Beyond the Present and the Particular (International Library of the Philosophy of Education Volume 2)

A Theory of Liberal Education

Charles H. Bailey

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781138871342
• eBook ISBN: 9781135171513
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Charles Bailey advances a modern characterization and justification of liberal education and defends such a view of liberal education against contemporary challenges. The book will be of special value to those guiding educational policy, designing curricula and reflecting on their own teaching practice. An introductory part of the book describes the need for justification and the special nature of liberal education as compared with other characterizations of education in utilitarian terms. The author offers a positive account of the content of liberal education, after a consideration and critique of the work of Paul Hirst, Philip Phenix and John White and follows this with an account of teacher strategy, attitude and methodology appropriate to liberal education. The final part of the book describes contemporary trends and challenges to the idea of liberal education and shows how they fail to provide a coherent alternative to liberal education as a basis for universal compulsory education.

1
Introduction—Theory and education

Since the aim of this work is to present a comprehensive and coherent theory of liberal education it is important to be clear in what sense I am talking about theory.

The word ‘theory’, like many other useful words in our language, has more than one meaning. Some of these meanings are plainly derogatory. For example ‘theory’ can mean ‘an unproved assumption’ or a ‘mere idea’, and there could be little to say about theory if this was all there was about it. We do not have to look far, however, to see that when we talk about bodies of ideas like the wave theory of light, the theory of radioactive decay, or the special theory of relativity, although there is a sense in which we are talking about assumptions, we are certainly not talking about mere ideas or lightly held assumptions. We are talking rather about carefully worked out and internally coherent bodies of ideas that seem to explain observed phenomena over a wide range of experiences. Although not verified beyond any peradventure of doubt, these theories enable us to make reasonable predictions and have not been refuted, though critically probed in many ways.

There are two important points to note about these scientific or explanatory theories. Firstly, they are not, as is sometimes supposed, derived from some piling up of observations until a theory emerges. They are, instead, the result of imaginative and creative ideas on the part of a Newton, a Rutherford or an Einstein about how things might be. Only then can propositions be deduced from the theories which we might try, as Karl Popper¹ has indicated, to refute. The theory stands as an explanation in so far as we fail to refute it. The theory is, to use Popper’s language, the unrefuted conjecture.

The second point to notice about scientific theories of this kind is that it would be arrant nonsense to say of such a theory, ‘It is all right in theory but not in practice.’ This would be nonsense because a failure in practice would amount to refutation. Einstein’s general theory of relativity, for example, provided propositions about the motion of the perihelion of Mercury, about the deflection of light in a gravitational field and about the displacement of spectral lines towards the red, all of which provided opportunities for refutation. Had the propositions not been found to fit practice in the sense of practical observation, then the theory would not have been all right but would have been discarded, however elegant the internal coherence of the mathematics might have been.

I do not want to claim that an educational theory, least of all the theory of liberal education to be advanced in this work, is a scientific theory in this sense. All I am concerned to show at the moment is that here is one quite respectable sense of ‘theory’ which anchors it securely alongside a particular kind of practice.

Another sense of ‘theory’ sees it as related to practice in another way, and since this is the sense in which I am using the term ‘theory’ in the expression ‘a theory of liberal education’ I must try to spell it out as carefully as possible. The sense I have in mind is a combination of the two following meanings from ‘Webster’s International Dictionary’:

(i) the body of generalisations and principles developed in association with practice in a field of activity, and

(ii) a belief, policy or procedure proposed or followed as the basis of action.

It will be seen that both of these meanings attach theory clearly to practice and action and that two complementary ideas are blended together. In the first the idea is that of principles or rules developed together with the practice of an activity, say medicine, jurisprudence or education; and in the second there is the idea of the body of beliefs or principles guiding the practice or action. The two ideas are superficially contradictory in that one seems to derive theory from the practice whilst the other might be seen as imposing theory on the practice. This would be to oversimplify, however, since reflection does show that the two ideas appear to co-exist in theories of practice. In medicine, for example, the actual practice produces knowledge about the body, about disease, the effect of drugs and surgical practice and technique. Reflection on the practice raises problems, not only those requiring laboratory-based research but also those of an ethical or valuative kind not susceptible to scientific enquiry. The body of knowledge and valuative attitudes so gained in turn guides practice and can be studied by student practitioners. Not all of the rules and principles so studied are of a factual, cause-effect kind, though in medicine many of them are. The important point is that there is an inter-play of practice and reflection upon the practice, with the reflection becoming more structured, systematic and sophisticated as the body of knowledge, and the literature in which it is embodied, grows.

Theory in this sense is not so much explanatory, as in the case of scientific theory, rather it is systematic reflection for a purpose, the continual characterization, delineation and guidance of a practical activity. The idea that theory, especially educational theory, has a guiding function, has of course been indicated by others. Paul Hirst, for example, in a well known paper has written:

Educational theory, like political theory or engineering, is not concerned simply with collecting knowledge about certain practical affairs. The whole point is the use of this knowledge to determine what should be done in educational practice.²

Later he says of theory of education:

It is the theory in which principles, stating what ought to be done in a range of practical activities, are formulated and justified.³

What has not been so commonly noted is that such a reflective theory of practice from time to time re-defines, re-characterizes, the practice itself. This is certainly true of educational theory, where what counts as education, or what makes a practice educational rather than non-educational is one of the questions continually reflected upon and calling for imaginative conjecture. People like Froebel, John Dewey and A.S.Neill do not simply perceptively describe the existing educational practice of their time, nor yet do they merely inform and guide such practice, what they do is to set out to recast that practice, reformulate it along more justifiable lines. Such thinkers have not just told teachers how they might better achieve agreed ends, they have questioned the ends and proposed different ones.

