Critical responses and counter-philosophies

Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt largely avoided education as a subject, but she did so for 
reasons which are very interesting to educational philosophy. Her thoughts 
on the subject are recorded in one of the essays collected in Between Past 
and Future, entitled, "The Crisis in Education." In this essay, Arendt 
proceeds to argue that any attempt to create democracy through educational 
methods was a form of tyranny... (Continuation pending)

E.D. Hirsch

E.D. Hirsch would surely identify himself as someone interested in 
educating for democracy, but he is grouped separately here because his 
philosophy is basically a counter to Deweyan pragmatic education, and 
because, like Arendt, he is concerned with preparing children for an 
existing order, rather than working towards a new one, let alone 
instituting the practice of democracy as a part of education. Hirsch is 
responsible for promoting the cultural literacy movement.

Neil Postman and the Inquiry Method

Neil Postman has been a strong contemporary voice in both methods and 
philosophy of education. His 1969 book "Teaching as a Subversive 
Activity" (co-authored with Charles Weingartner) introduced the concept of 
a school driven by the Inquiry Method, the basis of which is to get the 
students themselves to ask and answer relevant questions. The "teacher" 
(the two authors disdained the term and thought a new one should be used) 
would be limited in the number of declarative sentences he could utter 
per class, as well as questions he personally knew the answer to. The aim 
of this type of inquiry would be to prepare the students to lead 
responsible adult lives, primarily by functioning as an antidote to the 
rampant bureaucracy most adults are faced with after leaving school.

Postman went on to write several more books on education, notably 
"Teaching as a Conserving Activity" and "The End of Education." The 
latter deals with the importance of goals or "gods" to students, and 
Postman suggests several "gods" capable of replacing the current ones 
offered in schools, namely, Economic Utility and Consumerism.