METAPHILOSOPHY Vol. 13, No. 2, April 1982

THE PHILOSOPHER AS TEACHER OPEN-MINDEDNESS IN THE TEACHING OF PHILOSOPHY

WILLIAM HARE

1. The important philosophical questions about open-mindedness concern its nature, its possibility and its value. There are, of course, many important questions about this idea which are not philosophical in character, such as how it can be developed, at what age it can be acquired, and its incidence in various societies. These questions would take us into psychology, soci- ology and history and I shall only refer to these discussions as they raise philosophical issues. A philosophical inquiry is, I think, logically prior to these other researches because a productive use of the concept presupposes an adequate characterization.

At least among those educators who think that open-mindedness can be achieved, there is general agreement that it is worth striving for, though the occasional dissenting voice is heard.’ Since, however, it is rarely examined carefully but just appealed to as a vaguely desirable attitude to promote, we cannot be sure that those who agree that open-mindedness is desirable are in fact recommending the same objective, nor that the “dissenters” are actually in disagreement. If we are to determine whether or not open-mindedness is in principle attainable, and moreover attempt to assess its desirability in education, it seems that we must begin with an examination of the concept.

Although it is not the philosopher’s task to discover which teaching methods most effectively promote open-mindedness, nonetheless philo- sophical analysis is relevant to this matter. If, for example, it is thought important for the teacher to display open-mindedness, then we must have a clear idea what it involves. If empirical researchers are to judge that a teaching method does or does not promote open-mindedness; again clarity about the trait is necessary, and this will include a grasp of the sort of criteria which indicate that the attitude is or is not present. More generally, philosophy is useful in the assessment of arguments which we meet in pedagogical literature and can help to detect apriori legislation, unexamined assumptions and the drawing out of procedural principles from purely conceptual considerations.

There is not reason, I think, to believe that open-mindedness means one thing in the context of philosophy and something else in another discipline. We might find, of course, that the specific sorts of actions required of an

2.

’ Jacques Barzun, The American University (London: Oxford University Press, 1969). p. 83.

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open-minded person would vary from one subject to another, and minimal standards of acceptable performance might differ from one context to another, but all of this would be compatible with the claim that the concept meant one and the same thing in each case. In relating our discus- sion then to the teaching of philosophy, we should be careful neither to exaggerate nor to distort. Other disciplines also properly insist that open- mindedness is a goal of teaching in their area and a desirable trait in the teacher, and there is no need to claim, what would be false, that philosophy is unique in this respect.

Having said this, however, it is worth remarking that contemporary philosophers have shown a very considerable interest in questions which relate to the teaching of their subject in general, and to issues involving, what Montefiore has called that “rather untidy family of concepts” which is the focus of our concern here.’ In part, no doubt, this is an aspect of the general revitalization of the philosophy of education as an area of serious philosophical inquiry in the quarter-century since the mid- f i f t ie~ .~

The word “revitalization” is appropriate because, of course, at earlier times philosophy of education has been a very important area of philo- sophical inquiry. Here, I will only remind you of Socrates’ great concern when his friends were sending their children to the Sophists for their education and his doubt whether those who portrayed themselves as philosophers had really thought about the nature of what they professed to teach or not. You will recall his contempt for the excessive deference shown to Protagoras, for example, by the young men who followed him, and his worry about the influence of charisma:

Protagoras draws them from every city that he passes through, charming them with his voice like Orpheus, and they follow ~pe l lbound .~

Here surely is an early concern about closed-mindedness, and is connected with Socrates’ objection to lengthy speeches and his preference for the give and take of discussion. And although he himself strenuously denied that he was a teacher at all,’ in fact his name has been used to characterize an approach to teaching, one which many contemporary philosophers try

2 Alan Montefiore (ed.) Neutrality and Impartiality: The University and Political Commit- ment (London: Cambridge University Press, 1975), VII.

Crucial events include the publication of the special issue of the Harvard Educational Review XXZV (Spring 1956) on “The Aims and Content of Philosophy of Education”, and of D. J . O’Connor, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957). For a survey of the period in question, see Richard Pratte. “Analytic Philosophy of Education”, Teachers College Record, 81, 2 , Winter 1979, pp. 145-165.

Protagoras 315B. ’ Apology 19E. For a similar denial, see Descartes, Discourse on Method ch. 1. It was apparently his unwillingness to be described as teaching the method, which led Descartes to use the word “Discours” rather than “Trait&” in his title.

OPEN-MINDEDNESS IN THF TEACHING OF PHILOSOPHY 167 to follow in their own teaching. The importance of the history of philosophy to the practice of philosophy6 would make it surprising if philosophers did not have an interest in the problems of teaching.

