ABSTRACT
But even if one tidied up these various aspects of ‘development’ how would this help to determine the emphasis of education? Is a man more ‘developed’ if he is highly trained scientifically but aesthetically insensitive or if he is aesthetically sophisticated but a scientific ignoramus? Is a man more developed who is ‘well-rounded’ but with a thorough knowledge of nothing, than one who is a brilliant mathematician and musician but ignorant of most other things? Was Lenin more ‘developed’ than Gandhi?…
There was a time, of course, when forms of awareness were comparatively undifferentiated and when the religious one, in the form of various brands of Christianity, provided some kind of unifying ideal of man against which a man’s development could be roughly measured. But those times have passed. We now live in a pluralistic type of society without any such unifying ideal, and as educators we must come to terms with this. Those who stress the importance of individual self-realization as an educational aim are, perhaps unwittingly, lending their support to a pluralist conception of the good life….
