Table Of ContentPhilosophy of Education
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PHILOSOPHY OF
EDUCATION
Aims, Theory, Common Sense
and Research
Richard Pring
continuum
LONDON • NEW YORK
Continuum
The Tower Building 15 East 26th Street
11 York Road New York
London, SE1 7NX NY 10010
1st published 2004
This paperback edition published 2005
Richard Pring 2004
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval
system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library.
ISBN 0 8264 7239 7 (hardback)
0 8264 8708 4 (paperback)
Typeset by BookEns Ltd, Royston, Herts.
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Bath
Contents
Introduction 1
Part I Aims, Values and Standards
CHAPTER 1 Education as a moral practice 11
13th Lawrence Kohlberg Memorial Lecture,
given at the 26th Annual Conference of the
Association of Moral Education, University
of Glasgow, July 2000. Published in Journal
of Moral Education, 30 (2), (2001) 101-12
CHAPTER 2 Educating persons 26
Lecture given in the series Affirming the
Comprehensive Ideal', University of Oxford,
February 1996. Published in Pring, R. and
Walford, G. (eds) Affirming the
Comprehensive Ideal, London: Palmer, (1997)
83-96
CHAPTER 3 The aim of education: liberal or
vocational? 42
The Victor Cook Memorial Lecture, given at
the Universities of St Andrews, Aberdeen
and Cambridge, 1993. Published in Haldane,
J. (ed) Education, Values and the Human
World, Centre for Philosophy and Public
Affairs, University of St Andrews, (1994) 1-18
CHAPTER 4 The context of education: monastery
or marketplace? 61
The Victor Cook Memorial Lecture, given at
the Universities of St Andrews, Aberdeen
and Cambridge, 1993. Published in Haldane,
J. (ed) Education, Values and the Human
vi CONTENTS
World, Centre for Philosophy and Public
Affairs, University of St Andrews, (1994),
pp. 19-35, and in The Cambridge Review,
115, (232), (1994) 55-62
CHAPTER 5 Subject-centred versus child-centred
education - a false dualism 80
Paper given at the Annual Conference of the
Society for Applied Philosophy, May 1988.
Published in Journal of Applied Philosophy, 6
(2), (1989) 181-94
CHAPTER 6 Standards and quality in education 99
Paper given at the Annual General
Conference of the Standing Conference for
the Study of Education. Published in British
Journal of Educational Studies, 40 (1), (1992)
4-22
CHAPTER 7 Political education: relevance of the
humanities 119
Published in Oxford Review of Education, 25,
(1 & 2) (1999) 71-87
Part II Common Sense and Educational Theory
CHAPTER 8 Common sense and education 145
Published in Proceedings of the Philosophy of
Education Society of Great Britain, XI, (July
1977) 57-77
CHAPTER 9 The language of curriculum analysis 163
Doris Lee Memorial Lecture, delivered at the
Institute of Education, University of London,
February 1975. Published in Hirst, P. el al.
The Doris Lee Lectures, (1975) 54-69
CHAPTER 10 Knowledge out of control 180
Published in Education for Teaching (1972,
Autumn) 19-28
CONTENTS vii
Part III Educational Research
CHAPTER 11 Evidence-based policy and practice 195
Published in Thomas, G. and Pring, R. (eds)
(2004) Evidence-Based Practice in
Education, Buckingham: Open University
Press
CHAPTER 12 Truth, knowledge and power 209
Paper given at the British Educational
Research Association Annual Conference,
September 2000. Incorporated, with
modifications, in Pring, R. Philosophy of
Educational Research, London: Continuum,
(2000)
CHAPTER 13 The 'false dualism' of educational
research 228
Published in the Journal of Philosophy of
Education, 34 (2), (2000) 247-60
CHAPTER 14 The virtues and vices of an educational
researcher 244
Published in the Journal of Philosophy of
Education, 35(3), (2001) 407-21
CHAPTER 15 The future of educational research 262
Paper given at British Educational Research
Association, 2002, published in a revised
form in the Times Higher Educational
Supplement, October 2002
/Votes 268
Further reading 272
Index 278
To the loving memory of
Anna-Maria and Joseph Pring.
Introduction
When first appointed to the University of Oxford, I shared a
conference platform at Wolfson College, and then dinner, with
Lord Joseph, until recently the extremely influential and powerful
Secretary of State for Education and Science. After the soup, he
turned to me and asked if my name was Pring. This I found difficult
to deny after nearly fifty years. The reason he gave for the
subsequent reprimand was that I had been responsible for all the
problems in our schools. I received this information with a mixture
of horror and pride - horror, because I had done so much damage;
pride, because, unknown to me, I really was having an impact.
Asked to explain this, Keith Joseph asserted that it was me (and
people like me) who had introduced teachers to the writings of
the American philosopher, John Dewey
Dewey was seen as an evil influence - the guru of child-centred
education which, then, was perceived to be responsible for the
comparatively low standards in our schools. Indeed, during the
early 1990s, there was a systematic attack on John Dewey in
pamphlets from academic philosophy associated closely with the
Conservative administration (see O'Hear, 1991), in books
attacking the misleading theory espoused within university
departments of educational studies (see Lawlor, 1990), and in the
media. A freelance journalist from the Daily Mail visited me in
Oxford to enquire whether we 'taught John Dewey'. Failing to
draw me on that one, he then asked me if the prevailing philosophy
within the department might be described as 'child-centred'. He
finally went when I said that the last lecturer within the
department who had a reputation for being child-centred was
someone called Chris Woodhead - but Woodhead had left before
I arrived. Then, I had a recorded BBC interview with Melanie
Phillips, in which I was asked about my views on child-centredness
in general and John Dewey in particular. It was as though there