But quite apart from such historical explanations there are reasons, I think, which have to do with the nature of philosophy which account for an interest in the question. Philosophy has a proper interest in characteriz- ing the nature of the different disciplines, and in inquiring into the kinds of claims which they make and how they can be supported. Such reflection may lead one, as indeed it led Descartes, to the philosophical claim that to teach in a certain way would not be to teach philosophy at all. If all we do is to master the arguments of Plato and Aristotle and fail to develop the capacity to pass a solid judgment on these matters we shall not become philosophers.’ Descartes thus raises the question what it means to teach philosophy and is implicitly drawing the distinction between (1) teaching someone to philosophize and ( 2 ) teaching someone about philosophy. Teaching with the latter purpose will be an important part of the former task but it is not the same thing, and does not necessarily accomplish the m e goal. Descartes is making a conceptual point based on reflection on the nature of the subject in question, rather than an empirical claim about the actual effects of teaching in a certain way. Descartes’ point might be expressed as follows. If something is known to be a method of teaching history, but history is conceptually distinct from philosophy, we are not entitled to assume that it is a method of teaching philosophy at all. Descartes reveals then that he recognizes that it is a prejudice (one which incidentally has not yet been expunged from educational theory) to hold that there is necessarily a single best method of teaching, quite apart from considerations of what is being learned. As I will show later, however, Descartes was not entirely able to resist this prejudice himself.

Many philosophers have been aware and concerned that “teaching philosophy” can degenerate not only into merely teaching about philo- sophical ideas but further into the dogmatic inculcation of such ideas. Descartes scorns those devoted disciples of Aristotle, those “mediocre minds”,’ who never pause to raise critical questions. Closer to our own day, Russell reported that at Cambridge in the 1890’s he was indoctrinated with the philosophies of Kant and Hegel.g Let us see in a general way why a concern with open-mindedness might be of special significance in the teaching of philosophy.

First, there is the stubborn fact that the notion of making progress in

3.

Jay F. Rosenberg, The Practice of Philosophy (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1978), p. 11. See also Bernard Williams, “Phjlosophy”, in Michael Yudkin (ed.) CeneralEducation {Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1971). ‘ Descartes, Rules for the Direction of the Mind, 111. a Descartes, Discourse on Method ch. 6 .

Bertrand Russell, My Philosophical Development (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1959), p. 11.

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philosophy is more obscure than in many other disciplines. The peculiar importance of the history of philosophy to the practice of philosophy mentioned earlier is an indication of this point, for the writings of the great historical philosophers are of more than merely historical interest. lo

I will side-step here the difficult question of what actually constitutes progress in philosophy, and merely say that it does not take the form of arriving at answers to philosophical problems with which all experts in the field are agreed. It was the fact of fundamental disagreement about the solutions to philosophical problems which influenced Descartes to reject the “disciple” model of learning philosophy.

Second, however, there is the point that quite apart from disagreement in philosophy, there is serious disagreement about philosophy, about its methods, problems, scope, purposes and possibilities. It is this fact which explains why it is so common for introductory books in philosophy to begin with an explanation why a concise definition of the subject cannot properly be given. Thus a second-order critical attitude seems necessary in the study of philosophy, and one can readily see how doubts may be generated about the possibility of introducing students to the subject without prejudicing the inquiry at the very outset.

Third, there is the persistent ambiguity as between (1) philosophy as carefully reasoned argument and (2) philosophy as a general view of life, and the consequent confusion between argument and preaching. This distinction, however clear it may be to those who teach philosophy, is certainly not always clear to students of the subject who are always in danger of radically misconstruing the objectives of the course. A growing awareness of the two previous points may lead them also to the view that “its all a matter of opinion” and that one opinion is as good as another.

Finally, we might call attention to certain institutional facts which have troubled many contemporary philosophers. Because of the disagreements about the nature of philosophy itself, it happens that quite different activities go on in the name of philosophy in different countries, and sometimes, as in Canada, side by side but rarely interacting.” Some philosophers would quite openly oppose the appointment of philosophers with certain philosophical interest^.'^ A recent survey has shown how difficult it can be at many major American universities for students to study contemporary European philosophy. The fact that many of the departments surveyed said that they would discourage students interested

lo Williams, op. cit., p. 170. John Kemp, “T. H. Green and the Ethics of Selfrealisation” in G. N. A. Vesey, (ed.)

Reason and Reality: Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures. vol. 5 , (London: MacMillan, 1972, p. 224. l2 For attempts to bring philosophers of different traditions together, see Montefiore op. eit .; also Alan Montefiore (ed.) Philosophy and Personal Relations: A n Anglo-French Study (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press 1973). l 3 See the anecdote reported in W. D. Hudson, “Learning t o be Rational”, Proceedings of the Philosophy ofEdmat ion Society of Great Britain, vol. X I , July 1977, p. 51.

