This book contains edited versions of the Victor Cook Memorial Lectures delivered in the universities of St. Andrews, London, Cambridge, Aberdeen, Oxford, Glasgow and Leeds. The essays are written for a non‐specialist audience so it is accessible to the general educated reader. The subject is considered from a range perspectives including culture (Anthony Quinton and Anthony O’Hear), the state (Richard Pring and Mary Warnock), religion (Jonathan Sacks and Stewart Sutherland), and science (Mary Midgley and Bryan Appleyard). John Haldane and David Carr provide opening chapters from a philosophical perspective which draw together and provide context for the titles. The title, Values, Education and the Human World, gives an indication of the broad scope of the collection and the contributions of the different authors reflect the multidisciplinary theme. Footnotes are occasional and there is a bibliography and index.
The core themes of the book centre on the moral dimension of the purpose of education and contemporary challenges to the nature of education, both in higher education and at school levels. If anything binds the authors philosophically it is that they are realists, promote a values dimension in education, and are concerned about trends away from traditional liberal education and towards a more market‐oriented and relativistic one. Some essays explore and challenge dualisms in education, be they vocational and liberal education in Richard Pring's essays, or science and the arts in education in Mary Midgley's and Bryan Appleyard's essays.
John Haldane and David Carr's opening chapters provide a general theoretical framework and explore aspects of values and values education. They raise the key theme of the return to the metaphysical question of value as opposed to the dependence on empiricist traditions. John Haldane argues that the truth of the matter is that not every truth is about matter and David Carr reinforces this point, arguing that educational theories should support the acquisition of qualities for intrinsic motives, rather than configuring itself for extrinsic justification alone.
Anthony Quinton gives an account of the decline of traditional education and the classical canon. Politically correct censorship in libraries, the growth of post moderns, antirealists and anti‐rationalists and the presence of gender studies and cultural studies in educational circles undermine the classical canon and the principles of education. His use of the phrase ‘sexual deviancy’ is likely to cause offence and as such detracts from the point he is making.
Anthony O’Hear makes a case for a return to moral education with Platonic notions of objective goodness and Aristotelian ideas about the acquisition of virtue. Children should be given dispositions towards the virtues before they are encouraged to apply reason to safeguard values from overly critical analysis. In contrast to much contemporary educational theory he maintains that education is the transmission of wisdom and requires a subject‐centred approach to learning, rather than a child‐centred approach.
Richard Pring identifies different features as the main threats to education. He discusses the failure to steer between vocationalism and traditional liberal education. Both are needed for a balance which gives justice both to the knowledge of the past and to the learners’ need to look to their future experience of life and work. His other concern is the increasing commercialization of the language of education which is undermining its values and principles.
Mary Warnock moves this theme forward with her analysis of the trend away from the idea of welfare as the basic principle of education and the embracing of the market ideas of choice and competition instead. She proposes a return to a paternalistic education, trusting local authorities to know how to distribute resources for local needs. Ironically, her concerns about school‐based initial teacher education are more timely and pertinent than when she made the lecture, with the considerable extension of such programmes nationally.
The two religious, or spiritual, offerings are again quite different. Jonathan Sacks takes the discussion in a different direction again exploring the difference between societies based on contracts which get broken in times of hardship and those based on a Jewish concept of covenants which provide a binding force of community. He is concerned that the language of morality has become detached from family and tradition. On the other hand Stewart Sutherland argues for a humanistic spirituality based on the development of the soul, which he maintains is what education is fundamentally about.
The final chapters by Mary Midgley and Brian Appleyard take the discussion looking at the divide between science and the arts and the implications this has for our understanding of knowledge. To an extent they both argue that science and the arts complement one another in the search for knowledge. Brian Appleyard in particular warns that science or scientism disconnected from ideas of intrinsic value is dangerous.
The book identifies threats to education and educational values and the essays propose two possible ways forward. On the one hand are those who argue essentially for reverting to the previous state affairs and denounce the “new education”(Quinton, O’Hear and Warnock, for example) while on the other are those who propose some middle way forward (Pring, Midgley and Appleyard). The breadth of approaches and diversity of contributors is a strength of the book which means many readers will find angles which are new to them. Clearly, a book presented to a general audience will never be able to provide the depth that specialists will want, but this book does succeed in weaving together several disciplinary approaches critical of the empiricist orthodoxy and sympathetic to a view the moral basis of education. Those who argue for education to be progressive, post‐modern, market‐friendly or empiricist in orientation are not represented in the book, excepting Richard Pring's essay. It would have been interesting and complementary to have reflections from the business world or politics. Nevertheless, Values, Education and the Human World provides a multidisciplinary offering of a particular camp with passionately argued cases and should appeal to many with general interests in education, values and moral philosophy.
