Bertrand Russell and the Religion of Education

Bertrand Russell and the Religion of Education David Harley (bio) Howard Woodhouse. Critical Reflections on Teacher Education: Why Future Teachers Need Educational Philosophy. New York: Routledge. Pp. xi, 139. isbn: 978-0-367-71405-5, us$48.95 (pb); 978-1-003-15070-1, us$39.16 (ebook). [End Page 184] In his review of Russell’s On Education, John Dewey made the comment that it was a fine contribution to the “religion of education”.1 By this Dewey did not mean an uncritical educational dogma but rather a belief in, and a hope for, the possibilities of education to transform and improve the human condition. Russell himself believed that the possibilities of education were only limited by limited aspirations. As such, perhaps belief in what education could achieve should be placed in a separate category to what it either is achieving or is likely to achieve in the near future. In the words of Robert Browning, “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp or what’s a heaven for.” In this regard, Howard Woodhouse’s book is a fine contribution to the aspirational dimension of educational thought. He is also to be congratulated on being one of the rare people who have argued for the historical importance of Russell’s educational writings as well as their contemporary relevance. But then few educational theorists of the past are currently regarded as relevant and, indeed, little work, effort or importance is currently attached to either the history of educational ideas or the theories that supported them. This neglect, I would argue, is deliberate and is sustained by a belief that previous ideas and practices have no relevance to the present. One of Woodhouse’s main claims is that teacher training should include philosophy of education, particularly the educational ideas of Bertrand Russell. There is little doubt that a more philosophical approach to life’s activities and problems would benefit most if not all human beings. Most readers of this journal would also agree that the world could use a little more “Russell”. The author’s use of the word “need” in the title of his book is, however, open to interpretation. Perhaps “need” is better substituted with the phrase “should have”. By Woodhouse’s own admission, the current direction of education does not encourage individualism at the grass roots teaching level. Indeed, it actively attempts to eliminate it. As such, the irony is that in today’s teaching profession it could be argued that it is not only not needed but is even a liability that threatens both advancement and the very security of the job itself. The role of teachers as currently defined is to accept and obey instructions from those whose superior grasp of the situation dictates the nature and scope of their role, whether from ministries of education, school boards or unions. In most university teacher training programs, the removal of any critical or philosophical approach to the profession has been accompanied by an equal absence of alternative ideas. Not only is this true of the educational ideas; it is equally true of the history of educational practices. The past has no relevance for the present except as a departure point to discuss previous errors and celebrate the unquestionable superiority of modern practices. In a manner not unlike Mao’s reframing of Chinese history as beginning in 1949, one is now [End Page 185] led to believe that what was done or thought about education in the past is not only irrelevant but also bad. Even where not explicitly stated, the evidence from current teacher training points in this direction. I must confess to sharing a rare degree of affinity with the author in that we both graduated from the University of Toronto at about the same time with the now virtually extinct degree of a phd in education. We also shared the same thesis supervisor as well as a focus on Russell’s ideas about education. I use the term “ideas” deliberately inasmuch as I prefer to consider philosophy as an approach to educational ideas and practices.The author went on to a university position, whereas I went from a postdoctoral fellowship to spend the...

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