With reference to one ‘freedom writer’, critically evaluate the claim that Erin Gruwell’s character is a white saviour

Blindsided by the Avatar: White
Saviors and Allies Out of Hollywood
and in Education
Julio Cammarota

Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known
it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such
moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will
now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or thought one knew, to
what one possessed or dreamed that one possessed. Yet, it is only when
a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he
has long cherished or a privilege he has long possessed that he is set
free—he has set himself free—for higher dreams, for greater privileges.

—James Baldwin

Every week I assist a social studies teacher with the implementation
of a social justice government course at a Tucson high school located
in Arizona. My role is to teach students qualitative research techni-
ques so they can ‘‘read the world’’—in the Freirian sense (Freire
1993). The teacher provides the students with terms such as ‘‘cultural
capital,’’ ‘‘social construction,’’ and ‘‘white privilege’’ so they can
express critically the complexity of what they are ‘‘reading.’’

As part of a lesson on white privilege, the teacher whom I will
refer to as Juan Gomez decided to show a trailer to the film, The
Blind Side as evidence of the ‘‘white savior syndrome.’’ This was
the first time that I had seen this trailer, and I was struck by the
affect of the actors. Sandra Bullock’s character was fierce, bold,
and eminently determined to change the world in ways that mat-
tered to her. Quinton Aaron, who plays a young African American

The Review of Education, Pedagogy,
and Cultural Studies, 33:242–259, 2011
Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1071-4413 print=1556-3022 online
DOI: 10.1080/10714413.2011.585287

242

football player Michael Oher with many needs (i.e., housing,
financial resources, emotional support), appears subdued, emotion-
ally withdrawn, almost developmentally handicapped—with no
real sense that he has the capacity to change the world in any
way, shape, or form. Juan showed this trailer to demonstrate that
Hollywood tends to make films based on this theme; young people
of color can escape their predicament of marginalization through
the guidance and agency of a lone white actor. Juan identified this
theme as the ‘‘white savior syndrome.’’

After the trailer, we engaged students in critical media literacy
(Alverman and Hogood 2000; Kellner and Share 2005, 2007).
Students are often unaware of unjust representations and thus need
critical media literacy, which cultivates ‘‘skills in analyzing media
codes and conventions, abilities to criticize stereotypes, dominant
values, and ideologies, and competencies to interpret the multiple
meanings and messages generated by media texts’’ (Kellner and
Share 2005, 372). Additionally, media is often how students learn
about racial prejudices and privileges, as part of an encoded social
logic of racist expression and exclusion.

We started our media literacy lesson by querying the students
about their general perceptions of The Blind Side. We drew from
Freire’s (1993) approach of ‘‘problem-posing’’ by suggesting ques-
tions to the students and facilitating a dialogue about the problems
of the film. To our general question about their perceptions, many
responded that they ‘‘liked the film,’’ or thought it was a ‘‘good
story about helping someone out.’’ Our facilitator roles allow us
to offer our positions and take responsibility as educators to
stimulate dialogue in critical directions. Therefore, I interjected
and mentioned how I thought the trailer represented the white
female and black male in extreme, polarized ways. I told the stu-
dents that the white female seemed strong, capable, and effective
while the black male appeared dilatory, dour and even, perhaps,
mentally challenged. Some students immediately defended the film
saying that the African American character did not appear
‘‘mentally challenged’’ and that it was ‘‘good that he was being
helped.’’ One student stated that she saw the entire film and that it
‘‘focuses more on the football player than on her (the white female).’’

Juan reminded the students that the trailer represents the white
savior syndrome in which a white person guides people of color
from the margins to the mainstream with his or her own initiative
and benevolence. The movement occurs through the ‘‘smarts’’ of

Blindsided by the Avatar 243

the lone savior and not by any effort of those being saved. The
white savior syndrome has the tendency to render people of color
incapable of helping themselves—infantile or hapless=helpless
victims who survive by instinct. People of color supposedly lack
the capacity to seek change and thus become perceived as dispos-
sessed of historical agency. Any progress or success tends to result
from the succor of the white individual, which suggests that
escaping poverty or ignorance happens only through the savior’s
intelligence.

This assistance amounts to what Freire calls ‘‘false generosity’’
such that a white person may provide help to people of color yet
help comes in the form of a saving action that tends to help a single
individual or group. The focus on ‘‘saving’’ instead of ‘‘transform-
ing’’ fails to address oppressive structures and thus the privileges
that maintain white supremacy. False generosity is an ‘‘attempt to
soften the power of the oppressor in deference to the weakness of
the oppressed’’ (Freire 1998, 46).

The teacher then contrasted his definition of white savior with
white ally. According to Juan, a white ally is someone who does
engage in what Freire calls ‘‘true generosity’’ by joining in soli-
darity with people of color to struggle collaboratively against those
institutions that maintain oppression. Solidarity involves sublimat-
ing one’s ego and status so that people of color can provide empow-
ered leadership in movements of liberation. A reduction of status
requires challenging the very institutions and practices that proffer
white privilege and power. Anything less would amount to ‘‘false
generosity’’ such that support would at best make a difference to
a handful of people as opposed to engaging in actions of solidarity
that may lead to the dismantling of oppressive institutions and thus
long-term change. True generosity requires of the oppressed
‘‘hands . . . extended less and less in supplication, so that more
and more they become hands which work, and working, transform
the world’’ (Freire 1998, 46).

Although we problem-posed several questions to the students,
they also have equal opportunity to pose their own questions.
When Juan completed his statements about the white savior versus
the white ally, an African American male student expressed, ‘‘But
Blind Side is a true story! How could you criticize someone helping
another human being?’’

Juan and I do not argue against the veracity and value of white
people helping people of color. Significant social change can and

244 J. Cammarota

does happen with the assistance of white allies. However, we
are concerned, through an Althusserian symptomatic reading
(Althusser and Balibar 1979), about what might be missing or even
implicitly assumed in films like The Blind Side. In such cinematic
treatments of race, people of color appear to lack the agency neces-
sary to enact positive changes in their own lives. The underlying
assumption is that people of color, on their own, fail to enact resili-
ence, resistance, and success—as made gratuitously evident in the
representation of Michael’s family life. Any achievements in these
areas seem to result from the initiatives of the white savior. Further-
more, these Hollywood narratives often miss or ignore how people
and communities of color do successfully resist and overcome
marginalization through their self-initiated agency.

This article discusses how the white savior syndrome renders the
misrepresentation of the potential of people of color to resist and
lead the transformation of oppressive conditions within their own
social context. Indigenous resistance requires endogenous (internal)
leadership such that all social justice actions derive from and con-
tinue to flow through communities of color and their leaders. White
saviors represented in popular media overshadow the fact that
people of color are part of and, most importantly, make history.
For instance, the historical legend of Abraham Lincoln ‘‘freeing
the slaves’’ eclipses the real efforts of myriad African Americans
who resisted and fought against their bondage.

In the school context, I discuss Ruby Payne’s (2005) work to
underscore pseudo-educational approaches that avoid building
leadership in communities of color while continuing to label them
as deficient. This negligence results from the impact of racism shap-
ing the worldview of the savior. Acceptance of Payne’s approach
depends upon internalized racism influencing the perspective of
the ‘‘saved.’’ In contrast, I examine the virtues of white allies and
how they can help promote leadership among people of color by
challenging the privileges that provide them with superior social
status and legitimacy. The article concludes with a discussion of
how racial justice can occur with the oppressed in leadership posi-
tions and the oppressor adhering to and following this leadership.
The existence of white saviors may help some people of color but it
will not result in long-term systematic change. White allies can
contribute to systematic change by abdicating both privileges and
superior status while cultivating leadership within communities
of color and relations of mutuality and respect.

Blindsided by the Avatar 245

WHITE SAVIORS IN HOLLYWOOD

The Hollywood industry is a proponent of what Giroux and Giroux
(2004) call ‘‘corporate culture’’ that shapes active ‘‘[c]itizenship’’
into a ‘‘solitary affair whose aim is to produce competitive,
self-interested individuals vying for their own material and
ideological gains’’ (252). The needs and interests of the individual,
particularly the white male who possesses market power (social
and cultural capital), supersedes the importance of people of color
struggling to gain collective rights. The neoliberal logic driving
corporate culture demands that the market regulates all social
and economic practices, and the overarching principle regulating
markets is competition (Lazzarato 2009, 117). Corporate culture
facilitates a social climate of competition by feeding and managing
inequalities so that individuals with power and status can dominate
and succeed over marginalized others.

In the competitive market, neoliberalism applies racial distinc-
tions in the process of managing inequalities to ensure the dominant
racial group maintains advantages and privileges in the practice of
individualism. Goldberg (2009) asserts that neoliberalism shifts the
focus of the state from public welfare to private concerns and
‘‘thus also ensures a space for extending socio-racial interventions—
demographic exclusions, belittlements, forms of control, ongoing
humiliations . . .’’ (334). This shift involves moving racial practices
from the public to the private realm, thereby engendering a privati-
zation of racism by securing racial exclusions, preferences, and
privileges within the private world away from government inter-
vention (Goldberg 2009, 339). Privatized racism is what Goldberg
would refer to as ‘‘racial neoliberalism.’’ With the continued
prevalence of racial practices promoting injustices, the neoliberal
inclination toward individualism will proffer advantages to the
dominant racial group in market-driven structures, such as capital-
ism, private schools, and insurance managed health care.

