Hello Ron!
Previously we explored R.S. Peters concept of education.
Peters certainly analysed the most important concept of
education which˙can be inherited from the West, one which
can be traced back in practice˙and in scholarly discussion
for several thousand years. Once the requirements˙of making
a living and meeting the basic needs of life have been met,
this˙is the concept which has had the most to offer people
when it comes to˙living in, and making sense of their world.
That doesn't mean, however,˙that it isn't seriously flawed.
Its most serious problems are as follows:˙
It is a concept of "education" limited to schooling. This
limits the range˙of kinds of knowledge and understanding
which should be pursued to those˙kinds which can best be
pursued through schooling, and narrows the range˙of kinds of
truth which are judged to be of value.
It implies an advocacy for a particular vision of the
worthwhile life.˙It is a life in which the academic pursuit
of truth for its own sake must˙continue to play a serious
part. This rules out the many widely learned and
experienced˙people who turn their lives to other things.
The vision of the worthwhile life which is advocated is a
life associated with a privileged, leisured ruling class,
and has been so associated˙since the Ancient Greeks.
This vision has more to do with values and pursuits
cultivated among ruling elites than it does with a coherent
theory of how˙we might learn to understand the world and our
best living within it. It˙involves, after all, nothing more
than a collection of pursuits of truth˙which have developed
for various historical reasons. A cultivated member of the
ruling class was expected to be familiar with them, but they
were not necessarily, or always, developed with the
educational growth of the individual in mind.
Though there is a good intuition in the idea of "cognitive
perspective", there is no clear˙explanation as to why it is
important, or how, and why connections should˙be seen and
made.
For these reasons, this account of education is not well
suited to our˙times, or the foreseeable future. The
intrinsic pursuit of truth is a wonderful thing, but there
are other values, and truth itself becomes problematic˙once
we step outside the confines of Western tradition, in which
this account˙is rooted, and ponder the many different
cultures in which many different˙things have been pursued
with intelligibility. This does not make the pursuit˙of
truth irrelevant, but it does cause us to question the idea
of any educational˙advocacy of a particular way of life.
Nevertheless Peters's analysis alerts us to the possibility
of a concept˙of education which is of far more fundamental
importance than our more˙instrumental concerns. To leave
education reduced to mere vocational training,˙or to the
production of human capital to be exploited in the service
of˙the economy, or to create mere social conformity and
political compliance˙would be a catastrophe. There also
seems something of special importance˙which was captured by
his ideas of breadth of knowledge, and cognitive
perspective. The problems can be resolved in
a way which˙retains the essential insights, and shows us
vividly why such a form of˙education should matter. With
these considerations in mind, the˙following reformulation
of Peters's conditions is offered:
That "education" involves an initiation of the learner into
effective inquiry˙about the conditions of human flourishing
and their own good living, and˙into the modes of action
which their own inquiry may suggest is important.
That "education" must involve breadth of knowledge and
understanding, and˙wide-ranging skill, connected and related
in a comprehensive cognitive˙perspective; not being "inert"
but transforming, informing and influencing˙perception and
action.
That the process of "education" engages the reason of the
learner so that˙they come to believe and act for their own
reasons, and it rules out some˙procedures on the grounds
that sufficient wittingness and voluntariness˙on the part of
the learner would be lacking.
Cheers
Chris
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