The Purpose of Education Revisited: The Radical Educational Potential of a Concern for “Hidden Things”

• In Event: Roundtable Session 111
  In Roundtable Session: Questioning the Purpose of Education

Abstract

What marks out much of the “educational” research in recent times is a shallowness in theory with respect to a consideration of the purpose of education itself. We argue here that our failure to realise the deeper implications of the educational process distorts our ability to understand the phenomena about which we claim to hold special and advanced expertise. We can neither grasp the total breadth of the educational domain we claim to research nor, more importantly, expect to succeed in the range of objectives we seek to promote. Our paper examines the problem of ideological distortion. We argue that it is only through the adoption of what we term a “neo-dialectical perspective” that an alternative worldview is possible.

Authors

• Deb J. Hill, The University of Liverpool

• David Richard Hufton, Leeds Metropolitan University