Category Archives: Philosophy of Education

New Piece on Academic Freedom

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Just came out in the AAUP’s Journal of Academic Freedom. Here’s the abstract:

This article looks at a three-way debate between Robert Post, Judith Butler, and Stanley Fish over the role of academic standards in our understanding of academic freedom. It argues that skepticism about such standards, anticipated by Post and embraced by Butler and Fish in the early 2000s, foreshadowed the growing doubts about academic freedom and higher education that are now recognized as a crisis. The debate also illustrates why effective responses to this crisis have been hard to come by, particularly for those working in the humanities, as academic trends have played into the hands of opponents of academic freedom on both sides of the political divide.

Thoughts on Hand and Kohlberg Part 2

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It is an interesting exercise to try to locate Hand’s approach on Kohlberg’s taxonomy, particularly in light of what I think is an irresolvable tension in Kohlberg’s approach.

Kohlberg’s stages are entirely formal—higher levels of moral reasoning are identified not in terms of the actual beliefs or judgments endorsed but the principles by which agents defend their judgments. Accordingly, Kohlberg’s version of moral education focuses on improving the routes by which students arrive at whatever judgments they settle on, but it does not allow him to identify anything in particular that they should judge to be right or wrong. While it was clear that the politically minded and liberal Kohlberg had his own opinions about the right position on any number of controversial subjects, he could only hope that students would arrive at those conclusions themselves. Towards the end of his life this inability to identify, from within his theory, specific beliefs students should be taught directly was a growing concern for Kohlberg. Continue reading…

Thoughts on Hand and Kohlberg Part I

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Michael Hand’s A Theory of Moral Education is a good book, and his theory a powerful and plausible one. The book is curious in one respect, however, which I want to poke at here. Hand presents the challenge of moral education in contemporary liberal democracies in the form of two questions: 1) what should children be taught by way of moral education? and 2) is it possible for moral education to be more than indoctrination? Hand spends a little time exploring why these two question seem most pressing, and the answer seems clear. The first arises when we acknowledge the pluralism of moral beliefs in modern liberal democracies, and the second when we acknowledge the paramount importance of respecting children’s autonomy either, as some would have it, while they are children but at least as future adults. In short, we don’t want to sanction state enforcement of some controversial beliefs and values over others, and we don’t want to foist upon children beliefs they cannot have chosen for themselves on some rational basis. Hand aims to outline an approach to moral education that respects both these constraints in the face fo doubts that it can be done. So far so good. Keep reading…

Against “Indoctrination”

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Like a lot of areas of philosophy, philosophy of education is frequently a locus for skirmishes in larger political battles. A common tactic is to accuse one’s political opponents of not really believing in education as shown by their lamentable views on school funding, school choice, sex education, evolution, or whatever. A variant of this tactic is to suggest our sides supports education—that is real, or genuine education—while the others practice indoctrination, is an ugly imposter that resembles education at first glance but which is actually something else entirely. That the word “indoctrination” is mostly doing rhetorical work in these debates is strongly suggested by how readily both sides of political divides use it against their opponents, how similarly they characterize it, and the mutual lack of charity both sides display in trying to make the charge stick.

I think it’s time to retire the word “indoctrination” in serious discussions in philosophy of education. Keep reading…