The PESGB-funded ‘New Critical Conversations’ Seminar series
Three seminars have been held so far. The series promotes conversations between philosophers of education, representatives from university departments of philosophy, and educational researchers from other disciplines. The focus is on mutual understanding and education in the context of dialogue between representatives of contrasting philosophical/intellectual traditions. In contemporary philosophy of education, there ‘are many mansions’, and some inhabitants are neither willing nor able to gaze from their own and appreciate the existence and nature of others. Some feel that philosophy of education urgently needs to communicate its nature and value to empirical researchers, practitioners and policy makers lest it fails to survive. Others question the very existence of this concern.
Conversations in our first three seminars focus on communication between differing philosophical styles, approaches and languages. To what extent do, or should philosophers of education seek to ensure ‘understanding’, by whom and for what purpose? Running themes include ‘clarity’ and ‘accessibility’. These ideas are evidently open to interpretation. All have agreed so far that if philosophy of education has ‘problems’ (this would be disputed), these are not associated with any one tradition (e.g. analytic, continental, postmodern-please forgive the crude labels).
Among other things, I have been testing the following claim. Education is a normative enterprise and because philosophy of education has such importance for education practice and much else, there is a moral obligation to be ‘accessible’ or ‘clear’ to those from a variety of philosophical traditions, to policy makers, to empirical researchers in education and to classroom teachers. Or at least, such a moral obligation should be addressed at least on some occasions.
This suggestion has received short shrift, in part because of the multiple ambiguities involved, including the range of possible audiences and purposes. Who is supposed to be subject to such an obligation? When, and how? The nearest to agreement of a kind about moral obligation has emerged in relation to Initial Teacher Education.
So is Philosophy of Education dangerously complacent about its intellectual, academic and moral posture? Or is its current state perfectly in order, both morally and academically, and the promotion of ‘accessibility’ inappropriately ‘evangelical’? A fourth seminar will be held on November 18th 2015.
First three seminars: discussion summary
How far, if at all, should philosophy of education aspire to be ‘accessible’?
People responded: Accessible to whom, and for what purpose?
People were concerned that a focus on accessibility may impoverish intellectual content. Someone commented: ‘There is no shallow end in philosophy’. Philosophy teachers do students a disservice if they oversimplify. Students often hate being confused, but teachers need to support them in coping with some levels of confusion. In our attempts to ensure they can cope with complex material we may imply a deficit in them, while in actual fact we are helping to create that very deficit.
How far, if at all, should philosophy of education aspire to be ‘clear’?
It was felt that ‘clarity’ could characterise a number of different things, including the character of reasoning, a philosophical question as such and subject matter or content. All these are interrelated. Today’s ‘clarity-mongers’ are not attacking metaphysics, as did past empiricist/analytical philosophers in the Anglophone tradition. Now, crudely, they don’t like what they can’t understand.
Someone noted that philosophers’ ‘clarity’ might not be clear to others. (This comment was made in the context of conversation about ‘analytic’ philosophy in particular.) Well-known analytical philosophers of the last century such as A.J. Ayer were said to be ‘deceptively clear’. The clarity was superficial, and on deeper examination many key assumptions and concepts were very far from clear.
In his classic 1945 article “Clarity is not enough” Price claimed that some very important things cannot be said clearly. Accordingly, the relationship between philosophy and poetry was explored. Plato’s ‘quarrel’ between philosophy and poetry lurked in the wings. T.S. Eliot’s ‘Wasteland’ cannot be made ‘clear’. It was noted that Levinas aims to draw attention to matters that exceed comprehension in some sense. In any case, ambiguity itself can be productive and act as a stimulus for deeper thought.
A form of philosophical dialogue was defended in which neither participant knows fully what they think, but where they want to entice others into sharing some reflections about the topic concerned. At the same time, it was felt that philosophy in general is often rightly concerned with robust and clear reasoning and strong critical thinking. These achievements are prized by employers.
Is there any kind of moral obligation for philosophy of education to be ‘accessible’ or ‘clear’?