Hollywood films tend to gravitate toward the theme of the indi-
vidual savior whose actions of saving others from themselves as
opposed to addressing oppressive structures elide the possibility
of recognizing social injustices and the need for collective action
to secure rights and opportunities. The neoliberal logic of corporate
culture highlights the savior as a model that narrows human
agency to only the pursuit of individual success and gains.
‘‘Responsibility,’’ according to Susan Searls Giroux (2010), under

246 J. Cammarota

⼆

在竞争性市场中，新⾃
由主义在管理不平等现
象的过程中采⽤了种族
差异，以确保占主导地
位的种族团体在个⼈主
义实践中保持优势和特

the neoliberal regime initiated in the Reagan era ‘‘was divested of
its social character; indeed . . . there was ‘no such thing as society’’’
(3). Thus, lost in neoliberalism is the recognition that subordination
is not a failure of individual initiative but the result of a whole host
of oppressive conditions including inadequate education, limited
employment opportunities, unfair wages, and unjust discriminatory
treatment.

In the Hollywood ‘‘savior’’ film Avatar, the main protagonist and
individual savior, in this case, is a white male marine, named Jake
Sully whom the military plants to gain access and information from
the indigenous people, the Navi of the moon Pandora. The narra-
tive parallels the film Dances With Wolves in which Kevin Costner
plays an Army captain who is sent to an outpost to protect white
settlers from the Sioux Indians. Similar to Costner’s character, Jake
Sully becomes enamored with the native people, even falling in
love with the female Navi character Neytiri. Jake then decides to
lead a resistance that saves Pandora from the colonizers. Avatar
parallels Dances With Wolves so much so that one might consider
the screenplay a twenty-first century version.

New York Times editorialist, David Brooks (2010) writes that
Avatar follows the

oft-repeated story about a manly young adventurer who goes into the wil-
derness in search of thrills and profit. But once there, he meets the native
people and finds that they are noble and spiritual and pure. And so he
emerges as their Messiah, leading them on a righteous crusade against
his own rotten civilization. (27)

This narrative, what Brooks calls the ‘‘White Messiah Fable’’ is
prevalent in several Hollywood productions, including A Man
Called Horse, The Last Samurai, and most notably,Dances With Wolves.
We have seen this trope or fable many times before such that a film-
maker ‘‘doesn’t have to waste time explaining the plot because
everybody knows roughly what’s going to happen’’ (Brooks 2010,
27). The dominant theme in these films centers on colonized people
who ‘‘possess not the . . .physical or intellectual capacity to compete
with their European counterparts and thus have not the ability to
adequately govern themselves, much less in times of adversity ergo
the need for a White savior’’ (Meade 2010, 209).

The natives appear the same way to the white savior in these
films: always beautiful, spiritual, and reverent to God and earth.
These qualities render the natives appealing to both audiences

Blindsided by the Avatar 247

and white saviors. However, as Brooks (2010) correctly points out,
‘‘they are natural creatures, not history making ones’’ (27). Their
agency is understated to a point in which the natives resemble
elegant, graceful animals more than competent human agents.
The lack of human agency among people of color is perhaps the
most offensive aspect of the white savior productions. The
oppressed have no other choice but to follow the leadership of
oppressors who generally choose to oppress but occasionally
choose to play the role of savior. These productions undermine
the value of indigenous ideas for shaping the destiny of native
people. Moreover, most native people would have been fine and
not in need of rescuing were it not for the exploitation of the
saviors’ people in the first place.

In the social science class, Juan Gomez talked about the white
savior syndrome in Avatar and The Blind Side. He pointed out that
the films focus on the white savior’s deeds to the exclusion of the
real conditions of oppression that put the ‘‘saved’’ in the predica-
ment of needing to be ‘‘saved.’’ Avatar does, however, present a
narrative of colonization, which students in southern Arizona
understand intuitively from a similar colonial process afflicting
the U.S.–Mexico border. However, Avatar fails to address the
historical context of what Mendelsohn (2010) describes as ‘‘the
scary and often violent confrontation between human and alien
civilizations’’ (1). This failure leaves students with a lack of under-
standing of how conflicts occur between civilizations (alien or
human) or cultures along borders.

In The Blind Side, the discussion of social and economic forces
(i.e., racism, lack of affordable housing, unemployment, inferior
education) impacting black communities is largely absent. The
history of oppression and negative social and economic forces are
missing in these films, yet their absence nonetheless allowed Juan
Gomez and me ‘‘teachable’’ moments by filling in the historical
silences.

RESISTANCE OUT OF HOLLYWOOD

History directly contradicts these films by exposing their untruths.
Rather than awaiting white saviors, people of color do act in
accordance with their own interests and in the interest of a more
just society. Resistance leaders are often people of color struggling

248 J. Cammarota

against white colonization, who end up either in prison, murdered
or both. For instance, Puerto Ricans have struggled for liberation
longer than the U.S. occupation, which began in 1898. Pedro Albizu
Campos and Lolita Lebron are two of the most prominent Puerto
Rican resistance leaders in the twentieth century. Campos was
the leader of the Puerto Rican nationalist independence party from
1930 until his death in 1956. Because of Campos’ political actions for
independence, the U.S. government arrested and then condemned
him to more than 10 years in prison. He eventually died from
radiation torture imposed while under arrest. Two years after the
U.S. Congress voted to make Puerto Rico a permanent colony in
1952, Lolita Lebron entered the House of Representatives to shoot
at her colonizers. Five representatives were injured in the shooting.
She was also arrested, sentenced to 70 years in prison but served a
‘‘modest’’ 25 years for her actions.

There have been other resisters like Campos and Lebron. Assata
Shakur was falsely arrested for her involvement in the Black Panther
party. After spending time in jail she escaped and fled to Cuba. She
has been living there ever since her escape. Another Black Panther,
Fred Hampton was shot and killed in Chicago by FBI agents, and the
famed Soledad Brother, writer, and activist George Jackson, was
also shot by a prison guard during an attempted escape. A young
Angela Davis would also find herself the subject of repeated harass-
ment by then Governor Ronald Reagan, placed on the FBI’s Ten
Most Wanted list and incarcerated, even facing the death penalty,
on absurdly trumped up charges. Leonard Peltier was jailed for
his involvement in the American Indian Movement, and Mumia
Abu Jamal is also suffering a similar fate on death row for his
connection to the black liberation organization MOVE.

There have not been any Hollywood films made about these
resistance leaders. A film about a person of color standing up to
white colonization would anger, intimidate, alarm, and thus
ultimately fail with white audiences. Currently whites are still a
majority in the United States and perhaps the most important racial
group among movie-going consumers. However, the white savior
syndrome in films like Dances With Wolves or even Avatar do more
damage than good to the historical record. These films suggest that
social change occurs through white leadership and that people of
color in change processes occupy primarily the role of the victim
as opposed to the victor. Perhaps the worst misrepresentation is
Allan Parker’s Mississippi Burning, which depicts the FBI as key

Blindsided by the Avatar 249

电影表明，社会变⾰是
通过⽩⼈领导⽽发⽣
的，在变⾰过程中，有
⾊⼈种主要扮演受害者
⽽不是胜利者的⻆⾊

activists in the civil rights movement. This, in contrast to their
actual roles as agents of repression under J. Edgar Hoover and
his covert program of ‘‘dirty tricks,’’ COINTELPRO. Overshadowed
in this film is the critical role of people of color organizations such
as the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and Southern
Christian Leadership Council. Young people of color who consti-
tute an important segment of moviegoers will have little to draw
from models of leadership and positive, empowered roles to adopt
in social change movements if movies continue to misrepresent the
role of people of color in history.

Apathy among people of color is a real concern because they are
consistently bombarded with images of inferiority and victimiza-
tion. Hollywood films sustain these messages via constant repetition
and obfuscate the historical record. In the social studies class, Juan
Gomez queried the students about their knowledge of film stars
versus real educators. They were more familiar with Michelle
Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds than with Bob Moses of the Algebra
project. When a picture of Jeffery Canada was shown to the
students, he was not recognized. However, students recognized
the white savior played by Hilary Swank in the film FreedomWriters.

WHITE ALLIES IN HOLLYWOOD

Occasionally Hollywood has made films about white allies in which
the white leader stands in solidarity with the leadership and actions
of people of color. Perhaps the best white ally example appears in
the film, Glory, based on the true Civil War events of an all-black
troop of the 54th Regiment led by the white Colonel Robert Gould
Shaw, played by Matthew Broderick. Although the film does not
accurately or fairly represent the African American perspective, it
does shift the standard white leadership role from messiah to
martyr (Stoddard and Marcus 2006). Colonel Shaw accepted the
leadership assignment knowing that racism would prevent the
troop from ever seeing battle. However, at the end of the movie,
the Union forces needed to take a Rebel bunker to win a battle
and the only troop available to fight was the 54th. The troop elected
to fight knowing that the straight on attack of the bunker would
lead to their deaths. The soldiers’ white ally, Colonel Shaw stood
and fought shoulder to shoulder with them. Shaw and the soldiers
were eventually killed but their defeat led to the enlistment of

250 J. Cammarota

150,000 African Americans, which Lincoln assessed as the turning
point of the Civil War.

In this example, the white ally Colonel Shaw assisted the African
American soldiers with becoming agents of history by preparing and
then fighting alongside them in battle. Matthew Broderick’s charac-
ter sacrificed his status and power to stand with the soldiers and face
death together while struggling against the forces of oppression.

