Philosophy of Education Notes

Gellner’s mature articulation of his model of Nationalism sharpens the distinction between two universal features of human life while insisting that their historical interplay gives rise to the non-universal phenomenon of nationalism. “Society,” he writes, “is made up of culture and organisation.” Culture, in this view, is not genetically inscribed behaviour but a set of “patterns of conduct generated by emulation.” While certain cognitive or linguistic capacities may be rooted in biological preconditions, like Chomsky’s idea that language acquisition presumes a universal grammar, the actual transmission and content of culture are unconstrained by biology. Culture, in this model, can change rapidly and even deliberately.

I want to say that this is something that I think in my usual half baked and confused way. And it's probably to do with the fact that I still see things through the lens of the Philosopher Ernest Gellner and I think in a way he foresaw this. His anthropology of reason revealed that rationality was never truly universal. It was a style of cognition produced by a specific social formation: industrial society, with its need for impersonality, precision, and continuous innovation. Rationalism, he argued, emerged from a particular cultural ecology: it was not the antidote to culture, but a culture in its own right.

I've been going to the Institute of Education's philosophy of education seminars on Wednesday nights for nearly two decades. Two key figures in the department over that time have been Paul Standish and Jan Derry. Each offer nuanced and profound philosophical insights into education and it struck me that I ought to write a note to myself trying to get a grip on their different approaches and why despite disagreeing with their commitments in some respects (I'm neither a Heideggerian nor a Hegelian) engement with their ideas has been so fruitful and rewarding for me .