OPEN-MINDEDNESS IN THE TEACHING OF PHILOSOPHY 169

in pursuing an exclusively Continental program might suggest a welcome open-mindedness, but one wonders if students are discouraged from an exclusively analytical preparation! l4

What then is this elusive ideal of open-mindedness which seems to be threatened both by the nature of philosophy and the institutional form in which that subject often appears? An examination of the participial adjectives of the form “qo-minded”, and the corresponding nouns, show that they have quite different functions. All, of course, are used to comment in some way on a person’s thinking, typically to evaluate it in a favorable or unfavorable way. Sometimes an isolated single comment is being made, and at other times a trait ascription. These points are true of all the concepts in this family. The chief difference arises when we ask what it is about the individual’s thinking which is being commented on. Sometimes, as with “quick-minded’’ and “feeble minded”, it is the person’s ability or inability to think of certain matters which is in question. On the other hand, “narrow-minded” and “broad-minded” tend to be used to comment on the kinds of opinions held. A person will be said to be narrow- minded if he subscribes to certain beliefs, that is, if he thinks that certain things are the case. Other concepts in the group, however, do not seem to be used in either of these ways. If, for example, a person is independent- minded, it is not being said that he is able or unable to think of certain things nor that he holds certain opinions. Rather the way in which he conducts his thinking is being picked out for attention. He tries to make up his own mind. Similarly, it seems to me, open-minded and closed-minded serve to comment on the way in which a person thinks, specifically how he thinks about the beliefs he holds or the way in which he sets about forming his beliefs.

Open-mindedness is generally used to refer to a trait and the person who has it is one who is disposed to revise or reject the position he holds, whatever it may be, if sound objections are brought against it, or, in the situation in which the person presently has no opinion on some issue, he is disposed to make up his mind in the light of available evidence and argu- ment as objectively and impartially as possible. When he has formed a view in this way, the first condition mentioned here becomes operative. The object of one’s open-mindedness may vary from rather specific issues to very general hypotheses, but the meaning of open-mindedness remains constant. Again, a variety of criteria can indicate the presence or absence of open-mindedness but what is present or absent is the same in each case. Open-mindedness is polymorphous, and it is important to ask in particular contexts if what we observe does indeed show the disposition in question. it is a feature of such concepts that many different things can count in

4.

l4 Robert C. Solomon, “Graduate Study in Continental Philosophy in American Universities”, Teaching Philosophy 1, 2 , Fall 1975. Only the University of California at Riverside made the point that “we oppose philosophical parochialism from either side”.

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certain circumstances as the thing in question, yet none of these necessarily count as that thing in other contexts. Open-mindedness is a vague concept in the sense that there is not a precise or exact point at which it begins to apply. Partly because of this, and partly because it tends to have a built-in evaluative component, we will not be surprised that there are serious disputes over the application of the concept in particular cases. But none of this shows that the above account of the concept is mistaken.”

( 1 ) This general account may perhaps be assessed by comparing it with other accounts of the concept which can be found. Sometimes, open- mindedness is thought to be related to neutrality, where that term is understood to mean something like not taking a stand on a disputed issue. Certainly, it needs to be noted that the expression. “I’m keeping an open mind” tends to be used in circumstances where the person has not made up his mind. Again, the expression “I’ve made up my mind” is often used with that finality which marks a closed mind. These considerations gain more plausibility when we recall that very often those who are neutral are more inclined to be open-minded than those who are identified with a particular view.

These observations, however, do not warrant the conclusion that open- mindedness and neutrality are equivalent, nor that neutrality is a necessary condition of open-mindedness. We may safely admit, of course, that open-mindedness is not inconsistent with neutrality. Indeed, part of the analysis offered earlier referred to the situation in which a person presently has no opinion on some issue i.e. is neutral. But even here, open-mindedness does not simply mean neutrality. The person is neutral but disposed to make up his mind in the light of available evidence and argument as objectively and as impartially as possible. A person might after all be neutral but simply waiting for the Party, the Church or whatever to tell him what to believe.

If neutrality were a necessary condition of open-mindedness, then expressions such as “open-minded Catholic” and “open-minded liberal” would simply contain a contradiction in those cases where “open-minded” is used attributively to say something about the person as a Catholic or as a liberal.16 For in so far as the person is a Catholic or is a liberal, he has abandoned neutrality with respect to a certain range of issues, and on the view that neutrality is a necessary condition of open-mindedness, it would not be possible to say that he remained open-minded about those issues. Such an analysis, however, simply prevents us from drawing the very important distinction between those Catholics and liberals who do continue to reflect on their beliefs in the light of emerging difficulties and those whose minds are quite closed. With respect, for example, to the matter of belief in God, it is just not the case that only the agnostic can qualify as

l5 In this scction and the next, I am drawing on ideas in my book Open-mindedness and Education (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1979). l6 P. T. Geach, “Good and Evil”,AnaZysis 17 (1956-57). pp. 33-42.