Although fighting alongside the African American soldiers was a
suicide mission, a white ally does not have to give up his or her life to
achieve solidarity. Alliance requires at minimum a symbolic death,
more in the line with Amilcar Cabral’s ‘‘class suicide’’ in which one
relinquishes social status to work collaboratively with the oppressed.
Cabral asserts that allies with privilege and power who join move-
ments of change should commit ‘‘suicide as a class in order to be
reborn as revolutionary workers, completely identified with the
deepest aspirations of the people to which they belong’’ (quoted in
Rudebeck 2006, 94). Hierarchical positioning becomes inactive
betweenwhite allies and people of color so that ideas andmovements
emerge unilaterally with those united democratically on the ground.

In order for Colonel Shaw to become an ally he had to dismount
from his high horse, abdicating his status and power as an officer in
this final moment and place his feet on the ground next to the foot
soldiers. When the time to act and make history comes, the white
ally must sacrifice his power so that the agency of the oppressed
becomes central.

THE WHITE SAVIOR OF EDUCATION

Popular film culture not only undermines young people of color’s
potential to become change agents but also reinforces and at times
shapes the social policies that bear the greatest impact on their lives.
For instance, Ruby Payne is perhaps the most influential individual
with shaping teacher practices for poor students in this country.
Although she focuses primarily on class and poverty, most exam-
ples in her writings involve the work of students of color (Stinnent
2008). Nevertheless, many school districts that serve students of
color have adopted her ‘‘framework’’ for professional development
and teacher training (Sato and Lensmire 2009).

Payne’s ideas are not much different than those espoused by the
white saviors in Dangerous Minds, Freedom Writers, and The Blind

Blindsided by the Avatar 251

Side. She perceives poor students of color existing in deficit such
that they supposedly do not possess any knowledge or intellectual
capacity beyond what they absorb from their more educated and
economically stable teachers. The following represents how Payne
(2005) characterizes poor students’ behavior in the classroom:
She believes that they ‘‘laugh when disciplined, argue loudly, make
angry responses, make inappropriate or vulgar comments, have
hands on someone else, fail to follow directions, learn to be disor-
ganized, unable to finish tasks, become disrespectful to teachers,
harm others, cheat or steal, and talk incessantly’’ (79–80). Missing
here is any sense of how students resist forms of teacher authority
that relentlessly define students according to their alleged lacks—
often as a matter of maintaining dignity.

The ‘‘important’’ knowledge that poor people may procure
reportedly derives from institutional or ‘‘official’’ instruction and
not from any indigenous or local practices generated by their
own initiatives. What she does report as indigenous knowledge
is quite insulting. For instance, she claims, without supporting
research, that poor people relative to middle-class folks know more
about how to ‘‘buy guns, bail someone out of jail, function in
laundromats, acquire food from grocery bins, and use duct tape’’
(Payne 2005, 53–58).

Furthermore, Payne perceives poor students of color as lacking
middle-class cultural capital, values, and behavior. The teacher’s
job is to ensure that poor students learn middle-class culture and
values, ‘‘and this very need characterizes them as deficient’’
(Stinnent 2009, 65). Once they assimilate to the middle-class value
system, they supposedly become better off. This approach allows
the educator to adopt a savior perspective and mistakenly see his
or her role as saving the poor student by extirpating him or her
from a culture of pathology and then remaking him or her into
the image of the educator=savior (Sato and Lensmire 2009, 368).
‘‘Saving,’’ according to Michie (2007), ‘‘is not how real teaching
works. Teaching . . . can only happen over time as trusting and
mutually respectful relationships are built’’ (8). The savior perspec-
tive in Payne’s method translates into a messiah complex, elevating
educators to an artificially high level of self-importance and value
for ‘‘feeding’’ their supposedly bereft students. This higher status
buttressed by racism, classism, and general elitism allows white
and wealthier people to feel superior over the supposedly down-
trodden others. It would be hard for teachers to build trust with

252 J. Cammarota

students who they believe to be from a much lower social position
and perspective than them.

Educational assimilation posits that people of low socioeconomic
status lack the appropriate values to achieve success, and any lack
of success or low status is the result of their personal deficiencies.
This is an example of the way that the privatized racism of the neo-
liberal order works. Inequalities are reduced to private character
flaws (e.g., laziness, predilection for drugs, sex, etc.) rather than
understood as (historically and currently) institutionally shaped
and maintained. The deficiencies, according to Payne, are dimin-
ished resources, but her definition of ‘‘resources’’ surpasses money.
She includes ‘‘emotional, spiritual, physical, relational, and social
resources’’ (Payne 2005, 16). However, repeated ethnographic stu-
dies demonstrate the real resourcefulness and resilience of poor
people (Edin and Lein 1997; Gregory 1998; Cammarota 2008). This
research demonstrates that poverty presents political and economic
restraints that may impose effects on human development yet sep-
arate from cognitive and cultural realms. Some, in fact, argue that
poor people cultivate valuable ‘‘funds of knowledge’’ or ‘‘cultural
wealth’’ out of the necessity to negotiate and survive the harsh cir-
cumstances of poverty (Velez-Ibanez and Greenberg 1992; Yosso
2005). The incorrect assumption that poor people lack resourceful-
ness exonerates social or economic structures from any culpability
in reproducing poverty and oppression generation after generation.

Approaching poverty or any form of oppression as an individual
behavioral problem evades the entire point about economic marginal-
ity and low status. Society influences the social position one inhabits;
the individual may have some say about his or her social status, but
for the most part society plays a huge role with shaping status distinc-
tions. Inmany societies, includingAmerica, social and economic prac-
tices tend to organize individuals into gradients so that some people
access greater power andwealth than others. This happens systemati-
cally, and schools are part and parcel of this system of unequal distri-
bution of wealth and power. Teaching down to poor students, as if
they are unintelligent and culturally deficient, when coupled with
the real material hardships they face, will only reproduce poverty.

THE WHITE ALLY IN EDUCATION

White allies adopt a significantly different position from white
saviors. They realize they have privileges and work to undermine

Blindsided by the Avatar 253

the very power that provides them with superiority. Beverly Tatum
(1997) asserts that a white ally’s role should not be about ‘‘helping’’
people of color but rather about speaking ‘‘up against systems of
oppression and to challenge other Whites to do the same’’ (109).
Allies tend to redirect resources toward addressing racism,
resources that would otherwise only be given to a chosen few.White
allies, therefore, look to end oppression by challenging the neolib-
eral logic of competitive individualism and privatization, then look-
ing for fair and equal treatment for all—even at the expense of
diminishing their status to share power with the oppressed.

However, teacher educator Christine Sleeter (1993, 173) warns
that many white teachers fail to accept and thus deal with the
‘‘paradox’’ of supporting students of color by challenging the racial
neoliberalism that grants superior market status to whiteness.
Rather, she notices patterned responses of avoidance that includes
‘‘colorblindness’’ or presenting the model of European immigrants
as a way to demonstrate positive shifts in race relations. Bonilla-
Silva (2002) asserts that whites may use rhetorical strategies to
maintain color-blind racism. These strategies include the avoidance
of racial terminology altogether, the use of semantic moves such as
saying that they have ‘‘friends who are black’’ to deny accusations
of racism, and the projection of racism onto the marginalized racial
other by saying that ‘‘they are the racist ones, not me.’’ Addition-
ally, there is the ‘‘Obama effect’’ in which people falsely assume
a black president means a postracial America.

Sleeter (1993, 174) recommends white teachers become allies by a
process of reeducation that helps them analyze white privilege and
the ways neoliberalism perpetuates racism through competitive
individualism and de-regulated, market-based forms of resegrega-
tion. This education begins with an immersion into a community of
color in which the ally focuses his or her learning on the history of
racism and those structures such as inferior education, depressed
wages, and inadequate housing that maintain others’ subordinate
statuses. Through this process, ‘‘teachers . . . are not just learning
about other races but becoming committed to anti-racism as part
of their own self-hood’’ (Thompson 2003, 14). The immersion can
be integrated into field research experience in a teacher education
program (Sleeter 2001). The outcome, according to Sleeter, from this
deep immersion should be willingness to work collectively with
people of color to end structural or institutional racism. This means
that allies work in collaboration, not as leaders, not as saviors, but

254 J. Cammarota

as engaged participants who share power in a democratic process.
Esteva, Prakash, and Stuchul (2008) write

[in]stead of pro-motion (which operates under the assumption that the
people are paralyzed or are moving in the wrong direction), those taking
initiatives at the grassroots to govern them autonomously or democrati-
cally speak of co-motion—moving with the people, rather than moving
the people. (99)

White allies, therefore, should ‘‘follow people of color as they
provide the leadership in the struggle for racial justice’’ (Gardiner
2009, 1). Following requires accepting and validating the oppressive
experiences of people of color and acknowledging their critiques of
the power of whiteness (Gardiner 2009, 1). ‘‘The White person,’’
according to Tatum (1997, 113), ‘‘who has worked through his or
her own racial identity process has a deep understanding of racism
and an appreciation and respect for the identity struggles of people
of color.’’ White allies must engage leaders of communities of color
in a dialogue based on this appreciation and respect, particularly as
it pertains to the years of suffering caused by racism. This type of
open and honest dialogue might be painful, and even the most
well-intentioned ally might feel the need to retreat (Dickar 2008,
130). However, allies must become compassionate listeners and
remain engaged in dialogue no matter how painful it becomes.

