Professor David Carr Delivers Inaugural Lecture
15th May 2015
Centre News
Philosophy of education
Professor David Carr delivered his Inaugural Lecture at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, on 6th May. The lecture, titled ‘The Importance of Philosophy for Education’ began with an overview of David’s background before taking his post as Professor of Ethics and Education at the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, and went on to emphasise the critical role that techniques of analytical philosophy play in education. The abstract for the lecture can be found below:
One significant post-WWII development in educational theorising was the attempt on the part of distinguished modern philosophers – such as R. S. Peters and Israel Scheffler – to refashion philosophy of education as a serious branch of analytical philosophy. Despite this, the reputation of educational philosophy has continued to be somewhat chequered. While there are no doubt many and varied reasons for this – including the extremely variable quality of much recent educational philosophy itself, certain confused post-modern and related misconceptions of the aims and methods of analytical philosophy and an evergreen popular tendency to regard philosophy as dealing only in abstract and ivory tower speculations of little relevance to effective practice – this lecture will argue that the techniques of analytical philosophy are absolutely indispensable to clear professional thinking and theorising in education and other practical fields.
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