A Polanyian rationale for a liberal arts core curriculum

What would we have the school teach? To what end? In the name of democracy, and building on the pioneering epistemology of Michael Polanyi, Harry S. Broudy, a leading voice in philosophy of education during the twentieth century, calls for a liberal arts core curriculum for all. The envisioned produ...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inTheory and research in education Vol. 19; no. 1; pp. 19 - 39
Main Authors Fennell, Jon, Simpson, Timothy L.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London, England SAGE Publications 01.03.2021
Subjects
Core Curriculum
Criticism
Democracy
Educational Philosophy
Epistemology
Expertise
Foundations of Education
Imagination
Liberal Arts
Moral Values
Role of Education
tacit knowledge
liberal arts
justification
moral imagination
Michael Polanyi
Harry Broudy
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ISSN1477-8785
1741-3192
DOI10.1177/1477878521996237

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Summary:What would we have the school teach? To what end? In the name of democracy, and building on the pioneering epistemology of Michael Polanyi, Harry S. Broudy, a leading voice in philosophy of education during the twentieth century, calls for a liberal arts core curriculum for all. The envisioned product of such schooling is a certain sort of person. Anticipating the predictable relativistic challenge so much on display in our own time, Broudy justifies the selection of subject matter (and thus the envisioned character formation and cultivation of moral imagination) by reference to the authority of experts in the disciplines. This response fails to fully repel the assault, thereby revealing the need for a dimension of Polanyi’s thought whose significance exceeds even that of the epistemology that Broudy so effectively invokes.
ISSN:1477-8785
1741-3192
DOI:10.1177/1477878521996237