Liberal Education: A Defence
- Created by: Alasdair
- Created on: 28-10-17 15:39
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- Liberal Education: A Defence
- Reason is a good way of getting at 'the truth'
- '...it can help immunise against the sales of second-hand car salesman, astrologers, feng-sui consultants, get-rich-quick pyramid-scheme sellers, Holocaust deniers and other purveyors of snake oil.
- 'The ability to spot when someone has committed a logic howler, attempted to psychologically manipulate you or other tried to pull the wool over your eyes is always useful no matter what your walk of life'
- WFCM, pg. 40: emphasis mine
- Democracy
- For democracy to work in the best way possible
- People need to be informed
- People need to be able to discern truth from falsehood
- People need to be reasoning, logical, thinking people
- It seems Liberal education is way of ensuring democratic process is best it can be
- For democracy to work in the best way possible
- Obey, control and resistance
- It seems people are easily led (e.g. see famous Milgram experiments)
- However, interestingly attributes developed by Liberal education make us less susceptible to control.
- e.g.
- 'If you look at the people who sheltered Jews under the Nazis, you find a number of things about them'
- One is that they tended to have different kinds of upbringing from the average person, they tended to be brought up in a non-authoritarian way, brought up to have sympathy with other people and to discuss things rather than just do what they were told'
- 'If you look at the people who sheltered Jews under the Nazis, you find a number of things about them'
- Conclusion and Challenge
- Liberalism is different from liberalism: Authoritarianism is different from authoritarianism
- The arguments from Authoritarians mix this up and are often unconvincing
- Liberalism in education seems vital for a number of reasons including:
- Truth seeking
- Democracy
- Resistance
- There is a current threat to Liberal education which coud be seen as a threat to democracy and truth.
- If we think these things are important then we need to keep alert
- Reason is a good way of getting at 'the truth'
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