'Education' tag archive

A lecturer will ask the audience ‘and can anybody tell me what this is?’ And she or he is met by an everlasting silence, with people refusing to look her in the eye … Now the thing is, I’m a very confident person … I’m very outgoing. I usually volunteer to do presentations but even […]

Der Mensch kann nur Mensch werden durch Erziehung. — Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Pedagogy, 1803. 1 Few topics have in recent years caused more controversy in studies in the history of philosophy than the issue of Immanuel Kant’s conception of race and its significance for the universalism of his moral and political philosophy. In this […]

Matthieu Renault argues in a recent issue of Radical Philosophy (RP 2.10, Summer 2021) that justifications for the counter-violence of the oppressed which draw on Hegel’s master-slave relation are based on a myth originating from Kojève’s Paris lectures (1933-9). The Kojève myth is that history begins with the violence of the master over the slave […]

A is for apocalypseDavid J. Blacker, The Falling Rate of Learning and the Neoliberal Endgame, Zero Books, Winchester and Washington DC, 2013. 319 pp., £15.99 pb., 978 1 78099 578 6. Amidst the recent flood of lachrymose reports on the neoliberal assault upon education, this book stands out for its unflinching survey of the extent […]

Comment Lines in class The ongoing attack on mass education in England Matthew charles Andrew McGettigan’s analysis of the financial transformations of higher education (‘Who Let the Dogs Out? The Privatization of Higher Education’, RP 174) is important for comprehending the complexity of the changes universities are undergoing and their implications. As he argues, ‘it […]

Universities Who let the dogs out? The privatization of higher education Andrew mcgettigan In April last year, I framed my article on ‘New Providers’ in relation to the delay surrounding the publication of the government’s White Paper for Higher Education (HE). That was caused by a combination of factors, but chiefly the need to fix […]

News The right to protestAs Quebec erupts over plans to increase tuition fees by the equivalent of £200, and twelve people (including Professor Joshua Clover) who protested against a campus bank at University of California–Davis begin a trial that could see them imprisoned for eleven years and fined $1 million each, what of the scores […]

Comment Pirate Radical Philosophy Gary hall Pirate … from the Latin pirata (-ae; pirate)… transliteration of the Greek piratis (pirate; πειρατής) from the verb pirao (make an attempt, try, test, get experience, endeavour, attack; πειράω). … In modern Greek… piragma: teasing [πείραγμα] … pirazo: tease, give trouble [πειράζω].1 Much has been written about the ‘crisis […]

Michael Bailey and Des Freedman, eds, The Assault on Universities: A Manifesto for Resistance, Pluto Press, London, 2011. 200 pp., £14.99 pb., 978 0 74533 191 1. Matthew Charles The conceptual poles that orient the collection of essays edited by Des Freedman and Michael Bailey in The Assault on Universities are, on the one hand, […]

Dossier Thealthusser–Rancière Controversy Introduction to Althusser’s ‘Student Problems’ Warren montag For those familiar with Louis Althusser’s published work, reading his relatively early essay entitled ‘Student Problems’ may be a surprising and even disconcerting experience. Part of the surprise lies in the fact that the essay exists at all. Although it was published in Nouvelle Critique […]

Philosophy for children Matthew charles A well‑orchestrated public relations campaign led pri‑marily by educational charity The Philosophy Shop has helped raise the profile of the philosophy for children movement in the UK significantly over the last few years. Whilst The Philosophy Shop has been promoting its ‘Four Rs’ campaign to make ‘Reason‑ing’ a central feature […]

NEWS VICTORY AT SWANSEA Visitor’s Report Reinstates Rebel Lecturers The three lecturers at the centre of the long-running row over academic standards in the Philosophy Department at University College, Swansea are to be reinstated, following the publication of a 173-page report on the affair by retired High Court judge Sir Michael Davies. Two years after […]

EDUCATION CHANGES: THE HIDDEN AGENDA The proposals for Modularisation, Credit Accumulation and Credit Transfer (MOCACT) currently under consideration at universities have profound implications for students. Yet there has been virtually no consultation with student bodies. Why? Proponents of MOCACT argue that it will increase student choice; enlarge the range of qualification levels; increase freedom of […]

NEWS REVOLUTION THE VIEW FROM PARIS To discover the temper of a modem culture, it often pays to look at the advertising. Those guys spend an awful lot of money trying to find out about it. So, my first story from attending the World Congress on the French Revolution and other celebrations of the Bicentenary […]

LETTERS ‘A’ LEVEL PHILOSOPHY Dear RP, Steve Brigley (RP 35) was pessimistic about the ‘A’ level Philosophy syllabus proposed by the AEB. His main concern was its failure to provide opportunities for the development of students’ own ideas and arguments, suggesting that the syllabus was likely to reproduce the elitism and obscurity which graces the […]

Television Literacy: A Critique David Buckingham The term •television literacy’ has been increasingly widely used in recent years, both by researchers investigating the relationship between children and television and by educationalists arguingfor the formal study ofthe medium in schools. This paper discusses some of the theoretical issues which are at stake in the basic analogy […]

Philosophy in Hackney Nadine Cartner Nadine Cartner, a member of the Radical Philosophy collective, teaches ‘A’ level Philosophy at Hackney College in London. Below is an edited transcript of the ideas and comments of some of her students. The large majority of these students are working class, many of them black; most of them have […]

The’A’LeveICanon Sally Minogue [This is a slightly revised version of a paper delivered at the Conference for Higher Education Teachers of English at the University of Kent, Easter 1987.] I want to begin by saying something about the institutionalisation of English in education, and we don’t need to look far for images of this institutionalisation. […]

NEWS French Socialism and Philosophy Since May 1981 Has the new French Socialist Government made any moves to alter the position of philosophy in French education where (in spite of a diminution of the proportion of philosophy in the syllabus in the mid-seventies) philosophy still retains a role in school education not entirely unlike that […]

TOWARDS A MATERIALIST THEORY or mEOLOGY: The IQ Debale as a Case Sludy Les Levidow In the Race-IQ debate which has resurfaced in Britain and the USA since 1969, socialist critiques of IQ science have centred upon some notion or other of ‘ideology’. That term has been invoked largely as an insult, intended to mean […]

that needs to be put into question. For Althusser only repeats in Spinozist form the operation which is common to all epistemological theories of demarcation of science from other kinds of theoretical discourse. That is, to attempt to provide a philosophical justification for a particular social selection and hierarchical distribution of theoretical discourses, a certain […]