Conference Agenda

If education is an intrinsically normative exercise, then the ethical question of how we arrive at those norms cannot be avoided. Educational theorists often address this as a question of educational aims, but also of moral education. In either case, it demonstrates the foundational nature of educational theory and philosophy.

Scotland’s contribution to educational theory and philosophy is significant. One important aspect of this symposium is to reflect on the past to imagine possible futures for philosophy of education for Scottish education and society. Aspiring to establish the significance of the discipline, we then turn to the concept of moral education to consider different aspects of moral formation, from the civic and political to the personally formative. While the concept of moral education lies at the heart of many theories and philosophies of education it is an explicit dimension of contemporary Scottish schooling through the obligatory school subject: Religious and Moral Education. And yet the phrase Moral Education might seem out of kilter with contemporary Scottish sensibilities. On the one hand it can be simply defined as helping children and young people to acquire beliefs, values and dispositions concerning right and wrong. On the other hand, the phrase might seem like a paternalistic anachronism. Does moral education belong to a bygone era in which one of the primary functions of public education was to inculcate explicit moral virtues that reflected a singular moral vision? If we no longer consider moral education to be shaped by the religious culture of Scottish Presbyterianism, how do we understand moral influence today? How are we to reimagine moral formation when we struggle to take account of our own social and political realities, when we can’t fully reflect on our past and present? How are we to expect children to explore and discover moral and ethical values?

Such questions are longstanding. But contemporary contexts raise these issues in novel ways: from the transformation of social relations through modern technology, to repeated climate and ecological breakdowns; from the erosion of democratic and liberal values to crises in global health; from discourses of justice and human rights in an era of so-called post-truth. Such contexts highlight the urgent need for serious normative debate about the nature and future of education, in Scotland and the world.

This symposium invites reflections from philosophers of education at the University of Glasgow whose career-long interests in philosophical and normative educational issues make them well placed to initiate novel reflections on the state of moral education in Scotland today.

Locating moral education in the broader field of philosophy of education, I offer a series of provocations for the future. Building on Tesar’s (2021:1235) claim that the foundations of philosophy of education ‘are no longer valued by managers and educational leaders’ unless ‘serving ‘managerial purposes and desired outcomes’, I explore what a ‘new key’ (Tesar et al, 2021) might entail. That new key pertains not only to philosophers of education in HE in Scotland, but for all educational researchers attending this ECER conference with its theme of ‘The Value of Diversity in Education and Educational Research’. My argument rests on the claim that while ‘we need to draw on the rich and diverse research traditions that make up our educational community’ with a ‘commitment of educational researchers and educational research to address and include diversity in all aspects of what we do’ (ECER, 2023[i]), the philosophy of education is simultaneously thriving and under threat. Thriving is suggested in the 2021 UK REF report[ii] in which, ‘Educational research drawing on philosophy and history was mainly of very high quality, and the sub-panel noted its clear contribution to contemporary debates about core epistemic questions in educational practice, especially around its purposes and responsibilities’. However, concerns about the relative paucity of philosophy in teacher education at all levels are paralleled by a common dismissal of philosophy of education as research or, perhaps more obviously, by a dismissal of philosophers of education as researchers. These concerns are not new, but I suggest that philosophers of education need now to participate more volubly in the ‘ongoing dialogue about what it means to “do” educational research in the 21st century’ (ECER, 2023i). I shall suggest possible futures for philosophy that might stem the tide of our demise. Firstly, we can and should talk about our methods without slipping into methodolatry (see Ruitenberg, 2010). Secondly, we have a key role as both users of and contributors to empirical research (see de Ruyter, 2019). Thirdly, we should teach and so include philosophy of education in all teacher education programmes, including research methods courses and, finally, we should work together in and beyond Scotland to articulate our contributions to educational research. That this colloquium is part of a special interest group for philosophers of education likely not to attract many ECER participants outwith our field is, itself, a challenge we will also discuss.

Heyting, Frieda, Lenzen, Dieter & White, John (2001) Methods in Philosophy of Education, Routledge. Oancea, Alis & Bridges, David.. (2009) Philosophy of education in the UK: The historical and contemporary tradition, Oxford Review of Education, 35(5), 553-568. Ruyter, Doret de (2019) Does a Theory of Moral Education Need the Input of Empirical Research?,Journal of Philosophy of Education, 53, (4):642-648. Ruitenberg, Claudia (ed.) (2010) What Do Philosophers of Education Do?: And How Do They Do It?, Wiley-Blackwell. Tesar, Marek, Hytten, Kathy; Hoskins, Te Kawehau; Rosiek, Jerry; Jackson, Alecia Y; Hand, Michael; Roberts, Peter; Opiniano, Gina A; Matapo, Jacoba; St. Pierre, Elizabeth Adams; Azada-Palacios, Rowena; Kuby, Candace R; Jones, Alison; Mazzei, Lisa A; Maruyama, Yasushi; O'Donnell, Aislinn; Dixon-Román, Ezekiel; Chengbing, Wang; Huang, Zhongjing; Chen, Lei; Peters, Michael A; Jackson, Liz (2022) Philosophy of education in a new key: Future of philosophy of education, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 54(8), 1234-1255.

