also The Student's Work Situation: Melbourne: Assessment , Australian Union of Students, July, 1974. C.M.L. Miller &M. Parlett, Up to the Mark - a Study of the Examination Game, London: Society for Research into Higher Education, 1974. C.T. Husbands, 'Ideological Bias in the Marking of Examinations', Research in Education,XV (1976), 17-38. R. Montganery, A New Examination of Examinations, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978. C.A. Wringe, 'Teaching, Monitoring and Examining', Educational Philosophy and Theory, XII, 2 (October,

Educational Measurement

1980).

Chapter 15: Children and Rights H. lane, Talks to Parents and Teachers, London: Allen & Unwin, 1928. A.J. Kleinfeld, 'The Balance of Power Among Infants, their Parents and the State, I, II & III ' , Family Law Quarterly, IV, 3 (September, 1970), 319-50; IV, 4 (December, 1970), 409-43; and V, 1 (March, 1971 ), 63-107. F. Schrag,, 'The Right to Educate', School Review, LXXIX (May, 1971 ), 359-78; also 'Rights Over Children', Journal of Value Inquiry, VII, 2 (Summer, 1973), 96-105; 'The Child's Status in the Democratic State', Political Theory, III, 4 (November, 1975), 441-57 ~replies by

288

C. Cohen, 158-63, and E. Spitz, IV, 3 (August, 1976), 372-74); 'Justice and the FamiJy', Inquiry, XIX, (1976), 193-208; and 'From Childhood to Adulthood: Assigning Rights and Responsibilities', in K.A. Strike & K. Egan ( eds.), Ethics and Educational Policy, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978, pp.61-78. M. Vaughan (ed.), Rights of Children. Report of the First National Conference on Children's Rights, 1972, London: NCCL, 1972. J. Hall (ed.), Children's Rights, London: Panther/New York: Praeger, 1CJ72. Special Issue: 'Rights of Children: Human and Legal', Peabody Journal of Education, 1 (January, 1973), 87-141. A.E. i'/ilkerson ( ed.), The Rights of Children, Philadelphia: Temple U.P., 1973. B. Bandman, 'Do Children have any Natural Rights? A Look at Rights and Claims in Legal, Moral and Educational Discourse', in B. Crittenden (ed.), Philosophy of Education 19?3, Proceedings of the Twenty-ninth Annual Meeting of the Philosophy of Education Society, Edwardsville, Ill.: Philosophy of Education Society, 1973 ' pp. 234-46 . C. Sachs, 'Children's Rifpts', in J.W. Bridge et al., ( eds.), Fundamental Rights, London: Sweet & Maxwell, 1973, pp.31-42. V.L. Worsfold, 'A Philosophical Justification for Children's Rights', Harvard Educational Review, XLIV, 1 (February, 1974), 142-57; and idem, 'Justifying Students' Rights: John Rawls and Competing Conceptions', in J.R. Coombs (ed.), Philosophy of Education 19?9, Proceedings of the Thirty-fifth Annual Meeting of the Philosophy of Education Society, Normal, Ill.: Philosophy of Education Society, 19~&, p.323-33; reply by B. Bandman, pp.334-38. J. Halt, Escape from Childhood: the Needs and Rights of Children, New York: E.P. Dutton, 1974. H. Sockett, 'Parents' Rights', in D. Bridges & P. Scrimshaw (eds.), Values and Authority in Schools, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1975, pp.38-59· D.N. MacCormick, 'Children's Rights: A Test Case for Theories of Rights', Archiv filr Rechts- und Sozialphi losophie, LXII, 3 (1976), 305-16. 0. O'Neill & w. Ruddick (eds.), Having Children : Philosophical and Legal Reflections on Parenthood, New York: O.U.P., 1979. I.A. Snook, & C.J. lankshear, Education and Rights,Melbourne U.P., 1979. ' H. Cohen, Equal Rights for Children, Totowa, N.J.: Littlefield, Adams & Co., 1980. L.D.Ho~te, ~he Child & the State: A Normative Theory of Juven~le ~ghts, Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins U.P., 1980. • W. Aiken & H. LaFollette (eds.), Whose Child? Children's

289

and State Power, Totowa, Parental Authority, N.J.: Littlefield, Adams & Co., 1980. C.A. Wringe, Children's Rights: a philosophical study, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981. Rights,

Chapter 16: Education and Authority K.D. Benne, A Conception of Authority: An IntroduatopY Study, New York: Teachers' College, Columbia University, 1943; also 'Authority in Education' , Harvard Educational Review, XL, 3 (August, 1970), 385-410; for critiques, see M. Terris, 'On Authority and Education', in M.A. Raywid ( ed.), Philosophy of Eduaation 1972, Proceedings of the Twenty-eighth Annual Meeting of the Philosophy of Education Society, Edwardsville, Ill.: Philosophy of Education Society, 1972, 246-55; L.J. Hetenyi, 'On Authority: the Thoup~ts of Kenneth D. Benne', Eduaational Theory, XIII, 2 (Spring, 1973), 177-84. S. de Grazia, 'The Principle of Authority in its Relation to Freedom', Educational Forum, '!:V, 2 (January, 1951), 145-55; also 'Authority and Rationality', Philosophy, XXVII (April, 1952), 99-109; 'What Authority is Not', American Political Scienae Review, LIII, 2 (June, 1959), 321-31 • F. La T. Godfreys, 'The Idea of Authority', Hermathena, XCI (1958), 3-19. C.J. Friedrich (ed.), Nomos I: Authority, Cambriilge, Hass.: Harvard U.P., 1958. J. Day, 'Authority' Political Studies, XI (1963), 257-71. S.I. Benn, s.v. 'Authority' in P. Edwards (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, New York: Collier Macmillan, 1967, Vol. I, pp.215-18. H. Arendt, 'What is Authority?' in Between Past and Future Eight Exercises in Political Thought, New York: Viking Press, 1958, pp.91-141. R.P. Wolff, In Defence of Anarchism, New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1970; for replies, see M.D. Bayles, 'In Defense of Authority', Personalist, LII, 4 (Autumn, 1971 ), 755-59; L.H. Perkins, 'On Reconciling Autonomy and Authority', Ethias, LXXXII, 2 (January, 1972), 114-23; D. Sobers, 'Wolff's Logical Anarchism', ibid., 173-76; S. Bates, 'Authority and Autonomy', Journal of Philosophy, LXIX, 7 (6 April, 1972) 175-79; R.F. Ladenson, 'Wolff on Legitimate Authority', Philosophiaal Studies, XXIII (1972), 376-84; J.H. Reiman, In Defense of Political Philosophy: A Reply to Robert Paul Wolff 'In Defense of Anarchism', New York: Harper Torchbooks,

1972. D.R. Bell, 'Authority', in G.N.A. Vesey (ed.), The Proper Study, Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures, 1969-70, 290

London: r1acmillan, 1971' pp.190-203. J. Holt, Freedom and Beyond, New York: E.P. Dutton, 1972, Ch.5. B.S. Crittenden, Eduaation and Soaial Ideals, Ontario: Longman Canada Ltd., 1973, Ch.III. M.E. Downey & A.V. Kelly, Theory and Praatiae of Eduaation: An Introduation, London: Harper 8r Rovr, 1975, Ch. V. R. Pring, 'In Defence of Authority - or how to keep knowledge under control' in D. Bridges and P. Scrimshaw (eds.), Values and Authority in Sahools, London: Hodder & Stoup~ton, 1975, pp.20-37. M. Coady, 'Authority- A Natural Necessity?', in D. Cave (ed.), Problems in Eduaation: a philosophiaal approaah, Australia: Cassell, 1976, 155-68. D.N. Silk, 'Aspects of the Concept of Authority in Education' Eduaational Theory, XXVI, 3 (Summer, 1976), 271-78. R.B. Harris (ed.), Authority : a philosophiaal analysis, Ala.: University of Alabama Press, 1976. Chapter 17: Sahooling, Eduaation and Disaipline H. Lane, Talks to Parents and Teaahers, intro. A.A. David, London: Allen &Unwin, 1928, Part 2: 'Thoughts on the Self-Determination of Small People'. G.V. Sheviakov & F. Redl, Disaipline for Today's Children and Youth, rev. edn., Washington. D. C.: National Education Association, Department of Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1956. A.G. & E.H. Hughes, Eduaation: Some Fundamental Problems, London: Longmans, 1960, Ch.8. A.S. Neill, Summerhill (1960), Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968; cf. R. Hemmings, Fifty Years of Freedom: A Study of the Development of the Ideas of A.S. Neill, London: Allen & Unwin, 1972. W.J. Gnagey, Controlling Classroom ~sbehaviour, Washington, D.C.: National Education Association, Association of Classroom Teachers, 1965; also The Psyahology of Disaipline in the Classroom, New York: Macmillan, 1968. L. Stenhouse (ed.), Disaipline in Sahools: a symposium, Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1967. P.H. Hirst &R.S. Peters, The Logia of Eduaation, London: Routledge &Kegan Paul, 1970, pp.125-28. P.S. Wilson, Interest and Disaipline in Eduaation, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971, esp. Ch.3. J. Holt, Freedom and Beyond, New York: E.P. Dutton, 1972, Ch.7. G.C. Penta, 'Discipline: a Theoretical Perspective', Eduaational Theory, XXVII, 2 (Spring, 1977), 137-40; reply by M. Smith, XV, 2 (Spring, 1978), 154-55. 291

Chapter 18: Eduaation and Punishment E.L. Pincoffs, The RationaLe of LegaL Punishment, New York: Humanities Press, 1966. E.H. Madden, R. Handy & M. Farber (eds.), PhiwsophiaaL Perspeatives on Punishment, Springfield, Ill.: C.C. Thomas. 1968. H.L.A. Hart, Punishment and ResponsibiLity, London: O.U.P.,

1968.

H.B. Acton (ed.), The PhiLosophy of Punishment, London: Macmillan, 1969. J. Feinberg, Doing and Deserving, Princeton U.P., 1970. H. Morris (ed.), GuiLt and Shame, Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1971. G. Ezorsky (ed.), PhiLosophiaaL Perspeatives on Punishment, Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1972. J. Gerber & P. McAnany (eds.), Contemporary Punishment: Views , ExpLanations and Jus ti fiaations , South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 1972. P. Moore, 'Perspectives on Punishment', Proaeedings of the PhiLosophy of Eduaation Soaiety of Great Britain, VIII, 1 (January, 1974), 76-102; reply by P.S. Wilson,, 108-34. M. Goldinger ( ed.), Punishment and Hwnan Rights, Cambridge, Mass. : Schenkman, 1974. K. Baier, 'The Strengths and Limits of the Theory of Retributive Punishment', PhiLosophia Exahange, II, 3 (Summer, 1977), 37-53. M. Foucault, DisaipZine and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, New York: Pantheon, 1978. J .G. Murphy, Retribution, Justiae, and Therapy , Dordrecht: Reidel, 1979. Chapter 19: MoraL Eduaation E. Durkheim, MoraL Eduaation-: appLiaation of the

A Study in the theory and soaioLogy of eduaation (1925), trans.

E.K. Wilson & H. Schnurer, Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1961. J. Piaget, The MoraL Judgment of the Chitd, trans. M. Gebain, London: Routledge &Kegan Paul, 1932. M.L. Hoffmann, 'Moral Development' in P. Mussen (ed.), CarmiahaeL 's ManuaL of Chitd PsyahoLogy, New York: Wiley, 1970, Vol.II, pp.261-360. T.R. & N.F. Sizer (eds.), MoraL Eduaation: Five Leatures, Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard U. P. , 1970. D. Wright, The PsyahoLogy of MoraL Behaviour, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971. T. Mischel (ed.), Cognitive DeveLopment and EpistemoLogy, New York: Academic Press, 1971 . J. Wilson, PraatiaaL Methods of MoraL Eduaation , London: Heinemann, 1972; idem, The Assessment of MoraUty , 292

Slough:

NFER, 1973;

idem, A Teacher's Guide to Moral Geoffrey Chapman, 1973. B. Chazan & J.F. Soltis (eds.), Moral Educati6n, New York: Teachers College Press, 1973. G. Langford & n:J. O'Connor (eds.), New Essays in the Philosophy of Education, London: Routledge &Kegan Paul, 1973. Special Issue: 'Moral Education', Monist, LVIII, 4 (October, 1974). R.S. Peters, Psychol-ogy and Ethical Development, London: Allen &Unwin, 1974, Part II. P.H. Hirst, Moral Education in a Secular Society, London: University of London Press/National Children's Home, 1974. Special Issue: 'Moral Education', Phi Delta Kappan, LVI, 10 (June, 1975). M. Taylor ( ed.), Progress and Problems in Moral Education, Slough: NFER, 1975. J.E. McClellan, Phiwsophy of Education, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1976, Ch.5. A.J. Watt, Rational Moral Education, Melbourne University Press, 1976. B.S. Crittenden, Bearings in Moral Education, Hawthorn, Vie.: ACER, 1978. A. V. Kelly & M. Downey, Moral Education : Theory and Practice, London: Harper, 1978. D.B. Cochrane, C.M. Hamm & A.C. Kazepides (eds.), The Domain of Moral Education, New York: Paulist Press, 1979. C.M. Beck, 'The Reflective Approach to Values Education', in J.F. Soltis (ed.), Eightieth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Chicago: NSSE, 1981, pp.185-211. Education, London:

Chapter 20: Religious Education H. Loukes, New Ground in Christian Educati01, London: SCM, 1965. A.G. Wedderspoon (ed.), Religious Education 1944-1984, London: Allen &Unwin, 1966. C.D. Hardie, 'Religion and Education', Educational Theory, XVIII, 2 (July, 1968), 199-223.

The

Fourth R: RepoT't Education in Schools

of the Commission on Religious 1970 (Durham Report), London:

National Society/S.P.C.K.: 1970). D.Z. Phillips, 'Philosophy and Religious Education', British Journal- of Educational Studies, XVIII, 1 (February, 1970), 5-17, reply by P.H. Hirst, 2 (June, 1970), 213-15. R.J. Neuhaus, 'No More Bootleg Religion in the Classroom', in R.D. Heslep ( ed.), Philosophy of Education 1971, Proceedings of the Twenty-seventh Annual Meeting of the Philosophy of Education Society, Edwardsville, Ill.: 293

Philosophy of Education Society, 1971, pp.95-110; replies by P.H. Phenix, pp.111-15, and S.W. Itzkoff, pp.116-20. Schools Council, Religious Education in Secondary Schools (Working Paper, No. 36), London: Evans/Methuen Educational, 1971; also Religious Education in Primary Schools (Working Paper, No. 44), London: Evans/Methuen Educational, 1972. See commentary in D.G. Kibble, 'Religious Studies and the Quest for Truth', British Journal of Educational Studies, :XXIV, 2 (June, 1976), 144-54. M.H. Stannus,' Knowledge of God: the Paradox of Christian Education' , Educational Philosophy and Theory , IV, 1 (March, 1972), 29-46. W.D. Hudson, 'Is Religious Education Possible?' in G. Langford & D.J. O'Connor (eds.), New Essays in the Philosophy of Education, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973, pp.167-96. R. Barrow, 'Religion in Schools', Educational Philosophy & Theory, VI, 1 (March, 1974), 49-57. D.J. Vold, 'A Case for Religion in the Public Schools', Educational Theory, XXIV~ 1 (Winter, 1974), 99-109. N. Smart & D. Harden (eds.), New Movements in Religious Education, London: Temple Smith, 1975. N. Curry, 'Why Religion?' in D. Cave ( ed. ) , Probtems in Education: A Philosophical Approach, Victoria: Cassell Australia, 1976, Ch.11. R. Marples, 'Is Religious Education Possible?', Journal of Philosophy of Education, XII (1978), 81-91 ; reply by D. Attfield, 93-97. R. Holley, Religious Education and Religious Understanding: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religious Education, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978. D.C. Meakin, 'The Justification of Religious Education', British Journal of Religious Education, II, 2 (1979), 49-55. P. Gardner,, 'Religious Education: in defence of non-commitment', Journal of Philosophy of Education, XIV, 2 (November, 1980), 157-68. R. Jackson (ed.), World Religions and Developing Minds, London: John Murray, 1981.