Arguably, a necessary condition for an affirmative answer is this:- ‘clarification’ and ‘making accessible’ must be open to multiple interpretations. For, given the legitimate range of different audiences and purposes for which philosophy of education may be intended, no moral obligation for ‘accessibility’ or ‘clarity’ in just a single sense of these terms could possibly exist.
An empirical researcher claimed that all researchers have a responsibility to enable their potential audiences to understand. Thus, according to this perspective, anyone should be able to explore anything. Yet it was acknowledged that there were serious tensions between this position and the legitimate role of the poet, for instance.
The ‘evangelical’ approach of those (me in particular?) supporting a moral obligation to be clear and accessible was strongly contested. After all philosophers of education sometimes write ‘for themselves’ –and that this was perfectly legitimate. In any case, such an accessibility obligation would have to be expressed with great subtlety lest it was self-evidently impossible to meet and thereby discredited from the start.
The existence of moral obligations of a kind in respect of at least some philosophy of education was defended on the grounds that education itself is a normative practice. Even those opposing communication obligations per se might concede that they could be triggered in philosophy of education if circumstances suggested that someone should speak out in an educational debate. But what, if anything does this imply for individual philosophers? Who might incur such an obligation? Why and how?
Where philosophers of education have written in an inaccessible fashion they may well have fallen short of some requirement or standard, but it was not felt that in general they had failed to meet a moral obligation.
Teacher education is gradually excluding philosophy of education. A familiar question for philosophy of education is how it should respond. A couple of seminar participants felt strongly that this is indeed a moral issue for various reasons. One reason relates to the vision of teachers as ‘intellectuals’ in a good sense. Without the contribution of philosophy this vision could never be achieved. It should be noted that the argument here would need supporting by the claim that there ought to be such people as teacher ‘intellectuals’..
Philosophers and temperament: Margalit
The ‘accessibility’/’clarity’ issue was explored in a particular way by drawing on ideas about philosophical temperament developed by Avishai Margalit. He distinguished between explicators and illuminators; those who appeal to definitions and those who appeal to examples, between “i.e.” philosophers and “e.g.” philosophers. Most participants favoured the ‘e.g.’ approach, but emphasised that it was appropriate to employ both, as and when appropriate, and also that the temperament distinction failed to correspond to alleged distinctions between philosophical traditions such as continental and analytic. The ‘e.g.’ style in particular seemed to manifest the writer or speaker’s attempt to ‘draw in’ audience and readers.
There was some investigation of the character of the ‘e.g’s. These could be real life examples – such as a problem of a certain kind in a classroom provoked by a certain kind of government policy. The highly stylised and ‘unreal’ instances beloved of analytical philosophy were also mentioned – such as Davidson’s ‘Swamp Man’ and Wittgenstein’s ‘Slab’ language game. The role of imagination in putting a problem before a reader or listener was emphasised – many philosophers are very good at this, and they are not restricted to any one tradition.
What issues should philosophy of education address?
A ‘practical conception’ of philosophy of education would address problems rather than texts. An extreme ‘practical’ version might expect the discipline to be grounded in the work of practitioners. One of the problems with this is that it would cast philosophers of education in the role of those who must wait until called – they would then act as janitors – clearing up the mess. This picture is reminiscent of the philosophical plumbing or under-labourer role, going back at least to the time of John Locke and challenged many decades ago in particular by Peter Winch in The Idea of a Social Science. It suggests that philosophers of education are not themselves allowed to initiate challenges or to introduce problems for educational debate. It was felt that there is a danger here of fossilising the distinction between thinkers and deciders – Marx claimed that philosophy interprets the world rather than changing it. Yet some seminar participants felt that the interpretive acts sourced in philosophy of education had at least potential for changing the world.
It was noted that when problems ‘out there’ are tackled by philosophy of education, everyone can join in the debate. Whereas certain kinds of focus on texts exclude those who have not read or cannot read them, or are unable to interpret them in the ways emphasised by certain groups of text-based scholars. Nevertheless, it was felt that a text-based approach to the discipline could involve the creation of ‘good’ problems by the reader as they read the text.