Books

Children must be taught morality. They must be taught to recognise the authority of moral standards and to understand what makes them authoritative. But there’s a problem: the content and justification of morality are matters of reasonable disagreement among reasonable people. This makes it hard to see how educators can secure children’s commitment to moral standards without indoctrinating them.

In A Theory of Moral Education, I tackle this problem head on. I set out to show that moral education can and should be fully rational. It is true that many moral standards and justificatory theories are controversial, and educators have an obligation to teach these nondirectively, with the aim of enabling children to form their own considered views. But reasonable moral disagreement does not go all the way down: some basic moral standards are robustly justified, and these should be taught directively, with the aim of bringing children to recognise and understand their authority.

 

Hand has written a book on the deeply difficult problem of moral education that is a marvel of clarity and cogency. No recent book on the topic can compare with this one. (Eamonn Callan, Stanford University)


Michael Hand's book is the concise and dense result of fifteen years of thinking about moral education. It is one of the rare examples of an instant classic. (Johannes Drerup, University of Koblenz-Landau)

Hand’s book is terrific. It is a model of how to write in the philosophy of education: clear in conception, free of jargon, analytically subtle and packed with interesting and controversial arguments. (Matthew Clayton, University of Warwick)

Education, Ethics and Experience is a collection of original philosophical essays celebrating the work of one of the most influential philosophers of education of the last 40 years. Richard Pring’s substantial body of work has addressed topics ranging from curriculum integration to the comprehensive ideal, vocational education to faith schools, professional development to the privatisation of education, moral seriousness to the nature of educational research. 

The twelve essays collected here explore and build on Pring’s treatment of topics that are central to the field of philosophy of education and high on the agenda of education policy-makers. The essays are by no means uncritical: some authors disagree sharply with Pring; others see his arguments as useful but incomplete, in need of addition or amendment. But all acknowledge their intellectual debt to him and recognise him as a giant on whose shoulders they stand.

Philosophy in Schools

(Bloomsbury, 2008, with Carrie Winstanley)

Philosophy in Schools is a collection of original philosophical essays that together make a robust case for the teaching of philosophy in schools. Leading philosophers of education explode the myth that philosophy is somehow too difficult or abstract for children and set out a series of compelling arguments for its inclusion in the school curriculum.


Key themes addressed include: the role of philosophy in teaching controversial issues; the epistemological basis of critical thinking; the practice of conceptual analysis; philosophical thinking in moral and religious education; the idea of philosophical intelligence; philosophical themes in children's literature; philosophy and the adolescent's search for meaning; and the connection between philosophy and wisdom.

Is Religious Education Possible? A Philosophical Investigation tackles a well-established problem in the philosophy of education. The problem is the threat posed to the logical possibility of non-confessional religious education by the claim that religion constitutes an autonomous language-game or form of knowledge. Defenders of this claim argue that religion cannot be understood from the outside: it is impossible to impart religious understanding unless one is also prepared to impart religious belief.

I argue for two central points: first, that non-confessional religious education would indeed be impossible if it were true that religion constitutes a distinct form of knowledge; and, second, that religion does not in fact constitute a distinct form of knowledge.