294

INDEX OF AUTHORS

Abernethy, G.L., 282 Acton, H.B., 292 Aiken, W., 289 Althusser, L., 280 Andris, J.F., 272 Anthony, A.S., 273 Aquinas, T., 1, 264 Arendt, H. , 290 Aries, P., 208 Aristotle, 14, 21, 33, 122 Arnold, M., 150 Arnstine, D., 272 Aspin, D., 287 Atkinson, R.F., 131 Attfield, D., 294 Austin, J. , 219 Austin, J.L., 38-9 Ausubel, D.P., 229, 273, 274 Ayres, C.E., 286 Babeuf, F.-N.E., 130 Baier, K., 276, 292 Bailey, C., 281, 287 Bambrough, R., 246 Bandman, B., 271, 289 Bantock, G.H., 274 Barrow, R.St.C., 270, 277, 278, 280, 294 Bartley, III, W.W., 268 Bates, S., 290 Bay1es, M.D., 290 Beck, C.M., 271, 293 Bedau, H.A., 242, 283 Beery, R.C., 229 Bell, D.R., 290 Bene, M.J. 283

Benn, S.I., 123-4, 130, 232, 277, 290 Benne, K.D., 290 Benson, T.L., 67 Bentham, J. , 88 Bereiter, C., 279 Berger, P.L., 161 Berlin, I., 282 Binet, A. 132, 137-8, 143 Block, N.J., 137, 139, 140, 142, 143-4 Bloom, B.S., 146, 181, 191, 287 Bonnett, M., 70, 285 Boring, E.G., 133, 140 Bower, G.H., 272 Bowers, W., 194 Bowles, S., 144, 280 Broad, C.D., 9 Broudy, H.S., 269, 272, 285 Brown, R.R., 242 Brown, S.C., 273 Brown, S.I., 274 Browne, D.E., 130 Brownson, W.E., 287 Brubacher, J.S., 55 Bruner, J.S., 45 Bryson, L., 282 Buber, M. , 271 Bucher, C.A., 286 Bucl-9 x. 2 It is a useful elementary exercise in philosophical criticism to read some standard texts on education with the object of detecting the different kinds of statement which occur there. On the whole, the better the writing, the easier it will be to Jrecognize its different components. 104

What is an Educational Theory? reason need to be supported in quite different ways. Often indeed we find that the three kinds are mixed up together in the writings of a single man so that it is not easy to judge the value of what he is saying until we have distinguished the different logical components and evaluated them separately. First, there is often a metaphysical part to educational writings. This occurs most obviously in the writings of Plato and the medieval scholastics and, in modern times, in the educational theories of Christian writers. Statements of this kind are not believed, in the first place, just because they form part of an educational theory. They are accepted rather because they feature in a philosophy or a theology which is already believed on other grounds. But they occur in educational writings naturally enough because they are the sort of statements which seem to have an important bearing on education. Many of Plato's educational proposals, for example, are based on the beliefs that man is essentially a soul or spirit in a temporary association with a material body, that this soul was created before the body and will survive its dissolution and that the real object of education is 'improvement of the soul'. This belief in a radical distinction between soul and body is, of course, a metaphysical one. It has never been demonstrated by any recognized process of argument. Nor can we even be sure what sort of argument could establish it. Christianity took over from Platonism this belief in an immaterial and immortal soul in a temporary relation with a material and corruptible body. And it has added a more precise and circumstantial account than Plato's of the divine origin of souls and their destiny. Moreover, it has supplemented this with an explanation of the relation of man to God in terms of the doctrines of the incarnation, grace and salvation. Whether true or false, all of these doctrines, Platonic and Christian alike, are metaphysical in the sense in which we have understood this word. Nevertheless, they have had an enormous influence on the aims and methods of education. And it is easy to see why this has been so. If we hold that every human being is an immortal soul, created by God for an eternal destiny and placed here H

105

Philosophy of Education

on earth in a state of probation, this belief has an important effect on the aims and content of the educational system that we shall be prepared to support. 1 We have seen that the: main difficulty about claims of this kind is that there is no wellestablished way of confirming them. It is therefore impossible to say exactly what is being claimed or even to be sure that such statements have any cognitive meaning at all. Propositions of this kind do not always show their character on their faces. But they may usually be recognized because however much they may look like ordinary statements of fact, they are basically unlike them in at least one way: they cannot either be confirmed or refuted by evidence which can be collected, checked and assessed by established and publicly recognized methods. It is important that, whether or not we suppose that such statements are meaningful or provable, we should at least be able to recognize them. For it is hardly possible to understand them if we do not appreciate their logical status. The second type of statement embodied in educational theories consists of judgments of value. These are inevitable in 1 The following point is important but is put here in a footnote because it may be found difficult. It is not possible to deduce statements about the aims of a system of education or its curriculum from any purely philosophical statements. This follows from an obvious extension of Hume's principle which we discussed in Chapter 3, namely, that the evidence for any conclusion must contain statements of the same logical sort as the conclusion itself. There is a sense in which a practical policy for education can 'follow from' a psychological theory about human motivation, for example, or the learning process. But it does not follow from it in any logical sense. It is merely that if we know or think that we know something about the motives governing human conduct, it would be foolish not to take advantage of this knowledge in planning the educational system just as it would be foolish not to use our know ledge of hydrostatics in designing a system of plumbing. In a similar way, philosophical statements which are metaphysical can have practical consequences for education just because such statements purport to be factual as well as philosophical. The difficulty, as we have seen, is that these 'facts' are of a peculiarly inaccessible kind. This point is of considerable importance for the philosophy of education. I06

What is an Educational Theory? any system of education, though they are sometimes disguised so that the very proponents of an educational system may be imperfectly aware of the values that guide their practice. Part of the use of philosophical criticism of an educational theory is to dissect out and make plain its guiding values. Most of the catchwords and slogans of the educational reformer are fossilized value judgments: 'education according to nature', 'education for democracy', 'equality of opportunity', 'education for citizenship' and the rest. It is of the greatest importance that directives of this sort should not remain mere slogans. They should be explicitly formulated, related to practice and recognized for what they are. An undiagnosed value judgment is a source of intellectual muddle. Once we recognize it, we realize that it is not 'self evidently true' and beyond all criticism. For however important and inevitable our valuations are, we have seen that their justification is a very perplexing philosophical problem. If we realize this we shall tend not to be dogmatic or fanatical about them. The third component of educational theories is empirical, being capable of being supported by the evidence of observable fact. Empirical components of educational theories are, in general, of two different kinds. The first of these is relatively common in the writings of those theorists who lived before psychology became established as an experimental science. They consist of recommendations for educational practice. These recommendations may of course be made on theoretical grounds but they have been adopted rather because of their efficiency in giving results. The influence of educational reformers like Pestalozzi, Froebel and Montessori is due more to their precepts and their practical achievements than to their theoretical teachings. A new practical approach to teaching is more influential than a new theory about teaching. Ideally of course a new technique should be capable of being justified by theoretical considerations as it usually is in engineering or medicine, just as a new theory, if it is genuinely a theory, should result in practical advantages when it is applied in the classroom. But we do not find that the connexion between most 107

Philosophy of Education educational theories and their practice is as close as this. It is rather similar in this respect to the present state of psychotherapy where there are a number of different therapeutic techniques in use, each with its theoretical background. It is found that although the theories are incompatible with one another, the techniques as used by skilled practitioner:s all seem to produce sufficient results to justify their continued use. And this would be impossible if the techniques were in fact tied as closely to their supposed theoretical foundation as iH the case with physical or chemical theory and its applications. We must rather suppose that the theories of the psychiatrists are rationalizations of their practice rather than genuine reasons for them. The same seems to be true of much of the so-called theory underlying established educational practice. The fact that a well conducted school using the Dalton plan or Montessod or Froebel methods produces good results is, of itself, no justification whatever of the supposed theoretical background of these practices. If indeed a representative group of schools using, say, project methods of teaching consistently got b€~tter results than a comparable group of schools using other methods, that would be some evidence in favour of Dewey's educational theories which the project method was designed to apply. But no very convincing evidence of this sort seems to be available at present.1 The cumulative effect of new proposals for teaching techniques is of course considerable over long periods of time. The teaching practice and curriculum of a present-day primary school is very different from those of a similar school of sevt~nty years ago. And these differences are due to the ingenuity and hard work of many educational reformers. But the adoption of these different improvements in the art of teaching does not commit anyone to adopting the often elaborate 'theoretical' justifications of the new methods. The introduction of a new 1 For recent work of this kind, see the references cited by W. D. Wall in his lecture Teaching Methods: Psychological Studies of the Curriculum and of Classroom Teaching in University of London Institute of Education Studies in Education No. 7·

108

What is an Educational Theory? teaching method has often been more like the empirical insight

of a herbalist in the early stages of medicine. Practice comes first; but its theoretical justification has to wait for the scientific development that can explain its success. Thus educational theories which preceded the rise of a scientific psychology (when they were not metaphysical speculations or ethical judgments) were more or less acute guesses at explaining successful practice. Some of them were acute and systematic but mistaken like the psychology of Herbart. 1 Some were unsubstantiated conjectures, like Montessori's views on the training of the senses. Some, like Pestalozzi's doctrine of Anschauung, were unintelligible adaptations of metaphysical concepts. Many of such theorists indeed seem to have taken to heart the rule of method by which Rousseau attempted to explain the nature of man: 'Let us then begin by laying facts aside, as they do not affect the question.' It is not therefore surprising that the results were unsatisfactory. Usually however these abortive theories were just glosses on fruitful innovations in educational practice. It was the practice that mattered. But the development of a scientific psychology has put us in the position where we no longer have to rely on practice to suggest theory. It may, of course, still do so but it is experiment rather than practice which now suggests theory. The relationship between theory and practice has become a reciprocal one. Theory directs practice and practice corrects theory. Presentday knowledge of perception, learning, motivation, the nature of 'intelligence' and its distribution and development, the causes of educational backwardness, and many other matters of this kind enable us to amend educational practice in the expectation of improved results. We have, in other words, a body of established hypotheses that have been confirmed to a reliable degree. They enable us to predict the outcome of their application and to explain the processes that we are trying to control. They are, to that extent, genuine theories in the 1 For a good example of philosophical criticism of a standard 'educational theory', see C. D. Hardie's analysis of Herbart in

Truth and Fallacy in Educational Theory.

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Philosophy of Education standard scientific sense of the word. Even so, they do not approach the theories of the physical sciences in their explanatory power. For example, learning theory is one of the best developed fields of psychology. The processes of human and animal learning have been very thoroughly studied by experimental methods for over fifty years. The great mass of accumulated results of this work has greatly improved our understanding of how we learn but it has not yet been condensed into a single overall theory. There are several theories of learning all of which seem to be compatible with most of the known facts without being necessitated by them. No one of them fits the facts so perfectly as to exclude aU its rivals. What are still needed are crucial experiments which will enable the psychologists to decide between one theory and another. 1 Thus even the best examples of theories in the sciences of man are less closely tied to their supporting' facts than theories in the sciences of nature. We can summarize this discussion by saying that the word 'theory' as it is used in educational contexts is generally a courtesy title. It is justified only where we are applying wellestablished experimental findings in psychology or sociology to the practice of education. And even here we should be aware that the conjectural gap between our theories and the facts on which they rest is sufficiently wide to make our logical consciences uneasy. We can hope that the future development of the social sciences will narrow this gap and this hope gives an incentive for developing these sciences. 1 For an excellent account of the relation of contemporary learning theory to education, see R. W. Russell, How Children Learn, in University of London Institute of Education Studies in Education No. 7.

IIO

6 SOME QUESTIONS OF MORALS AND RELIGION I

THE connexions between philosophy and education that I have discussed so far have given the philosopher the role of a critic rather than that of a discoverer. This will seem unsatisfactory to those who believe that philosophy can give some positive guidance to educational theorists and can therefore have more than the modest regulative task that I have tried to describe. I have explained in Chapters 2 and 3 some of the reasons for supposing that the task of philosophy in relation to education is as I have stated it. Nevertheless this question is a fundamental one and needs more than the merely incidental treatment it has received up to now. I shall therefore discuss in this final chapter some of the philosophical issues basic to any educational theory. It is worth pointing out, before we go on to discuss the claims of philosophy to be able to make a positive contribution to educational theory, that the outcome of philosophizing conceived as a process of analysis and criticism is not merely negative and destructive. The critical philosopher is not to be thought of as a sort of intellectual demolition contractor who sweeps away the constructive work of others and leaves nothing in its place. He is rather, in one of his roles at least, a sort of inspector or assayer who rejects those theories and Ill

Philosophy of Education arguments which can be shown to be faulty by the logical touchstones or gauges which are his stock in trade. Nor is this work of assessment the whole of critical philosophy. A large and important part of it consists in trying to provide the ana~ysis of concepts like 'cause', 'self', 'mind', 'voluntary action', 'obligation', 'good', 'society' and so on, concepts which play a central part in our scientific, moral and political thinking. It is hoped that the outcome of this clarificatory activity will be to reveal logical tangles in these concepts and in their relations to their neighbours. It will then often be possible to remove these sources of confusion by remodelling the concepts. Finally, the critical philosopher cannot claim to be innocent of theorymaking. In his criticism of the philosophical theories of his contemporaries and predecessors he is led often enough to a reformulation of these theories rather than to a total rejection of them. Sometimes indeed he constructs theories of his own, though such theories tend to be interpretations of experience in terms of experience and not like the theories of the metaphysical philosophers in terms of entities transcending experience. Philosophical theory construction when it is undertaken by critical philosophers is in the nature of a reshuffling of the items of experience into a comprehensible pattem like the solution of a jigsaw puzzle. This is very unlike traditional metaphysics which often invoked unknown and unknowable entities or arbitrary 'principles' to account for our puzzlement about the everyday world. Nevertheless, though the work of tho8e philosophers who are called 'critical empiricists' or 'logical analysts' is in a sense constructive as well as critical, it does not give us any new knowledge as does the work of the scientist. Rather it giv~~s us a new point of view on what we already know and so may properly be said to provide understanding rather than knowledge. By reformulating and reinterpreting the common content of human experience it tries to provide the same sort of unifying overall views of experience as traditional metaphysical systems purported to supply. But since it tries to do this without going beyond experience, it does not pretend to 112

Some Questions of Morals and Religion add to our knowledge of the world. There are thus three main parts to the work of the critical or analytic philosopher. He can act in a purely critical capacity in correcting or refuting the theories of other philosophers. He can trace the logical interconnexions of certain crucial concepts which experience has shown to be the centres of philosophical disputes and puzzles. In doing so he can hope to trace some of these puzzles to their sources. Finally he can construct philosophical theories to systematize and elucidate human experience provided that in doing so he does not indulge in those transcendental extravagances of metaphysics that have been shown by the history of philosophy to be ineffective.1 The outcome of philosophizing according to this programme is twofold. It has the negative effect of an intellectual antiseptic, inhibiting the growth of concepts and theories that lie beyond the common check of logic and experience. It can have also the positive result of clarifying and refocusing our thinking on those questions that we find puzzling and for which the growth of natural knowledge gives no final solutions. Such are the questions of morality, politics, religion and education. But these negative virtues of clarity, order and intellectual antisepsis do not impress everyone. The word 'philosophy' promises much more than this to many people. And how can we be sure that this promise cannot be honoured? The best reason for being sure about this has been given more than once in the previous chapters. It is simply that some of the ablest men have done their best during twenty-five centuries to work out metaphysical views of the universe and man's place in it which would provide a positive answer to these disputed questions of religion and morality and have all failed. 2 By saying that Examples of constructive philosophical thinking by contemporary philosophers of very different outlooks can be seen in Reichenbach's Experience and Prediction, Ryle's Concept of Mind, Price's Thinking and Experience, Goodman's Structure of Appearance or Komer's Conceptual Thinking. 1 Some metaphysicians have been driven to desperate expedients in order to explain that their theories about religion and morality have not found general acceptance. For example, the 1

II3

Philosophy of Education they have failed, I mean that none of their proposed solutions of these problems has stood up to criticism and been found acceptable to the majority of experts in the same field. We have the same reason for rejecting metaphysics as we have for rejecting witchcraft, astrology or phrenology: it cannot do what it claims to do. There is of course the bare possibility that the true metaphysical system has not yet been discovered just as it is barely possible that the right method of casting effective spells or veridical horoscopes has not yet been found. But this bare possibility need not raise more than an academic doubt. For we have positive grounds in the recent development of philosophy for rejecting the grandiose claims of metaphysics just as we have positive grounds in the development of natural science for judging the truth of witchcraft or astrology to be fantastically improbable. I have done no more in previous chapters than sketch in very rough outline, what these grounds are. This rough outline was given in the discussion on the use of reason and the nature of genuine questions in Chapter 2. It would need a book on the theory of knowledge to justify this point of view in detai1. 1 We can however look briefly at some particular ways in which the claim of metaphysics are sometimes stated in order to have some idea at least why the claim should be accepted with reserve. I shall therefore examine first some metaphysical questions that seem at first sight to have a close bearing on the basic problems of education. I shall then ~con­ sider what relevance, if any, religion has to educational thimply the devaluing of context that it implied but the very denial that the context is pertinent.[7J She distinguishes two outstanding pr-oblems related to this str-ategy originally indicated, she says, by John Dewey. One, in Dewey's own words is that: When the context is suppr-essed elements become absolute, for they have no limiting conditions. Results of inquiry valid within specifiable limits of context ar-e ipso facto converted into sweeping metaphysical doctr-ine. [8J

The other, in Raywid's own words this time, is that conceptual analysis ser-ves up a kind of at.omism in the by denying empir-ical connection establishment of a concept'.[9J

2

The Philosophical Paradigm The intention of the cotinter-revolutionaries was to reverse all these three trends; mainly to return the debate to the 'human circumstances' from which the analytic philosophers had so violently 'ripped' it in their anxious search for a 'scientific' detachment from the world that would enable them to pronounce truths about it that are valueneutral.[l(IJ The 'decontextualization of the spoken and written word' referred to by Raywid was the means by which they strove to achieve it. The counterrevolutionaries proposed to recontextualize the language of philosophy in the real world and to keep philosophy of education open to resolution into different paradigms according to the intentions and requirements of the philosopher. This latter pluralism was recently expressed by Robert Dearden who declared: I do not myself think that philosophy of education stands in need of a single paradigm. Its patterns and strategies of argument should be tai 1 ored to the subject matter under discussion, which is normally certain general concepts, principles, positions or practices. [ 11]