FREEDOM FROM PRIVILEGE

In this article’s epigraph, James Baldwin speaks of the need to
abandon privilege. He refers to not only the privileges of racial
superiority, but also that of pure ignorance. Somehow the vague-
ness of insularity must cease so that hearts and minds open to
the realities of human suffering. Our greatest and most nefarious
privilege in America is the blatant willingness to turn a blind eye
to our deepest social problems. Everyday, many live without
shelter; brown and black men fill prison cells; workers lose their
jobs; women experience violent abuse; gays and lesbians face
unbearable threats; and migrants risk their lives for their survival.
National dialogue about these daily tragedies is delimited to victi-
mization at best. But this discursive turn proves a double-edged
sword: victims are either to be pitied or scorned. More often than
not, the problem supposedly lies with the victims’ choices and

Blindsided by the Avatar 255

not with neoliberal policies that generate unfair wages, subpar
education, and ineffective and rapidly disappearing social support.
Those who benefit from the managed inequalities of racial neoliber-
alism have the responsibility of correcting the disparities that result
from it.

Ignoring the social and economic inequalities of ongoing
market-based residential segregation, labor exploitation, health
disparities, racial profiling, and racially tracked schooling that
influence the daily experiences of most people of color is the most
guarded privilege in America. When we finally become ‘‘free’’ of
this privilege, we will truly begin to address the entire range of
human suffering. It is within this ‘‘freedom’’ that Baldwin asserts
we will experience higher privileges—the rewards of ‘‘justice,’’
‘‘peace,’’ and true ‘‘compassion,’’ inclusive of those under the
weight of oppression. Removing the privilege of ignorance will
cure our blindness and allow us to truly ‘‘read the world.’’

The false generosity of the contemporary white savior binds to
the privilege of ignorance by failing to see how the maintenance
of his or her higher status in relation to the oppressed perpetuates
inequalities. Limiting people’s access to opportunities and resources
also provides the context in which higher status individuals benefit
from the hierarchical system they maintain. The savior requires
exploiting his or her status to procure leadership positions and thus
denying people of color the process of developing the agency
required for long-term systematic change. Real change within struc-
tural racism requires the leadership of people of color, because it
involves the sharing of power to the point in which an affirmative
democratic character will emerge in society. Sharing power for those
members of dominant groups necessitates the abdication of status to
clear space for the leadership of people of color. Once there are more
progressive people of color in leadership positions, then the realm of
power and politics will contain a greater sense of equality. The
voices of people of color in this realm will elevate to demand better
circumstances for all. Members of the dominant culture cannot and
should not speak for the oppressed because their voices will silence
them, which in turnmaintains their status and privilege in ways that
support racial hierarchies.

The false generosity of saving one or more of the oppressed may
amount to no more than false redemption. The guilt that a white
savior holds resulting from his or her privilege is left unredeemed
by a generosity that may change an individual’s life but fails to

256 J. Cammarota

address the long history of injustice shaping our present day
system of inequality. As long as labor exploitation, educational dis-
parities, and state repression of people of color remain in place and
one’s privilege is part and parcel to their maintenance, redemption
may never occur. A true redemption may arise through solidarity
work in which white allies support the leadership of people of color
in actions focused on challenging systems or structures of racial
injustice. For example, white ally teachers may contribute to actions
initiated by people of color to end those structures of white privi-
lege in education, including racial tracking, Gifted and Talented
Education, or moreover, the hegemonic and representational white-
ness of the teaching profession. Sleeter (1993) recommends that
educators should help to ‘‘reverse policies that propose mainly
white people into the profession . . . Schools as they are structured
currently operate in a way that largely reproduce the racial and
social class structure’’ (168).

In addition, white allies can advocate for changes in curricula
and pedagogical strategies that empower people of color. These
changes would include multicultural education, ethnic studies,
critical pedagogy, and participatory action research. These
approaches tend to place students of color and their experiences
of racism at the center of the curriculum. Educational transform-
ation on this level also cultivates their leadership with addressing
racial oppression. Seeking and implementing these changes facili-
tates the freedom from the privilege of white supremacy in edu-
cation; culturally relevant curricula and pedagogies deconstruct
white supremacy in the classroom. White educators can participate
in this facilitation by adopting an ally perspective and working in
solidarity, and thus collectively with students and teachers to build
knowledge to challenge racism.

Juan Gomez and I ended our lesson on race and critical media
literacy by shifting the focus to people of color in leadership roles.
We showed the students the beginning sequence of the film 187,
which tells the story of an African American teacher struggling to
teach inner-city students in Los Angeles. Although the film has a
person of color as the main protagonist, his representation offers
little in the way of a positive model for leadership. Moreover, his
actions in the film indicate that violence is the only means to ‘‘deal’’
with students of color. After we showed the first ten minutes of the
film, we started a discussion by granting students the opportunity
to pose questions. One student immediately said, ‘‘What does this

Blindsided by the Avatar 257

have to do with us?’’ Juan and I were elated because he posed an
important question. Although the demographics between the
Tucson government class and the film’s class were similar (students
and teacher of color), the differences in behavior and attitude were
miles apart. The film’s violence and mean-spiritedness did not
relate to the Tucson students. This difference was exactly the point
Juan Gomez and myself were trying to make. Hollywood very often
gets it wrong about people of color, leadership, and resistance.

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Blindsided by the Avatar 259

CHAPTER2

MORAL EDUCATION, LIBERAL EDUCATION
AND THE VOICE OF THE INDIVIDUAL

Paul Standish

‘I want to break free.’ – Freddie Mercury

The words above, from Freddie Mercury’s hit song, Free, have, so it seems, a guaran-
teed appeal to young (and older) people today. In fact, there are many songs in which
one finds expressions of, or cries of, or demands for freedom. We live in a world that,
in so many respects, offers freedom to people as never before. But the word seems to
have an unstoppable emotive force. Don’t we all at times utter it or think it – whether
we are thinking ‘Now at last I feel free’, or ‘If only I could be free’, or ‘Once I get
away from here I shall be free’? Where does the emotive power of the idea of freedom
come from and why does it seem so important to us?

For all the apparent impetus towards new possibilities of life, however, there is in
some of these expressions more than a suggestion of the ressentiment that Nietzsche
saw as a manifestation of nihilism. Nihilism of such kinds involves a negativity
towards the way things are, in a never-ending, perhaps compulsive longing for some
other world. If only things could be different, these thoughts seem to say; they are the
opposite of the yea-saying, the intense absorption in experience, that might otherwise
be associated with freedom. But, this is an essay about neither Nietzsche nor nihilism.
What I propose to do is to consider the ways in which concerns with freedom have
been played out in the philosophy of the curriculum. I shall do this by tracing a story
that leads from the rise of progressivism to the reactions against it.

Although there is, in a sense, something timeless about questions concerning free-
dom, they acquire new dimensions in circumstances of globalization. Whereas one
might, on a standard analysis, ask questions about what it can mean for the individual
to be free when he or she is at the same time conditioned by social, cultural, political
and religious circumstances within the nation-state, the very terms of this question are
now challenged by globalization. It is not just that the nation-state finds itself com-
promised by the power of multinationals or by the invasive forms of new communi-
cations or by larger political forms of organization; it is that the very space of the
political, the terms of the public and the private, is reconfigured in new and sometimes
frenetic, sometimes tranquilized forms. Education systems now routinely acknowl-
edge questions of globalization, but these rarely go beyond gestures towards the
knowledge economy or the somewhat haphazard adoption of web-based learning.
From country to country, however, the picture varies. A dimension of the demise of

33

K. Roth and I. Gur-Ze’ev (eds.), Education in the Era of Globalization, 33–50
© 2007 Springer.

34 PAUL STANDISH

the nation-state for many citizens in European countries, for example, is precisely that
they now think of themselves as citizens of Europe. The ways in which individual
identities are developed, and hence that the possibilities of freedom are conceived, are
deeply conditioned by these changing political terms. In countries, such as the UK or
Japan, however a relative isolation is maintained, with correspondingly more intro-
spective conceptions of citizenship and its education. There are obvious debates to be
had about how far public education should foster loyalty to the nation-state and how
far cosmopolitan values, and about how far these are incompatible. In other political
regimes, to be sure – say, in theocracies, in countries devastated by poverty or in newly
formed democracies – the stakes of freedom are plainly very different.

When one looks across this range of difference, and against the in some respects
common background of global change, what is clear is that Enlightenment ideals of
freedom are themselves challenged. While I do not propose to foreground the
Nietzschean themes alluded to here, it is in the restoring of such an inflection at
the end of the chapter that an alternative, richer conception of freedom in relation to
the curriculum is sought.

It is in this context that concerns about freedom and schooling have developed
in various ways and in diverse circumstances. In Japan, there is concern about
drop-out rates from education, about the rebellious behaviour of young people,
about classroom disruption, and lack of respect for tradition, about hair dyed
blond . . . And, in this context, some argue that what is needed is education of the
heart (kokoro no kyoiku). In the UK within recent decades, debates about moral
education and citizenship have gained a new prominence. What is needed, the
argument has been, is to get ‘back to basics’. What we need to do is to teach
children the difference between right and wrong. In these and other countries, it
has become a common wisdom that it is progressive (or child-centred) ideas and
methods, that have given children too much freedom and so deprived them of the
standards of behaviour and the discipline that is necessary in their upbringing.
John Major went so far, in the early 1990s, as to say: ‘The progressives have had
their say and they have had their day’. In fact, in the UK, during the past 20 years,
no leading politician (of any of the parties) has been willing to speak in favour of
progressivism because in the eyes of the public it has become so much associated
with the image of self-indulgent teachers, who want to be ‘friends’ with the
children rather than to teach them, to let children do whatever they want, and
because the one thing that the general public wants from education is for it to
make sure that their children come out of school with the necessary skills to find
decent jobs.

