Approaches to Integrating Philosophy Into Teacher Education: Critiques and Report of a Learning Experience

The central claim of my essay is that certain ways of thinking and feeling associated with Romanticism, and widely disseminated in North American culture, have a broadly negative influence on the capacity of students to learn.Much has been written about the link between Romanticism and progressivism in education.For example, the historian William Reese has argued that child-centered pedagogies were popularized in America by reformers who drew heavily on thinkers such as Pestalozzi and Froebel, who were themselves deeply indebted to the Romantic tradition.1 The philosophers Richard Peters and Paul Hirst have characterized progressive education as a romantic revolt against traditional education, one that emphasized method over content. 2 More recently, David Diehl has pointed to the ongoing influence of Romanticism on the structure of contemporary schooling, which is infused with goals such as diversity and creativity.3 Far less attention, however, has been given to the influence of Romanticism on the ways in which students themselves approach learning.The Romantic tendencies I will analyze in this essay are (1) the tendency to look 'inward,' (2) the attachment to freedom and spontaneity, and (3) the focus on authentic feeling.4 Drawing primarily on Iris Murdoch's work, I will argue that these individualistic tendencies can prevent students from paying close attention to objects of understanding, therefore hampering the process of learning.That being said, each tendency also has a certain 'rationale' motivating it; in some cases, in fact, we can salvage important insights about learning by pointing out this rationale.In this sense, my critique of Romanticism can also be understood as a retrieval of sorts-bringing out insights that these naïve tendencies obscure.That each tendency has a rationale also makes it somewhat understandable why they have become widespread among students.However, we are mistaken if we assume that these tendencies represent essential characteristics of young people or a necessary stage in their development.The upshot of my

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