What Should We Teach as Controversial? A Defense of the Epistemic Criterion

Abstract

There is an emerging consensus that to teach something as controversial is to present it as a matter on which different views are or could be held and to expound those different views as impartially as possible. This raises an important normative question that has yet to receive the attention it deserves from educational theorists: how are we to decide which topics to teach in this way? The answer suggested by Robert Dearden is that we should apply the epistemic criterion: a matter should be taught as controversial when contrary views can be held on it without those views being contrary to reason. In this essay, Michael Hand aims to defend that answer. In the first part of the article he revisits Dearden’s rather thin and unsatisfactory justification for the epistemic criterion and attempts to mend its deficiencies. In the second part, Hand examines an alternative to the epistemic criterion in the area of moral education, an alternative he labels the political criterion, and explains why he thinks we should reject it.

The influence of moral education on the personal worldview of students

“…The teacher does this because of the belief that he or she does not have any convincing arguments for one particular position. In Hand's (2008) words, the topic is controversial.…”

“…If an approach to moral education seems to have consequences for the theological convictions of students and their organised worldviews, we can examine whether this influence is an intentional aim of the programme or approach, or a non-intentional side effect and whether attention is paid to religious and non-religious organised worldview convictions in a directive or nondirective manner (Hand, 2008). …”

“…The second distinction we can make is between directive and non-directive teaching (Hand, 2008). If applied to moral education, directive teaching involves the teacher having the intention that the students will come to share the view that something is morally right or wrong because there are no good or valid reasons to argue for the opposite position.…”

Identity, Discourse, and Safety in a High School Discussion of Same-Sex Marriage

“…Hess (2009b) suggested that same-sex marriage should be discussed as it relates to either Constitutional issues (e.g., whether forbidding same-sex marriage violates the 14th Amendment) or policy issues (e.g., whether Congress should overturn the Defense of Marriage Act [DOMA]). While these framings of the issue have ethical dimensions (Harris, 1996), they are examined primarily as a political issue (a need to decide what to do) rather than as a moral issue (Hand, 2007(Hand, , 2008. Such a framing holds the potential to make what the New York Times recently called "one of the most contentious and politically charged social issues of the day .…”

What is the point of religious education?

“…6 Even if it were the case that exposure to religious views that differed from one's own did lead to increases in levels of civic harmony, it is worth noting, first, that this is unlikely to justify a privileged (in curriculum terms) and expansive subject which examines differing religions in considerable depth, such a the stand-alone, compulsory subject that is taken by pupils aged 5-16 in England and Wales. Rather, it might merit consideration in some part of a curriculum, such as, for example, Citizenship Studies, in the UK, where questions of toleration and the social benefits of mutual respect amongst citizens can be studied more directly and directively (see Hand 2008;White 2004).…”