Abstract
It is widely thought that education should aim at positive epistemic standings, like knowledge, insight, and understanding. In this paper, we argue that, surprisingly, in pursuit of this aim, it is sometimes necessary to also cultivate ignorance. We examine several types of case. First, in various circumstances educators should present students with defeaters for their knowledge, so that they come to lack knowledge, at least temporarily. Second, there is the phenomenon of ‘scaffolding’ in education, which we note might sometimes involve the educator quite properly ensuring that the student is ignorant of certain kinds of information. Third, if ignorance is lack of true belief, as a number of commentators have claimed, then in those cases in which students believe something truly without knowing it and teachers show that they lack knowledge, students may abandon that belief and thus become ignorant. In examining the role of ignorance in education, we explore exactly which kinds of ignorance are valuable in teaching situations and draw attention to important epistemic differences between ignorance on different levels.
Highlights
Education has many goals, such as the political goal of producing good citizens, or the economic goal of ensuring that education serves the economic interests of society
Given that the overarching epistemic goals of education are positive epistemic standings, one might well suppose that negative epistemic standings like ignorance—which is surely a paradigmatic negative epistemic standing—have no role to play in educational practices
One reason why an educational practice might be explicitly geared towards the generation of ignorance is that the epistemic ends of education are coming into conflict with its non-epistemic ends
Summary
Education has many goals, such as the political goal of producing good citizens, or the economic goal of ensuring that education serves the economic interests of society. Educational theorists set the epistemic ends at a higher threshold This might include, for example, the propagation of knowledge, or at least reasoned belief.. This might include, for example, the propagation of knowledge, or at least reasoned belief.1 It might involve setting the epistemic bar even higher, such as demanding the development of intellectual virtues and related epistemic standings like understanding.. Given that the overarching epistemic goals of education are positive epistemic standings, one might well suppose that negative epistemic standings like ignorance—which is surely a paradigmatic negative epistemic standing—have no role to play in educational practices. We claim that this would be a mistake. Where ignorance is generated in this way, it is in service of (positive) epistemic ends.
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