Mireille Falardeau et Michel Loranger Le choix de stratégies ... - CSSE

BOOK REVIEWS / RECENSIONS 473
exception of philosophy, the rest are just the standard fare of the core curriculum
worldwide in our era. There is nothing about swimming, which was part of the
Roman curriculum. Nor about handling the lance, the mace, or the horse, which
chivalry the world over cared about; or weaving, knitting, and lace work for the
ladies. And the reason there is not is that essentially Barrow is continuing his
(very important) work of identifying the presuppositions of this scientific age, in
this case the things we take for granted about root curriculum. And that is why
nobody has implemented what Barrow apparently fears, namely a curriculum
consisting of “Understanding 10, 11, and 12,” “Imagination 10, 11, and 12,”
“Creativity 10, 11, and 12,” and so on.
Is philosophy as he expresses it, with its ethical and aesthetic component, an
exception here? I don’t really think so. It is just that philosophy is something that
permeates everything else in the curriculum: philosophy as method, ethical
approach, concern for truth, concern for beauty, care for argument, care for
logical presentation, care for accuracy, care for precision, care for. ...Barrow
has noticed this and explicitly spelled it out as a special topic to be studied.
Perhaps its explicit study might destroy it in a scientific era, since it is a hidden
activity lurking everywhere in the curriculum. Those of us who are engaged in
trying to get philosophy into the last year of high school as an option in all
Ontario schools, may find we are engaging in a great evil, if this is true.
In summary, then, Barrow’s book is a vigorous, sometimes wonderfully
written, exposé of many things we take for granted in education in our time. He
has done us a tremendous service in identifying them. Certainly these things are
more likely to change if most people are aware of what it is they themselves
presuppose. But this is not likely to occur through a series of knock-down
arguments of the sort provided in this book. Rather, it will be through the slow
encroachment of ideas over a long period of time due to the transformation, or
perhaps the decline and fall, of this “technologico-Benthamite” civilization that
has us all in thrall. Whether we will like that when it happens, I do not know.
What I am sure of is that a liberal education as we presuppose it is not likely to
survive this civilization’s decline and fall either.
Autonomy and Education
by Eamonn Callan
Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988. 164 pages.
REVIEWED BY MURRAY ROSS, UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
A quarter-century ago the significance of children’s intellectual autonomy was
an issue of considerable interest. With the revival of child-centred education