I gave a talk at the London School of Economics a number of years ago and on the way in say their unofficial slogan, "Smarter than you since 1895", and I confess I went into the talk with, shall we say, an attitude. I may be from the sticks, but that doesn't make anyone smarter than me. Anyhow, this discussion, ironically from an LSE professor, argues against the sense of a 'philosophical canon' because "there are many, many, many thinkers, ideas and texts that are sufficiently interesting to merit serious consideration." Sure, you'll benefit from reading Descartes, say, but you'll benefit equally from reading one orf many many 'lesser' philosophers. We don't 'stand on the shoulders of giants', we 'stand on the shoulders of everybody'. I think the same is true of the philosophy of education and in education generally. Donald Clark is currently proving this point by finding name after name of highly qualified and interesting people who have worked in the field (I hope he doesn't stop, because he'll never run out of names).
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