5.

OPEN-MINDEDNESS 1N THE TEACHING OF PHILOSOPHY 171 open-minded. Open-mindedness is an attitude which we can adopt with respect to beliefs which we hold in as much as we remain willing to revise and reconsider those positions. Thus John Dewey in effect placed an arbitrary restriction on open-mindedness when he described it as “accessi- bility of mind to any and every consideration that will throw light upon the situation that needs to be cleared up . . .” (my empha~is).’~ This tends to suggest that the attitude exists with respect to issues which are still in dispute,where the individual has not yet made up his mind. It is important, therefore, to insist that it can exist with respect to those matters we have come to accept. This point was made very clearly by Socrates when he said that our conclusions must not merely have seemed right when we arrived at them, but continue to seem right nowand in the future.’*

(2) A quite different view of open-mindedness is found in Bertrand Russell. Although he nowhere analyzes open-mindedness very formally, he has been inclined to link it with doubt. For Russell, the very uncertainty of philosophy mentioned earlier constituted its chief value. Without philosophy, we may remain “imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common-sense” and in the grip of that “arrogant dogmatism of those who have never travelled into the region of liberating doubt.”” Now, no one who has read philosophers such as Socrates, Descartes, Peirce and Russell himself would want to underestimate the importance of doubt as a method or heuristic device. (Though when adopted as a teaching strategy it becomes problematic should students start to doubt the sincerity or seriousness of the teacher, as others have noted2’). But again, this is not to show that doubt is a necessary condition of open-mindedness. We need to distinguish a doubtful state of mind from the readiness to submit claims to knowledge to the test of evidence and argument. Peirce, it seems to me, was mistaken to claim that “when doubt ceases, mental action on the subject comes to an end; and, if it did go on, it would be without a purpose.”21 It can very well have the purpose which Socrates was concerned to point out to Meno, that of on-going reflection on our beliefs.

Peter Unger has argued that being absolutely certain of something implies closed-mindedness, or as he puts it, dogmatism, an absolutely severe attitude in which “no new information, evidence or experience will now be seriously considered by one to be at all relevant to any possible change in how certain one should be in the matter.”22 Now absolute certainty is not an attitude in the teaching of philosophy which many of us would be anxious to recommend. But Unger extends his case to claims

Plato, Meno 89C. l7 John Dewey, Democracy and Education (New York: MacMillan, 1930), p. 206.

l9 Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (London: Oxford University Press,

2o A. Phillips-Griffiths, “A Deduction of Universities”, in R. D. Archambault (ed.) Philosophical Analysis and Education (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965), p. 206. 21 Charles Peirce, “The Fixation of Belief”, in Popular Science Monthly November 1877. 22 Peter Unger, Ignorance, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 19751, p. 105.

1912), pp. 243-4.

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to know, and many will at times want to claim that they know something in the course of teaching philosophy. Unger puts the point this way:

One thing which must be entirely absent, and which is, I think, implicit in the absence of all doubt, is this: any openness on the part of the man to consider new experience or information as seriously relevant to the truth or falsity of the thing.23

Here again then doubt surfaces as a necessary condition of open-mindedness. Unger allows that a person who has no doubts about something now can consistently admit that he may change his mind should certain evidence come up, but this involves a shift away from a consideration of the person’s present attitude to a prediction of what he will, or might, do in certain circumstances. Unger insists that the absence of doubt implies a present attitude such that one will count nothing as contrary evidence. I agree that such an attitude is closed-minded, and is essentially open to the objection that one is not allowing that the claim to knowledge could in principle be defeated. But is it the case that the absence of doubt implies the absolutely severe dogmatic attitude in which we do not allow that our claim could be defeated? Unger discusses the views of Norman Malcolm24 who, though denying that it is at all unreasonable, does adopt an absolutely severe attitude towards certain propositions. But Unger does not seem to consider a suggestion, offered by Alan White” in commenting on Malcolm, that the attitude present when one has no doubts is that one simply cannot see or envisage how one’s position could be defeated. If this is the case then we are both able to claim knowledge with complete confidence yet insist that we are willing to consider counter-evidence if this should begin to turn up, a circumstance we cannot imagine occurring. It was this attitude which I found Hume adopting at the conclusion of the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals and I noted that while he had no doubts at present, future events might bring him to see defects in his argument which at the moment he does not see and cannot even imagine.26 It seems to me to be possible then for open-mindedness to exist in the absence of doubt.

