Abstract
Truth to tell, I was a little surprised to learn that my writings include a philosophy of education; and then a little surprised again to learn that the paper in which my philosophy of education is to be found is “Multiculturalism and Objectivity.” Before this, I’d probably have said that—but for the thoughts expressed in “Preposterism and Its Consequences,” and “Out of Step,” about how the ways in which higher education is currently organized tend to erode academic ethics, and so to frustrate (what should be) the real purposes of a university—philosophy of education wasn’t a topic on which I’d had much to say.
Nevertheless, Seidel and Trüper are correct: there are indeed some more general thoughts about education to be gleaned from the few short paragraphs in “Multiculturalism and Objectivity” to which they refer. Unfortunately, however, they don’t get this paper quite right; and neither, as we shall see, do they do justice to the nascent philosophy of education to be found there.
I believe that … education … begins unconsciously almost at birth, and is continually shaping the individual’s powers, saturating his consciousness, forming his habits, training his ideas, and arousing his feelings and emotions. … [T]he individual gradually comes to share in the intellectual and moral resources which humanity has succeeded in getting together. —John Dewey.
John Dewey, “My Pedagogic Creed” (1897), in Larry A. Hickman and Thomas M. Alexander, eds., The Essential Dewey (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1998), vol. 1, 229–35, p. 229.
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- 1.
Susan Haack, “Preposterism and its Consequences” (1996), in Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate: Unfashionable Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 136–48. I return to the themes of this paper in my reply to James Gouinlock, “Professing Philosophy: Response to James Gouinlock,” in Cornelis de Waal, ed., Susan Haack: A Lady of Distinctions (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2007), 329–32.
- 2.
Susan Haack, “Out of Step: Academic Ethics in a Preposterous Environment” (2011), in Susan Haack, Putting Philosophy to Work: Inquiry and Its Place in Culture (2008; expanded edition, Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2013), 251–67 and 313–17.
- 3.
Susan Haack, “Multiculturalism and Objectivity” (1995), in Manifesto (note 2 above), 137–48.
- 4.
To judge by a recent press report, these ideas are apparently still influential: in 2011, I read, the English department at the University of California, Los Angeles, changed its curriculum, dropping the requirement that students majoring in English take one course on Chaucer, two on Shakespeare, and one on Milton, and requiring instead that they take three courses in the areas of “Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Disability and Sexuality Studies; Imperial, Transnational, and Postcolonial Studies; genre studies, interdisciplinary studies, and critical theory; or creative writing.” Heather Mac Donald, “The Humanities Have Forgotten Their Humanity,” Wall Street Journal, January 4–5, 2014, A11.
- 5.
The Simpsons, “Girls Just Want to Have Sums,” episode number 19, season 17, directed by Nancy Kruse, written by Matt Selman. FOX, April 30, 2006. See http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/GirlsJustWanttoHaveSums.
- 6.
Anthropologist Margaret Mead, I read, once wrote: “Always remember that you are absolutely unique—just like everyone else.” David Barash, “What Makes Humans Unique?” Wall Street Journal (online), November 15, 2013 (reviewing Thomas Suddendorf, The Gap: The Science of What Separates Us from Other Animals [New York: Basic Books, 2013]).
- 7.
Susan Haack, “Staying for an Answer” (1999), in Putting Philosophy to Work (note 2 above), 35–52, 269–70.
- 8.
Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, The Harmless People (New York: Vintage, 1959).
- 9.
“Multiculturalism and Objectivity” (note 4 above), p.139.
- 10.
I set aside, as far beyond my competence, the very difficult questions about the desirability or otherwise of bilingual education in communities where two languages are spoken (as in Miami, where by now more than half the population is Spanish-speaking).
- 11.
Indeed, the California State University system requires that all their students take a course in critical thinking. Executive Order No. 1065 relating to California State University General Education Breadth (CSU GE Breadth) requirements (September 16, 2011), Article 4. Other universities (including Fisk University, James Madison University, Marshall University, and Sioux Falls University) have similar requirements. See http://www.fisk.edu/academics/core-curriculum; http://www.jmu.edu/gened/message/shtml; http://www.marshall.edu/gened/core-i-courses; http://www.usiouxfalls.edu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1956.
- 12.
I still recall the reaction of the students in my first Law School class: accustomed to being asked simply to master a ton of material, they said, in amazement, “You actually want us to think about this stuff?”
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Haack, S. (2016). The Aims of Education: Response to Markus Seidel and Christoph Trüper. In: Göhner, J., Jung, EM. (eds) Susan Haack: Reintegrating Philosophy. Münster Lectures in Philosophy, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24969-8_14
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