Educational Implications of Gamwell's Argument

Extract

Franklin I. Gamwell's book, The Meaning of Religious Freedom, sets forth a theory that, if followed, would require some response (change) in education (from educators). Among other things, a philosophy of education should indicate curricula choices and instructional practices that follow from, or would lead to, a theory such as Gamwell's. John Dewey, the preeminent 20th Century American philosopher, to whom Gamwell refers numerous times, believed that “[e]ducation is the laboratory in which philosophic[al] distinctions become concrete and are tested.” I will raise some questions that are not so much criticisms of Gamwell's argument as they are attempts to start a discussion about what the theory would require from education.

Gamwell makes it clear that his argument, and the definitions from which it works, is “formal,” that is, not tied to any particular set of circumstances, let alone the United States, because he does not want to privilege or preclude at the outset any, what he calls, “candidate answers.” (13) His argument is compact and intricate. He earlier gave an outline of the argument in a paper on “Religion and Reason in American Politics” read at a conference in 1986. His concern is that there is a tendency to treat religion as inconsistent with politics, indeed as adversarial, and as non-rational, or not liable to criticism. (This is the same concern that Stephen Carter addresses in The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion, though Carter's treatment is “popularized,” not formal, and, in my judgement, is superficial).