(3) Open-mindedness is not always carefully distinguished from tolerance. Sometimes, for example, one finds that teaching methods which are hailed as open-minded are assessed for effectiveness by employing tests for t~ le rance . ’~ Tolerance is typically demanded if open-mindedness is to be

23 Op. cit., pp. 115-6. 24 Norman Malconi, “Knowledge and Belief”,Mind LXI (1952), pp. 178-189. ’’ Alan White, “On claiming to know”,PhilosophicalReview vol. 66 (1957), pp. 180-92. 26 Open-mindednessand Education op. cit., p. 31. 27 Gajendra K. Verma and Barry Macdonald, “Teaching Race in Schools: Some effects on the Attitudinal and Sociometric Patterns of Adolescents”, Race XIII, no. 2, (1971) pp. 187-202. This paper reports some early assessments of the Humanities Curriculum Project in England, the approach to which had been outlined by the director Lawrence Stenhouse in “Opcn-mindcd Teaching”, New Society, July 24, 1969, pp. 126-28.

OPEN-MINDEDNESS IN THE TEACHING OF PHILOSOPHY 173 ascribed. If we will not tolerate differences of opinion, we can hardly claim to be willing to revise our views in the light of objections which others may introduce. But the concepts are by no means identical. Toler- ance involves a certain “patient forbearance in the presence of something which is disliked”,?’ but it is not at all implied that the person who is tolerant will be disposed to revise or reconsider his own views. He may be tolerant and quite closed-minded. Again, one may be too tolerant and put up with actions or circumstances which should not be tolerated, but “too open-minded” does not have ready application. A person cannot really be too open-minded, though he can of course be empty-minded, gullible and naive. Jay Newman has recently made the point2’ that tolerating someone’s religious beliefs, for example, does not involve respecting those religious beliefs but rather involves accepting someone’s holding those beliefs. He is concerned in part to head off what he sees as a slide in the direction of relativism, when it is thought that tolerance implies the view that one’s own views are neither significantly better nor significantly worse than anyone else’s opinions. The open-minded person goes beyond the merely tolerant person in according a kind of respect to other views in the sense that they are recognized as possible sources of defeat for one’s own position. But this too can stop short of relativism as I was concerned to indicate in the earlier discussion of doubt. Our analysis does not imply “that corruption of the ideal of open-mindedness where everything is always ‘up for grabs’.”30

(4) Finally, we may briefly consider the view that open-mindedness presupposes certain specific opinions or beliefs. This view gains support from the contingent point that often those who subscribe to certain positions do in fact have closed minds and we are then in danger of con- fusing the claim that those who believe this are (in fact) closed-minded with the claim that those who believe this are (on that account) closed- minded. The view gains support from the difficulty in imagining in some circumstances how a person could continue to believe something in the light of a massive amount of co~nter -ev idence .~~ Two points need to be made. First, continued adherence to a belief might be taken as evidence of closed-mindedness but what it would be evidence for would be an unwillingness to seriously consider counter-evidence. Secondly, a person might in fact fail to see the merits of the counter-evidence and indeed be an open-minded person. It just does not seem to be true, contrary to Descartes, that a man always has enough intelligence to understand the

28 Maurice Cranston,“Tolcration”, in Paul Edwards (ed.) The Encyclopaedia ofPhilosophy vol. 8 (New York: MacMillan, 1967), pp. 143-46. 29 Jay Newman, “The Idea of Religious Tolerance”, in American PhilosophicalQuarterly 15, 3, July 1978, pp. 187-195. ’O Joel Feinberg, “The Idea of a b’ree Man”, in James Doyle (ed.) Educational Judgments (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973), pp. 143-169. 31 cf. Descartes, Rules for the Direction of the Mind I1 “kor if thc reasoning of either of them were certain and evident, he would be in a position to propound it to the other in such wise as to convince him also of its truth.”

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conclusions which stem from clear principles by evident rea~oning.~’ The main difficulty with the analysis in terms of specific views is that a process of inquiry where the conclusion is open-ended could not be characterized as open-minded, nor could a person count as open-minded if he were neutral with respect to the views in question. Finally, holding certain beliefs cannot be a sufficient condition of open-mindedness because people can be indoctrinated into holding those beliefs. In short, it is not the beliefs we hold which establish our claim to open-mindedness, but the attitude we adopt to whatever our beliefs may be or that which we adopt in the formation of our views.