Educational theory, then, in the sense used here, is inescapably linked with practice. It cannot be the case that the theory is all right only to fail in practice since the proper relationship to practice is the test on which the theory stands or falls. It is very important, however, that the relationship of such a theory to practice is not misunderstood and some possible (indeed common) misunderstandings must be noted.

(i) It does not follow from the idea that theory must properly relate to practice that a theory is false or bad if it cannot be implemented without disturbing in some way present practice. Mixed-ability grouping, for example, is not shown to be a false or bad theoretical idea simply because it cannot be effectively managed with normal methods of class teaching, since the theory normally carried the accompanying idea that existing methods of teaching should be disturbed. All this is a consequence of the guiding and/or re-defining nature of educational theory. As mentioned above, educational theory might tell us how better to achieve ends already agreed upon, but it might also tell us what is wrong with the ends we are setting and why and how they might be bettered. There is much confusion in the interpretation of educational research because of a failure to distinguish between arguments as to ends and arguments as to means. Relatively straightforward experimental techniques and correlation studies can usefully inform us about preferable methods if the desired end is clear and agreed, and if the desired end does not change as the method changes, and if non-relevant variables can be avoided in the experimental comparisons. This essential clarity is rarely met with in educational research, however, partly because of the difficulty of controlling variables, but more importantly because there is nearly always a different attitude to ends implicit in the adoption of different methods. Consider, for example, the following pairs of contrasts.

comprehensive organization	selective organization
setting by ability	mixed-ability grouping
traditional mathematics	modern mathematics
formal teaching	informal teaching
differentiated subject curriculum	integrated curriculum

Any teacher familiar with these juxtapositions will know that they involve not only differing methodologies, arrangements and techniques, but differing views or conceptions of what the enterprise is supposed to be about. Setting and mixed-ability grouping, for example, are not just two opposed ways of achieving the same end, where one might be shown experimentally to be the better; they are two different conceptions of what should be going on in the education of children and young people. The issue between them is not therefore to be determined solely, or even perhaps at all, by experimental and statistical methods of investigation, but by a much more complex comparison of valuative positions backed by some kind of philosophical—ethical, conceptual, logical—argument.

Where a theory, in this sense, characterizes or re-characterizes a practice, then by implication it defines or re-defines what is to count as a skill or a successful method within the practice. The test is still in the practice, but not necessarily in the existing practice.

(ii) It does not follow from the idea that theory must properly relate to practice that the substance of the theory, and changes to the substance of the theory, must only derive from inside the practice itself. There is no reason why ideas influencing the practice should not come from outside the practice, from any appropriate bodies of disciplined thought or even from other practices. Of course such an influential idea, discovery or argument can come from within the practice upon which it bears, but it does not have to. A doctor in general practice can have such an idea or make such a discovery, but so can a bio-chemist or even a metallurgist. A teacher can have an idea influencing educational theory and thereby educational practice, but so can a philosopher or a psychologist. Ad hominem arguments against a theoretical point on grounds of the inadequacy of the protagonist’s teaching experience are common in the educational world, as is the ad populum argument that something should be done because it is fashionable. Both are clearly fallacious. All that should count is that the theory should be clear as to the kind of propositions being urged: whether they are, for example, conceptual or ethical recommendations or scientific, and, further, that the appropriate kind of justificatory argument should be offered or relevant criteria of falsifiability should be indicated where the claims are allegedly scientific.

(iii) It does not follow from the idea that theory must properly relate to practice that the only appropriate tests of a theory are those seeking to refute it in practice. Such tests are appropriate for theories or parts of theories claiming to be scientific, that is, theories claiming to state how things are. Examples of such theories, not necessarily true, would be:

(a) Children are encouraged to learn by the promise of extrinsic rewards.

(b) Punishment has an alienating effect, especially on adolescents.

(c) Clever pupils make slower progress in mixed-ability groups than equally clever pupils in groups of relatively similar ability.

Such tests are not appropriate, however, for claims seeking to guide or re-define practice which make no claim to be scientific. Claims like:

(d) Liberal education should involve the development of the rational mind in whatever form it freely takes.

(e) Education should always involve initiation into what is worthwhile and be concerned with knowledge and understanding.

(f) Teachers should respect their pupils as persons.

It is clear that (a), (b) and (c) differ from (d), (e) and (f) in that the first three claim to state what is the case, whilst the second three are all about what ought to be the case. Both kinds of claim or theory guide practice but they do this in two different ways.

The kind of facts claimed in the first three examples guide practice by telling us (if true) what happens if we do certain things. They do not tell us, of course, that we have to do that thing. To know that children are encouraged to learn by the promise of extrinsic reward, for example, does not in itself mean that I should, as a teacher, promise my pupils extrinsic rewards. There might well be other considerations. It does not even tell me that I should promise extrinsic rewards to my pupils if I want them to learn, since there may be other, more desirable ways of encouraging my pupils to learn. There are, therefore, two appropriate considerations about factual claims, or what we might call fact theories: firstly, how can they be ...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Epigraph
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction—Theory and education
• part I Justification of Liberal Education
• part II Content and Method
• part III Challenges to Liberal Education
• Notes and references
• Index