Abstract
In this chapter, I reconstruct the basic structure of Peters’ analytic response to educational progressivism as politically expressed in the 1967 Plowden Report. The report expressed a particular line of thought in educational theory, namely that of educational progressivism or child-centred education. In the 1960s, Peters introduced the analytic paradigm into the philosophy of education in Great Britain. In the socio-economic context of the 1960s, this new paradigm had some institutional as well as political effects. In particular, Peters’ theoretical response to the Plowden Report in Perspectives on Plowden had a practical influence. The chapter proceeds as follows. After a short historical note and a brief rehearsal of the contrast between progressivism and traditionalism, I detail Peters’ fundamental presuppositions in the light of which his critique of child-centred education can be elucidated. These two main presuppositions are, first, the primacy of the social or the public and, second, the ideal of liberal education. Next, I organise his critique around two central themes: first, education and its aims, and, second, the curriculum and the teacher.
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Notes
- 1.
My sketch of the historical context is based on Black (2010), part two, especially pp. 200–204.
- 2.
For the report’s full text on line, see http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/plowden/. For assessments of “Plowdenism” twenty years later, see Halsey and Sylva (1987) and Dearden (1987).
- 3.
For a more extensive account of the (P)-(T) contrast, see Cuypers and Martin (2013), pp. 214–15.
- 4.
Peters assumes that something like a western civilisation exists. The very idea of western civilisation might, however, be contested; see, for example, Appiah (2016).
- 5.
Besides this conception of liberal education, there are at least two other ones: liberal education as (i) knowledge for its own sake and as (ii) nonauthoritarian education. See Cuypers and Martin (2013), pp. 108–116.
- 6.
For a critical account of this argument, see Cuypers (2012).
- 7.
For a further elaboration of this argument, see Cuypers (2018). One could further ask: What then about the justification of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), the other segment of Hirst’s forms of knowledge thesis? Arguably, in our present day technological culture STEM does not stand in need of any intrinsic justification because its self-evident instrumental justification amply suffices. In this sense, STEM is on a par with the three Rs.
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Cuypers, S.E. (2018). “Plowden” at 50—R.S. Peters’ Response to Educational Progressivism. In: Ramaekers, S., Hodgson, N. (eds) Past, Present, and Future Possibilities for Philosophy and History of Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94253-7_8
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