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Pluralism, Particularity, and Paideia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2016

James W. Fowler
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Extract

‘And now,’ Socrates begins the famous parable, ‘compare our nature, from the point of view of paideia and lack of paideia, to an experience like this.’ He tells of men in an underground cave, which has a broad entrance open to the light. They have been chained down there since childhood, by their legs and neck, so that they cannot move, and cannot turn round and look behind. They have their backs to the entrance. Above and behind them, some distance off, a fire is burning. Its rays fall above the heads of the prisoners on the back wall of the cave, towards which they are looking. Between them and the fire there is a road, along which runs a low wall, like the stage of a marionette-theatre, upon which conjurors show their puppets. Behind the wall there are people carrying along all sorts of objects and figures made of wood and stone, some talking and others silent. The objects show above the wall, and the fire throws their shadows onto the back wall. The prisoners cannot turn round, so that they have never seen anything all their lives except the shadows. They naturally take the shadows for reality, and the echoes of the voices for the speech of the shadow figures.

Type
Special Section—Religion and American Public Life
Information
Journal of Law and Religion , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , 1984 , pp. 263 - 307
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University 1984

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References

1. This summary is by Jaeger, W., Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture in 2 In Search of the Divine Center 291 (1943)Google Scholar.

2. For an illuminative account of the rich ferment alluded to in this paragraph see Cremin, L., American Education in 1 The Colonial Experience, 1607-1783, 3–106 (1970)Google Scholar. On the shaping of ideals of character and education for a new urban gentry see Horwitz, R., John Locke and the Preservation of Liberty: A Perennial Problem of Civic Education, in The Moral Foundations of the American Republic 141–56 (1979)Google Scholar.

3. Cremin, supra note 2, at 181-82.

4. Id. at 187.

5. Id. at 129-30.

6. Id. at 359-412.

7. Niebuhr, The Idea of Covenant and American Democracy, 23 Church History 131-32 (1954)Google Scholar.

8. Id. at 132.

9. Mead, S., The Lively Experiment 26–7 (1963)Google Scholar and Ahlstrom, S., A Religious History of the American People 161 (1973)Google Scholar.

10. Mead, supra note 9, at 25. Ahlstrom, supra note 9, at 188-92.

11. Greene, E., Religion and the State—The Making and Testing of an American Tradition 37 (1941)Google Scholar.

12. Ahlstrom, supra note 9, at 193-201.

13. Mead, supra note 9, at 30.

14. Michaelson, R., Piety in the Public School 47 (1970)Google Scholar. See also Ahlstrom, supra note 9, at 280-94.

15. This statement regarding the formally secular character of the newly constituted state should be balanced by a recognition of the immense role churches in the Puritan and Evangelical traditions played in evoking and sustaining the will and spirit that undergirded the colonists in the protracted struggle for independence. See the fascinating treatment of the preaching of traditional Puritan “jeremiads” which called colonists to observe congressionally established days of fasting, repentance, and the renewal of covenant obedience before, during, and after the struggle. Though the churches emerged from the war with no brief for establishment or religious uniformity, there existed a powerful religious consensus that viewed freedom-religious and civil-as the concomitant of covenant faithfulness to God. Miller, , From the Covenant to the Revival in The Shaping of American Religion 322–68 (Smith, J. and Jamison, A. eds. 1961)Google Scholar.

16. Mead, supra note 9, at 68.

17. Stokes, A., 2 Church and State in the United States 53 (1975)Google Scholar.

18. Act of March 1, 1827, ch. 143, sec. 3, 1827 Mass. Acts.

19. Micahelson, supra note 14, at 76-77.

20. Glenn, , Religion and the Public Schools, 34 Reformed J. 8 (1984)Google Scholar.

21. Michaelson, supra note 14, at 76-77.

22. Id. at 78.

23. Mead, supra note 9, at 80-81.

24. Michaelson, supra note 14, at 80-81.

25. Id. at 82.

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29. Cremin, supra note 28, at 169.

30. Board of Education v. Minor, 23 Ohio Reports, 211 (1873).

31. Michaelson, supra note 14, at 90. The case referred to is Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203 (1963).

32. See L. Cremin, The Transformation of the School: Procressivism in American Education, 1876-1957 (1961) and D. Ravitch, The Troubled Crusade: American Education 1945-1980 Ch. II (1983).

33. Bernstein, R., John Dewey in 2 The Encyclopedia of Philosophy 384 (Edwards, P. ed. 1967)Google Scholar.

34. See G. Goldberg, Reconsecrating America (1984) and McMillan, R., Religion in the Public Schools (1984)Google Scholar in addition to Michaelson, supra note 14.

