Reason-Giving Versus Truth-Seeking: Reconceptualizing Indoctrination in Education
INTRODUCTION In the literature on indoctrination in education, indoctrination is often defined as having occurred when someone holds certain beliefs either non-evidentially or non-rationally. The emphasis in attempts to avoid indoctrination, then, is to teach students to provide reasons for their beliefs, rather than basing their views simply on unquestioned assumptions, or emotional commitments to certain beliefs. I find this notion problematic. To avoid indoctrination, we must not develop reason-givers; rather, I argue that we must develop what I shall call “truth-seekers.”
Ethical Teaching and the Social Justice Distraction
This chapter presents a conceptual argument that positions two broad areas of educational scholarship—the moral and ethical dimensions of teaching and social justice education—as being quite separate, different, and ultimately antithetical, despite contemporary trends towards merging them in both theoretical and practical ways. It argues that an emerging tendency in social justice education to position its political agenda as a moral or ethical endeavor, especially within teacher education, is problematic in that it complicates, rather than enhances, the conceptualization of teaching as moral practice; it further distracts teachers and student teachers from fully engaging with the ethical aspects of their daily professional work.
An Essay on the Nature and Significance of the Normative Nature of Economics
It is conventional in economics to distinguish between the normative and the positive. The normative has to do with goodness and badness, and with what ought and ought not to be done;1 and the positive has to do with objective description and/or explanation, with what is and with what is necessary given some normative end. The normative has to do with desirability; the positive has to do with truth (in the sense of either descriptive accuracy or serviceability of a means to a given end).2