I want shortly to give a brief account of that development in the UK and of reac-
tions against it. But, first, it is appropriate to say more about the value of freedom
that is so close to its heart. For brevity, I shall not say anything here about the
prominence of the idea in the world of Ancient Greece but shall confine myself to
some remarks about the rise of the idea of freedom, principally in Europe, over the
past 300 or so years. What does a consideration of that period show?

MORAL EDUCATION, LIBERAL EDUCATION 35

The development of the idea of freedom
in the modern Western world

When people speak in history or philosophy of ‘the modern world’, they typically
have in mind a period of time extending back to René Descartes and the individual-
ism of disengaged rationality and to the political individualism of John Locke. But
probably the most striking changes come with the political upheavals of the late 18th
century and, in the UK especially, the massive social change brought about by the
Industrial Revolution. Perhaps equally important during these centuries is the rise of
science, which came with a new confidence in man’s reasoning and a faith in progress.
(It was indeed thought of as ‘man’s’ reasoning at the time!) Words such as ‘progress’
and ‘development’ have now become so commonplace in our thinking that we
suppose them to be perfectly natural, almost as if progress were built into the universe,
but really this is very much the result of these massive changes in thought. With this
new confidence in human abilities, there was an unprecedented questioning of estab-
lished religious and moral horizons, and also the growing belief that, just as science
had brought about spectacular changes in technology, so too rationality could be
applied to the organization of society.

The gradual move from a conception of the universe as God’s creation towards a
placing of man at the centre of things (that is, the rise of humanism) gave new promi-
nence to the idea of freedom. Immanuel Kant advanced the key principle that, because
human beings were capable of free will, they should always be treated as ends, never
simply as means. (In other words, they should never be treated simply as slaves, but
should be recognized as beings with interests of their own, and with the capacity ratio-
nally to reflect on those interests.) This has become a guiding principle for the modern
world. Perhaps the most important figure in the change we are considering, however,
is Jean-Jacques Rousseau. His radical ideas pointed to the ways in which the contem-
porary world caused people to lead lives that were shaped by mere convention and that
were unnatural. One can perhaps picture the extraordinary costumes that were worn
by the aristocracy of that time – the long wigs, the make-up, the brightly coloured
fancy clothing for women and men! – and think of these as symbols of the falseness
of people’s values and behaviour. In fact, however, the very ideas of what is natural
and of falseness here are themselves familiar to us very much because of Rousseau’s
own work. For, in his rejection of the values of convention, he argued that human
beings had lost touch with nature and with their true selves. The way that today we
cherish the natural world – our delight in a beautiful mountain range as well as our
current environmentalism – would probably have made little sense in the Western
world before Rousseau’s time. And, when today we read in a popular magazine such
as Cosmopolitan of the need to get in touch with your ‘real self’ (Are you in touch
with the real you?), this idea, which apparently comes so naturally to us, is surely
partly attributable to Rousseau. The idea of what is real or true to ourselves, which
connects with our notions of honesty, sincerity, integrity and being ‘together’ as a per-
son, is sometimes spoken of as authenticity. In his book The Ethics of Authenticity

36 PAUL STANDISH

(1991), Charles Taylor speaks of the massive inward turn that is brought about by
Rousseau’s thinking: Rousseau gives us a sense of ourselves as beings with inner
depths, for whom the morally good life must be one where we feel in tune with our
own deepest commitments and feelings (as opposed to one where we simply follow
what our religious or political leaders, or our parents, say). The source of morality is
a voice within.

What Rousseau also offers, of course, in his conception of nature is a new idea of
childhood – hence his enormous influence on thinking about education. Against the
Christian idea that human beings are born in a state of ‘original sin’, he enables us to
think of children as innocent (and pure and good, perhaps) because they are closer to
nature. In contrast to the idea that the role of education was to mould children into a
shape that would fit society, Rousseau’s view was that the perverted forms that soci-
ety had come to assume must themselves change in accordance with what was natural.
His description of Emile’s upbringing does indeed have an important bearing on edu-
cation, but the book needs to be seen as part of his larger political philosophy: his
vision of the good society and of citizenship. In the light of Emile (Rousseau, 1911,
originally published 1762) and his other more obviously political writings, there is a
clear connection between his thought and an event that was profoundly to shape the
history of modern Europe and its understanding of itself – the French Revolution
(1789). Its slogan of ‘liberty, equality, fraternity’ underlines the point.

In the 19th century, the thinker who stands out for his importance in the political
thinking of the English-speaking world is, of course, John Stuart Mill. In Mill’s On
Liberty, originally published in 1859, he advances what has become taken by people
in general to be a fundamental principle. He writes:

The object of this essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern
absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and con-
trol, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties or the moral
coercion of public opinion. That principle is that the sole end for which mankind are war-
ranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their
number is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can rightfully be exer-
cised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to oth-
ers. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant (Mill, 1978, p. 9).

In other words, you should not prevent someone from doing what they want to do
unless they are harming someone else. You should not interfere with them because
they are harming themselves or because you think you know what is best for them.
This principle encounters many problem cases, some of which Mill and his critics
have addressed, but it remains an immensely powerful guiding principle and a natural
reference point.

Although the ways of thinking sketched here have become naturalized in the
Western world, they have undoubtedly brought problems, problems that could not
easily have been anticipated. When the individual becomes the ultimate reference point,
there is a loss of horizons of meaning that in the past had given sense to much of what
he did; community ties are weakened, and the individual feels rootless and purposeless;
there is a kind of ‘disenchantment’ of the world. Within the democracies that have

MORAL EDUCATION, LIBERAL EDUCATION 37

developed, especially where the masses are not well educated, there is some tendency
for values and policies to be determined by the ‘lowest common denominator’, so that
societies are flattened and narrowed. And in these circumstances morality can degen-
erate into crude utilitarianism, governed by a technical rationality.

Of course, the history of the 20th century is marked by two world wars. Amongst
the social consequences of these in the UK were a weakening of the British class
system, which had been such a pronounced feature of the period of the Empire, and a
change in the role of women (as they too became directly involved in the war effort or
took over civilian jobs normally held by men). In the 15 or so years immediately
following the Second World War, the UK faced a period of austerity and at the same
time saw the closing decades of its empire, as colonized countries moved towards
independence. But, in the 1960s, there was a new period of economic prosperity and
suddenly the feeling that things could change. New universities were built to meet the
needs of the children of the post-war baby boom who were now passing through
adolescence, sex scandals in the government changed people’s attitudes towards those
in power and authority, the Beatles made their first records and ‘flower-power’ (the
hippies) arrived! This was a new sense that one could question the way things had
been done in the past, that one could, and one should, live one’s life as one chose. One
must above all be authentic. It was in this context that progressivism came to be intro-
duced in schools.

Progressive schooling and its introduction in the UK

While the advent of progressivism in state education in the UK was later than it had
been in Germany and Scandinavia, for example, or for that matter in the United States,
its development was perhaps more dramatic.1 The Primary Memorandum in Scotland
(1965) and the Plowden Report (1967), two major government reports, advocated a
radical change in the education of children in elementary school. The following para-
graph from the Primary Memorandum is indicative:

It is now generally accepted that the primary school is much more than a preparation for
secondary school: it is a stage of development in its own right . . . [Schooling must] meet
the child’s needs and interests . . . [The teacher must] provide the environment, experi-
ences and guidance which will stimulate growth along natural lines . . . [The child is] not
an adult in miniature . . . [N]atural endowment of children is not uniform . . . [G]rowth
and development . . . are continuous . . . The artificial nature of school organisation
[needs to be compensated for] (SED, 1965, pp. 3–4).

To anyone familiar with the texts of progressive educators, these ideas will be famil-
iar enough. It would be easy to match the phrases here to ideas of John Dewey, espe-
cially in Democracy and Education (Dewey, 1925, originally published in 1916). It
is undoubtedly the case that the ideas that were promoted in the teacher education

1 There had been a number of influential experiments in private education before this time. For a full
discussion of the development of progressivism, see Darling and Nordenbo (2003).

38 PAUL STANDISH

colleges at this time were a watered-down, if not a distorted, version of the thinking
of the philosophers whom they quoted (Rousseau and Dewey above all). And even if
the new approaches that they advocated did not affect all schools, there was neverthe-
less a sudden wave of interest in these innovations. Visitors came from many coun-
tries to see the new ‘Plowden schools’.

It is worth pausing for a moment to think what one might have seen in a visit to a
progressive elementary school classroom in England at that time. In contrast to the
plain, rather forbidding room with high windows (so that the children would look up
towards God) and straight rows of desks (so that would work silently and attend only
to the teacher) that had been the experience of the previous generation, the new class-
room would be a colourful and comfortable place: there would be large windows, let-
ting the light in and encouraging children to look out at the garden outside; tables
would be arranged in ‘family’ groups, encouraging children to work with one another;
the walls would be decorated with the brightly coloured art work of the children; there
would be a ‘quiet corner’ with a carpet and cushions, and picture-books for children
to browse; there would be pet animals (such as guinea pigs) for the children to care
for, and plants for them to tend; and there would be a variety of activity, with children
writing, drawing, making things, playing, talking and laughing excitedly; the teacher
would not generally have spoken to the class as a whole, but would move around the
room, attending to one child then another as the need arose. The children would up to
a point be free to pursue the activities in whatever order they chose – in other words,
to follow their interests. The principles and values governing this scene can be
summed up in the following set of precepts:

• children learn best through doing, through experience;
• learning takes place in a process of discovery;
• creativity should be developed;
• imagination should be developed;
• children learn through play;
• they learn best when they are happy;
• learning should begin with the interests of the child;
• children must not become bored;
• children must learn things in meaningful contexts (not just isolated facts or

mindless drills);
• learning should be organized on the basis of themes or topics, not according to

abstract academic subjects;
• education is a process of growth from within;
• the role of the teacher is to provide conditions that will assist that growth;
• all children are different and they have their individual needs and rates of

growth;
• the teacher must respond to the child’s needs, not present them with what she

wants to teach;
• the emphasis should be on encouragement and praise, not punishment;
• the teacher should not be an authoritarian figure but more like a friend to the

children.

