Response to Mark Fettes’ Review of The New\ud Significance of Learning: Imagination’s Heartwork

摘要

I’m grateful to Mark Fettes for taking the time to review my book in an essay length piece.\udYet I’m quite surprised to discover that the review largely bypasses the book’s central\udtheme. That theme is an exploration of the claim that education is a practice in its own\udright. Far from being a ‘familiar complaint’, this claim is a rarely-made one, even by\udtoday’s more forceful critics of bureaucratic control of education. Far from being the plea\udof a well-meaning moderate moreover, it is a radical idea on any historical appraisal; as\udunwelcome to many of today’s Western governments as were the claims of previous times\udfor extending the electoral franchise to non-land holders, religious dissenters, women, or\uddiverse ethnic groups. For these reasons the historical-philosophical account of the colonisation\udof education in the book’s Introduction and opening chapter is crucial.