ABSTRACT
For those new to philosophy, the subject is likely to seem somewhat abstract and removed from day to day concerns at first, and I therefore want to begin by drawing attention to the quotation above. Here is an example of an actual policy decision: Students will no longer do homework (and apparently are no longer taught ‘subjects’). The decision is driven by a point of view or theory to the effect that schools should be relevant to contemporary life, that in order to achieve that students need to ‘manage their own learning’, and that the object of schooling is not to ‘transmit a body of knowledge’ but to encourage pupils to ‘love learning for its own sake’. I hope that most people will agree that, in broad terms, this is an interesting contention – something manifestly worth arguing about, and, particularly if you happen to have children at school, something that you might feel pretty strongly about, one way or the other. The kind of argument this decision might give rise to is decidedly not ‘airy-fairy’, ‘merely academic’, ‘purely theoretical’ or ‘irrelevant’ to practical matters.