MORAL EDUCATION, LIBERAL EDUCATION 39

These then were the values promoted by many of those training teachers at the time
and to some extent they became a kind of ideology. It is not the case that all schools
adopted them entirely, but the general climate in the primary school undoubtedly went
through a period of major change.

Economic change and conservative reactions

In the 1970s, however, events outside the school came to have an important bearing
on the country’s development and on how education and teachers were seen. In 1972,
a world crisis was occasioned when some of the main oil-producing countries in the
Middle East made the decision to act collectively to raise prices. In the UK, one effect
was a doubling in the cost of petrol overnight. Inevitably, this put severe pressure on
the economy. This occurred following a time of prosperity when the major trade
unions had succeeded, through collective bargaining, in gaining wage increases for
their members. Now, with higher prices in the shops, they understandably pressed for
more. Through the 1970s, there was a series of strikes against a background of rising
inflation (to over 20%). Social problems appeared to be on the increase, with crime
rising, and there was a general air of unrest. In 1979, Margaret Thatcher came to
power, with a radical agenda for reform, one that involved high levels of unemploy-
ment, new kinds of poverty and a squeeze on the funding of public services, welfare
and education. Inevitably, progressive education was blamed for much that was wrong
in society. Her first Minister of Education, Keith Joseph, even went so far as to say
that it was teacher educators who were to blame because they had introduced teach-
ers to Dewey!

In or around the 1970s, a number of publications had been produced under the
ominous title of ‘Black Papers in Education’2 (see Boyson, 1975; Cox, 1992; Cox
and Boyson, 1975, 1977; Cox and Dyson, 1969). At the time these reactionary texts
struck many teachers as the ranting of conservative extremists, and they were
assumed simply to be wildly out of touch. It was striking, however, that a decade
later, with the reforms that Margaret Thatcher was to introduce, they had come closer
to the mainstream. What Thatcher picked up on and skilfully exploited was suspi-
cions amongst ordinary people that all was not well with education. For many peo-
ple, the challenge to conventional notions of discipline and authority that had come
with progressivism had seemed threatening, and the emphasis on creativity, play, and
happiness in the elementary classroom appeared to involve a neglect of the knowl-
edge and values that children needed. Not surprisingly, this laid the way for the idea
that we needed to ‘get back to basics’ and that children must learn the difference
between right and wrong.

2 The term ‘Black Paper’ borrows from the normal use of the phrase ‘White Paper’ for a government policy
document.

40 PAUL STANDISH

This widespread reaction to progressivism may have been justified in some ways,
but it was generally based on very crude and limited ideas about education. It needs
to be contrasted with the serious and careful work of a number of critics who, from
the 1960s onwards, raised questions of a predominantly philosophical kind about
some of the assumptions of progressivism. These criticisms were advanced in the
name of liberal education, and it is to this that I now turn.

The idea of a liberal education

The views in Question are particularly interesting because, unlike those of the reactionary
critics above, they also were committed to the idea that education was fundamentally con-
nected with freedom. But they disagreed about what this freedom consisted in. The lead-
ing figure in this in the UK was R. S. Peters, although in many respects his work related
to ideas being developed around the same time by Israel Scheffler in the United States.
In collaboration with his colleagues, Paul Hirst and Robert Dearden, Peters attempted to
restate the idea of a liberal education. The importance of this idea and its influence on
Anglophone philosophy of education can scarcely be questioned. It is a conception of
education with ancient roots that presents us with cogent criticisms of progressivism.

Criticism of progressivism from liberal education

Like the reactionary critics mentioned above, these thinkers were concerned about vari-
ous aspects of the wave of progressivism that was changing education. Within the child-
centred preoccupations with play, happiness, creativity, learning by discovery (or
experiential learning) and growth, they detected a somewhat sentimental view of the
child. They identified also a failure to think through what these terms really implied. To
take an example, progressive educators tended to think that children must above all be
happy and that only the happy child would learn well, and this came to mean that a class-
room in which children were smiling and laughing was a good classroom. But, as
Dearden in particular pointed out, happiness is a much more elusive notion than this sug-
gests. Sometimes we can be laughing but not be happy or only happy in a superficial way.
Sometimes a greater degree of happiness comes because of struggling and then feeling
that one has really achieved something. Some kinds of happiness bring satisfactions that
are more profound. If smiling and laughing were the ultimate satisfaction, we should put
scientists to work on a drug that would produce this state reliably and without difficulty.
But surely we want more from our lives than this. At least, surely we should!

This connects very much with what is perhaps the most pervasive criticism of pro-
gressive education that these philosophers made. This was, in R. S. Peters’ words, that
child-centred education was concerned too much with the manner and insufficiently with
the matter of education. In other words, it was too concerned with questions about the
methods of learning and insufficiently concerned with what was learned. From the point
of view of liberal education, the question of what is to be learned is the fundamental ques-
tion of education. Let us consider how they set about answering that question.

MORAL EDUCATION, LIBERAL EDUCATION 41

What is worthwhile?

There are obviously some things that we learn to do that we need more or less for our
survival and some that are really a matter of training for the jobs that we take up in
society. For example, in the comparatively recent past, many young women were
trained in typing skills. With the development of voice-recognition, these skills will
perhaps eventually become obsolete, and it is not obvious why anyone would then
what to acquire them. So they are useful skills but nothing more. On the contrary,
there are some things we learn that are not obsolescent in this way. It is noticeable that
these are things that, unlike typing, have often been pursued by people who have not
had to find jobs to support themselves (the aristocracy, for example). They seem to be
things that, whether or not they are useful, are intrinsically worthwhile. The idea of
what is worthwhile in itself is at the heart of this account of education. So we must
ask what it is that people find worthwhile. What do they find most satisfaction in?

In addressing this question in his book Ethics and Education, Peters considers the
things that people enjoy in a series of ascending stages. In the first place, they enjoy
physical pleasures such as eating and drinking, sex, and lying in the sun. These are
genuine sources of satisfaction for human beings, and they are activities that allow
scope for care, refinement and sophistication. (Think for a moment of the remarkable
difference between the way in which even the higher animals eat and a simple meal
shared amongst friends or family.) But these activities also have their limitations.
They depend on cyclical appetites – for example, there is only so much that one can
eat at one time. And each time you eat, even where this is a gourmet meal, you do, as
it were, start again from the beginning.

The second kind of enjoyment that Peters considers includes games and sports.
People take great satisfaction in these. The advantage they have over the pleasures of
the senses above is that they offer extraordinary possibilities for the development of
ability or skill. If you play chess or tennis and you practise regularly, you may be able
to press your achievement to higher and higher levels. Activities of this kind do not
depend on cyclical appetites, and indeed, they may strengthen your capacity the more
you do them. When you resume such activities, you do not have to start from
the beginning, as it were, but build on the skill level that you have reached. They offer
the possibility for extending human capacities in remarkable ways. But these activities
also have limitations. Sports and games tend to be limited parts of our lives. Taking
part in such activities does not, in general, cast light on the world as a whole or help
you in other aspects of your life.

The third type of activity that Peters considers is what he calls ‘theoretical activi-
ties’. He has in mind such academic pursuits as the study of history or mathematics or
literature. Unlike the pleasures of eating and drinking, these do not depend on cycli-
cal appetites but, on the contrary, are intensified the more you do them. Of course, you
have to take a break for a rest sometimes! But the chances are that the more you know
about, say, history, the more satisfying further study will be. They do not depend upon
competition over resources that are scarce, because in intellectual activities the

42 PAUL STANDISH

possibilities extend the more they are pursued, nor do they depend upon competition,
where, as in sports and games, the winner takes the prize, because these activities
depend upon and are enhanced by the shared pursuit of their goals. Moreover, they are
not confined in terms of their influence on our lives. The way we live in the world is
transformed and improved if we know something about how it has developed (in terms
of social and political history, geography, geology and so on) and something about the
science and technology upon which it depends. More strongly, this knowledge, and
perhaps the understanding of human nature that we can gain from such disciplines as
history and literature, makes us better able to address the practical problems that we
will face, in all their ethical diversity. Furthermore, in view of the fact that reason is
the most obvious feature that distinguishes us from other forms of life and that these
activities are supreme developments of human reason, it is this that we should
develop. In sum, theoretical activities offer unparalleled opportunities for satisfaction.

Cultural initiation and the development of mind

If we think a little about reason and the nature of mind, we should come to realize that
the development of the mind is quite unlike the development of, say, a muscle in the
body. Of course, there are physical parts of the body upon which the mind depends,
but the mind is not an organ of the body; the brain is not the mind. To recognize this
is to realize the immense importance that initiation into a culture has for the mind’s
development. To speak of initiation into a culture here is not to refer to something
highbrow but rather to think of the range of complex practices that make up any soci-
ety and into which children are gradually introduced. Coming to participate in these
practices is the development of mind. This may seem a surprising statement, but it can
be supported by reference to the well-known case of the so-called wild child of
Aveyron.

