Paul Hirst as a liminal figure and modernizing moralist

Abstract

Abstract Four years prior to the publication of Moral Education in A Secular Society, Hirst presaged his commitment to education as a moral enterprise in The Logic of Education, co-authored with R. S. Peters. A cursory glance at the index will confirm his (their) preoccupation with morality as a, and probably the, key condition of all education. Morality appears some 43 times in the index, considerably more than any other item, including the curriculum and knowledge. Add the many further references to moral education, moral judgement and sundry substantive moral conceits show that his concern with morality is indisputable. In an educational landscape preoccupied with the admittedly somewhat asinine contest between personal actualisation and performativity, perhaps Hirst's explicit preoccupation with education as a moral endeavour may appear rather anachronistic. Yet, at the time, this concern was central to the conversation as to educational purpose and practice and Hirst was the liminal figure in British education standing at the threshold between a post-War educational identity centred on religion, sacrifice and a social contract, on the one hand, and a new, more individualized, self-expressive culture, on the other. Arguably Hirst's most important contribution in this was to act as a midwife to a new way of thinking about morality and education. In this article I will suggest that Hirst's enduring importance to British education was in his liminal role as a moralist trying to wean the educational establishment off an increasingly unsustainable attachment to Christian piety as the motive force underpinning educational provision while simultaneously attempting to hold on to the virtues that had secured much social progress in the War period. In 1970, the same year as he published The Logic of Education, the precursor to the British Journal of Religious Education, Learning for Life published a series of discussions on ethics and education, repeatedly asking the question: ‘Can ethics survive without religion?'. Through the lens of 21st century post-structralism, this can appear very odd but in 1970 it was commonplace in schools, universities, and indeed further education to explicitly see religion as the shape and energy of education. Hirst enters these controversies as an educational moralist intent on re-positioning moral education away from its status as a practical appendage to Christianity and as an integral activity of education, itself considered as a moral good. Moreover, I will suggest that Hirst’s account of moral education cannot be understood apart from his consideration of the general aims of education and that his voice has retained its echo long past his citation scores!