Search

In The Main Enterprise of the World , Philip Kitcher identifies an over-specialized and over-loaded curriculum as a particular affliction of education in our time. Kitcher criticizes a narrow view of education on which it is conceived as being no more than job training and proposes a more humane set of educational goals to be pursued in school. For Kitcher, the problem of the narrowness of the economic aims of education and the problem of the over-loaded curriculum are connected and, in Chapter 2 of the book, he presents a thoroughgoing critique of educational specialization as a distinguishing feature of education today. He holds that the economic value of education cannot capture education's full value and that true education should build children and young people's capacities for meaningful life and work. In this paper, I discuss Kitcher's critique of educational specialization. I note that Kitcher draws most of his inspiration from considerations about what makes a human life go well and therefore situates his thinking about education in the realm of ethics, rather than in his home discipline of the philosophy of science. Defending educational specialization, I turn to some of Kitcher's earlier work in the philosophy of science to show that the epistemic division of labour calls for a considerable degree of specialization in educational curricula on epistemic, rather than on economic, grounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maughn Rollins Gregory and Meghan Jane Laverty's Gareth B. Matthews, The Child's Philosopher explores the Philosophy for Children movement, and the way the work of Gareth B. Matthews carried forward its key components. In this paper, I consider the impact of Matthews' embeddedness within a Western philosophical tradition, even as he strives mightily to propose a broad-minded approach to P4C. I draw upon the work of Amasa Philip Ndofirepi to explore the tensions and possibilities in reconciling Western and non-Western approaches to P4C. I argue that the social contexts of culture, ethnicity, and nationality can serve to broaden P4C curricula and pedagogy, making it fit for schools in a liberal democratic society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]