In France in the 18th Century, a child was discovered in the forest. The child was
probably about 10 years old but was behaving like no ordinary child. He moved about
on his hands and feet, and, obviously terrified of people, made animal-like noises
when he was approached. Eventually, he was surrounded and caught, and then taken
to an asylum in Paris. Asylums in Europe at that time, quite unlike modern hospitals,
were places where mentally ill or abnormal people were confined. The public could
pay an entrance fee to come and look (and probably laugh) at the people inside. An
enlightened doctor heard about the child and became interested. The evidence was that
this was a child who had been abandoned at birth and who had been left in the woods
to die. The amazing thing was that it seemed that he had been found by wolves and
protected by them, and so had spent several years amongst them. The doctor was inter-
ested to see how far this child had become different from a normal child because of
being so dramatically cut off from society, and also whether he could be civilized. The
doctor took the child into his home and cared for him, and tried to do just this.

What is immediately striking about this story is that, although the child is not
radically different physiologically from other children (his brain has developed

MORAL EDUCATION, LIBERAL EDUCATION 43

organically, just as his muscles have), his mental state is barely recognizable as that
of a human being at all. This should draw our attention to what it is we mean when
we speak of the mind of a human being. In short, the mind is nothing without the
cultural practices into which the child is introduced. Most important among those
practices is language itself, as virtually all distinctively human activity seems to
follow in some way from this. This child has been cutoff from language users, and
so, the limited and strange ways of thinking that he has developed are scarcely
recognizable to us. Indeed, it relates more to a wolf’s behaviour than to anything we
could call mind.

If this is right, it seems to follow that a child’s upbringing cannot simply be a natural
process of growth, or of unfolding from within, or even of unaided discovery learning.
In any culture, the child must be introduced into the practices of that culture. Thinking
of the way we treat infants and very young children – over such practices as sitting,
walking, eating, talking, dressing, laughing – can help to show that this is the case.

A further comparison with animals helps to make this point. The societies that we
live in are extremely complex, and our practices are the result of thousands of years
of development. To see quite how far this is true, it is worth thinking for a moment of
animals living in a natural environment – say, lions living in the African savannah. It
is probably the case that the way that lions live today – their patterns of hunting, eating
and mating – are no different from the way they were 5000 years ago. If we think, on
the contrary, of the way in which people live in any ordinary city today in contrast to
the lives of people there 5000 years ago, the difference is truly remarkable. It should
leave us with no doubt, first, of the importance of educational practices through which
these ways of thinking and understanding are passed on and advanced from one
generation to the next, and, second, of the dependence of what we mean by ‘mind’
upon these practices.

It seems to follow from the above that education ought to initiate people into the
forms of knowledge and understanding that have come down to us. For, if education
is to be more than mere training for a job, it should free the mind to function in as rich
a way as is possible; it is in this sense particularly that it is liberal. Not to introduce
learners to the ways of understanding that have come down to us would amount to
leaving them confined within limited ways of thinking – ones that they had acquired
perhaps only from their immediate community or perhaps from a diet of cartoon
programmes on television.

The ‘conversation of mankind’

One of the most influential articles by Paul Hirst concludes with words from an essay
by Michael Oakeshott entitled ‘The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of Mankind’
(in Oakeshott, 1962):

As civilised human beings, we are the inheritors, neither of an inquiry about ourselves and
the world, nor of an accumulating body of information, but of a conversation, begun in the
primeval forests and extended and made more articulate in the course of centuries. It is a
conversation which goes on both in public and within each of ourselves. Of course there

44 PAUL STANDISH

is argument and enquiry and information, but wherever these are profitable they are to be
recognized as passages in this conversation, and perhaps they are not the most captivating
of the passages . . . Conversation is not an enterprise designed to yield an extrinsic profit,
a contest where a winner gets a prize, nor is it an activity of exegesis; it is an unrehearsed
intellectual adventure . . . Education, properly speaking, is an initiation into the skill and
partnership of this conversation in which we learn to recognize the voices, to distinguish
the proper occasions of utterance, and in which we acquire the intellectual and moral
habits appropriate to conversation. And it is this conversation which, in the end, gives
place and character to every human utterance (Hirst, 1965, pp. 52–53).

Oakeshott’s moving words here underline the connection between the ways in which
an education of this kind is properly described as liberal. It is liberal in the same sense
of the term as is used in the liberal arts colleges of the United States. The initiation
into the ‘conversation of mankind’ then involves something like an initiation into ‘the
best that has been thought and said’, in Matthew Arnold’s famous (if contentious)
phrase. And, in this respect, these words not only value the past but connect with val-
ues that shaped the thinking of the world of Ancient Greece. The past is not valuable
because it is the past. It is valuable because it offers us the developing history of
attempts to get at the truth of things and to understand what matters in human lives.

In the Republic, Plato gives us a wonderful image of education with the myth of
the Cave. He describes the human condition as being like that of people living in the
darkness of a cave and watching the flickering images projected onto the back of the
cave by the light from its mouth. What they see is not real but the distorted images
(the shadows) of real objects at the mouth of the cave, objects illuminated by the
bright light of the sun. (The relevance of the fact that the idea of reality that many
people have today is given by the distorted images of the world on television scarcely
needs spelling out.) Education involves the process of helping these people to turn
their heads away from these images in order that they should come to see the real
objects at the mouth of the cave and eventually look at the sun itself, the source of
truth and goodness. But, just as we find it difficult to look at bright lights when we
have been in the dark and are inclined to be dazzled and to turn back to the darkness,
so too people would prefer to look at these images (and to remain in ignorance) rather
than to face up to the truth. Crucial to Plato’s account then is coming to see things
truly (the contemplation of truth and goodness); it is freeing the mind from illusion.

Rational autonomy and political liberalism

A commitment to truth is close to the heart of the idea of a liberal education that is
developed by Peters and his colleagues. But their position is also complicated by a fur-
ther dimension of freedom, and this connects with the modern political liberalism
associated especially with J. S. Mill. Here, the emphasis is not so much on freedom
from illusion as on freedom to choose what to do: in the absence of any indisputable
substantive conception of the good, the individual should decide for herself how she
is going to live her life. Far from being a licence for irresponsibility, however, this was
developed in terms of what came to be called ‘rational autonomy’. Although there is
now a huge literature on autonomy, especially in relation to education but also more

MORAL EDUCATION, LIBERAL EDUCATION 45

generally in political philosophy, perhaps the most succinct expression of rational
autonomy is to be found in Dearden’s essay ‘Autonomy and Education’. As Dearden
explains: ‘A man is autonomous, on Kant’s view, if in his actions he has bound himself
by moral laws legislated by his own reason, as opposed to being governed by his own
inclinations’ (Dearden, 1972, p. 58). What should be noticed here is the emphasis on
reasoning through one’s principles for oneself. On this view, you should not do some-
thing simply because the priest or the government or your parents or the media tell
you to, or because you do not have the strength of character to do anything different,
or because you are under the influence of drugs or obsessions or neurotic fears, and
so on. You should reflect on your desires and reason through what to do. Of course,
the principles you adopt, the reasons for your actions, may be ones that are likely to
be current in your culture in one way or another, but what is crucial is that you decide
to adopt these as your own.

In the decades since this restatement of the idea of a liberal education was made,
there has been a tendency for the connection with political liberalism (and hence with
autonomy) to come to the fore, to the growing neglect of the more classical connec-
tion with the contemplation of truth. The term ‘liberal education’ is sometimes now
used solely with such political principles in mind, in such a way that the robust
account of the curriculum that was produced has been largely lost. In my own view
this is very much to be regretted. Questions about what is to be learned and why
should be recognized as unavoidable by any policy maker or practising teacher, and
philosophy of education must find ways of addressing them.

In what follows, and to confront such questions myself, I shall say something
about problems with the vision of a liberal education that I have sketched and shall
point to ways in which its limitations may be overcome. I shall also attempt to show
how what I have to say connects with the account of contemporary individualism with
which the present discussion began.

Addressing the difficulties with the idea of a liberal education

Peters and his colleagues had great influence throughout the English-speaking world.
But the idea of a liberal education that they advanced was not without its critics. A
common response was that it provided nothing new: it was simply a rationalization for
what was in fact going on at the time in grammar schools, with children at other
schools – that is, the majority – given a watered-down version, and thus, it shored up
the power relationships and class distinctions that were responsible for some of the
injustice in society. Its conception of the curriculum itself was dull and outmoded – a
matter of passing on the knowledge that happened to be preferred by a section of soci-
ety rather than anything that was likely to be truly meaningful to the lives of people
in general. That knowledge was highbrow and academic, the critics said, and so, not
surprisingly, many children were alienated and did badly at school. Not only did it
reflect the interests of particular social classes; it was also inherently sexist, being

46 PAUL STANDISH

based on the work or the deeds of ‘dead white males’. And, far from developing crit-
ical thinking, it encouraged the repetition of received ideas. Moreover, because of its
emphasis on this outmoded content, it failed to appreciate the importance of the
insights of progressivism – in particular, the need for education to acknowledge the
differences between people and to develop from the individual herself.

If liberal education is practised in the way described in the preceding paragraph, it
should indeed be criticised. Many students, including some of the most intelligent, are
not moved by ‘the best that has been thought and said’. Such an education will, more-
over, be a limitation of the individual rather than something that might engage her
more deeply and foster her development. And it must be admitted that over-attention
to the subject matter can inhibit opportunities for students to respond authentically
and to find their own voices.

