John Peter White

Howard Gardner's theory of Multiple Intelligences has had a huge influence on school education. But its credentials lack justification, as the first section of this paper shows via a detailed philosophical analysis of how the intelligences are identified. If we want to make sense of the theory, we need to turn from a philosophical to a historical perspective. This is provided in the second section, which explores how the theory came to take shape in the course of Gardner's intellectual development. The third section looks at changes in the theory since its inception in 1983 and at problems with its applications to education. The paper concludes with a response to Gardner's critical comments on the argument to this point.

In England and Wales we have had a National Curriculum since 1988. How can it have survived so long without aims to guide it? This IMPACT pamphlet argues that curriculum planning should begin not with a boxed set of academic subjects of a familiar sort, but with wider considerations of what schools should be for. We first work out a defensible set of wider aims backed by a well-argued rationale. From these we develop sub-aims constituting an aims-based curriculum. Further detail is provided here on one of the most central educational aims, to do with equipping each child to live a flourishing personal and civic life. [A later, more detailed account of an aims-based curriculum is available in Reiss, M and White J <An Aims-based Curriculum: the significance of human flourishing for schools> Institute of Education Press 2013].

Richard Peters argued for a general education based largely on the study of truth-seeking subjects for its own sake. His arguments have long been acknowledged as problematic. There are also difficulties with Paul Hirst's arguments for a liberal education, which in part overlap with Peters'. Where justification fails, can historical explanation illuminate? Peters was influenced by the prevailing idea that a secondary education should be based on traditional, largely knowledge-orientated subjects, pursued for intrinsic as well as practical ends. Does history reveal good reasons for this view? The view itself has roots going back to the 16th century and the educational tradition of radical Protestantism. Religious arguments to do with restoring the image of an omniscient God in man made good sense, within their own terms, of an encyclopaedic approach to education. As these faded in prominence after 1800, old curricular patterns persisted in the drive for ‘middle-class schools’, and new, less plausible justifications grew in salience. These were based first on faculty psychology and later on the psychology of individual differences. The essay relates the views of Peters and Hirst to these historical arguments, asking how far their writings show traces of the religious argument mentioned, and how their views on education and the development of mind relate to the psychological arguments.

What is analytical philosophy of education (APE)? And what has been its place in the history of the subject over the last fifty years? In a recent essay in Ethics and Education (Vol 2, No 2 October 2007) on ‘Rival conceptions of the philosophy of education’, Paul Standish described a number of features of APE. Relying on both historical and philosophical argument, the present paper critically assesses these eight points, as well as another five points delineating APE in the Introduction to The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Education.

Everyone will agree that education ought to prepare young people to lead a meaningful life, but there are different ways in which this notion can be understood. A religious interpretation has to be distinguished from the secular one on which this paper focuses. Meaningfulness in this non-religious sense is a necessary condition of a life of well-being, having to do with the nesting of one’s reasons for action within increasingly pervasive structures of activity and attachment. Sometimes a life can seem meaningless when it is not so in fact. In more extreme cases it may in fact be to some extent meaningless. Equipping young people for a meaningful life is a worthwhile, but not all-important educational aim. Educators should help them not only to see their lives as meaningful but also to lead lives that <are> meaningful. This involves continuous engagement in the nesting of reasons mentioned above. Where autonomy is also an aim, temperamental attunement to possible options – rather than exposure to all possible options – and time to explore them are important considerations. Questions arise here both about social justice and about whether current school curriculum and timetabling arrangements help or hinder pupils in living a meaningful life.

The idea that education should equip people to lead flourishing lives and help others to do so is now becoming salient in policy-making circles. Philosophy of education can help here by clarifying what flourishing consists in. This essay examines one aspect of this. It rejects the view that well-being goods are derivable from human nature, as in the theories of Howard Gardner and Edmond Holmes. It locates them, rather, as cultural products, but not culturally-relative ones, drawing attention to the proliferating forms they have taken over the past three or four centuries. It looks to aesthetics and art criticism as a guide to a philosophical treatment of well-being goods more generally. It also takes off from aesthetics and art criticism in seeking to identify reliable authorities on the flourishing life. On this, it rejects elitist conceptions in favour of a more democratic model, emphasising its importance in education for citizenship.

The paper looks at arguments for and against private schools, first in general and then, at greater length, in their British form. Here it looks first at defences against the charge that private schooling is unfair, discussing on the way problems with equality as an intrinsic value and with instrumental appeals to greater equality, especially in access to university and better jobs. It turns next to charges of social exclusiveness, before looking in more detail at claims about the dangers private schools pose for democratic government. It then examines complications arising from shifts in the notion of ‘private’ education since the 1980s, before concluding, in the light of recent articles in JOPE about criteria for admission to university, with a discussion of Brighouse's proposal for the reform of private schooling. There are also shorter discussions of other suggestions for such reform.

