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date: 16 February 2025

Skepticism and Educationlocked

Skepticism and Educationlocked

  • Yuya TakedaYuya TakedaThe University of British Columbia
  • , and Itamar ManoffItamar ManoffThe University of British Columbia

Summary

Skepticism is a stance that is both called for and warned against in the public discourse in general, and in education in particular. Although the size of the educational literature dedicated to this topic is limited, the importance of cultivating skepticism has been discussed by a number of critically oriented researchers. When skepticism is discussed as a desirable trait for education to cultivate, this recommendation nonetheless comes with cautionary adjectives like “healthy,” “constructive,” and “hopeful.” These adjectives suggest that the desirability of skepticism is a matter of degree: Pushed to the extreme, skepticism becomes unhealthy, naïve, destructive, and dismissive. This makes intuitive sense, but with a spirit of skepticism, the following question is posed—when is it necessary to judge whether a particular enactment of skepticism is healthy or not? It is important to explore different vocabularies to enliven educational conversations on skepticism.

At different historical junctures, skepticism manifests with different emphasis and orientations: from the ancient attitude associated with the figure of Pyrrho, in which skepticism is a means to achieve the goal of ataraxia, to the epistemological project initiated by Descartes, and taken to its logical endpoint by Hume, that raises a generalized, global doubt of our ability to attain knowledge. More recently, there have been two anti-foundationalist responses to skepticism: one by Richard Rorty and another by Stanley Cavell. Although their diagnoses of philosophical skepticism do not differ substantially, Rorty and Cavell diverge significantly in their response to it: While Rorty turns it into a futile project, Cavell takes it as an inevitable crisis for finite linguistic beings. A juxtaposition of their widely different responses provides a useful set of vocabulary for nuanced treatment of skepticism in education.

Subjects

  • Educational Theories and Philosophies

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