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Teaching Controversial Issues: A Pragmatic View of the Criterion Debate
Author(s) -
SÆTRA EMIL
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
journal of philosophy of education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.501
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1467-9752
pISSN - 0309-8249
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9752.12361
Subject(s) - mistake , epistemology , context (archaeology) , point (geometry) , a priori and a posteriori , sociology , subjectivism , philosophy , law , mathematics , political science , paleontology , geometry , biology
This article addresses the ongoing debate over which criteria should determine what teachers ought to teach as controversial. I argue that this debate rests on false assumptions. It is a mistake to assume that 1) there should be a context‐transcending criterion, 2) such a criterion can be prescribed a priori and universally , and 3) this criterion can be utilised by teachers by means of deductivism . Instead, I argue in favor of a situationist stance in which the means and ends are both worked out from within the situation. This implies that a theory must begin from a practical starting point. In practice, the situation should be the foremost guide rather than a definite criterion.