With the recontextualizing of philosophical debate, the context is what is pertinent. For a recontextualized philosophy it is within a particular spatia-temporal, or historical, situation that we define our concepts and choose the issues we want to discuss; it is by referring to and being related continuously to the context of their employment that concepts avoid 'atomism' or taking on a quasi-metaphysical status. Analytic philosophy of education was from the beginning the chosen paradigm of liberal thought, and immediately became its domain. It held out to the liberal philosopher that promise of 'objectivity' ,of 'value-neutrality' ,that has always been the dream and ideal of liberal scholarship. And it was the discreditment of the notion of 'scientific objectivity' in philosophy of science, with the advance of the 'theory-ladenness thesis', that opened analytic: philosophy itself to criticism from different quarters. Since the 'theory-ladenness thesis' denies the possibility of 'detachment·, of adopting an a-theoretic standpoint with regards to 3

The Philosophical

Pa~adigm

the phenomena being investigated. If it is true, then there is no way of avoiding ideology; science is 'ideology'. The whole base of analytic philosophy therefore crumbles with this thesis, and the objections that were aimed against it as a result were not merely epistemological but political also, as Marxist philosophers have cashed in quickly by accusing thei~ liberal counterparts of using the analytic paradigm to hide their real value commitments. Nor is this criticism lost on the new post-analytic wave of philosophers. Brenda Cohen, in fact, reflect.s the sentiments of many when she urges her fellow 1 iber-al phi 1 osophers of education to abandon 'the unattainable idea of neutrality in the direction of more conscious commitment to valL1es and ideals', thereby depriving Mar>dsts of a facile political advantage.C12l From the background of a recontex tual i zed view of education emer·ges an important consequence for the way in which we come to define the concept itself. Thus, within this paradigm, the appropriate question to ask is not the generic one, 'What is education?', but the contextual i zed one; 'What OLight education to mean given conditions X?', if what is required 'is a nor111ative or philosophical statement, What does education actually mean in conditions X ?', if what is reqLiired is a descriptive, or sociological statement. This is a vital point I am making, as such it merits further elaboration and emphasis, for the form that any educational programme takes is determined lar·gely by the way we define education itself" initially. For the manner of the question will indicate the form of response required and, further, what directions the inquiry that will answer it will take and how that answer will be justified. From this point of view philosophers· of education have been right in insisting all along that the question of what we mean by education has logical priority over other subsidiary questions, though they have not always been in accord with this suggestion about how it can be answered. The· context with and within which philosophy of education will work, the 'cc;~ve', is the world of educational practice. This could mean that a recontextualized philosophy of education r·everts tt1 the Deweyi an thesis that education must be for some particular kind of society, which is itself the context for educational activity. Since the openness

The Philosophical Paradigm to differ·ent paradigms it implies amounts to the concessi on that there are different ways into the 'cave' and different ways of describing it. Liberal philosopher-s of ~;~ducation in general, however, not simply the early analytic ones, have tended to assume that education occurs in schools and is the business of teachers, and have granted education no other context. And this is true also of orthodox Marxist philosophers of education, like Matthews and Harr·is for e~:ample,[13J who are mainly concerned with a cr·itical analysis from their own ideological viewpoint of the practice of schc1oling in liberal--demt1r;rac:ies, thfa objections they raise are often presented as negative evaluations against 'education'. To the e~:t.ent that Harris, for instance, whose book illustrates this point perfectly, writes of the need to oppose 'education' with 'anti--education' in these societies. In short Marxist philosophers tend to assume, in their criticism of liberal philosophy of education, the same equivalence of educ:at ion with schooling as do liberal philosophers. What they tend to object to, besides the ideology that guides the liberal theory of schooling and that is supportive of the general political order which they evidently oppose, is the disguised function of analytic philosophy itself as 'supportive rhetoric' for that ideology and order, and the status analytic philosophers claim for their conclusions, which they project as the definition of education. A standard example of the Man:ist argument is presented by Anthony Skillen, where he makes the point in the following manner: Conceptual deference is not of course peculiar to politics, higher entities abound in all areas of thought: theology has 'God', psycholorJy has 'self' and sociology has 'society' and philosophy of education treats the state school as the one 1 ocus of education. Like the state and unlike God and the immortal soul, the school is real enough. What is mythical is its presentation as, essentially and ypec:ifically, that-which-educates. It becomes difficult, then, for a student even to entertain the proposition that such institutions, far from solving the problem of freedom and reason in society, are themselves an important part of political and educational pr·oblems. If, as Peter·s says, it is only in a stretched sense that a visit to a brothel can be said to be an educa5

The Philosophical Paradigm tion' it is certainly only in a cra.mped sense that an education is gained from the schools so dutifully rationalized in contemporary 'philosophy of education'. [14]

The sensitivity of post-analytic liberal philosophers of education to this and other criticism of the same kind has provoked some sharp reactions not merely to the analytic programme in general, as was stated earlier, but also to the employment of conceptual analysis itself as a tool of definition. Few however can be described as sharper, in this respect, than John White's: Let me stipulate that education is simply upbringing •••• Objectors may want to pick a bone over the term 'upbringing·, some arguing that it is broader in application than education, others, bearing such things as adult education in mind, that it is narrower. But I have 1 ost whatever passion I may have had in the past for conceptual joustings of this kind. At an opposite pole from those who cannot stay to examine their implicit beliefs about aims in their haste to worry away at their concepts, I am anxious - some might say too anxious - to leave concept analysis behind me and proceed to my main business as soon as possible.[15J White is, of course, only interested in that aspect of 'upbringing' that concerns schooling for, from his point of view, it is only that that counts for education. And since this standard assumption within philosophy of edu~ation that education and schooling refer to one and the same thing is a. crucial one as far as we are concerned, much more wi 11 need to be said about it in a further chapter where we wi 11 also need to return to this statement and others about lifelong education that White makes in his book.[16J There are some comments however that need to be made immediately about his attitude toward his definition of. education as 'upbringing' because this is relevant to the present chapter. Thus one feels sympathetic with his feelings about 'concept analysis', which are substantially those of all the postanalytic philosophers, but his polar reaction is an unjustified one; mainly for the reasons that he himself anticipates in the passage, namely that 6

The Philosophical Paradigm others with different conceptions of education to his own, such as the one that is the subject of this book, will want to contest his definition. Nor is his excuse for it acceptable, for it is not clear that a defence of his definition need involve him in 'conceptual joustings·, unless his opponents are analytic philosophers, and even then, he need not consent to fight them on their own ground. In cavalier manner he says, by way of explaining his choice of definition, that it is enough for him that . 'upbringing' is how parents, teachers and citizens look at education since it is the upbringing of their young that interests them most. And there can, of course, be no objection to this; there is no doubt that he has the right to set his own programme. If it is the upbringing of children that he is mainly interested in, then this is what he should write about, and it is only right that, if he does, he should address himself to the interested parties. But he has also written a philosophical book, and as such he is also inevitably addressing himself to philosophers besides the people he mentions. This being the case he cannot, therefore, ignore whatever predictable criticism he may anticipate from this quarter and decline to defend his view against it. One can go further and say that his attitude towards definition is not only unacceptable to philosophers, it cannot be of much help to the people he mentions either. This is because they will also be addressed by other philosophers and theorists besides himself with al tern at i ve proposals, and for those of them who are ref 1 ect i ve (if th.ey are not, they are not going to be interested in educational theory or in his book anyhow) his unsupported stipulation that education means 'up~ringing' will ~t help them much to make up their minds. Besides, the way people think about something cannot be the determinate criterion for 'adopting it as a definition of what a thing really is, everi less of what it ought to be. The perceptions of people with regards to education are, more often than not, as badly based and informed as they are freq1..1ently dogmatic. One, again, sympathizes with what may be White's underlying motive of bringing theory and practice together by making the former more accessjble to a wide range of people. But such an exercise does not necessarily mean making theory supportive of practice; theorists may want to polemicize with those in practice or with parents and other citizens concerned with it. White would answer this last point by pointing to 7

The Philosophical Paradigm his statement that he himself agrees that education is about upbringing. If this is the case, however, his agreement must surely rest on grounds other than unreflective conformity with the current opinion of these people. It is these grounds that are interesting to his fellow philosophers who will want to assess them and his defence of them in competition with their own. Surely this is what the philosophical 'game' is about, and surely this is what all the interested parties parents, teachers and other citizens wi 11 want to hear; parti cul arl y those other citizens who are policy-makers of some description. Taking into account the general philosophical paradigm with which we shall work in the coming pages, a paradigm which takes full account of the principles of recontextualization and is faithful to the epistemology to be described in the coming section, the general matrix within which the answer to the question of meaning should be framed takes something like the following form: education is a response of kind X to a set of conditions which will include real or ideal (according to whether the intentions of the definition are descriptive or normative) conceptions Y about what constitutes, in general, a betterment of the quality of human life within a context Z which is historical. Philosophical definitions of education, therefore, presuppose a justification of Y and a description of Z before they can be deemed satisfactory. PRAGMATISM AND PHILOSOPHICAL HERMENEUTICS Recontextualizing philosophical language in the world, epistemologically achieves its most complete form in the pragmatism of James and Dewey. Rorty describes the programme of pragmatism as follows: My first characterization of pragmatism is that it is simply anti-essentialism applied to notions 1 i ke ·truth' , ·knowledge' , · 1 anguage' , 'morality', and similar objects of philosophical theorizing •••• Those who want truth that const i t.ut.e ct.1l tur·e, n:o.ther than being part of that culture itself. Contrary to this, a recontextualized hermeneutirral philosophy departs from the rejection of this central 'foundationalist' supposi t: ion si nee it does not shar-e the 1 at ter · s confidence that philosophy can be so distanced frwn the rest of culture in order to take up this metacritical role. 9

The Philosophical Paradigm Rorty points out that the 'foundationalist' project was inherent already in Descartes and Locke, and that it reached its completion with Kant. But the notion that underlies it, of truths that are certain because of their causes rather than because of the argument brought for them is of more ancient stock. Rorty describes it as the fruit of what he calls the 'Platonic principle'. Within this principle, knowledge is modelled on perception, since it treats 'knowledge of' as grounding 'knowledge that'. Modern philosophers, Rorty argues, have not only inherited the Platonic metaphors, they have, moreover, failed to recognise their nature as optional and have instead made them deTinatory of 'philosophical thinking' • In doing so they have f ai 1 ed to understand the essential historicality of these metaphors. The exceptions, such as Dewey, Heidegger and Wittgenstein have differed precisely in the possession of this awareness and in their determination to express themselves within a historical perspective. The three, having identified the provenience of foundati onal ism, were able to return tranqui 11 y to where the Sophists were before Plato brought his 'principle' to bear on philosophy, Rorty says, by looking for 'an airtight case rather than an unshakable foundation'.[19J Hermeneutics, Rorty points out, in restoring philosophy to culture, takes the form of an epistemological holism involving all the diverse sources of knowledge and forms of interpretation familiar to mankind even the most marginal, idiosyncratic and esoteric. It sees all these different sources and forms as constituting an ongoing conversation contextualized in social practice, which lies open to history and is also the outcome of historical interpretation. The critical premise of the hermeneutical outlook, which subsumes the pragmatic, is that we understand knowledge when we understand the social justification of belief, and thus have no need to view it as accuracy of representation; knowledge is something negotiated in social practice rather than an attempt to 'mirror nature'. If we view it in this way we are unlikely to envisage the need for a metapractice which will be the critique of all possible forms of social practice. It is evident that the hermeneutic view of knowledge also challenges the foundationalist conception of justification. This no longer remains a matter of a special relation of correspondence between ideas or 10

The Philosophical Par-adigm words and objects, but a matter- of acceptable social practice. A good deal is condensed into this account, but, in general, at the bottom of the hermeneuti c culture Rorty sees the rejection of what he describes, using Cai rd 's metaphor, as a ·mirror of nature' model of epistemology and scientific inquiry, one which rests upon our supposed ability to state the 'facts' as they are, unmedi ated by anything, by normative or mataphysical incursions.[20J Within the 'mirror of nature' model the presupposition is that it is possible to demarcate the 'scientific' from the 'nonscientific' in the strictest terms and to set up special canons for the purpose. These canons are supposed t"o constitute the a priori conditions of scientific inquiry and are themselves taken to be as timeless as the objects they pursue; the ·facts' that are the constituents of experience. The philosopher who adheres to this model sees himself, supposedly like the scientist, as being in systematic pursuit of the truth, the definition of which requires the rejection of 'irrelevant' data or material. The hermeneutic approach to philosophy, on the other hand, rejects the very model of science with which the 'foundational ist' works. It goes even further than that, it starts by rejecting the basic notion that the physical sciences constitute some superior paradigm or form of theorizing which sets the standard for other fields of inquiry, continues by rejecting the idea that these can arrive at the same 'certainties' by adopting a positivistic approach to their subject matter and ends by rejecting the view of the i ndi vi dual researcher as one engaged in a monological relationship with a 'fact' or its equivalent within his chosen field of discourse. [21J In its place it recognizes the Kuhnian notion of science which has redirected the focus from the internal development of the cumulative growth of knowledge towards the socio-historical embeddedness of science and the occurance of gestalt-switches which underlie major redirections in the conceptualization and investigation of the object of science. New conceptual frames form different 1 anguage games whi eh allow not only the discovery of new facts but also the r-ei nterpr-etat ion of previously est ab 1 i shed ones. New theories do not 'speak the same 1 anguage' as pr-evious ones and contain different standards 11

The Philosophical Paradigm of rationality. The normative function of paradigms precludes the possibility of judging their superiority from the outside since that would only constitute the unwarrented application of external standards originating in a different language game.[22J The contrast between the pragmatic-hermeneutic conception of philosophy and the programme outlined for analytic philosophy of education by Scheffler is evident enough not to require much elaboration; the latter has all the qualities of the 'foundationali st' project, with its preoccupation with secondorder questions its emphasis on rigour and objectivity, its methodology of 'detachment', its conservative conception of educational theory as essentially a debate about timeless aims, values and qualities. RELATIVISM Liberal philosophers of education who have moved away from analytic philosophy have, in general, found it difficult ~o accept the 'relativistic:' consequences of hermeneutic philosophy. For relativism must be the logical outcome of a viewpoint that rejects the possibility of an objective commensuration between different programmes, between different knowledge-claims, which rejects the traditional facts-value distinction, and so on, and relativism is ~n uncongenial frame of reference for phil~sophers raised in the empirical/analytic tradition. Rorty foresees the charge of relativism and, indeed, points out that it has frequently been levelled against Heidegger, Wittgenstein and Dewey. Holistic theories appear to philosophers of the empirical/analytic tradition to threaten the whole basis of rational discourse, they seem to license everyone to construct his own little hole - his own little paradigm, his bwn little practice, his own little language-game and then crawl into it.E23J Thus phi 1 osophers have never been comfortable with rel ati vi sm, because it appears to many of them to encourage skepticism and anarchy. Another popular argument is that it must be wrong because it is counter-intuitive. Both forms of objection are brought against it, for instance, by Roger Trigg E24J. Both are standard complaints, although there are 12

The Philosophical Paradigm others.[24J Trigg can be answered, as far as these objections are concerned at least, with the observation that he tends to concentrate his arguments on reasons why relativism must be impossible or unacceptable rather than prove that it i $ so by providing a coherent account of a foundationalist theory of the world. In fact, none of these reasons sticks. A perfectly straightforward and facile reply to the charge that relativism is counter-intuitive, can be made by referring to the relativist argument that what appears to be counter-intuitive can be explained historically, and ought so to be e>:plained. While the charge that, in the moral sphere, it leads to permissiveness or anarchy can be answered with the argument which Rorty makes, drawing on Sartre, that the acceptance of rel at i vi sm implies an acceptance of moral responsibility, while the search for 'objective' moral and other values implies a preparedness to surrender that responsibility and hence a reluctance to exercise one's choice.[25J There are certain arguments against relativism that are harder to shake off. For instance there is the equally, perhaps the most popular charge, levelled against it by most of its opponents, including Trigg, that relativism inv6lves a paradox. Relativism's own claim that the truth is relative, it is claimed, is not itself taken to be a relative truth; thus the theory, ipso facto, contradicts itself, since it appears to be asserting what it denies, namely that there can be any absolute truths, by dec 1 ar i ng that there is at 1 east one truth that is absolute, which is that there c~n be no absolute truths. We will return to this 'paradox shortly. Before doing so we need to take up a distinction Trigg makes in the earlier part of his between 'relativism' and 'subjectivism' to book make clearer a point about hermeneutic philosophy. Trigg points out that, although they are alike in what they deny, namely the concepti on of something being the case apart from either a community or an individual thinking that it is, the two approaches nevertheless differ in that whereas the subjectivist believes that the truth is in the mind of the thinker, the relativist believes that it arises from collective agreement, as it is embodied in some culThe hermeneutic understanding, ascribes a ture. different epistemic role to the subjective, in the 13

The Philosophical Paradigm way implied by the combined realities of the 'double hermeneutic", and of the 'hermeneutic circle', while holding that ot.lr knowledge criter·ia have a social or i g i n . [ 26 J With this important point made, we can return to our 'paradox·. One reply to it is made by F.C. White who points out that: lf its argument convinces anyone, it will convince only the already CI:Jmmitt.ed nonrelativist. For only the latter· is likely to accept that a claim intended to be t.miversal in its application cannot be relative in its truth.[27J Also, as Jonathan Lear points out, there need be no reason why relativism should be held in such 'vulgar form' as that described.[28J He describes, for instance, a ·more sophisticated, and coherent form of relativism·, such as is to be found in Bernard Williams" book on Horal Luck. There is no need to enter here into any prolonged discussion of the different forms r·elativism can take. The points being made are: that relativism can be interpreted variously, and that even in the form assumed by those who detect a 'paradox of relativism·, the supposed 'paradox· is not an e·ffecti ve argument : i st.

