Michael Hand

Against autonomy as an educational aim

It is widely held that personal autonomy is a quality of character at which educators ought to aim. In this paper I argue that those who hold this view are misguided. I identify two ordinary senses of autonomy, and a range of technical senses currently popular with philosophers, and show that none of them constitutes a defensible educational aim.

A Philosophical Objection to Faith Schools

This paper is a re-examination of the argument that faith schools ought to be abolished on the grounds that they are indoctrinatory. The premises of this argument are (1) that faith schools teach for belief in religious propositions, (2) that no religious proposition is known to be true, and (3) that teaching for belief in not-known-to-be-true propositions is indoctrinatory. I argue that the first two premises are true, but the third, as it stands, is false. However, the flaws in the third premise are relatively minor and the argument against faith schools can be reformulated to take account of them.

Should we teach homosexuality as a controversial issue

Philosophers of education disagree on how the question of the moral status of homosexual acts should be tackled in the classroom. Some argue that the question should be taught as a controversial issue, that we should present rival moral positions as even-handedly as possible; others maintain that we should actively promote the view that homosexual acts are morally legitimate or unproblematic. Here I attempt to resolve this disagreement. In the first part of the article I defend the use of Robert Deardens epistemic criterion for identifying the questions that should be taught as controversial issues. In the second part I argue that the question of the moral status of homosexual acts does not satisfy this criterion because moral objections to homosexuality are rationally indefensible. I conclude that we ought to affirm the moral legitimacy of homosexual acts in the moral education of children and young people.

Religious Upbringing Reconsidered

There is, on the face of it, a logical difficulty as well as a practical one about ascribing to parents both a right to give their children a religious upbringing and a duty to avoid indoctrinating them. Curiously, this logical difficulty was largely overlooked in the debate on religious upbringing and parental rights between Terence McLaughlin, Eamonn Callan and Peter Gardner in the 1980s. In this paper I set out the terms of the logical problem and propose a solution to it.

Discussing Controversial Issues in the Classroom.

Discussion is widely held to be the pedagogical approach most appropriate to the exploration of controversial issues in the classroom, but surprisingly little attention has been given to the questions of why it is the preferred approach and how best to facilitate it. Here we address ourselves to both questions. We begin by clarifying the concept of discussion and justifying it as an approach to the teaching of controversial issues. We then report on a recent empirical study of the Perspectives on Science AS‐level course, focusing on what it revealed about aids and impediments to discussion of controversial ethical issues.

The Problem with Faith Schools: A Reply to My Critics.

Geoffrey Short, Harvey Siegel and Douglas Groothuis have, in previous issues, advanced a number of objections to my recent paper (Vol. 1(1)) arguing for the abolition of faith schools. Here I attempt to answer their criticisms.

Should We Promote Patriotism in Schools

If patriotism is love of ones country, the attempt to promote it in schools must count as a form of emotional education. Emotional education is defensible in so far as it consists in offering pupils good reasons and effective techniques for fostering or suppressing particular emotions. The question is whether we are in a position to offer pupils good reasons for loving their countries. In this article I set out an account of the rationality of emotions in general and of love in particular, and then identify two benefits and one drawback of patriotic attachment. I argue that there is room for reasonable disagreement on the desirability of patriotism and that we therefore ought not to promote it in schools but rather to teach it as a controversial issue.

Towards a theory of moral education

In this inaugural lecture, delivered at the University of Birmingham in January 2014, I sketch the outline of a theory of moral education. The theory is an attempt to resolve the tension between two thoughts widely entertained by teachers, policy-makers and the general public. The first thought is that morality must be learned: children must come to see what morality requires of them and acquire the motivation to submit to its authority. The second thought is that morality is controversial: there is deep uncertainty about both the requirements of morality and the reasons to comply with them. I draw distinctions between two kinds of moral education (moral formation and moral inquiry) and between two kinds of moral inquiry (directive and nondirective). I argue that some basic moral standards are robustly justified and that schools should promote subscription to these standards by means of both moral formation and directive moral inquiry.

Patriotism in British schools: teachers’ and students’ perspectives

Because there are good arguments both for and against loving one’s country, patriotism should be taught as a controversial issue in schools. But is this pedagogical approach practically viable in the British educational context? Here we report on a small‐scale survey of teachers and students in secondary schools and show that their perspectives and practices are highly compatible with our recommended approach.

What’s in a worldview? On Trevor Cooling’s Doing God in education

In Doing God in education, Trevor Cooling aims to defeat what might be called the marginalising view of the place of religion in education. I am sympathetic to this aim; but I think Cooling conflates two different arguments, predicated on two different concepts marked by the term ‘worldview’, and that only one of the arguments is plausible. The first argument assumes that worldviews are theories of the meaning of life and contends that learning in all areas of the curriculum bears on the credibility of rival worldviews, including religious ones. Study in any discipline can prompt reflection on wider questions of meaning and purpose. It is therefore important to give explicit attention to worldviews in education. This seems broadly right. The second argument assumes that worldviews are conceptual schemes and contends that, without initiation into a worldview, ‘children cannot think at all’. While it may be true that having a conceptual scheme is a condition of the possibility of experience, it is highly implausible to suppose that religions qualify as worldviews in this sense. So Cooling’s second argument poses no threat to the marginalising view.