To be fair to Peters and his colleagues, however, it was never their intention that
the curriculum should be a mere passing on of received ideas: they advocated cur-
riculum content that incorporated traditions of criticism, and they saw the initiation of
the learner into such forms of knowledge as a means of her engagement. The criticism
of their views considered here then depends upon a distortion of the ideas that they
advanced. I do, nevertheless, want to draw attention to two main concerns.

In the first place, the emphasis on rational autonomy as a central aim of education
is based on a narrow view of human life and morality. It encourages us to think of the
good life as one that is carefully planned out in (perhaps) most respects. In conse-
quence, it loses sight of the value of spontaneity. This might be found, for example, in
acts of unreflective generosity or courage and in the everyday kindness that good peo-
ple show to others. Indeed, sometimes to reflect before you act – say, when an acci-
dent occurs – could be a sign of moral failing. Spontaneity is also apparent in a kind
of joie de vivre, a delight in living or even just a sense of fun, as it is in a certain
receptiveness to others. The emphasis on rational autonomy makes it sound also as
though being morally good is likely to coincide with being intelligent and so hides the
goodness that can exist in simple unreflective lives. As such, it may suppress the vari-
ety of human life and thereby have a limiting effect on the kinds of community that
we can develop. To exaggerate (just a little unfairly!), it sometimes seems that the
ideal rationally autonomous person would be someone like Mr Spock on the Starship
Enterprise, someone who always meticulously plans everything he does and for whom
a spontaneous emotion is something to be quickly mastered and overcome.

A second criticism concerns its emphasis on intellectual pursuits and the elitist
connotations this has. While there is a good case for saying that everyone should be
given the chance to pursue such activities, it is likely that these will appeal most to
more intelligent people, and perhaps, as has been noted, not to all of them: many will
find that an academic curriculum of this kind does not speak to them and stifles their
voices. The point of studying history or physics may be lost on many people, espe-
cially while they are children. The fact that people who write theoretical articles about
education almost by definition enjoy such things makes them bad at seeing how this
may not be so for everyone!

MORAL EDUCATION, LIBERAL EDUCATION 47

Three questions arise from this. First, what response should there be to the problem
of the demanding and potentially alienating nature of intellectual pursuits? Second,
does this justify different curricula for those who do not progress well with such activ-
ities? And third, is there anything in the account of the value of theoretical activities –
anything liberal, that is – that can be extended to other less intellectual pursuits?

Intellectual activities are demanding, and their appeal is often difficult to under-
stand from the outside. It is usually the case that, before one can participate in them
with any great satisfaction, one has to undergo periods of hard work and perhaps bore-
dom: one has to acquire the ‘vocabulary’ to take part in the conversation, as it were –
whether this is in literary criticism, physics or history, or in more creative activities
such as music and art. Hence, the teacher must tread a careful path that enables the
child to acquire the vocabulary appropriate to the subject – the skills, knowledge and
understanding – while avoiding the alienating effects that the demands of the subject
may have. It must be her aim in the course of this for the subject to speak to the child
in such a manner that the child can come to find her voice in it: that she sees how it
may (come to) matter to her. And this does not mean that she finds that it may match
something that already exists in herself, but rather that it offers a new possibility for the
development of her voice – that is, for the expansion of herself. Without this, the sub-
ject is in danger of going dead on the child, and schooling is likely to be an alienating
experience, even if it equips the child with high grades. Bearing these factors in mind,
then, it does seem that a degree of coercion is justified in taking the child through those
difficult stages of learning that lead to this more rewarding understanding.

My own view regarding the second question is that the demands of a liberal edu-
cation, thus conceived, are likely to be too great for some children and so that it is
appropriate to provide different curricula, probably at some stage during high school.
Of course, this need not be done on an all-or-nothing basis. And there should be
opportunities for children to move from one route to another.

A further factor is important here – in terms of social justice but also for purely
educational reasons. It is sometimes said that education is wasted on the young.
Certainly there is evidence that mature students make much better use of educational
opportunities. Hence, there is every reason to encourage people to take up such study
throughout their lives, and so this is a powerful argument for meaningful lifelong
learning. I do not necessarily suggest that full-time education should be available to
adults at public expense because the costs of this may well be prohibitive. But there
is a strong case for state subsidy of part-time education for adults. Even part-time
study in evening classes can transform people’s lives, and sometimes the combination
of study and working can be peculiarly enriching.

With regard to the third question, it should be recognized that there are aspects of
a liberal education that cannot easily be extended or replicated. The ideal product of
such an education is someone who has a breadth of understanding across the different
forms of knowledge that are our inheritance, in sciences, the humanities and the arts.
But such a person will also have a deep love for at least one of these pursuits, such
that it is an absorbing interest that brings to her life the sense of participating in an

48 PAUL STANDISH

‘unrehearsed intellectual adventure’, in Oakeshott’s words, an adventure that becomes
all the more intense and absorbing the more it is pursued. And, surprising though this
may at first seem, it is in the idea of intense absorption that a Nietzschean inflection
is found once again. It is perhaps this more dynamic aspect that we should look to if
we hope to extend something of this experience to those who are not intellectually up
to the full demands of a liberal education.

I suggest that there are other less intellectual activities that can offer such kinds of
intense absorption. For examples, we should perhaps turn attention in the direction of
craft activities. Of course, we can think of the kinds of satisfactions that people gain
from activities such as carpentry or pottery, but there is obviously a danger of anachro-
nism or nostalgia here. These things play a less prominent part in people’s lives,
whether at work or in their leisure time, than they used to. So, we need to be prepared
to consider activities of quite different and perhaps surprising kinds. I am struck by the
kind of enthusiasm and delight that people can take in practical work with things – in
making them and shaping them – in more contemporary, everyday circumstances.
I am thinking of the pride of the engineer in the smooth-running machine, of the hair-
dresser in cutting and styling, or of the bricklayer in the clean lines of a wall, or of the
chef in preparing fine food. Take car mechanics as an example. Such activity does
indeed offer scope for further understanding and enquiry, and for the refinement of
skill with the accumulation of experience. Those involved in it often seem to take a
delight in the work that incorporates aesthetic and ethical values – say, in the good
timing of the engine, the pleasure to be found in its efficiently moving parts, its func-
tional capability and improvement, and so on. This is a very ordinary example but one
worthy of attention. When people take pleasure in their work in this way, this can spill
over into other areas of life, generating a kind of curiosity about things and bringing
them into intense involvement with others. Such involvement is often not confined to
the activities concerned but becomes a broader social commitment and identification.

The idea of a liberal education has tended to reinforce certain dichotomies in our
thinking – between theory and practice, between the academic and the vocational,
between the mind and the body – in each case favouring the former term. It has also,
and perhaps in consequence of these dichotomies, been excessively preoccupied with
propositional knowledge. Of course, it would be absurd to deny the massive impor-
tance of propositional knowledge – not as the expression of inert facts but as the sub-
stance and vocabulary of the forms of knowledge of which Peters and Hirst speak. The
alternative advocated here is not the skill-based curriculum that has become fashion-
able, important though skills obviously also are. What is missing from the picture, and
what the craft examples above may suggest, is the importance of knowledge by direct
acquaintance. Amongst more intellectual pursuits, art appreciation plainly involves an
acquaintance with particular works of art, where one’s encounter with them exceeds
anything that could be rendered in propositional terms, however rich propositional
language may be as an approach to these works. This kind of acquaintance is also, I
suggest, to be found somewhere in the mechanic’s relation to the engine or the hair-
stylist’s relation to hair – including their relation to the kinds of resistance that the

MORAL EDUCATION, LIBERAL EDUCATION 49

materials they work with present. It is there too, I also want to say, in the historian’s
familiarity with a particular period, or in the physicist’s or the philosopher’s familiar-
ity with particular sets of problems, and the characteristic kinds of resistance that they
present. Indeed, this familiarity is very much a part of knowing one’s way around a
subject and the satisfactions that this offers.

Finally, it is important to draw attention to the fact that there is a kind of moral edu-
cation that is inherent in the demands that learning can make on us, but these are
demands that sometimes elude progressive education. These include, first, the intellec-
tual virtues celebrated in the academic life, but the thought here is that what is most
important extends across more practical domains. Without the understanding devel-
oped through knowledge by acquaintance, through patient attention to the way things
are, these intellectual virtues may cut loose from the substance that gives them their
sense. These are moral matters also in the way that such forms of learning draw the
learner into practices that are sustained by communities. Although this may not be
explicit, such communities uphold standards to which the learner must constantly
aspire to be worthy – whether this is to the standards of truth and critical argument
found in an academic discipline or to those inherent in the creation and maintenance of
the fabric of the world we live in. When one applies oneself to such activities, there is
a real sense in which one’s attention is turned beyond oneself. What is learned –
whether this is the functioning of the machine, the stresses that metal will take, and the
explosiveness of a gas in an engine, or the substance of an academic subject – can lead
to a kind of attention-to-the-way-things-are that has its intrinsic virtues but that also can
disturb us from the self-preoccupied tendencies to which we can otherwise succumb.
Far from a direct concentration on the development of the self, it is in such endeavours
that the individual can flourish most, and through this engagement that she may find
not only her own voice but that she has something meaningful to say.3

References

Boyson, R. (1975) The Crisis in Education (London, The Woburn Press).
Cox, C.B. (1992) The Great Betrayal (London, Chapmans Publishing Ltd.).
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3 An earlier version of this chapter was presented as the Ogata Lecture at the University of Tohoku, Japan.
I am grateful to those present on that occasion, and to Morinichi Kato and Naoko Saito especially, for their
comments and response.

50 PAUL STANDISH

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