29

The Philosophical Paradigm Our approach then, being a valid one, the programme it indicates is clear: we have to work out a coherent lifelong edLication programme, which is internally consistent according to the description of inter-nal consistency described in this chapter (that ther-e are the proper rel at i onshi ps between the different components of the programme)· and according to the formal rules of touchstone,and empirically relevant because it responds adequately to the pressures and demands of historical context. The next chapter which, as we have said, describes the current lifelong education programme, will establish whether such coher·enc:e already in fact e>: i st s, by looking specifically at the question of internal consistency. Evidently, the answer- is pr··esupposed already, since ther-e would be no justification for writing this book if it did, so we shall really be searching for the causes of non--coher-ence r-ather is already establishing whether coherence than ther-e. NOTES AND REFERENCES For example: Dearden, R.F. 'Philosophy of 1. Education, 1952-82', British ,7ournal of Educat-ional >:x>:, No. 1, Feb. 1982; Wilson, J. St-udies, Vol. 'Philosophy and Education: retrospect and prospect·, 6, No. 1, 198121; of £ducat- ion ,Vol. Oxford Review Wilson, J. 'The Future of Philosophy in Education', British ,.Journal of Educat-ional Studies-, Vol. >oo:i, No. 1, Febr·uary 1983; Gilroy, D.P. 'The Revolutions in English Philosophy and Philosophy of Education', Educational Analysis, Vol. 4, No, 1, 1982. The e>:pression is R.S. Peters' , London, Allen and Unwin> Thus, feu·- instance, fn:~m the philosophical ,), since its inception, viewpoint, Carr ar-gues that 'conceptual analysis' has been criticised so severely that its claim to define the nature and scope of philosophy are (with the r•otable e>:ce?ption of the philosophy of education) no longer tc.,ken seriously'. :pressed puzzlement with the very concept of lifelong education on this account.[22J For, because of the manner of its construction, he argues, the meaning of the term cannot be sorted out by conceptual analysis; he therefore concludes that there is really no concept of lifelong education at all. Or, more accurately, he concedes (for this is not really a serious claim to make in view of the fact that people do use the term to mean something), it does exist, but only if one is prepared to read it into the policy proposals that, in actual fact appear under the name 'lifelong education·. And this, for Lawson, is not satisfactory, and he goes on to show why; the policy proposals themselves, he says, are handicapped by the absence of 'those finer conceptual distinctions' that alone prevent confusion. And confusion, he says, with regard to the 1 i fel ong education proposals, there certainly is; one clear proof of it is the inclusion of informal learning as part of its meaning of education. For this inclusion means that the programme it gives rise to 'fail (s) to distinguish between the totality of formative influences which determine our individuality and those influences whi eh are intentionally chosen to form or influence us in desired and desirable ways'.[23J Enough was said in Chapter 1 about the c 1 aims of analytic philosophy and the worth of the 'finer conceptual distinctions· recommended by Lawson, and it is not proposed to go over the same ground again here. The only point that requires recall because it appears relevant to this cr-iticism, is that which

47

Lifelong Education established an intimate connection between analytic philosophy of education and liberal thought - the reader will remember the c:r·iticism that the former does no more than rationalize the latter under the guise of neutrality. So what 'conceptual distinctions' arrive at in this case is no more than the rationalization of liberal educational philosophy. The connection between liberal philosophy of education and both the idea of education for 1 ife and the movement's lifelong education programme are the subject of a complete chapter later in the book, whi eh wi 11 consider, among other things, the question whether a liberal lifelong education programme is theoretically possible in the sense that it would describe the main principles of the current 1 i beral programme with a. changed temporal dimension and the modifications required to accornodate it. But it is evident that such a pro-· gramme would be a. substantially different one from the movement's. This 1 ast point needs to be made because what Lawson is in fact doing, though evidently not consciously, is to criticize the movement's programme for this fact, for not being a liberal programme. Of course he does not say this, nor believe it, since like other analytic philosophers he evidently thinks that conceptual analysis wi 11 establish the truth about the meaning of education, not merely the beliefs of certain phi 1 osophers and others. But this is not a position we need accept, just as we have not accepted the philosophical programme from which it derives.

INFORMAL

EDUCATION

Even apart from Lawson's criticism, however, the idea of including informal learning within one's definition of education is evidently a controversial one. It is therefore important to consider just what it means and what the criticism of it is about. In general informal learning is distinguished from other kinds of learning by the fact that it is nonintentional (a more precise distinction is rendered below). The usual tendency is therefore to distinguish it from education which is commonly taken to refer to intentional learning activities. The standard objection to the proposal to include non-intentional learning within its definition is that the move renders the term education meaningless. This is, in fact, one criticism often made against Dewey

48

Lifelong Education by his opponents who accuse him ther-eby of having made education indistinguishable fr-om life. This is because the meaning of a ter-m, they ar-gue, depends as much on what it excludes as on what it includes. If it excludes nothing then it includes ever-ything and consequently denotes nothing since it is left with no d i sti net conceptual space of its own. A definition of education that includes for-mal, nonfor-mal and informal learning pr-ocesses includes ever·ything and excludes nothing. So, according to the ar·gt.lment, it means nothing, or- so its cr-itics would c:ontend.[25J This criticism of Dewey is par-ticularly popularwith analytic: philosopher-s of education, but it is also shared by many others who are taken with this argument and have made education stand far wholly intentional lear-ning activities involving teachers; a position which naturally renders the informal contrary to the educational, not part of it.[26J It wi 11 be dealt with mor-e fully in a 1 at er- chapter devoted to the r-elationship between Dewey's educational philosophy and the lifelong education pr-ogr-amme which similar-ly shar-es Dewey's deter-mination to inter--r-elate education with life in the most intimate way, and is therefore subject to the same cr-iticism if it can be made. With r-efer-ence to the analytic philosopher-s however-, it is clear that ourassessment of their- cr-iticism must take into account the fact that it comes fr-om a theoretic: outlook that is obsessed with second-or-der- questions or metatheor-y, with cutting up the l.:mguage for fine conceptual distinc:tions.A theor-etic outlook that depar-ts fr-om the assumption that the ter-m education stands for- a fr-ee floating non-contestable concept whose 1 ogi c:al ter-ri tcJry needs to be car-ved aut of the wider- language for- general use. But this is a theoretic outlook which, to repeat the conclusion of the previous section, lifelong education theorists implic:ity appose, since their view of education is a radically different one resting as it does on the assumption that it is the name of a contestable programme not of a free floating concept. Thus, while the concer-n of analytic philosophers is to exclude from a concept all that can be distingt.ti shed from othet~s, the opposing concern is for what can be coherently and consistently included within the particular- programme that theorists are interested in. This is why, for them, the progr-amme defines the term rather than the other way r-ound 49

Lifelong Education Lawson's complaint about lifelong education theory, discussed earlier, shows a lack of appreciation of this point. The more fundamental difference, of course, between Dewey and the lifelong education theorists on the one side and analytic and liberal philosophers of education in general, who insist that all educational learning must be intentional, on the other, lies with the fact that whereas the former are more concerned with the ·process· aspect of education and are therefore basically interested in locating education in the learner, the latter are more interested in the activity of teachers and are therefore more interested in what teachers should transmit and how, so that they locate education in pedagogical activity. If education is viewed as process, then, evidently of the f.;er.:ond kind C'those which, while necessary, are not definitive attributes of lifelong education')[30J The first is the understanding 'embraced by the idea that systpmat.ic and purposeful learning is not confined to schools·; the undewstiimdi ng just di scussed of education as involving non-formal besides 52

Lifelong Education and as including, learning, patterns of formal therefore, deliber·ate self-education and possibly the participation of institutions and systems or ne-tworks other than the school, in the community . In fact, as we have seen, the lifelong education understanding of education also includes non-formal learning activities, and the essence of the non-formal, as Chazan 's definition shows, is that it refers to 'activity outside the established formal system'. The second 'major idea central to theorizing about lifelong education', the 'humane' approach to learning it is supposed to imply, is not so closely tied to the idea of lifelong education as the first. For it is not obvious that the lifelong education idea need require any such approach either logically or in practice. This second 'major idea' woLtl d therefore seem to fall more squarely within the weakly contingent class of 'concept characteristics' identified by Cropley than within the strongly contingent, which, one supposes, would be the class to which the 'major ideas' should belong. This gives it the same status more or less, qua 'concept characteristic', as the rest identified by Dave. For instance, it need not follow either, from the necessary temporal requirement built conceptually into the term lifelong education or from the requirements of practice, that the 'general' and the 'vocational' aspects of learning referred to in (11) should interrelate or interact together within the same programme. A conception of 1 ifelong education governed by purely economic or instrumental consideration& could, for instance, translate itself in purely vocational terms, while, from a different point of view, a conception of lifelong education translated into 'general' or 'cultural' terms would exclude the vocational element altogether.t36J Therefore, as with the claim with the 'humane' direction of the lifelong education programme, the principle that they should interact is a. purely programmatic: one reflecting a choice, pure and simple. THEORETIC DIFFICULTIES The use of words 1 i ke ·movement' and 'programme' , and the setting up of Dave 's ·concept characteri sties' as a synthesized version of the lifelong education programme will so far have conveyed the im55

Lifelong Education pression of a clear and well-ordered lifelong education theory, with well-defined concepts and a coherent structure of principles both operational and ideological. That impression is however quickly dispelled by Cropley·s 'stocktaking· of the reaction to the lifelong education literature over the years: Much has been written about lifelong education in the last few years. The idea has beeh advocated with almost 'theological' fervour, as one writer put it put it, th~ view is also sometimes taken that learning is almost synonymous with living, so that to talk about lifelong education is almost the same as talking about lifelong living, and therefore requires no further discussion.[38J Criticism, in other wards, is levelled at the programme at different levels. That of Ruegg and Elvin, for instance is aimed against the general theoretic approach in the literature which both describe as 'utopic'. But it is seen differently by Pucheau, who describes lifelong education, by contrast, as an 'elastic concept'. The criticism of the former refers, in effect, to the direction taken

56

Lifelong Education by the early 1 i terature of the movement and is an accurate description of that literature, as will be shown in the coming section where 'the state of the theory' will be discussed. The latter's criticism, on the other hand, probably refers to work like that of Long who, a.s Cropley says, attempted something like a conceptual analysis of lifelong education, with the results described by Cropley. Long's exercise in fact shows up the limitations of conceptual analysis where the terms involved are stipulative, revealing the programmatic prescriptions of a theorist or group of theorists, rather than concepts that evolved in the language, for the net result of his efforts is a vacuous tautology. Lawson, as we saw earlier, ruled out the possibility of any such analysis, though he considered this a deficiency in the concept rather than a limitation of analysis. The only possibility for conceptual analysis to yield any results in fact, in this case, would be, Lawson seems to indicate, to submit the concept of education, rather than 1 i fel ong education, to analysis, then prescribe the outcome for life. But this, we have said, is contrary to the implicit theoretic orientation of the movement's programme which defines education more broadly and is more interested in 'policy· than in 'conceptual truths', and would, in any case, produce an utterly different programme if one conceptualizes education in the manner described by analytic philosophy of education. What is important, from our point of view, about the contrasting criticism of the lifelong education 1 i terature de&cribed in the previous paragraph is that it demonstrates that the literature is complex not unitary, embracing a plurality of theoretic approaches of which the utopic and the analytic may be but two, rather than representing a single paradigm. It is also clear that this pluralism creates problems for the theoretical presentation of a unitary programme for the movement, particularly if the theoretic approaches are contrasting as is the case with the two described. The other difficulty that emerges from the criticism quoted by Cropley is one we have discussed already a few pages back. Is the lifelong education programme a 'trap' permitting perpetual control over people, as I 11 i eh and Verne contend? The possi bi 1 i ty that it could be is frankly admitted by the representatives of yet another theoretic approach within the litera-

57

Lifelong Education ture which we will refer to as the 'pragmatic' and which will also be discussed in the next section, who admit themselves preoccupied by it. Our earlier discussion of the problem concluded that the inclusion in the programme's technical definition of education of other than formal learning indicates that its itention is not to turn the 'learning society', which it speaks about, into a 'global classroom'. And yet the objection of Illich and Verne, and their general description of lifelong education theory as 'utopic' by Ruegg and Elvin, raise the question whether the nor·mati ve aims of the pr-ogramme, the part of its core that is politically ideological rather than educationally so, are sufficiently well defined to avoid ambiguity. The criticism does not indicate that they are. In fact we saw earlier that Cropley claims a 'humane direct. ion for the programme. Our subsequent discussion of this claim however showed that, as the criticism above also indicates, it is not necessary that a lifelong education programme, defined in terms of its operational characteristics only, should be humane. One also notes among Dave's 'concept characteristics' the claim that 'The ultimate goal of lifelong education is to maintain and improve the quality of life' . There is not however any subsequent elaboration of what this means in more concrete terms. As a normative statement, therefore, it is about as enlightening as Cropley's. Cropley's own more condensed version of Dave's list, which he similarly claims to be 'the comprehensive one implicit in the publications of UNESCO', serving it as 'an initial working definition' of lifelong education, contains an interesting if subtle development. The full version is as follows: education should:

58

Cl>

last the whole life of each individual;

(2)

lead to the syst.emat.ic acquisition, renewal, upgrading and completion of knowledge, skills and attitudes made necessary by the conditions in which people now 1 i ve;

(3)

have as its ultimate goal the promotion of the self-fulfilment of each individual;

Lifelong Education

be dependent: for its successful implementation on people's increasing ability and motivation to engage in self-directed learning activitieSJ

(5)

acknowledge the contribution of all available educational influences, including formal, non-formal and informal.[39J

The fundamental points can, in actual fact:, be seen to be substantially those of Dave, though in more economic form since the description limits itself to the barest principles. The interesting development referred to above, which naturally regards the normative statement of the programme, is point whi eh announces that the 'ul t: i mate goal · of the programme is the 'self-fulfilment of each individual', as against the statement in Dave that it is 'to maintain and improve the quality of life'. Cropley adds that self-fulfilment depends on 'people's increasing ability and motivat:ion to engage in self-direc:ted learning activities', which is, again, a more specific re-statement of 'characteristic' (15> of Dave's list which says that the 'three major requisites' for the i ndi vi dual 's lifelong education are 'oppor·tunity, motivation and educability'. What is conspicuously missing in Cropley, as compared with the 'concept characteristics' is the distinctive social dimension added to the concept by the latter in points (4) and of the list, particularly in the latter where Dave states that 'lifelong education is rooted in the community. ' Does it denote a change of direction, a shift of emphasis in the interim between the publication of the two lists, in the movement. 's ideological view-point? The question will be answer·ed later. The general picture that we r&!quire at the moment has already begun to emerge. Although terms and expressions like 'self-fulfilment', 'self-realization', 'self-direction', 'the quality of life', and, as we shall see later, 'democracy·, in particular, are bandied about everywhere in the literature, more often than not accompanied by rhetorical statements in their regard, there is nowhere any attempt towards a deeper analysis of them, or any attempt towards integrating them into a coherent ideological position whic:h would give the programme an unambiguous normative direction. In short, the programme

59

Lifelong Education appears to lack that philosophical underlay against which it could measure itself. This notwithstanding Cropley's reference to a readily distinguishable 'philosophy' which he claims it to have: The literature on lifelong education ••• makes it clear that the majority of writers in the area have indeed accepted, implicitly if not always explicitly, certain beliefs about the nature of man, good, society and education. In this respect there is an identifiable 'philosophy' of lifelong education, if agreement between thinkers concerning goals and values can be said to involve a phi 1 osophy. This 'philosophy' is loosely humanitarian and humanistic in nature: in theory, at least, writers on lifelong education would therefore not accept that any and all practices that have the effect of extending education throughout 1 ife reflected the 'philosophy' of lifelong education.[40J This is, one would agree, about right. There are indeed goals and values held in common within the literature, statements that appear repeatedly in the works of different writers, declarations about the value of individuality, the importance of self-realization as an educational aim, the indispensability of democracy as a measure of the quality of 1 i fe. But they only qualify as a philosophy, as Cropley admits, in an inverted commas sense. Moreover, Cropley describes this 'philosophy' as 'loosely humanistic:', Humanism is already a 'loose' enough philosophy as it is, and as the next chapter will show; what does 'loosely humanistic' mean? Can a 'loosely humanistic' 'philosophy' define a suitable normative direction for an education programme? The fact that the lifelong education programme with its 'loosely humanistic:' 'philosophy' gives rise to accusations like those of Illich and Verne, notwithstanding what Cropl ey says, i ndi c:ates that it cannot. THE STATE OF THE THEORY Cropley distinguishes two distinct theoretic: trends within lifelong education theory. The word 'trends' is actual! y Ireland· s, who makes substantially the same analysis as Cropley's. It fits well Cropley's further assessment of the differences between them 60

