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

BOOK REVIEWS / RECENSIONS 475
distance himself from the more discredited doctrines of child-centred education,
such as those positing some innate goodness or wisdom in children, or
denouncing all forms of direct instruction.
In his rejection of the orthodox view that autonomy is conceptually linked to
the practices of reason, he argues, unconvincingly in my view, that one can be
realistic and independently minded without being committed to critical reflection.
It is hard to see how someone can be a realist in Callan’s sense, that is, someone
who demonstrates “a persistent orientation of the mind towards reality and a
corresponding suppression of the various ways human beings are apt to evade
reality” without being generally disposed to offer reasons and to seek them when
required. Similarly, Callan’s disregard of the need for a liberal education
characterized by breadth of knowledge is puzzling. It suggests he has not found
the right balance between the private sphere of personal interests and the public
domain of epistemic practices which lie at the heart of our traditions of inquiry.
These practices, which enlarge this private sphere beyond its solipsistic limits,
offer one of the most valuable defenses against the intellectual dependence which
so troubled Kant. The aim of developing rationally autonomous persons requires
that learners accept as true only those claims grounded in good reasons (providing
the claims are of the sort where justification is called for). Since the criteria
for the truth of propositions, and thus the criteria which pick out “good” reasons,
vary across disciplines, breadth of knowledge is not something that can be sacrificed
in an effort to foster autonomy. Students who are not taught these disciplines
are simply denied access to the means of rational autonomous development
which schools are best suited to deliver. Perhaps it is Callan’s expectation that
students will eventually develop more catholic interests once they are given a
freer hand in ordering the content of their inquiries. But this assumption, like
others in this otherwise fine book, is an empirical matter about which less is
known than Callan seems to allow.
NOTE
1
Philosophically inclined readers might wish to consult Robert Dearden’s critical review
in the Journal of Philosophy of Education 24, no. 1 (1990): 127–131.