It is time now to see how these considerations might bear upon the teaching of philosophy. At one level, the debate centers around the question of the relative merits of formal instruction versus discussion, the lecture hall versus the tutorial.33 Here, of course, the influence of Socrates is immense, but other philosophers too have produced general arguments in favor of a certain approach. Descartes, for example, favored “discovery learning” and claimed that :

6 .

one cannot so well grasp a thing and make it one’s own when it is learnt from another person, as when one discovers it oneself.%

This might suggest that Descartes opposed teaching altogether, but it is clear, I think, that it is a guided version of “discovering” which he has in mind. Now, if Descartes’ remark is taken as a conceptual claim it is surely false, for we cannot infer from the fact that a person understands something that he must have learned it in a certain way.35 If the claim is empirical, then it must rest on evidence and there is, I think, no reason to believe that we cannot come to understand things by way of formal instruction. Claims about the effectiveness of teaching in a certain way must be sup- ported by appeal to empirical evidence, and it is somewhat surprising to find philosophers, who ought to know better, engaging in apriorilegislation. In my book, I showed how ambiguity in crucial terms can encourage this and illustrated this point by reference to the notion of passivity. I have since detected the same influence at work in discussions on the teaching of philosophy. Bernard Williams, for example, is reluctant to allow that lecturing has much to do with teaching philosophy at all. He comments:

. . . there is a purely expository approach, by which - at the extreme - lectures are merely given to a passive audience, supposedly attentive or even over-awed . . .36

32 Descartes, Letter from the Author (to the translator of thc Principles of Philosophy). 33 R. M . Hare, “A School for Philosophers”, Ratio vol I1 1959-60, pp. 107-120. 34 Descartes, Discourse on Method. ch. 6 . 35 Elsewhere, Descartes sees this clearly himself, cf. Letter to Beeckman, 17 Oct. 1630, in A. Kenny, Descartes Philosophical letters (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), p. 59. 36 Williams, op. cit., p. 167.

OPEN-MINDEDNESS IN THE TEACHING OF PHILOSOPHY 175 It is no surprise at all then to find him suggesting a few paragraphs later that a certain kind of lecture can “demand allegiance rather than criticism”. He opts for a Socratic model, or whatever approximates to this in the modern university.

It is, of course, notoriously difficult to obtain reliable empirical evidence about the effectiveness of teaching methods because it is so hard to be sure that the many factors which can influence the outcome are held constant from one context to another. The, admittedly controversial, findings do suggest, however, that discussion methods are more effective than lectures with respect to changing attitudes37 and this finding is clearly relevant to our topic. But if, in view of this, we teach philosophy by involving our students in discussions, we may move our query to a second level by asking what role the teacher is to play in this discussion if his teaching is to be characterized as open-minded.

Some have rushed rather hastily to the conclusion that, in general, discussion groups should not have a leader as such, because research shows apparently that minority opinions in a discussion are often protected when th-ere is a leader. As a result, it has been suggested that “free group discus- sion” may be more effective in encouraging critical thinking.38 This would seem to rest on the erroneous view that critical thinking must lead to a rejection of the view being considered. In addition, of course, we can draw no firm conclusion until we know why the minority abandons its position.

The most fashionable view, at least in the context of school teaching, is that teaching in controversial areas should take the form of discussions where the teacher acts as leader but adopts the role of “neutral chairman”. This is the view advocated in the Humanities Curriculum Project in England and has been endorsed by philosophers, including R. M. Hare. The latter particularly likes the project because it insists on the distinction between substantive and procedural standards, and that while the teacher must uphold the latter, he should remain neutral on the former. That is, he should not advance his own substantive views on controversial matters.

If the claim is that the “neutral chairman” model is more likely to promote open-mindedness in students than is what we might call “open- minded partisanship”, the fact is that there is as yet no evidence to support this. As far as I know, it has not even been seriously tested. The main factor appealed to in support of the “neutral chairman” model is the alleged insuperable difficulty of the teacher avoiding the influence of his authority status. Even if this were true in schools, it is much less of a problem in

37 Norman E. Wallen and Robert M. W. Travers, “Analysis and Investigation of Teaching Methods”, N. L. Gage (ed.), Handbook of Research on Teaching (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963), p. 482. 3a Ruth M. Beard and Donald A. Bligh, Research into Teaching Methods in Higher Education (London: Society for Research into Highcr Education, 1971), p. 20. 39 R. M. Hare, “Value Education in a Pluralist Society”, Proceedings of the Philosophy 0,fEducation Society of Great Britain vol. X, July 1976, pp. 1-23.

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university teaching where philosophy mainly occurs. And one wonders how true it is of the school situation either. In fact, the declining authority status of teachers, often bemoaned, may provide greater opportunities for open-minded teaching than before.

