Harvey Siegel

Many defences of multiculturalist educational initiatives conjoin a‘liberal’ or ‘radical’ moral/political view—that education should endeavour to treat students with respect, and that respecting non-dominant,‘marginalised’ students requires protecting them from the hegemonic domination of the dominant culture—with what appears to be an equally radical epistemological view, according to which respecting minority students and cultures requires respecting their culturally specific epistemologies, which in turn requires refraining from imposing upon them a dominating hegemonic epistemology concerning the nature of truth, rational justification, and so on. In this paper I argue (1) that this‘radical’ epistemological position is fatally flawed; and (2) that, if true, it would undermine, rather than undergird, the favoured moral l political view. I argue, that is, that proponents of‘radical’ pedagogy would do better to reject the associated‘radical’ epistemological view in favour of a more traditional,‘conservative’ one.

This chapter is adapted from Siegel, in which I argue that the critical thinker is best thought of as one who is appropriately moved by reasons. In this view, critical thinking involves a variety of reasoning and other cognitive skills; knowledge of various sorts; a set of tendencies or dispositions to exercise those skills and utilize that knowledge; the valuing of reasons and an appreciation of their epistemological force; and a certain sort of character. I am grateful to David Moshman and Carol Crowley for helpful comments on an earlier draft.

Israel Scheffler is the pre-eminent philosopher of education in the English-speaking world today. This volume collects seventeen original, invited papers on Scheffler's philosophy of education by scholars from around the world. The papers address the wide range of topics that Scheffler's work in philosophy of education has addressed, including the aims of education, cognition and emotion, teaching, the language of education, science education, moral education, religious education, and human potential. Each paper is followed by a response from Scheffler himself. The collection is essential reading for anyone concerned with contemporary scholarship in philosophy of education, or with the place of this singularly important author in it.

This paper is a response to van Haaften’s attempt to build ‘a natural bridge from “is” to “ought”’ and in doing so to provide a general account of how, in developmental theory, a claim that ‘a later stage in conceptual development is somehow better or more adequate than preceding ones’ can itself be justified. The account by van Haaften violates the ‘seems justified/is justified’ distinction and embroils him in a problematic form of relativism. This paper offers an alternative account of such claims in terms of stage-independent criteria of adequacy.

No indictment of existing education is more serious than the charge that it fosters uncritical rather than critical dispositions. It is difficult to see how the addition of anything but epistemology - and even more importantly of philosophy in general - can remedy that deficiency. The sentiment expressed here by Professor Matthew Lipman is a profound one. I agree completely that education has, as one of its fundamental tasks, the fostering of critical dispositions. I agree, moreover, that epistemology is basic to an education that takes seriously the enhancement of critical thinking. Philosophy for Children has forcefully delivered the message, to both the educational and the philosophical communities, that philosophy can and should be viewed as a central component of an adequate education.