Lifelong Education as one of 'emphasis' rather than one that ref 1 ects any deep, underlying, operational or ideological disagreement.C41J The principles the two 'trends' hold are, in fact, similar; they are the basic principles of the programme outlined by Dave and Cropley. What separates them, essentially, is their different manner of theorizing about lifelong education and of presenting the programme. The difference can be expressed succinctly by stating that whereas the one is more interested in 'the construction of detailed future models' of lifelong education, and therefore reveals an 'optimistic and essentially utopic nature',(42J the other is more interested in the practical possibilities of applying the operational principles of the 1 ifelong education programme to different existent societies. The outlook of the former could therefore be described as 'utopic', while that of the latter could be called 'pragmatic', It is important to note that, in point of time, the 'pragmatic' appeared after the 'utopic' and, largely, in reaction to the criticism levelled against the early writing from different quarters. Some of this criticism was discussed in the section before this one, and the major point is summarized in Elvin's critical review of Learning to be, which is perceptive in some ways and extraordinarily unfair in others. Elvin attacks the report for its tendency to take refuge in rhetoric where some form of normative commitment is demanded,C44J and our earlier discussion indicated this state of affairs as symptomatic of the 'utopic' trend. The reaction of 'pragmatic' theorists to this criticism has not, however, concentrated on rectifying this deficiency, though, as was pointed out earlier, they are particularly sensitive to the 'dual potential' of an operati anal 1 i fel ong education programme to act as an instrument of repression just as much as liberation. Rather, they have limited themselves, as Cropley's description implies, to proclaiming humanistic values, and have turned towards the 'neLttral · social sciences for their theoretic: approaches. In this way they avoid the charge of rhetoric and abstraction levelled against their predecessors while refraining from any deeper ideological statement. A primary example of this approach is Gelpi, who believes that 1 i fel ong education practices wi 11 be

61

Lifelong Education improved not by ideology but by sociological and comparative wor-k; par-ticularly by analysis of the obstacles that impede the operationalisation of the lifelong education pr-ogr-amme in localised and inter-national contexts. Gelpi, as was indicated in the opening page of the chapter-, is an impor-tant, perhaps cur-r-ently the outstanding, figur-e in the lifelong edLtc:ation movement. This is par-tly because of his position within UNESCO and par-tly because of his pr-olific contr-ibution to the theor-y of lifelong education. The for-mer- means that he is extr-aordinarily well placed to monitor the lifelong education pr-ogramme at the international 1 evel and to engage in the kinds of analysis jLtst r-efer-r-ed to. Gelpi, in fact, is inter-ested both in the problems that inhibit the exchange of innovative views and practices at the inter-national level and those that hinder the lifelong education programme at a more localised level, and he sees both aspects as closely interr-elated together. It is ther-efor-e impor-tant to consider- how he views the 1 i fel ong education pr-ogr-amme which has ger-minated in the liter-atur-e. Clee.r-ly he adher-es to its central str-ategic pr-inciples and to the pr-ogr-amme's technical definition of the ter-m education, but, at the same time, in accor-dance with the outlook of the pr-agmatic tr-end which he suppor-ts, for- him, lifelong education 1s based on a dialectic it is not an absolute theory'. [46] In other- wor-ds, for· Gel pi, within ever-y society the concrete oper-ationalization of the concept is achieved by the dialectical interaction of the oper-ational pr-inciples of the pr·ogramme with the social for-ces at wor-k, par-ticular-ly those that affect the pr-oductive sector-. But although he sets such stock on the prevalent socioeconomic conditions, he does not, as Ir-eland points out, shar-e Vinokur-'s view that a classless society is a necessar-y pr-e-r-equisite for- the implementation of the pr-ogr-amme.[47J This is because Gelpi believes that in ever-y society, no matter- how r-epr-essive, ther-e exists autonomy for- educational action of some kind however- small, and that this autonomy is expressed by the pr-esence of 'pr-ogressive' individuals within it, even though he does not under-rate the political for-ces against their- emer-gence and subsequent influence any mor-e than he under-r-ates the pr-oblems of exchange at the inter-national level. It is these individuals, Gelpi str-esses, who need to be attracted to lifelong education; they ar-e the potential leader-s of the 'long mar-ch thr-ough the institu62

Lifelong Education tions' required to implement its programme.C48J Gelpi is therefore against 'imported models' of lifelong education. By contrast he affirms the need to bring the dialectical nature of the programme to the attention of these people since they are likely to be taken in by the current misrepresentation of it as something belonging to the rich, technologically developed countries of the world, as is currently happening with some of the more 'progressive' people in third-world countries who are set against it.[49J Finally, Gelpi makes it clear that the people he has in mind his 'progressive' educators, are not professional .teachers, or at least not necessarily so, they can, and often do, come from different walks of life and can belong to any social group. Gelpi is as conscious as the other 'pragmatic' theorists of the 'dual potential' of the lifelong education programme, and as sensitive to the fact that as pure strategy it can be used by governments to create the most efficient form of conservatism possible. Thus he describes the tension it provokes theory-wise, as between: an idealist approach (1 i fel ong education as a new global answer to the educational and cultural needs of our society> and a negative moralist approach which is in fact also an idealist approach.C50J · The solution to such a ten si on 1 i es with ·a sociological and historical approach to lifelong education' which will give those str.uggling for reform and innovation insight into the opposing socio-political and economic forces already at work in their society. Thus the dialectic of the programme works as much against t.he conservative forces within society as the reformatory; in this sense the struggle to implement the lifelong education programme cannot but be a political one. But what about political ideology? Granted that the struggle to effect educational change must be a political one and that the dialectic described as re qui red wi 11 therefore not be anything but the political forces at work involved in the struggle will the struggle itself over strategy not be defined by the strugglers in terms of more concrete underlying commitments of a political kind?

63

Lifelong Education Gelpi, in point of fact, does state his own political ideology in different places. Ultimately he sees lifelong education as ideally 'part of a process whose ultimate objective is the achievement of a democratic egalitarian socialist society in which everyone participates on an equal footing'.C51J But at the same time he believes that utopi c visions of this kind need to be balanced by hard realities which will fLtlly expose the difficulties in the way of progress towards the ideal, and the dangers inherent in the 1 i fel ong strategy itself. The fact that he does identify a set of ideal ideological principles for the lifelong education programme in effect, means little, fortheir systematic philosophical development is not part of his theoretical research programme. One cm. tld in fact say that his overt political beliefs ar-e kept in the background, but this is because underlying his research programme lies a faith in the immense power of educational strategy in itself to fulfil human goals through the very democratization and dissemination of knowledge which the lifelong education programme implies and through the very growth of the number of individuals committed to it. A similar optimism may be why theorists of the pragmatic 'trend' in general, tend to be satisfied with an i deol ogi cal commitment to humanism and to 'humane' educational practices without feeling the need for any deeper specification of what this means. But there are other reasons that could be just as compelling for adopting humanism as an ideological position. One would be Lengrand's, who argues that the established i deol ogi es, 1 i beral ism, Man: ism etc., as well as the leading religions, are currently in crisis and are therefore both incapable and unqualified to guide individuals living in times when the very beliefs and values they possess are constantly challenged. The other, very different, one could have to do with Elvin's hypothesis about the lack of ideological commitment of the Faure report: The necessity of abstaining from overt criticism of the social and political regimes within which, and often against which, educational reformers have to work, has meant that M. Faure and his colleagues could not go into their 64

Lifelong Education problem as thoroughly and penetratingly as an independent scholar might.[52J In other words it could, as this criticism says, be an imposition on the movement forced on it by its UNESCO sponsorship. Another reason still could be the need to present a broad homogeneity of outlook within the movement, which would not be a 'movement' otherwise, which could only, perhaps, be obtained by adopting an ideological underpinning for it that is permissive enough to embrace nearly everything. We could only speculate which of these and other possible hypotheses could be the right one. Certainly, the term 'humanism' has such a wide reference that it is capable of serving the purpose well if it is adopted deliberately to avoid specific ideal ogi cal commitment. We have stated, however, that, for this reason, it also tends to ambiguity of different kinds, though what these are wi 11 emerge clearly only after the next chapter. For before we discard it too readily for this reason, we need to see whether there are any advantages of a different kind humanism offers, and to do that we will need to look a little more closely into what it means. For Lengrand 's point, above, is a valid one, and so is the last suggestion made in the previous paragraph, that humanism has the permissiveness that suits an international movement. It may be, therefore, that a more specifically defined humanism, by which I mean a narrowing down of the options to a particular ·philosophy of man ' among all those that current 1 y fall under its umbrella, in a manner which is consistent with the programme, will do the trick. The difficult problem, in this case, will be seen to be that of resolving the tension between permissiveness and dogma that worries many self-declared humanists. CONCLUSIONS The main task of this chapter has been to make a very prel·iminary evaluation of the programme of the lifelong education movement gravitating around UNESCO. It has been assumed that Dave's concept characteristics constitute an accurate representation of it on the basis of the fact that Dave's source was the extant writing on 1 if el ong education over the years which his 'characteristics' synthesized. Reference was also made to the UIE definition of lifelong education reproduced by Cropley in succinct 65

Lifelong Education form and holding tenets similar to those of Dave. The subsequent discussion of Dave 's 'character-isties' and of the ter-minological ambiguities affecting the state of the theor-y br-ought the following to light: (1) the ter-m lifelong education is itself a potentially ambiguous one, forapar-t fr-om the necessity that it should r-eferto -education spr-eading over the life-span of individuals, ther-e ar-e differ-ent alter-native views about how this condition can be fulfilled; the main differ-ence being between the view that education should alternate with other phases and activities over- the individual's life-span, and the view that it should be viewed as continuous with life itself. It was seen that the differ-ence is r-eflected in differ-ent nomenc 1 atur-es used instead of 1 if el ong educ:at ion, all of which are designed to captur-e the under-lying idea of education for- life but with this and otherpr-ogr-ammatic differ-ences in mind. (2) The differ-ence between pr-ogr-ammes is in fact mainly owing to the technical definition of education with which the movement's lifelong education pr-ogr-amme wor-ks and which includes informal learning besides non-for-mal. This inclusion has far--r-eaching consequences because it also mal(es necessary the inclusion within the pr-ogramme of some conception of a 'learning society'. (3) The 'lear-ning society' itself can, in fact, be seen as the embodiment of. the pr-ogr-amme's deter-mination to so conceptualize education that 'at the operational level lifelong education is an or-ganising pr-inciple pr-oviding a total system for all education'.

11. Dave, R. H. (ed.) ( 1975> Reflect ions on Lifelong Education and the School, op.cit., p. 55 12 • op • c i t. , p • 14 • 13. Thus Lengrand, for instance, defines lifelong education as 'education in the full sense of the word, including all its aspects and dimensions, its uninterrupted development from the first moments of life to the very last .and the close, organic interrelationship between the various points and successive phases in its development'. 14. Kallen, D. 'Recurrent Education and Lifelong Learning: definitions and distinctions', in: Schuller, T., and Megarry, J. (eds.) (1979) Uorld Yearbook of Education~ 1979, p. 45, (London, l. 15. Cross-Durant, A. 'Lifelong Education in the Writings of John Dewey', International ,7ournal of Lifelong Education, p.115, Vol. 3 1 No.2, 1984. 16. Kallen, D., in: Schuller, T., and Megarry, J. ( eds. > op. c it. , p. 4 7. 17. op.cit., p. 115. 18. Jessup, F.W. (ed.) (1969) Lifelong Learning :istentialism as 'a hLlmanism' implies that, rather than a theory or ideology in its own right, humanism is more of a defining property of other theories or ideologies. Others have tried to pin the concept down with a charter or manifesto without, of course, thereby imposing any copyright on the term. The Marxist manifesto, which takes up 99

Humanism a well-defined ideological position, would, presumably, claim to de1'ine humanism (since its point of departure is a theory about what it is essentially to be human>, while the HL1manist Manifesto of the American intellectuals, by virtue of its very permissiveness, disclaims the view that humanism is an ideology, and this, subsequently, has been the line of many self-declared, non-Marxist, humanists. These have been inclined to hold that permissiveness is a good thing, and are content with having a manifesto, if at all, that is stated as a. number of 'emphases' that most would accede to, rather than any ideological commitments. We have seen how the Fa.ure report decl a.res 'scientific humanism' to be the culture of the lifelong education programme. But there is little or no explanation of what this means, although the evolutionary perspective and optimism that marks the history of the term itself and the work of Huxley, one of its major proponents, is found everywhere within it, and even more so in Kirpal's article. On the other hand we have seen how the permissiveness of the Humanist Manifesto seems to suit the temper of the lifelong education movement which, in fact, also shows this reluctance to express any definite ideological commitment and is more inclined to declare its general support for 'democracy' and individual self-realization and decry the conditions of 'alienation' in contemporary society and consumeristic CLiltures, while leaving the terms themselves politically imprecise. This does not mean that its theorists are not also politically active or that there are no political aspirations behind the practice of lifelong education. Quite the contrary in fact, the concept has attracted the interest of different associ at i ens, organ i z ati ens and activists whose work in the field of adult education· is intimately tied with political objectives that can be very definitely identified with the broad Left in the European political spectrum, though there are no similar political affiliations with the concept in the English-speaking countries where the tendency is to concentrate on the difficulties of bringing more learning to the adult popL!lation via new technoloQ_ies and learning strategies. The contrast, in fact, between the outlook of adult educators in European and Third World Countries on the one side and the Engl ish-speaking ones on the other can be reduced to the fact that where the latter appear to view adult education as a commodity to be efficient100

Humanism ly dist~ibuted in time and space, the fo~mer view it more as a cul tur·al project demanding the active participation of the learner io face-to-face encounters, and it is this, 1 ast mentioned, perspective that is p~ojected by the movement, whose sympathies reflect this st~ong orientation toward~ the political traditions of the Left in Europe, though this may be guarded because of the requirements of working within a UNESCO framework. A consensual pluralism could, in fact, be the defining characteristic: of the lifelong education movement's aim, as a movement. Its programme would thus avoid the excesses to which a scientific humanism is prone, given its utopic visions of the world and its openness to a form of dogmatism rendered the more dangerous by its very claim to being 'scientific',[52l It would also facilit.ate the acceptance of pragmatism as the fundamental epistemic tool of the programme, and a hermeneut i c phi 1 osophy as its culture. At the same time it would enable that same programme both to escape Power's warning that while it is easy to be misled by the pretensions of a vaguely defined humanism, it is even easier when humanism is not defined at a 11 , [53 l and to avoid the worst aspects of having manifestos; their necessary vagueness and permissiveness engendered by the requirements "of universality which means that, in trying to be suitable for all contexts, they usually finish 1.1p by being relevant to none. But the problem of ideological commitment remains, since the formal principles that would define the substance of the body of human rights which the programme would protect are as yet undefined, although it exists al~eady and is scatte~ed as rheto~ical statements through the lite~atu~e. The evident choice of a philosophy to provide these principles while coordinating with the conditions just described, is one that is both pragramatic and hermeneutic and consistent with a 'participatory' democracy, central to the political ideology of the theorists mentioned above. The ne>:us of these conditions will be seen to exist al~eady in one man's philosophy. NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. Aristotle, Ethics, Thomson, J.A.K. (ed.) (1979> p. 329 :t (both affective and cognitive learning of a specific bit of course content>; method of teaching (effective possibilities for teaching and learning); and teachers and administrators Cthe educator as a growing person and model for the students).[32J Roberts' goals, they point out, are further developed by a set of 'imperatives' designed by Fairfield to implement them in educational settings. [33J In the context of the comparative analysis that is the object of this section, what is especially interesting abo1..1t these 'goals' and 'imperatives·, because they are so close in essence (and sometimes even in description) to those distinguished i~ various places by lifelong education theorists, is their provenience. They are, Williams and Foster say, inspired: Cl) by the Social Education movement, which sought to foster cooperative individualism through education; (2) by Progressive Education, whose common principles were seen by Dewey as the 'expression and c1..1ltivation of individ1..1ality, free activity, learning through experience, acquiring new skills as a means to attaining ends, concentration on the 'here and now·, and acquaintance with a changing wor-1 d'; and (3) by the Open Education movement which 'encourages an equally active role for teacher and learner' in order to 'develop greater classroom democracy with an emphasis on a cooperative sharing environment', [34J LIFELONG EDUCATION AND EXISTENTIALISM Evidently we could continue to cite other statements and positions held in common in confirmation of the fact thatl 'romantic' humanism as an educational theory s~~res its more consistent orientations with elements in the lifelong education literature.[35J The identification of this conver-gence between the two is made more consistent by their separate iden118

Humanism and Lifelong Education tification with e~dstentialist thinking. This is not enough however to establish with any firmness the relation~hip of lifelong education theory itself with e>dstentialism, nor to explain the nature of that r-elationship. This is the matter to which we must turn next in this section, and we can start by observing that within the lifelong education literature there is the same pronounced awareness of the psychological pressures to which people living in an environment of accelerating change are exposed, particL1larly when the technology is used in a socially irr-esponsible or malicious manner and is turned to utterly materialistic purposes, as one finds in existentialist writings. There is the same sensitivity to the dehumanizing effect of a consumeristic mass culture that is shared also by existentialist writers, Jaspers most especially, and that makes a personalized and utterly individualistic outlook appear as the only intelligible alternative to the threat of alienation posed by such a culture to the individual personality and, more especially, its sense of identity. Reference has already been made to Suchodol ski 's brand of humanism. The central contention of Suchodolski 's essay is that people today are faced with the threat of alienation from many sources in both capitalist and socialist countries :peri ences through whi eh he has become steadily more himself. These efforts and experiences, even i ·f he shares them with thousand and mi 11 ions of human beings, are his own and relevant only to himself. Culture only e>dsts to the e>: tent to wh i eh it has been 1 i ved and tested within the particular hi story of a man who is leading an existence, who is building a life, who is conscious of the universe and who takes part in its shaping by his own decisions. [42]