If the claim is, however, that only the neutral chairman model presents an attitude of open-mindedness, then it is surely false for reasons given earlier. Neutrality is simply not a necessary condition of open-mindedness. In a recent paper on the problems of teaching in the area of American government, Gary Glenn brings out clearly the defects in what he calls “simple partisanship” in which the teacher presents the position which he thinks correct:

students cannot be assumed to be capable of judging competently whether the teacher’s partisan convictions are true.40

Glenn finds the arguments in favour of neutrality to be inconsistent, and proposes a pedagogical strategy which he terms fairmindedness. This:

makes each position as strong as we can make it but (which) also shows their respective weaknesses in such a way as to indicate what we think the truth is4’

I regard this as a good but inadequate recommendation. It is certainly important for the teacher to provide a fair account of different positions in controversial matters and this will be a crucial aspect of open-minded teaching. But it falls short of open-mindedness in much the same way as tolerance. For the teacher may present a fair and impartial account of the different views and yet be, and appear to be, unwilling to consider the possibility of his own position being open to revision. A fair-minded strategy will attempt to reduce bias and prejudice and will save the teacher from the charge of indoctrination. But it will not necessarily amount to an example of open-mindedness. The open-minded teacher dealing with a controversial issue in philosophy may defend a particular point of view if he judges that this will not simply lead to the view being uncritically received, if he presents rival views as fairly as he can, and if he shows that he is engaged in on-going reflection about the view which he is defending.

It is widely believed, however, that the effect of such an analysis is to suggest the conclusion that open-mindedness is an illusion, it cannot possibly be achieved. Consider, first, the point made earlier that there is controversy about the nature of philosophy itself. “Which version of philosophy- are we to teach?” it will be asked, the implication being that whichever we choose, the discussion is already distorted. The question is often meant to imply a certain relativism, such that any decision is arbitrary

40 Gary D. Glenn, “Partisanship and Neutrality in Teaching American Government”, in Teaching Political Science vol. 6 , No. 3, April 1979, pp. 31 1-330. 41 Op. cit., p. 323.

7.

OPEN-MINDEDNESS IN THE TEACHING OF PHILOSOPHY 177 and there is really no room for the kind of critical reflection suggested by open-minded inquiry.42

Certainly, it is true that to get students going in philosophy as in any other subject it will be necessary to start somewhere and one cannot discuss every problem at once. A problem of concern to some philosophers may be thought by others to have little to do with philosophy at all. A distinction drawn may be rejected elsewhere as spurious. A method regarded as crucial in some quarters will be regarded as trivial elsewhere. But surely the important point to insist on here is that the problems, the methods, and the distinctions may all be returned to for further consider- ation in light of such objections as exist, once some basic level of iinder- standing has been achieved. We need to take into account the long-term objectives of the teaching if we are to assess for open-mindedness; and to ask if the teacher’s aim is ultimately to confront the students with difficulties and objections or not. We should not, I think, be tempted to conclude that rational reflection is pointless because fundamental disagreements persist and because it is enormously difficult to make progress. We need to be given some general reason to believe that the whole enterprise is spurious.

To this it is often replied that bias is inevitabk in teaching subjects such as philosophy. First, the value-laden nature of ordinary language makes an impartial account of other views impossible. Second, we can never be sure that we have succeeded in eliminating bias from our account. Thirdly, how in principle could one be fair to a philosophical view which held that one should not be fair to one’s opponents? These are, of course, only examples of types of objections raised. To the first, we may admit that we frequently discover that an account is distorted because a question-begging, pejorative term has been used without justification. But then why cannot this be removed? We can also agree to the second point, that we cannot perhaps be sure that we have removed all such biases, but this is not to admit that it is certain others remain. In any case, what we need to say in response to both of these points is that it is not necessary for an open-minded account to be free from all trace of bias. It is not for every unintentional slip into bias that a person is called closed-minded.

To the third argument, it needs to be said that the open-minded teacher is not bound to support a view in order to be fair to it. In giving consider- ation to his opponents, he is rejecting in practice the view that one should not give such considerations, but he may well attend to whatever arguments are given for the latter view. But, it will be protested, his practice shows that he does not take the view seriously. No, it shows that he does not accept the view, not that it has not been given serious consideration. I will return to a consideration of this sort of case in the concluding comments on the value of open-mindedness.

42 Cf. Clive Beck, “Is Immigrant Education only for Immigrants?” in Aaron Wolfgang (ed.) Education for Immigrant Students (Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 1975), pp. 5-18. Beck’s question is about the teaching of modern history.

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Another popular argument against the possibility of open-mindedness takes the following form:

The official theory of the liberal university . . . is that it offers an open forum in which all opinions can be aired and all positions argued for . . . But this is really hypocritical. He who is not for Catholicism or Marxism is against them . . . it is this hypocrisy of liberalism that creates the fundamental problem of teaching philosophy in an English university at present .43

If Corbett is arguing that neutrality is not possible on the grounds that if one does not accept something one is opposed to it, he has failed to distinguish between: 1) not believing that Catholicism is true and 2) believing that Catholicism is not true. The first of these does represent neutral ground. But even if he were right, this would not show that the university was not, and could not be, an open forum. If a non-denomi- national Canadian university does not endorse the claims made by a particular religion, that university may still be a forum in which the champions of that view may advance their case. Certainly it may fail to be an open forum, and this was the significance of the earlier reference to the institutional form in which philosophy often occurs. But the fact that individual professors or even the university itself does not endorse certain views does not show that those views fail to be presented in an open-minded way.

