Competing Conceptions of the Educated Public

Alasdair MacIntyre's paper ‘The idea of an educated public’ followed on his frontal attack in After Virtue on the ‘failed’ intellectual project of the Enlightenment and on its liberal heritage. His argument, in the paper, was that the only way we can save ourselves from that failure is by restoring the idea of an educated public modelled on the type found in eighteenth century Scotland. This article takes up the issue of the ‘crisis’ of modernity, and argues that MacIntyre's ‘public’ is just one possible one and not necessarily the best. Other, competing conceptions of an educated public have been proposed, among others by Dewey and Habermas, that do not necessitate the conservative solution of going back to the past.     

School‐Industry twinning

The Non‐statutory Guidance for Information Technology Capability identifies the information technology (IT) co‐ordinator as key in implementing IT across the whole school, and defines the role as a member of the management team with policy and personnel rather than technical skills. This paper presents evidence from a survey of secondary school coordinators across an English local education authority and shows that they deal principally with technical management of the resource. They are allocated a low managerial status, despite being expected to produce and implement a whole school strategic policy. The discussion highlights that IT management requires complex curricular managerial skills, and recognition within school management structures.     

Foucault, Education, the Self and Modernity

Michel Foucault is often criticised in English-speaking circles for being interested only in power as domination, and of being uninterested in freedom and social reform. This paper shows, however, that Foucault's overarching concern was with the constitution of the self under conditions of modernity. It emphasises the significance of his interest in the Classical project of 'Self-care', and of his countermodernist educational programme in which the skills of self-governance and the ethical (non-dominating) governance of others, as well as the practice of freedom through self-creation, are the key ingredients.