121

Humanism and Lifelong Education Contrasting with this conception of culture there is another 'geographical' outlook which the individual is continuously presented with and which he needs to avoid if he is to affirm himself as a person, a cui ture of 'bad faith'. The 'geographical ' concept of culture sees culture not as a personal possession but as a 'self-contained domain comprising the sum total of knowledge accumulated over the centuries'. As a domain one has the option of entering or staying outside. Moreover, once one enters one comes to occupy more or less of this terr·-itory depending on chance and other factors. Thus, the 'geographical' concept of culture divides the world into the cultural rich and the cultural poor, the privileged and the victims, the initiates and the uninitiated.[43J Corresponding to these different conceptions of culture, ther-e are for Lengrand two ways in which the human phenomenon can be viewed, both of which are significant to the manner in which the educator may choose to approach education; one is the 'sociological·, the other is the 'psychological' or 'philosophical' (it is significant that he brackets the two together->. The first, he says, is 'monopolised by the masses, by the forces at work, by structures and institutions, and it is those they consider important'. The second, that whi eh, he says, should imp_el educators, is: conscious primarily of hL!man e>:istence in its individual form. What interests them (educators) above all is the single, unique, irreplacable life-story of an individual, the awakening of a consciousness, the whole set ways of thinking, feeling, and establishing relationships with himself and with the world which are peculiar to the individual, his own particular way of tackling and salving the pr·oblems he encounters both outside and within himself, which is, and always will be, different fr-om other people's ways.[44J Indeed the orientation the practice of education should take once we get these perspectives right practically suggests itself of its own accord. For, L.engrand argues, the psycho! ogi cal/phi 1 osophi cal appr-oach clearly assumes that the aim of the educator is to help form the mind, the body and the 122

Humanism and Lifelong Education and where else, he asks somewhat rhetorically, do mind, body and character belong but 'within the restricted and yet limitless space of a particular individual in the context of his own being and becoming?'.[45J

ch:istentialist tho1..tght with regards to its general compatibility with educational practice - in other words, it needs to see whether the credentials of e>:istentlalism as an educational theory are right; second, it must see whether there are not any a priori objections to the attachment of the movement 's programme with e:-: i stentialist tho1..tght based on some conflict of defining principles between the two. Starting with the first, there are evidently serious difficLtlties involved with bringing e:dstentialist thought in general to bear on educational practices, because such practices are typically assumed to i nval ve in st i tut i anal arrangements, namely the presence of schools and teachers; these, in turn, are considered indispensable in any sophisticated society for the transmission of its culture, an which its very continued e:-:istence depends. A consistent e:-:istentialist outlook, it would appear, m1..tst logically view schools or any form of collective learning within same form of institutionalized framework as undesirable. Power says: At best, e:dstentialism's advice to education is vague. After advert i ng to e>: i stent i al ism· s fundamental subjectivism and pluralism, not much remains on the level of philosophical principle for application to any theory of schooling.E49J It would also seem that existentialist thought, with its emphasis on subjectivism as the only truth, must be totally incompatible with any formal education since the latter implies the presence of an educator acting upon the 1 earner. The discussion of the other section, in fact, raised the point that romantic' humanists, who are of the same theoretic temperament of the e>:istentialists, are typically unhappy with the very concept of school, while they embrace a conception of education as a kind of therapy involving a one-to-one relationship between learner and facilitator :t). That they are nevertheless reluctant to throw over the concept completely accounts for their unwillingness to take over e>:istentialist thought. From another point of view one needs to recall the point made earlier that e:-:istentialism, with its psychological orientations, lacks a proper social 124

Humanism and Lifelong Education philosophy; a proper theory of society. Thus while existentialists describe to us the kind of society we already have and furnish us with a phenomenological critique of the individual's e~:istential condition within it, they ncJwhere tell us what, in effect, it ought to be in order to improve that condition; this is because they hold an aversion for prescription or theory. In fact, as we saw earlier, the lack of any social theory in existentialist thought does not so much denote a gap, a 1 acuna within it, as a necessary consequent of it. The question is 1 can an adequate educati anal theory be constructed in the absence of a social philosophy? The difficulties with conceptualizing an ex i stentialist education programme grows when education means schooling. For if by education we mean 'school·, then it is difficult to see how an existentialist philosophy can find a legitimate defence against the difficulties outlined above. For 'school' is historically a social construct, a human invention of an institutional kind which presupposes the involvement of a cooperative enterprise with shared interests and beliefs, and a shared ethic; the need for all of whi eh the existentialist denies, and the value of which he typically rejects. But if education is understood in a wider sense than 'school' does a social philosophy continue to be required for an education pr-ogramme? Rousseau has furnished a theoretical account of how education can dispense with a social framework in Emi 1 e, whi 1 e I 11 i eh and others have proposed a de-schooling philosophy. The stock r-eply to the former's naturalism is, however, that the social is rei ntr-·oduced throLtgh the presence of Emi 1 e · s tutor, while Illich replaces the school with learning networks that are new educational institutions'. Within a more contemporary and practical viewpoint, an i ncreasi ngl y 1 arge amount of adult education is being done in the Freirian manner, outside 'schools', without a for-mal curr-·iculum, and with fac:ilitators acting out therapeutic: roles rather than tradi ti anal teachers - but this renders the learning situation, if anything, not less but increasingly social, and Freire's pedagogy, or andragogy, is backed by a social analysis and an alternative philosophy. Finally, not even a social doctrine of 'authenticity' can replace a social philosophy proper, as Van Cleve Morris suggests it can do, 125

Humanism and Lifelong Education for the very concept of an ·authentic society' where 'each individual takes personal responsibility for the law he obeys, the conventions he consents to, the values he appropriates for his own life',[50J is as impossible as the possibility of a General Will which will always reflect in practice the views of every sing 1 e member of the society whose it is, which does not demand compromise of its members, and is not sometimes prepared to ·force them to be free·. On the other hand, societies have dispensed with schools in the past wher-e all their specialized needs COLtl d be catered for by the training of a limited few by tutors. However, they were clearly not democratic societies, and the arrangement would most certainly fail to satisfy the increasing demands for specialized learning that characterizes all kinds of modern societies. As was pointed out earlier, Illich has suggested, theoretically, that societies can be deschool ed. But again, though the suggestion is made seriously as a reaction to the effects on society which the pervasiveness of schooling engenders according to his own analysis, deschooling is not a possibility that he eventually canvasses adequately since his commendable efforts to combine individual freedom of action in learning with social cooperation must assume, in the absence of school or any formal substitute, that the ability for aLttonomous learning is either· something one is born with or one can effectively win for oneself, or is something that can be left to peer interaction or parental guidance, and whereas the former assumption defies all evidence to the contrary, the latter· leaves the child to the mercy of chance and parental good-will, which may not in itself be a bad thing in a perfect society where everybody's motives are the right ones (as in Skinner's Lttopia for instance), but not otherwise, in this impel~fect world of ours where children often need to be pr-otected from the intentions of grown Ltps, including their own parents. At any rate we have already seen that lifelong education theorists do not accept the move towards deschooling society. On the contrary they are committed by their programme to a revised theory of schooling that fits with their reconceptualizing of edLJcation itself as a lifelong matter·. Indeed, as we have seen, refer·ring to the e~:istent schooling system, one of Dave's 'concept characteristics' 1.26

Humanism and Lifelong Education speaks of the lifelong education programme as an 'antidote to (its> shortcomings' rather than as a radical substitution of it (13), and another retains the importance of 'formal institutions of education' as 'one of the agencies of lifelong education·, though not the sole one (4). And e>dstentialist philosophy, as our earlier discussion showed, can contribute nothing to these designs. However even more fundamental than its theoretical incompatibility with the concept of school, which as we have seen, is considered indispensable by the lifelong education programme, the existentialist point of view is i ncompat i b 1 e with the very having of an educational programme, lifelong or of any other description, since any programme, even a personal one, constitutes an attempt towards systematization and unity of outlook of some sort, and these are contrary to a subjectivist outlook. Thus, for instance, there 1 ies a fundamental ··incompatibility between the kind of systematized synthesis that constitutes Dave's 'concept characteristics' and the radical individualism of existentialist thought. A response to it consistent with the latter would be to avoid such exercises as Dave's. But this is not a move open to the movement. Not that, in the eventuality, it would cease to remain a movement, for movements, as was observed earlier, can admit to different degrees of cohesion, the move is not blocked on logical grounds, but that systematization is essential for policy-making, and, as we have seen, if anything unifies the lifelong education movement it is agreement over the fact Cas was pointed out in Chapter 2>, which is also considered the distinctive feature of the IIIO~'ement, that its conceptualization of the otherwise bare idea of education as something lasting for life includes the institutionalizing of that idea.[51J The ·fact that the 1 i fel ong .education programme presupposes the need for social and political action in order ·to operc:~tionalize the concept also forestalls what WOL!ld otherwise appear as an attr·active compromise. It could be suggested that the existentialist outlook be left as a description of the adult component of the programme, with perhaps a type of schooling that would lead to 'authenticity', that would 'awaken awareness in the learner - existential awareness of himself as a single subjectivity present in the world'C52J :istentialism are not to be denied, and its positive insights can still be creatively included. Among the former one could include the fact that edstentialism avoids the problem of ideology by rejecting the need ·for· one, and this makes it an attractive proposition for any who deliberately seek to avoid ideological commitment while asserting the value o·f individual freedom; both considerati ens that weigh heavi 1 y on UNESCO·sponsored projects or documents. But the price to be paid for these 'advantages' is an impossible one, for theoretic consistency demands that they can be won only through the effective sacrifice of the programmr~ itself. Indeed, there e~dst: within the 1 i fel ong education 1 i teratur·e strong statements to 128

Humanism and Lifelong Education the effect that self-education is the only authentic form of education, but the ·fact that they coe>:ist with further statements and with programmatic principles for the institutionalization of the concept is an indication of the looseness of the theorizing within it, or, at any rate, of the language in which it is expressed - one problem with rhetoric in fact is that it frequently contradicts itself. On the other hand, the positive points are plenty, though they re qui re more than careful pruning of their existentialist meanings. Indeed they need to be extracted from the whole framework of existenti al ism in order to bear fruit, and need to be reintroduced within a social philosophy of some kind. This means that the emphasis on individuality needs to be tempered with some account of a just system of cooperative behaviour within which the individual needs to pursue his own life project and within which the policy aspects of the education p~ogramme need to be construed. The phenomenological outlook of e>:istentialism gives us valuable insights into the current state of our technological civilization, which, in themselves, constitute a strong recommendation for continuing learning, but it cannot be satisfactory to define an 'authentic society' simply as one composed of authentic individuals and leave it at that. Existentialism merely tells l..lS that a truly human existence is ·authentic·, and that the ·Other' poses a threat to its pursuit, it also tells us that certain social conditions, those prevailing in modern societies, are potentially threatening to ind'ividuality. But it cannot tell us which social conditions would make authenticity more possible, because such authenticity is, for the existentialist, by definition, pursued agai.r,st society, whatever its kind - the only answer is subjectivism. A subjectivist educational philosophy, on the other hand, renders impossible any .concept of schooling or any collective educational action - more especially the setting up of education programmes for the purposes of policy making. The subjectivist must view lif~long education as a personal thing. These are factors that render subjectivism unacceptable to the outlook of the lifelong education movement. How do other educ.:~ti.onal philosophies feature in this respect? The next chapter is a critique of liberal philosophy o·f educ 11. Quoted from Schopenhaur- as Educator, in: Cooper, D.E. C1983) Authenticity and Lear-ning, p. 14. op. ci t. 12. Passmore, J. A Hundred Years of Phi 1 osophy, pp. 470-471

13. This formulation is Heidegger's 'Vasein is an entity which does not just occur

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Humanism and Lifelong Education among other entities. Rather it is ontically distinguished by the fact that, in its very Being, that Being is an issue for it'. . Its proper name would be .;:ontinuing education. All of this, however, does considerable violence to the original liberal technical definition of education, since all it keeps constant from that definition is the knowledge condition, otherwise it drops the condition that learning must be formal and that it requires the direction of teachers, although continuity could also be claimed with the latt~r in an extended sense in which the learning to be continued started with a teacher. Such a programme would leave the matter of adult education entirely to individual initiative, since, on the one hand it is evidently unthinkable that education should continue to be forced on adults,C19l and, on the other, it is clear that institutions already exist to continue the work of teachers and schools as liberal phi 1 osophers identify it - these are the uni versities and the other formal tertiary establishments, attendance at which is voluntary. JOHN WHITE AND LIFELONG EDUCATION

It is clear that in order to proceed to the kind of programme sketched in the 1 ast paragraph of the 141

Lifelong Education and Liber-al Philosophy previous section liberal philosophy of education would need to effect impor-tant depart.ures from its present outlook. First, it would be necessary for liberal philosophers to recognize that their initial definition of education as it is creates problems for an education conceived of in broader terms than chi 1 dhood. Second, they wi 11 need to concede the relevance of non-formal learning to the practice of education. Otherwise they can evidently continue to insist that only teacher-guided learning is education and that education cannot be pursued outside institutions or outside some form of tutorship, which is not, if I read them rightly, what most liberal philosophers intend, though it is a theoretical possibility. This latter position would win them consistency but would eHtremely restrict the possibi 1 i ties of their education programme. On the other hand a broader liberal programme could, as was suggested earlier, continue to hold the knowledge conditions that characterize the liberal outlook and, evidently, liberal political ideology, constant.C20l It would then be possible to assume that these conditions are consistent with other forms of 1 earning than the teacher-based though it could be conceded that teacher-based learning, especially in its characteristic form as schooling, is indispensable to set the ball rolling. The context of education, then, from the point of view of a continuing education programme, would not necessari 1 y be the school, but any locus of individual, cooperative, or tutor/teacher led learning which achieves for the individual the kind of knowledge and 'mental developmept' in terms of which liberal education is defined, at any time in life. This solution appears deceptively simple; in fact it is not. For besides the changes proposed one would need to effect another one of an even more radical kindJ it would be necessary for liberal philosophers to discard • number of concepts and emphases that are current in 1 iberal philosophy of education and that constitute an obstacle to rec:onceptuali~ing education in this way. And this proposal appears to be the most difficult to pursue, in fact it does not seem currently possible. This is because the necessary presupposition for it to happen is a prior cognition on the part of the liberal philosophers themselves, of the fact that a really consistent view of education as something that continues for life r·equires the reassessment of their educational outlook in the manner described above or in other 142

Lifelong Education and Liberal Philosophy And this awareness, as was argued in the ways. previous section, currently appears nowhere, since almost all these philosophers continue to hold their declared support for lifelong education against a theoretical outlook which restricts education to childhood and formal learning within schools, blissfully unaware of any inconsistency on th•ir part. I say 'almost· because in fact the point is taken by John White who devotes a whole section to lifelong education, which he cor-rectly char·acterizes as a •:hallenge to the liberal education programme to White recognizes which he himself subscr·ibes.[21J He also recognizes that the argument made above. what is currently being pr·oposed in the name of lifelong education is a much more radical reappraisal of education even than that outlined above. White recognizes that the lifelong education pr-ogramme demands a total r-econceptual i zati on of the whole of education r·ather than these limited cor-recHis concern in his book however is tive measures. not to contribute to the discussion of how the liberal progr-amme can be better aligned with the concept of lifelong education, but to r-eject the conAnd in the cept on behalf of liberal education. process he evidently lights upon the spots where the inconsistencies between the two are most pronounced. In doing so he highlights the concepts and emphases the current liber-al pr-ogramme would need to discard in order to achieve compatibility with the concept of lifelong education -although, evidently, he does not advocate that it should do so, taking the inconsistencies, on the contr-ary, as reasons for rejecting lifelong education. White's attack on the lifelong education concept (1) he argues that the takes different forms1 concept violates and render-s meaningless the central concept of liberal philosophy of education; the concept of the 'educated man' or 'per· son'; (2) he argues that it removes the emphasis from childhood, the fr-om 'special' remains longer no which educational point of view; (3) he argues that it can All of these are meant as be reduced ad absurdum. serious objections made by a serious philosopher, and therefore need to be met; they are also objections that do not appear elsewhere in philosophy of White's section, in fact, constitutes education. the only real philosophical critique of the lifelong education concept available at the time of wr-iting this book, and the fact. that it is made from a hos143