35. Michaelson, supra note 14, at 242.

36. For an insightful overview of a number of these reports see Cremin, L., Grading America's Public Schools in The World Book Year Book 66–83 (1983)Google Scholar and Healy, Book Review, New York Time Review of Books 14–15 (05 13, 1984)Google Scholar.

37. Boyer, E., High School: A Report on Secondary Education in America 66–67 (1983)Google Scholar.

38. Goodlad, J., A Place Called School: Prospects for the Future 52–3 (1984)Google Scholar.

39. Id. at 54-55.

40. Id. at 241-42.

41. Sizer, T., Horace's Compromise: The Dilemma of the American High School 121 (1984)Google Scholar.

42. Id.

43. Lightfoot, S., The Good High School: Portraits of Character and Culture 303–67Google Scholar; 25-26 (1983).

44. Cremin, supra note 36, at 80.

45. Glenn, supra note 20, at 7.

46. See McCarthy, R., Oppewal, D., Peterson, W., & Spykman, G., Society, State and Schools: A Case for Structural and Confessional Pluralism (1981)Google Scholar [hereinafter cited as Society, State and Schools] and Coons, J. & Sugarman, S., Education by Choice: The Case for Family Control (1978)Google Scholar.

47. In a letter to Pope Leo XIII protesting the accommodationist spirit of Archbishop John Ireland, Bishop Bernard McQuaid (1823-1909) warned of the indirect teaching of the public school with its moral atmosphere of indifference toward religious beliefs. He called it heresy: “Indifferentism, with regard to all religions, ends in rank infidelity.” Further on in the same letter he expressed the judgment that the “thoughts and speech” of Catholics who attended the state schools “are tinctured with a liberalism that borders on infidelity.” Quoted in O'Gorman, , American and Catholic: The Education of a People Within the Public, in The Church and the Education of the Public 88 (Seymour, J., O'Gorman, R. & Foster, C. eds. 1984)Google Scholar.

48. Glenn, supra note 20, at 12-14.

49. See Michaelson, supra note 14; and McMillan, supra note 34.

50. Glenn, supra note 20, at 14-15.

51. See Society, State and Schools and J. Coons & S. Sugarman, supra note 46.

52. This is, I believe, the conception of pluralism and of civility that underlies the influential book by Novak, M., The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism (1982)Google Scholar.

53. See Society, State and Schools and Coons and Sugarman, supra note 46.

54. Piaget, J., Piaget's Theory in 1 Carmichael's Manual of Child Psychology 703–732 (3rd ed. Mussen, P. ed. 1970)Google Scholar. Kohlberg, L., 1 & 2 Essays on Moral Development, (1981, 1984)Google Scholar. Fowler, J., Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning (1981)Google Scholar.

55. See Wallwerk, , Religious Development in The Cognitive Developmental Psychology of James Mark Baldwin: Current Theory and Research in Genetic Epistemology 335–388 (Broughton, J. & Freeman-Moir, D. eds. 1982)Google Scholar.

56. For detailed accounting of interrelations between these perspectives see Fowler, supra note 54, at Parts II-III.

57. For a stimulating discussion of the post-Cartesian possibilities of cosmology (and ontology) not based on the model of the spectator but on that of participation and praxis see Toulmin, S., The Return to Cosmology (1982)Google Scholar.

58. This sort of analysis helps us to see why most marital infidelity and divorce are necessarily traumatic and deeply dislocating. One does not have to believe that marriages are made in heaven to experience the breaking of relationship as an ontological shattering. Similarly, the loss of a valued long term work place or career project can occasion experiences of ontological fracture.

59. For more detailed descriptions, and for an account of our research method and procedures see J. Fowler, R. Mosely, D. Jarvis, Manual for Faith Development Research (forthcoming 1985). See also Fowler, supra note 54, at Appendix A.

60. I write here as though this stage might only be found in the middle childhood (7-12) age-span in which it typically has its ascendency. It is important to understand, however, that this stage frequently describes many adolescents and a significant number of adults. Ongoing movement through these structural developmental stages is not automatic or necesarily a correlate of physical or cognitive maturation.

61. L. Kohlberg, supra note 54, Vol. I at Ch. 9.

62. For the idea of a “classic” in culture and religion see Tracy, D., The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and The Culture of Pluralism 99–153 (1981)Google Scholar and Fowler, J., Becoming Adult, Becoming Christian 79–80 (1984)Google Scholar.

63. Pepper, S., World Hypotheses (1966)Google Scholar.