This is a book in the ‘Thinking in Action’ series, which ‘takes philosophy to the public’. The review outlines the argument in the two halves of the book: on educational aims; and on controversial policy issues. In its assessment of the arguments it focuses on the following topics: problems in the relationships between happiness, flourishing, and personal autonomy; the justification of the traditional subject‐centred curriculum; the role of conjecture in the argument for state‐funded faith‐based schools; and a defence of education for patriotism in the face of Brighouse's critique

In this paper John White argues that there has been a decline in interest in and support for liberalism in British philosophy of education. He provides examples of work by leading figures in the field that demonstrates scepticism about the key liberal value of autonomy and offers an analysis of new influences in the field that have contributed to this decline. In particular he notes the increase of work from a religious perspective. Doubts are expressed about the practical relevance to education of some of these avenues of thought, and the suggestion is made that they cause those within the field to be more out of touch with society at large, in which liberal values have continued to be the major source of animation. The paper is followed by short responses from four philosophers of education whose work he criticises.

The article is a critical discussion of the aims behind the teaching of philosophy in British primary schools. It begins by reviewing the recent Special Issue of the Journal of Philosophy of Education Vol 45 Issue 2 2011 on ‘Philosophy for Children in Transition’, so as to see what light this might throw on the topic just mentioned. The result is patchy; many, but not all, of the papers in the Special Issue deal with issues far removed from the classroom. Insights from the more practical papers, especially those working within the legacy of Matthew Lipman, are woven into the ensuing discussion. This describes two overlapping strands of work in primary philosophy, one focusing more than the other on topics familiar in specialised philosophy courses for older people. The article then discusses two kinds of aim behind primary philosophy, one to do with induction into philosophy as a discipline, the other to do with the enhancement of reasoning abilities. It finds both of these problematic. While welcoming more attention to different kinds of reasoning, it does not see this as a reason for teaching philosophy in particular. The article concludes with an account of possible reasons why primary philosophy has become increasingly popular over the last two decades

In the World Library of Educationalists series, international experts themselves compile career- long collections of what they judge to be their finest pieces-extracts from books, key articles, salient research findings, major theoretical and/practical contributions-so the world can read them in a single manageable volume. Readers will be able to follow the themes and strands of their work and see their contribution to the development of a field. Emeritus Professor John White has spent the last 35 years researching, thinking and writing about some of the key and enduring issues in education. In this book, he brings together 16 key writings in one place. Starting with a specially written Introduction, which gives an overview of John's career and conceptualizes his selection within the development of the field, the chapters cover: · Mind · State and Curriculum · Well-being · Politics · Curriculum subjects. This book not only shows how John's thinking developed during his long and distinguished career; it also gives an insight into the development of the fields to which he contributed.

This is a reply to Rebecca Taylor's 2017 JOPE article ‘Indoctrination and Social Context: A System-based Approach to Identifying the Threat of Indoctrination and the Responsibilities of Educators’. It agrees with her in going beyond the indoctrinatory role of the individual teacher to include that of whole educational systems, but differs in emphasizing indoctrinatory intention rather than outcome; and in allowing the possibility of indoctrination without individual teachers being indoctrinators at all.

Should we educate for patriotism? The issue has exercised many political philosophers and philosophers of education over the last few years and produced radical divisions among them. This paper comments on two recent contributions to the debate, by David Stevens and David Archard. While both these essays oppose education for patriotism, the present paper supports it. It argues that David Stevens's essay wrongly assumes that patriotic sentiment must be based on obligations to one's fellow-nationals, while David Archard's misgivings about education for patriotism seem to turn largely on his over-restrictive conception of education.

Yael Tamir's book Liberal Nationalism seeks to show that liberalism and nationalism are not incompatible political philosophies. Nationalism need not take the closed, authoritarian form it has so often taken; and liberalism is premised on certain national ideas, including national self-determination. This critical discussion of her account is broadly sympathetic to the compatibility thesis, but takes issue both with her notion of nationalism, with her account of a nation as a self-conscious cultural community, and with the sharp line she draws between civic and cultural concerns. Although her book does not deal with education, this paper concludes with remarks about what the role of nationality should be in education, in both a Tamirian and a non-Tamirian framework. The latter is applied to education in Britain.

This article is a critical discussion of two recent papers by Michael Hand on moral education. The first is his ‘Towards a Theory of Moral Education’, published in the Journal of Philosophy of Education in 2014. The second is a chapter called ‘Beyond Moral Education?’ in an edited book of new perspectives on my own work in philosophy and history of education, published in the same year. His two papers are linked in that he applies the theory outlined in the former to a critique in the latter of my views on education in altruism in a 1990 publication. I introduce this article by outlining the tradition of recent philosophical thought about moral education, beginning with that of Richard Peters, in which Hand is working.

The article consists of a general section looking at changes since the 1960s in the links between philosophy of education and policy-making, followed by a specific section engaging in topical policy critique. The historical argument claims that policy involvement was far more widespread in our subject before the mid-1980s than it has been since then, and discusses various reasons for this change. The second section is a close examination of the Expert Panel's December 2011 recommendations on the future of the English National Curriculum. Embedded in this is a critique of Michael Young's influential notion of ‘powerful knowledge’

Andrew Reid's essay on the value of education in this journal distinguished the intrinsic features of education from what education is for, the latter being ultimately located in the promotion of personal well-being. At a meta-ethical level, this response accepts Reid's claim about ultimate location, but challenges his view that prudential goods are desire-independent, arguing for a desire-dependent conception based on supra-individual, but not always universal-human, preferences. It also questions his claim that the source of educational value lies in the intrinsic features of education, rejecting the suggestion that epistemological rather ethical considerations should be the starting-point.