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INTERPRETING THE SEVENTIES, OR, RASHOMON MEETS EDUCATIONAL THEORY
Author(s) -
Phillips D.C.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
educational theory
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.21
H-Index - 42
eISSN - 1741-5446
pISSN - 0013-2004
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-5446.2000.00321.x
Subject(s) - scholarship , interim , philosophy of education , sociology , higher education , library science , political science , computer science , law
In the Oscar-winning 1951 movie, Rashomon, the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa presented four different accounts of a violent murder committed by a bandit. The philosophical impetus behind the film, no doubt, was to raise issues about the inevitability of subjectivity and the impossibility of objectivity. The articles in the volumes of Educational Theory from 1970 to 1979 — while less dramatic — raise similar thorny issues when a reviewer turns to make a historical assessment. Following Kurosawa’s lead, I shall give a number of different accounts of the philosophy of education of that decade, but I shall depart from his admirable example in one crucial respect: While the four accounts of the crime that he gives are incompatible (hence raising the dilemma of locating the “objective truth”), I shall attempt to finesse the issue by giving accounts that are different but compatible. (Also, the accounts to some degree will be overlapping, for some writings of the period that fit into one account readily could have fitted into others.)