ABSTRACT
In his analysis of Julien Benda’s 1927 thesis on the ‘treason of the intellectuals’, Stephan Collini reminds us of the deep concern once shared by many over the philosophy espoused by the ‘fierce teachers of realism’ 1 who had abandoned the quest to ‘preach the love of an ideal, of something supra-temporal’. 2 Today, perhaps, this distrust of “fierce realism” seems quaint, and certainly by the 1970s educationalists such as Paul H. Hirst had come to doubt the future of education theory animated by the Stoics’ conception of ‘the harmonious, hierarchical scheme of knowledge’. 3 The classical belief that liberal education ‘frees the mind to function according to its true nature’, 4 rather than conditions the individual for employment, rested upon the notion that knowledge is the understanding of reality in the cosmic chain of being. In contrast, the nineteenth-century psychologist and pragmatist philosopher, William James, argued that it is a ‘tremendously mistaken attitude’ 5 to believe that our opinions can never be ‘re-interpretable or corrigible’, 6 as our responsiveness to a hypothesis is not dependent upon its ‘intrinsic properties’, 7 but upon its relationship to our existing beliefs and our ‘willingness to act’. 8 For pragmatists, intrinsic properties of phenomena may be fixed and amenable to discovery through empirical enquiry, but human responsiveness is always fluid. John Dewey’s pragmatist account of education ( see Chapter 2 ) was therefore founded on the rejection of the ‘spectator conception of knowledge’, in which knowledge is the ‘mere beholding or viewing of reality’. 9
Rather than attempt to debunk progressivism, twentieth-century exponents of liberal education acknowledged that society no longer subscribed to the ‘metaphysical doctrine about reality’ 10 that underpinned Seneca’s belief that the pursuit of wisdom ‘prepares the mind for the acquisition of moral values’, 11 and sought instead to defend liberal education on the grounds that it is ‘concerned directly with the development of the mind in rational knowledge, whatever form it freely takes’. 12 In this chapter I argue that this capitulation, while no doubt expedient, paved the way for the reification of “transferable skills” as the defining feature of neoliberal pedagogy, and helped legitimise the teaching of literary studies and the humanities as a means to cultivate the next generation of leaders 13 while fostering what Michael Bristol describes as ‘loyalty to a hegemonic social and cultural dispensation’. 14
his ‘retirement play’ in which he bids farewell to the stage, making its consideration a fitting way to end this book. Robert M. Adams defines the literary “romance” as a quest narrative in which the wanderer ‘seeks a goal which, if only for the purposes of the tale, is accepted as ultimate’, 16 and many critics have imagined that Prospero represents Shakespeare’s intention to give up his art and repose near his daughter and son-in-law in Stratford-upon-Avon. In this scenario we, the audience, who have been instructed and entertained by Shakespeare’s “magic”, must give him leave to depart. Such speculation should, perhaps, be treated with caution. As noted by David Scott Kastan, it is impossible to determine Shakespeare’s religious convictions through an examination of his art, 17 and it is perhaps no less difficult to determine his views on the nature of the artist’s knowledge. Nevertheless, The Tempest has been described by Arthur F. Kinney as a ‘play of education’ 18 due to the characters’ frequent discussion of learning. Arguably, the defining feature of this quest narrative is Prospero’s knowledge of magic and the role that it plays in the attainment of an ultimate goal, making this play a useful lens through which to view our ideas about the role of knowledge in education today.
