White, Patricia;
White, John;
(2006)
Comments on ‘“Child” or “Curriculum”? On the genesis of a basic problem of “modern” education’.
Zeitschrift für pädagogische Historiographie
, 12
pp. 38-39.
10.5169/seals-901846.
Preview |
Text (White2006Comments.pdf)
White2006Comments.pdf - Other Download (98kB) | Preview |
Abstract
The title of Professor Oelkers’s paper speaks of a ‘problem’. What is this problem? A key idea in the paper is that there are two opposing views of education which evoke uncompromising commitment from their adherents. These are the child-centred approach, traceable from Rousseau through to Piaget, and the transmission of culture approach, found from Herbart down to Diane Ravitz. Most of the paper seems to have to do with historical elucidation of this polarity. The ‘genesis’ in the title appears to refer to this. Polarity or problem? But if the topic of the paper is the genesis of a polarity, where does the ‘problem’ come in? Why is a polarity a problem? Is Oelkers suggesting that there is a practical problem here, in that the uncompromisingness of the two approaches gets in the way of sensible educational policy-making? He does not say this, so this is only speculation. The difficulty for the reader, here and, as we shall show, elsewhere, is that Oelkers’s gnomic remarks at crucial points in his argument leave us rudderless, without guidance. This is especially true of the title, and of the mystifying final paragraph, from which the account of the two approaches just given comes. At least it seems reasonably clear that the bulk of the paper is intended to shed historical light on the genesis of the polarity, so let us attend to that. Oelkers spends most of his article looking at episodes in the history of American education where this polarisation is found, especially in the dispute between Hutchins and Dewey. He also traces the child-centred strand back from Dewey to Nicholas Murry Butler.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Comments on ‘“Child” or “Curriculum”? On the genesis of a basic problem of “modern” education’ |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.5169/seals-901846 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.5169/seals-901846 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the author-accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10001390 |
Loading...
Loading...Loading...Loading...Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