Lifelong Education and Liberal Philosophy tile or, more accurately, sceptical position, renders it additionally important. It will therefore be considered in some detail in the pages to come, beginning with the problem he raises over the incompatibility of the lifelong education concept with that of the educated man. With reference to it, White sayst If education is to be reconceptual i zed as a 'lifelong process' and not as something belonging only to youth, then we might as well drop the concept of the educated man: there is no line to be crossed; the journey goes on for ever.C22l And he evident 1 y thinks the concept so cr·uc i al that it should be guarded against this eventuality. The reasoning behind this viewpoint goes something like this: being an intentional activity guided by rational procedures, education must have an aim or a set of aims of some kind. That aim or set of aims must reflect qualities that it is desirable that people should have and that their education should give them; we call the individual who acquires these qualities an ·educated person'. The educated person, then, is one who possesses certain qualities that are deemed desirable and that are achieved through education; he can be described as the embodiment of the aims of edw::ation. The language of aims is thus an important one for the 1 i beral philosopher of education and he is ready to pursue its logic. The language of aims is the language of deliberate action, the language of 'targets' to be aimed atp to have an aim means to have a target in focus on whi eh one can adjust one's sights. When the 1 anguage of aims is pursued further in connection with education the analogy immediately presents itself; education is a set of end results towards which teachers direct their pupils with specific criteria of achievement in mind. The latter is understood within the terms of the analogy itself si nee one cannot proper· I y be said to be aiming at something without the understanding that one also knows what it means to hit it, how a successful aim shows itself. To pursue the analogy a little bit further, just as success in hitting the target closes off the action begun by aiming at it, so education is closed off when the aims of education have been achieved and one has acq1..1ired 144

Lifelong Education and Liberal Philosophy the qualities of the educated person. But this whole language game cannot be played if one introduces into it the alien concept of 1 i fel ong educationJ because the concept renders the conclusion we have just reached paradoxical. For if a person is educated, then the aim of education has been reachedJ as far as he is concerned his education is completed, the line has been crossed whatever 1 earning 1 i es beyond cannot be his continuing education. The 1 anguage of 1 i beral phi 1 osophy of education is oriented in this way; it recognizes the ultimate purpose of educating people as being that of achieving for them the characteristics of educatedness as they are identified by liberal philosophy. With particular reference to White he in fact describes his own clearly stated set of educational aims, his set of qualities of the educated man or person 1 and di tsti ngui shes them from those of other liberal philosophers of education by the fact that while the 1 atter focus on the knowledge conditions, in the main, he himself focuses on virtue. His concept, therefore, he says, avoids that over-emphasis on the cognitive which has rendered 1 ibera1 conceptions of educatedness the object of so much criticism. At the same time, and in conformity with our previous e>:position of the liberal argument, educ:atedness is for him, as it must be with all the other liberal philosophers of education, a point of arrival, like stepping into a new state. It is for this reason that the need for a demarcation line which will mark it out presents itself for him. And he finds it necessary to dedicate some pages to the unenvious task of trying to sort out the question of where the 1 ine 1 ies. His conclusion is, in fact, that it cannot be defined very specifically• This is partly because there are no sharp lines, only blurred areas, in anybody's case, and partly because people learn at different rates and some may be slower than others in reaching the blurred areas. Some may. never reach it, although we may s-.till want to call them partially educated, si nee they have travelled some way along the same road as others. But, in educated

any

case,

a

person

is

'more

or

less

'1

145

Lifelong Education and Liberal Philosophy

when he has formed something like a coherent life plan in the light of all the consider-ations bui 1 t into the Sl.tbstant i ve account of educational aims presented earlier, and is awa~e of the kinds of future circumstances which might cause him to adjust his valuations as he goes through life.[23l So, there are no sharp demarcation lines that mark off the point of arrival that is educatedness, only 'very blurred areas' that individuals will reach at different times in their lives and that some people may never reach at all since it is clear that not everybody will be able at any stage in his life to reach the condition where his life appears to him as a coherent life plan fulfilling 'all the consider-ations bui 1 t into the substantive account of educational aims' that White distinguishes. Few people, in fact, will ever be 'something of a philosopher', which is what, ultimately, he expects the educated man to be, although he recognizes the merits of those who can only ever manage part of the journey. [24) At the same time, this very indeterminacy in establishing where the demarcation line into educatedness 1 i es, and White's own unwi 11 i ngness to c 1 ose the fruits of education off for the individual arbitrari 1 y before these have been achieved, because of their very value, renders him reluctant to take any age as a 'cut-off point', though he does insist that educ:atedness may be achieved, indeed ideally should be achieved by the end of schooling, si nee one's schooling should have turned one into an educated man. But the fact that with many it wi 11 not have done so and that some at 1 east wi 11 arrive 1 at er means that the possi bi 1 i ty of educatedness must be kept permanently open, though, as White perceives 'a logical gap immediately opens up between aims and terminal school objectives' 1 [25l on this account. l he

question is, how does he respond to the perception of this gap? The logical way would seem to be that of holding up continuing education as a back up for those who have been unfortunate enough to have failed to achieve educatedness at school this would turn it into a species of compensator-y programme for a defective schooling. In fact White suggests something of the kind but he warns us not to confuse it with lifelong educationJ 146

Lifelong Education and Liberal Philosophy

We might then envisage compulsory full-time schooling until say 16 or later, possibly followed by compulsory part-time education for another period, with strong official encouragement to continue one's education on a voluntary basis beyond this point. This would not be 'lifelong' education, since the overall objective would only be to produce educated persons and this might be achievable while people are still young.[26l True, this programme would not be lifelong education, but it would not be 'upbringing' either. This is in fact how White, like most other liberal philosophers of education, defines education, as 'upbringing'.C27l And, evidently, the consequence of so defining it is to tie the concept specifically with that of childhood. Education, as upbr·inging, is something that older people, notably teachers, do to the younger. So the obvious question, with regard to the programme White outlines above, is, how is this definition compatible with it? How does one continue with one's education on a voluntary basis bey goes a little further than saying that post-compulsory provision ~;hould exist on a voluntary basis. It could mean, for instance, providing incentives in time or· money for young workers to undertake educational courses or to pursue their own self-education. It could mean reshaping conventional social expectations via the media, for instance, so that becoming educated in a full sense becomes the done thing. It could mean not only strengthening and making more accessible those agencies - career guidance units, marriage counsel! ors, almoners, Gingerbread groups, Cruse, psychiatric services and so on which help people to reflect on the shape of their lives 155

Lifelong Education and Liberal Philosophy as a whole :plored in his soc158

Lifelong Education and Liberal Philosophy ial philosophy have been utilized in educational theor·y, while Gramsci who, of all the Marxist thinkers, was perhaps the most interested in the subject, while similarly contributing concepts from his broader political writings, like that of 'hegemony' for instance, to educational discourse, was extraordinarily conservative where his explicit contributions to education are made.[51J For the most part Marxist philosophers have been content to criticize the liberal education programme for the values it rationalizes through its curriculum and for its contribution towards the liberal-capitalist status quo, otherwise they have retained the same focus and, basically, the same emphases, in some cases substituting the concept of the class-based 'organic intellectual' perhaps for that of the 'educated person·. With reference to the liberal philosophers of education, we have seen that they are, for the mo~t part perhaps, ready to concede the view that education is for 1 i fe in the temporal sense of the expression (otherwise the tendency is to distinguish education from life in the manner described by Oakeshott and considered unacceptable to the lifelong education programme>, but that they also, at the same time, define it as something formal, involving teachers and concerning childhood and youth. In Peters' view a liberal lifelong, or more accurately, continuing, education programme would quite simply encourage people to continue to develop what has been achieved in schooling on a personal basis. White, who has taken up the question more specifically, unlike Peters' whose contribution is a mere passing comment, would agree partially and with important reservations. For, he points out, the scope of such a programme must continue to be the achievement of educatedne$s, therefore, logically, once this is achieved for any particular person, his education is completed. There wi 11 therefore be a number of people who will not need lifelong education because their 'journey' will have been completed early on in 1 i fe, ideally by the end of school. The only concession to the concept of lifelong education then that White makes in his book refers to a continuing compensatory learning for those who need it. It is impossible to ascertain how far Peters would be in accord with this conclusion, but White is certainly right in insisting that this is not the proposal of a lifelong education programme since its lifelong expression is a concession to failure not an ideal 159

Lifelong Education and Liberal Philosophy for everyone. At the same time White has shown most clearly where the problem of achieving compatibility between the liberal programme and the concept of lifelong education lies. He has shown that reconceptualizing education as a lifelong programme inevitably violates certain key concepts retained to be indispensable by liberal philosophers, notably that of educatedness or of the 'educated per· son', it also challenges the liberal tendency to define education as 'upbringing'. In the chapter we have not made a specific list of the points of contrast between the liberal programme and the movement's lifelong education programme, which are evidently numerous because they can easily be made by the reader for himself. What we have said is that a liberal continuing education programme which departs minimally from the original liberal programme could continue to rationalize the traditional schooling aims and activities and define its 'continuing' component as the extension of these aims and activities in time, providing it abandons the concept of educatedness. Some further modifications to the original programme, though by no means minor in themselves, may, it is suspected, also meet with the approval of many liberal philosophe~s in order to give the continuing programme more breadth and freedom; the main ones would be the removal of the conditions that education requires the participation of teachers, which would allow the concept of 'selfeducation', and that it typically takes place in school and similar institutions [52J. A total reconceptualization of education as a lifelong programme, on the other hand, would, as White shows, require even more radical modifications than these; it would require a completely different theatre of discussion, a completely new language paradigm the bringing into operation of which would effectively entail the very abandonment of the current 1 iberal education pr··ogramme. The question to be addressed once it is accepted that the key concepts to be abandoned are not indispensable to an intelligible description of education, is, how consistent would this reconceptual i zed programme be with liberal social and political philosophy - how consistent would it be with the ideological core of the liberal education programme? The question is a substantially different one from that which faces us when we inquire into the possibility of an 160

Lifelong Education and Liberal Philosophy existentialist lifelong education programme, where the problems, as we have seen, arise from the very unwillingness of existentialist thought to present itself as a programme, and from the fact that there is no real ideological core to existentialism as a philosophy. No more than a cursory glance through the literature is required to establish that the ideological focus of the liberal education programme is the concept of this is considered by most autonomy; personal liberal philosophers to be the highest political The focus on autonomy, on the other hand, good. encourages an individualist educational philosophy, and several liberal philosophers have carried the individualist orientation so far as to draw sharp conceptual distinctions between education as the development of 'mind', and 'socialization' which is To the turning of i ndi vi duals into • current men'. this extent they have shown the same diffidence towards the social as that shown by existentialist At the same time they have typically thinkers. stopped short of pitching their ideal of autonomy at the level of 'authenticity' demanded by the existentialist while insisting that autonomy is something They have thus people need to be educated into. translated when that, aims holding avoided are incompatible with schooling, educationally, while at the same time insisting that schools should This they can do by avoid indoctrinating people. concentrating on initiating pupils into forms of knowledge that are intrinsically valuable in morally unobjectionable ways that eventually lead to the liberating of the mind. This is the paradigm that dictates how 'upbringing' is to be conceived. And White, who shares all these views, continues to emphasise the difference between auton'omy and the existentialist's authenticity by stressing that being autonomous implies having a coherent life plan not making criterionless choic;esJ it is thus that autonomy, unlike authenticity, can be made the object of education. What kind of social philosophy do liberal philosophers contextual i ze their concept of i ndi vi duality social/political into? Broadly speaking liberal philosophers are in two camps; one e>:presses itself in terms of a minimalist conception of the state and of collective intervention, the other finds its mode of expression in the concept of a welfare state. The first extols individual enterprise and holds the 161

Lifelong Education and Liberal Philosophy collective intervention at a regulatory minimum where individual freedom is threatened, the second, while similarly e>:tolling the merits of individual enterprise holds notions of a collective good that should regulate that enterprise. Now it is clear, without going into details, that a philosophy of the first kind would be inherently antagonistic towards anything but a minimum of collective intervention in educational matters. It would presumably grant every individual the right to a minimum education, enough to get him into the ·market·, though it would be c 1 ear that the basis of such a right would be an individual not a social one, but it would grant nothing beyond. Certainly its rationale is contrary to the view that adult continuing education should be institutionalized, it would hold rather that, like all other things continuing education should be a matter of personal private enterprise. A philosophy of the second kind, on the other hand, is clearly compatible with a policy of institutionalization; a good model would be the one proposed by White and subsequently rejected by his supposed reductio ad absurdu• - which, we have seen, is no reductio at all, and which, in any case, is a puny reason for rejecting what is otherwise deemed valuable and true. NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. Oakeshott, M. 'Education• the engagement and its frustrations', in: Dearden, R.F., tiirst, P.H., and Peters, R.S. (eds.> Education, Society and HUitan Nature,· pp. 4-5 . 52. Paterson would appear to be an exception to the arguments made against 1 i beral phi 1 osophers of education in this chapter. Against Peters, in fact, he argues that adult education is a positive (or welfare) right 'adults have a moral right to continuing 1 ifelong education· :i stence whi eh is complete in itself and free from the influence of utilitarianism (and which) implies that we do not build up a separate, exclusive 'kingdom·, but on the contrary treat with due r··espect all that has been the foundation of human life through the centuries, everything that has enabled man to take risks connecte~ with harnessing nature and creating civilization.[16J If one examines the concept of a 'learning society• against historical conceptions of the role of education within the political unit it becomes evident which tradition it belongs to. Fundamentally, it is on the side of the Athenian democracy and against Plato. What makes its re-emergence radical in our times is the fact that, notwithstanding small pockets of resistance on the way,C17J it was Plato who eventually won, and it is Platonic solutions that we now find operational in the Western world (and in most places outside it too>, where the central function of educational systems is still to produce a leadership rather than to disseminate learning democratically. The difference today is that the philosopher king model has been replaced by that of the • edLicated man·, who is also ·something of a phi 1 osopher ·, who has si mi 1 ar 1 y completed the journey to the pinnacle of 'the curriculum· which has successfully initiated him into 'forms of knowledge·, who is motivated towa~ds higher 'mental development" which will consist not in his interaction with 'life" but with the endless complexities and 205

The Learning Society his primary sophistications of the disciplines; object will be his self-improvement, this is why he wi 11 consider what he 1 earns mainly from the angle of its intrinsic worth. Alisdair Maclntyre, who recently delivered the first of the Peters lectures entitled 'The Idea .of an Educated Public', argues that the apparent dichotomy between the two goals modern educational systems typically set themselves that of socializing people and contemporaneously getting them to think for themselves can be resolved; it is not some permanent To resolve it recondition of human 1 i fe. ( 18] quires, he says, the restoration of those conditions that make an 'educated public' possible, and he goes He back in history to see what these could be. argues that in order to find the embodiment of the concept of an 'educated public' we need not return to as remote a time as Ancient Greece, but to 18th Its primary condition, he points century Scotland. out, was the structure of the Scottish 1 i fe-styl e itself, which resolved itself into small local communities, and the challenges which it was forced to meet at every level, cultural, political and economIts ic because of changing historical conditions. was its universities, but its success spearhead resulted mainly from a number of factors that are inherent in the concept of community; the possession of a common body of knowledge which is accorded 'canonical status' by its members, where what is meant is n:tent to which a collectivity, in fact, deserves the name of community depends on its success in drawing increasing m.tmbers of its members in different ways into the ongoing 'conversation' which is its 'form of life', and in widening in ever-increasing degrees the areas of its life where active dialogue is possible. On the other hand, conc:omi tant. with this heightened degree of participation, the logic of community dem.ands of its members a heightened sense of responsibility towards self .and others. The logic of commt.mi ty also implies .a decentralization of power without which there can be no realistic e>:ercise of responsible participation. It also carries implications with regards to size and geography, as RousseaLI pointed out and as is implied by the defining characteristics of community as described by Dewey.C21J In sum, it is clear that the political embodiment of community as we have described it is 208

The Learning Society that of a participatory democracy, which is also sui generis a 'learning society'. Pateman has described the characteristics of a participatory democracy well, and contrasted them with those of the contemporary theory of democracy functioning in liberal democracies in the Western world. [22J She makes the central point that the theory of participatory democracy is built around the assertion that individuals and their institutions cannot be consider·ed in isolation of each other, and that therefore the mere existence of representative institutions at the national level is insufficient. She also points out that ma>dmum participation by all requires an active socialization into democratic skills and dispositions that must take place in different spheres of life in order that the necessary individual attitudes and psychological qualities are developed. This development, in turn, takes place thr·ough the process of act.i ve participation itself. The major funct.ion of participation in the theory of participatory democracy is therefore an educative one. Pateman argues that there is no special problem with regards to the political stability of a participatory society, as is sometimes asserted, this is because it is self-sustaining through the very educative impact of the participatory process. Participation, she contends, develops and fosters the very qualities necessary for it; it feeds upon itself and gathers strength in the process of so doing, since the more individuals participate the better· able they are to do so, and the more favourably disposed they become towards procedures of negotiated agreement that are implied by a participatory decisionmaking. There is here understood, of course, that tacit and mutual acceptance of a body of procedures for participation which define the accepted norms of practice within the particular society, and of the core of beliefs, values, and common interests definatory of a community, together with the means for their effective and open e>:change and communication, that underlies the participatory system itself. Pateman also contends that the evolution towards a participatory society should ideally begin at its industrial base, for most individuals spend a great deal of their lifetime at wor·k, and because the business of the workplace provides an education in the management of collective affairs that it is 209

