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A Lack of Discipline

The philosophy of education has become a growth industry. It is claimed to be both a specialized branch of philosophy and one of the 'basic underlying disciplines' of education. I propose to contest these claims. But first, as the Michelin Guides would say, un peu d'histoire. The opening sales campaign for the new sub-discipline was launched in the early i960's at a conference on teacher training organized by the (then) Ministry of Education. Three of the main speakers were the late Stephen Wiseman, an educational psychologist, Basil Bernstein, an educational sociologist, and R. S. Peters, the father-figure of the new school of philosophers of education. The purpose of the conference was to reappraise the curriculum of teacher training colleges-later to be called, more resoundingly, colleges of education-in the light of the proposed extension of the period of initial training from two to three years. Wiseman, Bernstein and Peters put forward a forceful case for basing the 'education' component of training courses on three ingredients which they held to be fundamental to it. These were-predictably-psychology, sociology and philosophy. Until that time, the study of education had been presented as a traditional ragout of 'tips for teachers', personal anecdotage and crackerbarrel speculation. The colleges, hungry for academic respectability, gladly accepted the substitution of cordon bleu counterparts to such humble fare. The change has not been entirely for the better. The old courses, though often poverty-stricken in intellectual content, at least attempted to assuage the appetites of intending teachers. The new ones have been seen by most students as unsatisfying, indigestible and over-pretentious. If the idea was sound in theory-and I suggest, as far as the philosophical component is concerned, that it was not-it worked out poorly in practice. One reason, independent of the merits of the case, should be frankly recognized. The status of teacher training institutions is not such as to attract many competent philosophers. The result of the i960's reforms has been to create a cadre of modestly gifted purveyors of home-cooked dishes, generously advertised as educational philosophy but bearing little resemblance to what Professor Peters would presumably have had in mind. So much for the background. In turning to examine the concept of 'the philosophy of education', I must begin with a disclaimer. It is no part of my case to suggest that philosophy is irrelevant to the study of educational issues. Many philosophers, from Plato to Wittgenstein and