If it has not been shown that open-mindedness is impossible, let us ask finally why it might be worth striving for in teaching philosophy. Here, time-honored injunctions to “follow the argument where it leads” and so on may suggest that open-mindedness is peculiarly appropriate in philosophy. But this attitude is a requirement in any subject if the aim in teaching it is the education of the student. Education differs from learning in that it implies a concern to arrive at true beliefs, though it is not of course implied that all the beliefs of an educated person are true. A concern for truth is then a necessary feature of education. It is part of such a concern that a person will be willing to revise his beliefs if counter-evidence shows that they are faulty. In this way, open-mindedness emerges as a necessary, though not a sufficient, condition of education. This general account will apply to a philosophical education as much as to any other specific form.

One practice which constitutes a threat to open-minded teaching is censorship, for this can involve the attempt to ensure that rival views do not get a hearing. Incidentally, it is worth noting that the absence of this does not guarantee open-minded teaching, because sometimes teachers will:

8.

43 J. p. Corbett, “Teaching Philosophy Now”, in Archambault op. cit., p. 152.

OPEN-MINDEDNESS IN THE TEACHING OF PHILOSOPHY 179 draw attention to books tainted with error for the purpose of refuting them . . . and supply such an effectual antidote of true doctrine that the Christian education of their pupils will suffer no detrimentsu

This falls far short of open-minded teaching, and illustrates the importance of bearing in mind the logic of polymorphous concepts mentioned earlier in section 4. It also brings out the importance of motives and purposes in assessing whether or not the teaching is open-minded. Again, as we saw in the previous section, the long-term purposes must be considered. We may decide to restrict the access of children to certain books and Robin Barrow is right to say that this involves accepting in principle the censorship of children’s l i t e ra t~re .~’ But this does not mean that we endorse an attempt to prevent children from forming “opinions the opposite of those we think they should have when they grow up”46, an attempt which replaces open-minded teaching with indoctrination.

The great wave of book-banning in the United States and Canada in recent years has led philosophers to re-examine the practice of censorship. In a recent paper, Kenneth Strike has argued that:

individuals and groups who protest something that is or is not being taught can be conceived not as engaging in attempts at censorship, but merely as attempting to gain influence over the decisions concerning who or what gains access to the forum of the scho01.~‘

On this interpretation, there is nothing reprehensible about such attempts because decisions about access and exclusion do have to be made, and no threat to open-minded teaching.

It seems to me, however, that Strike has not captured the flavor of contemporary textbook disputes.48 For example, he blurs the distinction between protesting a decision and forbidding access. The groups in question are not merely trying to influence curriculum decisions. They are doing this, of course, but they are also trying to ensure that students areprevented from reading certain material. Let me refer to Descartes again. There is a great difference between suggesting to one’s student, in this case Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, that a different work be selected for careful study because the original choice is judged inferior in various ways49 and the

44 The Christian Education of Youth, Encyclical letter of Pope Pius XI, “Diviri I l h s Magistri”, 1929, (London: Catholic Truth Society, 1949), p. 43. 4’ Robin Barrow, Plato andEducation (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976), p. 73. 46 Plato, Republic 377. 47 Kenneth Strike, “Liberality and Censorship: A philosophy of text-book controversies” in Ira S . Steinberg (ed.) Philosophy ofEdducation 1977, pp. 217-286. 48 See, for example, R. A. Smith and J. Knight, “MACOS in Queensland: the Politics of Educational Knowledge”, in The Austrafian Journal of Education vol. 22, No. 3, October

49 Kenny,op. cit., p. 164. 1978, pp. 225-248.

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activities, for example, of the St. John Ministerial Association which seeks to have certain books banned from schools altogether.

The value we place on open-mindedness is chiefly tested when, for example, groups want to suppress ideas which we ourselves regard as wrong-headed, evil or dangerous. Significantly, it was the philosophers, though only a few, who defended Jensen’s right to be heard. One reason perhaps which accounts for the reluctance to take a stand on such an issue is a basic misconception about open-mindedness. That is, if one is willing to listen to Jensen, it is thought that one has doubts about the intellectual capacities of other racial groups. We have seen that this is not implied. The value of the attitude is that described by Mill. If we are wrong in our opinion, we can learn from others. If we are right, we can hold our views intelligently and critically having submitted them to scrutiny.”

Concluding remarks In so far as open-mindedness is thought to be an important aspect of

education we need to give careful attention to those arguments which suggest it is logically impossible. Unless these can be met, it will seem pointless to pursue open-mindedness. We cannot conduct this inquiry without a clear concept of open-mindedness and this is also crucial if we are to attempt to adopt this attitude in our teaching and explain to students why it is important.

9.

50 John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, ch. 11.