The argument of this paper is that the indigenous histories of education in early modern Scotland, and their expression in the distinctive public institutions of schools and universities, created conditions in the Scottish Enlightenment for the rise across the nation of several diverse influential philosophical movements at the centre of which was a shared concern for the educated person and the educated polity. This civic impulse, operative across otherwise often strongly contrasting styles of philosophical reasoning and political outlook, placed a defining emphasis on the promotion of a deliberative public ethics: one that was to be fostered by the extension of popular, moral education and the embrace by universities and schools of their accompanying social and cultural responsibilities. The paper charts these important historic trends and their living legacies. It starts from their shared origins in the Scottish Enlightenment moral systematics of Francis Hutcheson, the Common Sense School of Thomas Reid, Adam Ferguson and Dugald Stewart, and the qualified educational populism associated with Adam Smith and William Hamilton. It then attends to the ‘democratic intellect’ radicalisation of this heritage in the 20th century thought of George Elder Davie, John Macmurray and Stanley Nisbet, who in their various revisions sought to renew and extend from its own deep sources the Scottish tradition of educational critique and ethical exchange. The paper concludes that the moral educational purposes of education in Scotland retain to this day the imprint of these philosophical values and civic expectations.

Allan. D. (2020). Virtue, Learning and the Scottish Enlightenment. Edinburgh: EUP. Bow, C. B. (2022). Dugald Stewart's Empire of the Mind: Moral Education in the late Scottish Enlightenment. Oxford: OUP. Graham, G. (2015). Scottish Philosophy in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Oxford: OUP. MacAllister J. and Macleod, G (2016). Philosophy in Scotland and Scottish Education, Ethics and Social Welfare, 10:3, 197-210. Mirayes, J. R. V. (2005) The Prejudices of Education: Educational Aspects of the Scottish Enlightenment, Atlantis, 27.2 (Diciembre 2005), 101-118. Robertson, R. (2020). The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790. Harmondsworth: Allen Lane.

How should philosophy of education in Scotland address the postcolonial moment? Among the recent calls made across the academy is for all disciplines to be decolonised: to consider ways in which they have been historically implicated in colonialism, as well as possible reparatory obligations. Such calls are likely to claim that philosophy as a colonised discipline is heavily dominated by Western philosophers, whether in the Anglo-American or Continental traditions – and hence in need of decolonisation. Such claims could well be made by alluding to Scotland’s role in the history of the British Empire, to its continuing material gains from that history and so to an as yet incomplete reckoning with complicity in colonialism. Under particular scrutiny in the decolonial literature is the Enlightenment tradition, which among its alleged flaws is seen to suffer from a tendency to universalism and hence a failure to recognise and respect particularity, especially the experiences and traditions of societies colonised by European powers. Decolonial challenges pose important critical questions for philosophy in Scotland, and for philosophers of education who value the tradition of the Scottish Enlightenment. In a preliminary response to this set of criticisms I will explore the distinction between hegemonic, abusive universalism on the one hand and pluralist, critical universalism on the other, defending the latter as offering a necessary contribution to a postcolonial ethics in philosophy of education. My primary example will be the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, Adam Smith, drawing on recent reassessments of his work.

Benhabib S (1999) ‘Nous’ et ‘les Autres’ The Politics of Complex Cultural Dialogue in a Global Civilization. In Joppke C & Lukes S (eds) Multicultural Questions Oxford University Press, 44-63 Carey D & Trakulhun S (2013) Universalism, diversity, and the postcolonial enlightenment. In Carey D & Festa L (eds) The Postcolonial Enlightenment: Eighteenth-Century Colonialism and Postcolonial Theory Oxford University Press, 240-280 Gordon L (2019) Decolonizing philosophy. The Southern Journal of Philosophy 57 Supplement, 16-36 Muthu S (2008) Adam Smith's critique of international trading companies: Theorizing "globalization" in the Age of Enlightenment. Political Theory 36(2), 185-212 Rothschild E (2012) Adam Smith in the British Empire. In Muthu S (ed) Empire and Modern Political Thought Cambridge University Press, 184-198

In February 2022, and in response to the experience of an increasingly fraught discourse in the public spaces (actual and virtual) the Department for Education in England issued guidance on ensuring political impartiality. In his introduction to the Guidance the, then Secretary of State, observed that ‘Legal duties on political impartiality ultimately help schools command the confidence of our whole diverse and multi-opinioned society’. The Guidance then proceeds to suggest that while a teacher might legitimately encourage pupils to applaud the National Health Service they could not legitimately suggest to the same pupils that they might question the levels of funding and by extension the commitment of the Government. The grounds for such a distinction would appear to be that the latter displayed political bias but the former didn’t! The intervention, in its entirety, might be considered ill-conceived from an Arendtian perspective, given its deliberate intent to manipulate the boundaries of political discourse in the classroom. And, as I have argued elsewhere the impulse of governments and other political agencies to use schools as sites for the establishment of political preferences is as injurious as it is ubiquitous to the objects of good education. However, once the intervention is present what are we to make of it both educationally and philosophically. In this paper I will attempt to illustrate why the intervention was ill-conceived from the outset on not only Arendtian grounds but also on the basis of conceptual mis-steps (the injunction to foreground the celebratory is not apolitical in the way in which the advice seems to suggest) In doing so I will suggest that linguistic and para-linguistic moves such as clapping are no less performative than explicit questioning of resource allocation and because they are implicit potentially more harmful to the cause of education. Moreover, I will illustrate that the elision of the distinctions (evident in the advice) between the irrational, non-rational and rational leads not to more desirable educational and social outcomes but to undermining a key morally educative imperative – judgment.

Conroy, J.(2020) Caught in the Middle: Arendt, childhood and Responsibility, Journal of Philosophy of Education, 54:1, 23-42. Taylor, D. (2002) Hannah Arendt on Judgment: Thinking for Politics, International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 10:2, 151-169. The Department for Education (2022) Political Impartiality in Schools https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/political-impartiality-in-schools, downloaded 18th March 2023. The Department for Education (2022) Extra Support to Safeguard Political Impartiality in schools https://www.gov.uk/government/news/extra-support-to-safeguard-political-impartiality-in-schools