The human cost and intellectual poverty of high performance schooling: radical philosophy, John Macmurray and the remaking of person‐centred education

Abstract

In order to address some of the key underlying issues currently distorting dominant approaches to schooling it is necessary to acknowledge and engage with our broad intellectual and cultural responsibilities currently shunned by contemporary policy. Philosophy has a key role to play here, in terms of both deconstruction and recommendation. Drawing on the Scottish philosopher John Macmurray, this article argues for the need to situate our work within an historical context that requires judgement about matters of significance and purpose, not mere efficiency and effectiveness. It further argues for the provision of a convincing account of the relational nature of the self that will, in turn, provide the basis of a framework for organisational and communal analysis. The particular framework offered names the dangers of a new totalitarianism exemplified by high performance models of schooling currently preoccupying contemporary practice, advocacy and aspiration. In seeking to reclaim the centrality of human being and becoming in any future education policy it also proposes a person‐centred alternative that transforms and transcends the hegemony of insistent instrumentalism in favour of an inclusive, creative community as a more fitting aspiration for education in a democratic society.