The Learning Society difficult to parallel anywhere else. Spheres such as industry, she says, should be seen as political systems in their own right, offering ~reas of participation additional to those at the national level. A further reason for the central place of i nd1...1stry in the theory relates to the substantial measure of economic equality required to give the individual the independence and security necessary for equal participation. The contention that participation in social and political life is necessary for a positive conception of individual happiness and psychological wellbeing as well as being a valuable form of education is an important one. For it is these factors that make a participatory democracy desirable in itself, according to Patemen, who also presents another two 'subsidiary hypotheses' besides in support; namely that participation has an integrative effect on the group and that it aids the acceptance of collective decisions.[23J But it is, of course, not an uncontroversial one because we do not currently have at our disposal research to establish whether this is true in fact, as Pedersen has shown in his review of the question. This is because the conditions for assessing a participatory democracy do not exist, because 'even if large numbers of citizens could be persuaded to ma~(e political participation part of their daily life, the political educational effect of this remains uncertain in the absence of systematic evidence', and this evidence it is almost impossible to obtain since the variables involved are too many and too uncertain.[24J It is similarly not certain that participation need have a positive psychological effect on the individual or need lead to his happiness. Reynolds, for instance notes, with specific reference to evidence from participatory organizations in industry, which, it will be recalled, Patemen indicated as having a leading role to play in the evolution towards a participatory society, that: often, when participation has been put to the test, it is reported that people have seemed unwilling or incapable of assuming greater responsibility. It is a sadly commonplace experience that where the opportunity for taking part in decision making, planning, or problem-solving is e>; tended, the process can prove frustrating and the results trivial.[25J 210

The Learning Society

B1.1t something more than intuition suggests that the cause of this situation, where it exists, needs to be sought within the antecedent circumstances of the lives of the people involved with regards to their education. I t is, in fact, more than likely that they were unwilling or unable to participate significantly or effectively at the workplace because participation was something novel to them, it did not feature in their earlier formal education, and probably did not feature either within the culture of their family upbringing or peer relationships. In brief, if it is true, as intuition suggests that an effective participation is a form of education, it is also true that an effective participation is something that itself needs educatinq into before it bcomes a self-reinforcing practice as Pateman says. It is useless, as the Faure report argues, to expect a participatory democr·acy to occur in the wider institutions if it is not first apparent within the formal education system. There are still other difficulties with the concept of a participatory democracy at a more theoretical level. One is an old one bro1.1ght against the Athenian democracy by Plato. The whole basis of democratic decision making, said Plato, is ludicrous, since it confuses wisdom with weight of numbers. Furthermore, not only is it unscientific in principle, it is also, he argues, incompetent and open to abuse in practice since it inevitably degener.:ates into mob rule; th-is is because democratic societies are permanent I y open to the threat of demagoguery. It can in fact be argued that current Western democracies reflect a concession to the force of this argument, particularly that aspect of it that contends that a participatory democracy sacrifices efficiency for the doubtful value of participation by the masses. Again, connected with this argument is the further· contention that in a participatory society little or no attention is given to training in the qualities of leadership. Another argument is that participation is not in itself an unqualified good. Opponents of a participatory society point to the Weimar Republic and the use it made of mass participation as a form of political control and in order to direct the energies of people towards the persecution of a minority in their midst. This is the same argument as is fetched against Dewey's criterion of 'growth', as we saw 211

The Learning Society in the previous chapter, and, more relevantly, against the primacy he attributes to community. Thus Flew, making the point that an increasing sense of community wi 11 not necessar·i 1 y create a better society against Dewey ·argues that the fact that 'a smoked salmon is by definition smoked', does not mean that ·it must be a better salmon the more smoked it is".C26l The general point being that the existence of the conditions of communality of the most heightened and efficient kind can go together with the holding of thoroughly evil motives for association and interests we do not value a community of murderers because, whatever else may be the case, it is a community. In response to the first set of these arguments, we need to concede that belief in the value of a participatory democracy is currently, in fact, an act of faith rat her than a rigorously argued out and empirically backed scientific hypothesis. But then, an act of faith is required on behalf of any but a perfect societyJ only that requires no faith for its success si nee it is otherwise constr·uc ted, on a 'scientific· basis. Few people today however would accept the credibility of 'scientifically' constructed states, or the desirability of deciding social and political affairs or the public well-being 'scientifically' the collective experience of generations has turned out to be a much safer criterion for making such decisions than 'science', as Aristotle predicted. Advocates of the current representative forms of democracy will turn to this conclusion and point out that experience has in fact shown representative democracy to work, it is therefore less an act of faith than the participative democracy which is unknown in the modern Western world, though it has been e}:perimented with outside it, in some of the newer states, not with very encour·aging r·esults. And there is some truth in this, but only some, otherwise there would be no truth in the analysis of philosophers, sociologists and social psychologists, who describe the current conditions of li~e in Western societies on the psychological and cultural plane, in negative terms with which we are all familiar. And in fact today's revival of the ideal of a participatory society c_,an be viewed, over and above everything else, as·a response to these conditions, since the claim that a positively conceived society of this kind is psychologically and culturally beneficial has at least an initial sound of credibility about 212

The Learning Society it and appeals to our logic.[27J With regards to the second argument, one has to agree that not all participation need be a good thing, just as not all kinds of growth are desirable or all kinds of community commendable - in short, the point must be taken that what makes participation a good thing, or community a good thing, is not the fact of participation or community itself but the ends to which it serves. But, having said this, one needs to add that, besides the fact that there is no reason to assume a priori that a participatory democracy need be any more or any less repressive than other kinds, the whole way of putting the argument above is misleading. For what really counts is whether, all things being equal, i.e., granted that the ends for which either society exists are good ones, it is more desirable to have a society which is participatory or not. In true fact every democratic society concedes the right of its members to participate to some extent in its affairs, popular participation being of the very essence of democracy. And this implies that participation is itself valued in all societies that refer to themselves as democratic. The real difference, with regards to a participatory democracy, is that it emphasises the value of participation and strives to make it possible at all its institutional levels. Moreover it tries to make participation real by ensur·ing that the individual is given the opportunity to act in as many areas of his life as possible instead of always having others act on his behalf. It thus reverses the current situation within many societies where, to paraphrase Freire, people have the i 11 usi on of acting through the action of their leaders. SELF-REALIZATION One of the main contentions made on behalf of com . munity which is also, as we have seen, necessarily a participatory society, is that participation is itself conducive towards individual self-realization. Another major contention was that participation is also the community's primary method of socializing its members. Thus we seem to have tied up the problem of tension between the ideal of selfrealization and the demands of socialization, referred to earlier, quite neatly. But, in effect, we 213

The Learning Society have not really examined the problem adequately to see whether this is in fact so. So we need to return to the beginning to see where its roots lie. The tension between. i ndi vi dual freedom and socialization appears with particular sharpness in liberal and existentialist philosophy, and its origin 1 ies in a deep distrust of collective judgements, which are largely misinformed, and of collective intentions, which are commonly repressive. In short, the collective has, from the individualist point of view, the wrong credentials for giving people enlightened guidance even when it is not being deliberately repressive in their regard. Plato gave this tension metaphysical form; in his deep distrust of the collective he sought to liberate the individual by conjuring up a world of universal 'Forms' which would constitute a different, superior point of reference. Thus the programme of 'self-realization' for the Platonic philosopher· is described for him in the parable of the cave, which sums up Plato's contempt and distrust of the common stock of knowledge which the man-in-the-street shares with his neighbo1-1rs, and where Plato holds forth the hope that 'philosophy', as the turning of the eye inward into the soul, will achieve for him better things. In the process it will enable him to win his freedom. For Plato then, the search for truth is inextricably tied with the pursuit of ·autonomy· • It is not difficult to read the same project both into 1 iberal and into e>:istential ist thought. Plato's primary thesis is that the individual owes his first allegiance to the 'truth' not to his fellows. Existentialist philosophy renders the same thesis central to its viewpoint by placing its premium on authertticity or 'good faith'. At the same time however, in rejecting the possibility of universal truths, or the 'truth', it also rejects the Platonic hope in the liberating power of 'philosophy'. Liberal philosophy locates the truth in a more mundane sphere than Plato, the sphere of academic knowledge, the intrinsic value of which is set up by liberal philosophers of education against the 'abridgements of life', as that which is alone 'education~. It should therefore be distanced from the latter which is mere 'socialization'. At the same time liberal philosophers share the same faith in the power of 'phi 1 osophy' as Plato. Thus, although individual or social wants and needs cannot, 214

The Learning Society in their view, guide the education programme, philosophy can. For this reason, the autonomous person, who is the end product of the programme, is a 'philosopher', if with a different point of reference to Plato's. He is not simply one who makes 'choices', still less is he one who makes the 'criterionless choices' demanded by the existentialist, in fact his life follows a consistent life-plan rationally thought out. Or to put it in another way, the liberal conception of autonomy is not subjectivist in the way of the existentialist. For the existentialist ·Choose thyself! ' is the unwritten command that 1 i es at the heart of all true autonomy projects, for the liberal, in contrast, there are objective criteria for living the good life and for understanding the truth about things, with which individual autonomy must coincide and which can be recognized rationally. These conclusions make it evident why liberal philosophers of education are uncomfortable with the educational aim of self-realization, while the concept is in fact at home within existentialist philosophy. In effect, as soon as one declares self-realization to be the aim of education the question arises; which 'self· do we have in mind, which is the ·self' to be realized through education? And two kinds of general answers present themselves for consideration in response to ita either the 'self' to be realized is a nonpredetermined individual self, so that the general aim of self-realization can have, and ideally will have, as many idiosyncratic outcomes as there are individuals, or the 'self' to be realized is a model self, one which is predetermined and serves as what Dewey calls a fixed or 'static' goal for selfrealization. Liberal philosophers of education explicitly reject the former so, if they are to use the concept, they have to fall back on the latter. This is the case, for instance, with Elizabeth Telfer, whose essay on 'Education and SelfRealization' roughly distinguishes the following salient points with regard to the concept:[28J 1. 'unlike most words beginning with the prefi>: 'self·, it does not seem to imply that the person who undergoes it must be the same as he who produces it'. [29] She notes that the prefix 'self' is not, in the case of 'self-realization·, reflexive, referring back to the 215

The Learning Society agent, but rather conveys the view that what is 'realized' is selve:5 or per:5(.tns. 2. The releyant sense of 'realization' in the context of the term is not that of 'awareness • ; 'self-realization' does not mean 'self-awareness', however valuable this quality independently. The relevant sense is rather that of 'becoming real· or 'actualization·. 3. What is realized, then, must be certain potentialities of which two kinds are especially relevant a capacities and inclinations. The first refers to the realization of skills, the second refers to tendencies. Realization takes place in two ways, either by exercising skills, by putting incli.nations to effect, or by developing skills and inclinations• ' I f we see self-realization in ter-ms of the development of potentialities, we are depicting it as beco•ing a certain kind of person, whereas if we see it in terms of the exercise of potentialities, we are depicting it as acting in certain ways'.C30l The distinction, she says, is conceptual rather than practical, but it is important because it is reflected in the ways in which various educational processes are conceived. 4. The notion of self-realization involves an evaluative notion of self. There are f0t.1r forms that this can take, four accounts of the potentialities to be developed. Two are related to conceptions of a generic self, and they refer either to an ideal or higher self, or to a balanced self or 'whole man·, t.wo are related to conceptions of an individual self, and they refer either to an idiosyncratic self or to an autonomous self. 5. There is a s-trong compatibility between the activities of the higher self and those o-f the aut,~no11ous selfl 'all the activities which are naturally regarded as activities of . the higher self are at the same time activities which particularly employ the aut,mo•ous self·. C31l 6. Making self-realization the aim of education means depicting education as aiming at the individual's good in some way, it therefore rules out the idea that the purpose of education is to further the good o-f society. It also rules out the notion that the purpose of education is to increase tt;le individ1..1al's happiness since there is no necessary connection between the ideas of self-realization and happiness. 7. .Edt.u:::at i o.n i s a good in i t se 1 f ; i t i s tempting to tie the state of educatedness with that Tel fer .,.ul es out the real i z aof self-realization. 216

The Learning Society tion of the 'balanced self· as necessary to educatedness, also the realization of a higher self unless very narrowly conceived in intellectual terms. She in fact finally connects educatedness with 'intellectual sel-f-realization', which is in turn connected with the having of a certain range of knowledge familiar in liberal literature. The argument which establishes the first move in the development of this thesis is a crucial one: Telfer interprets the meaning of self-realization in a manner such that it becomes intelligible to say that I have realized myselT when others have decided for me what • self · I was to realize. For from it she can move on to legitimise the r·ight of the teacher to make all the educational decisions on the grounds that the teacher knows, while the pupil does not, which 'self· it is desirable that the pupil should realize. This is why philosophy is important for teachers; because the having of phi losophi.cal insights on their part ensures that the decisions themselves are not arbitrary or taken as a mere matter of opinion or personal interest. But, in any case, philosophy of education offers a model readymade which, if they are rational and well-intentioned, they ought to pursueJ the model of educatedness, of the 'educated person·. So, in actual fact, it turns out that it is the phi 1 osophers who set the aims of education which the teacher is expected to pursue, although not uncritically of course. And to do this the philosopher will examine theoretically what it is to be a • self ' or a ·person' , and what kind of knowledge and attitudes are proper to the aim of becoming an educated person or sel-f. Selfrealization, from the side of pupils, will consist in their realizing the aim of edLICatedness under the direction of their teachers. If this begins to sound uncomfortably like an argument for their socialization, Telfer makes it clear that making selfrealization the aim of education implies viewing it as aiming at the individual's good' in some way, it therefor.e, she says, 'rules out the idea that the purpose of education is to further the good of society'. At the same time she hastens to add that there is no necessary connection between self-realization and being happy either, which is perfectly true, but there is, on the other hand, a necessary connection between educatedness and intellectual development, so that if self-realization is the achievement of educatedness then it must be 'intellectual self-realization' that is meant. .217

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This all sounds very neat and is, in fact, an ingenious attempt on Telfer 's part to render the concept of self-realization a coherent part of the liberal education programme. But it is fatally flawed in many ways, starting with the premise which interprets self-realization to mean the re~lization of a 's;elf' rather than the realization of or/l!.'sel'f.[32J The COED defines the term as 'the full development of one's faculties', so that her interpretation does not square with what one can take to be its conventional meaning, nor does it square with ordinary usage where self-realization is normally regarded as a personal thing. Moreover, it does not sound right when you say it, when you translate it into a statement of educational aims, where it renders itself as 'p should decide for q the mode of q's self-realization·. Furthermore, the moment you accept that self-realization has a non-refle>:ive meaning and implies the realization of a 'self' you are opening the door theoretically to different kinds of proposals of what that 'self' should be, not all acceptable ones. You will therefore, from a liberal point of view, be constrained to make an additional case for the superiority of 'philosophical· reasons over others, which further means negotiating the hidden reef that is the theory-ladenness thesis# From a different point of view, if self-realization is made the aim of education, and it is further claimed that what is implied by self-realization is that 'what is 'realized' is selves or persons·, it sounds rather odd to qualify it with the condition that the 'self' implied is the intellectual self - one cannot say that it is meaningless, but the combination of terms ·intellectual self-realization· does not sound right. The reason why Telfer fixes on intellectual self-realization is o-f: course obvious, 'happiness· or 'the good of society· being the wrong motives, from a liberal point of view, for making educational decisions; since neither is sufficiently 'neutral·. The development of 'mind', or 'intellectual development', on the other hand, fits the bill perfectly. Liberal philosophers of education, on the whole, have rightly preferred to avoid the concept of selfrealization and the complications it creates for them; many have fixed upon 'autonomy' as the central quality of educatedness, which can be a di-fferent thing. Peters, as the reader may remember, in a passage quoted in an earlier chapter actually distinguished self-realization from education 218

The Learning Society thus cla5sifying it as 5omething different, which probably means that he tacitly recognized its truly ref 1 ex i ve nature. The concept of autonomy, on the other hand, enables the liberal philosopher of education to escape a form of individualism which i5 utterly subjectivist, like that of the existentialists for instance, and therefore not to his taste, while avoiding the equally di5ta5teful quicksand5 of '5ocialization·, 5ince he adopt5 it mainly in the l:i m. He thereby 1 bcates the seat of moral authority not in the collective will but within the individual himself. At the same time his theory that the individual is also member of a single moral community which is the human race contradicts Rousseau's contentions about community, at least in the moral sphere, and 1 atches onto the old hLimani sm of the Stoics whi eh 1 i kewi se hypothesi zed the existence of a hLiman moral community. Kant continued to add, again like the Stoics, that membership of this community not only imposes duties on the individual but also gives him a 'dignity' which others are obliged to respect by always treating him as an 'end'.[33J

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The Learning Society Liberal phi 1 osophers, on the other hand, have preferred to set the limits of freedom at the level of respect for reciprocal rights. They have tended therefore to follow Mill in distinguishing two classes of actions; the self-regarding or strictly private, whi eh are sacred to the i ndi vi dual to the extent that interference with them by others is never justified, and the ot.her-regardi ng where the limits of individual freedom are set by the like rights of others to the same freedoms. They have therefore tacitly rejected the lepression in the vigorous, inquiring life of the scholar, philosopher, artist, scientist, rolled into one typified by Leonardo da Vinci. 18. The lecture, along with the others, is expected shortly as a ULIE publication 243

Flew, A. 'Democracy and Education', in1 Peters, R.S. ( 1977> ·The Concept of Education Today', F'rankena, W. K. Educational