The book has ten chapters, six of which have been published before; and there is a critical introduction by Peter Sheehan. The four new chapters fill in some of the philosophical and theoretical background to the previously published work, and so, from my point of view, are the most interesting. A major theme of the book concerns the place of moral education in the school curriculum. This sensitive issue is well and carefully handed, and the book should be read by anyone who is interested in this question. However, I do not intend to say much about it here because Peter Sheehan’s splendid introduction raises most of the serious problems with Crittenden’s analysis of the issue. It too should be compulsory reading. In this review, I shall concentrate on Crittenden’s general arguments in favour of liberal education. For I take it that this is what the book is mainly about.

I describe the book as a defence of liberal education because Crittenden sees this kind of education as being under attack from various quarters by influential educational theorists. It is under attack from those who consider the structured curriculum required for a liberal education to be an interference with the rights of children to pursue their own educational objectives according to their perceptions of reality and value. It is rejected by those who would politicise education (it is already political in their view) and make it subservient to overall political objectives. It is distorted by those who would deny the cognitive significance of moral and aesthetic judgements (positivists), or who would, for this or other reasons, exclude moral or aesthetic questions from the school curriculum. It is rejected by those who consider liberal education to be elitist and irrelevant to the vast majority of people.

Crittenden spends most of his time arguing against his various opponents (real or imagined). Some of this effort is surely wasted, and some of it is misdirected. Most of the positivists still alive today would now be in their eighties, although maybe there are still some around isolated from mainstream philosophy in Education Schools. So I think he need not be concerned with them. Also, Crittenden has no cause to quarrel with Skinner’s learning theory. If displays of rational understanding can be recognised, then they can be reinforced. If they can’t be recognised, then Crittenden can have no reason to think that a programme of liberal education is better than any other programme. However, he does have some useful critical points to make about the philosophical foundation of some other educational programmes. His chapter on ‘Autonomy as the Aim of Education’ is particularly to be recommended.

Crittenden’s book might have been better if he had spent more time arguing the positive case for liberal education – in trying to show, for example, that it would indeed set people free from prejudice, ignorance, blind feeling, dull imagination, and so on, or at least do so better than other educational programmes. Personally, I favour liberal education more or less as Crittenden defines it. But I doubt whether I would have been convinced by Crittenden’s case if I had favoured anything else. Crittenden’s case for liberal education is really a case by default. He argues that other educational theories and practices have shaky philosophical foundations, and hence that there is no good reason to accept them. But the philosophical foundations of his own position are never clearly spelt out.

His positive case as I understand it is this: there are certain intrinsic values involved in moral judgement, aesthetic appreciation and epistemic evaluation, i.e. in deciding what is good or bad, morally or aesthetically, or what is true or false. But our moral, aesthetic and epistemic judgements are influenced by many other factors. We may want to believe something because it is socially acceptable to do so. We may labour to find something good about a work of art which the critics seem to like because we want to be thought of as a person of taste and discernment. Or we may stick to moral judgements, which we have good reason to reject, because it would be too disturbing to the established pattern of our lives, or too shattering to our self-image to reject them. That is, our judgements may be swayed or fixed by various non-rational forces. To free ourselves from the influence of such forces we must learn to recognise them and come to appreciate how rational judgements of these various kinds can be made. We must learn how to make epistemic, moral and aesthetic evaluations rationally, so that we may know what we ought rationally to believe or approve of.

Crittenden believes that the best way of achieving this objective is to introduce students to mathematics, science, history, literature and the arts, i.e. the major modes of thought and evaluation which have evolved in our culture, so that they may develop an understanding of these disciplines and come to appreciate the standards of proof, evidence or excellence which the best examples of work in these areas display. These standards may not be entirely appropriate to newly developing modes of thought and understanding such as sociology, anthropology or education itself. But at least in the established fields they should determine the relevant criteria for critical, rational evaluation.

It is a plausible case, and one with which I basically agree (although I think there are some more obvious and better reasons for favouring liberal education). But to make the case out properly he would have to do a lot more work on it than he has done in this book. First, he needs a much better argument than he has for the existence of intrinsic epistemic, moral and aesthetic values. For if there are no such values, then different value systems are incomparable. I could not, for example, say that one value system was better than another, for that would presuppose the existence of a value system with reference to which the comparison was made. Second, the distinction between rational considerations and non-rational forces needs to be more clearly drawn. For the argument implies that for rational understanding we must be able to recognize when, and in what ways, we are being influenced non-rationally. Hence, people who are being educated for rational understanding should be made reflectively aware of the non-rational forces acting upon them, and what effects they may have even in the process of being educated. Crittenden does not seem to be aware of this implication of his position – at least, it is not reflected in his curriculum. Third, Crittenden needs some argument that a liberal education is the best strategy for achieving his objective of rational understanding. It may be true that it is, but it is not obvious that it is. It may be best for some students, but not for others, or it may not be best at all. I imagine that defenders of free-school education, for example, would say that their way is better. This is a point at which Crittenden really needs an argument (or, rather, an empirical demonstration, since the issue is an empirical one). For without such an argument he has not presented a sound case for liberal education. He has not shown that a liberal education is a good education for rational understanding.

Overall I should say that this is a good and useful book, and I think that most educators and educational theorists would profit from reading it. Its main achievement is the challenge it presents to other educational theorists to look to the philosophical foundations of their positions.