Democratic Intellect Research Articles

The future starts in the past: embedding learning for sustainability through culture and community in Scotland

IntroductionIf sustainability is about imagining and pursuing desired futures, our past history, heritage, and culture will influence the kind of futures we seek and our chosen routes towards them. In Scotland, there is a strong connection between culture, land, and identity; a sense of community; and a perception of work ethic that derive from our biogeography and socio-political journey. Concepts and practises of education have been influenced by the ideas of key thinkers such as the Scot Sir Patrick Geddes, who introduced approaches to education and community through concepts such as “heart, hand, and head”, “think global, act local,” and “place, work, and folk”. This background influenced us in establishing Scotland's United Nations University-recognised Regional Centre of Expertise (RCE) in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), known locally as “Learning for Sustainability Scotland”. Its initial development ten years ago and subsequent evolution have been built on engaging collaboratively across Scotland and linking formal, non-formal, and informal modes of learning for sustainability. In this paper, we explore how culture and context have influenced the emergence, governance, and activities of RCE Scotland over the past decade.MethodsWe developed an analytical framework of possible cultural and contextual influences on Scottish education. We used a Delphi approach to develop a novel and locally relevant definition of ESD when the RCE was established.ResultsAnalysis of purposively selected RCE Scotland activities against our cultural framework illustrated how they had been influenced by culture or context. We propose that democratic intellect, local and global, and nature-culture connections have informed our initiative.DiscussionWe conclude that connection to people, place, and nature influences engagement and action on sustainability, and we suggest that additional sustainability competencies should include physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of nature connection.

Towards a Legacy of the Scottish Tradition: The Democratic Intellect in America

This paper addresses one of the themes of the 2018 CSSP Conference: understanding the legacy of the Scottish tradition. In doing so I suggest that we find some Scottish heirlooms in early American education. To make this case I will start with a text that has been largely refuted and establish a starting point for a legacy of the Scottish tradition with what I believe to be the weakest case: the almost unknown Glaswegian philosopher George Jardine (1742–1827).

Physical Education Teachers’ Relationship with University as Scientific, Educational and Social Institution

Research background and hypothesis. Academic environment necessitates university teachers to carry out three essential professional functions: scientific, educational and social, and to gain such professional self-perception which is desirable for the individuals themselves and are also rooted in the cultural perception of the academic community and matches the expectations of modern society. Research aim was to reveal the relationship between university physical education teachers and the university as scientific, educational and social institution.Research methods. The study employed a non-standardized questionnaire drawing upon the survey of L. Paterson et al. (2003) about the expression of democratic intellect in Scotland and England. The attitudes of the research participants were interpreted using nonparametric statistical methods.Research results. Educational activities remained the major priority of professional activities at the beginning of professional careers. The lower priority was ascribed to scientific and social functions.Discussion and conclusions. Physical education teachers carried out three essential professional functions: scientific, educational and social giving the major priority to the educational function: preparation of textbooks, course books, worksheets, courses, vocational events, updating their professional knowledge. Physical education teachers are also oriented towards applied research which is related to scientific function at the university – preparation of doctors of science.Keywords: higher education, academic profile, professional functions of teachers.

Scottish Philosophy in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries ed. by Gordon Graham

Reviewed by: Scottish Philosophy in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries ed. by Gordon Graham David Fergusson Gordon Graham, editor. Scottish Philosophy in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Pp xii + 340. Cloth, $99.00. The latest volume in the OUP History of Philosophy series comprises twelve essays, which provide in-depth study of a selection of philosophers who worked in the four ancient Scottish universities after 1800. Particular attention is dedicated to Thomas Brown, William Hamilton, James Frederick Ferrier, Alexander Bain, George Davie, and John Macmurray. Further chapters are devoted to the Scottish interpretation of Kant, idealism, and the international exporting of Scottish philosophy, especially its reception in American pragmatism. Introductory and concluding essays by the editor consider the distinctiveness of Scottish philosophy and the contested ways in which it can be judged a coherent intellectual tradition. Does Scottish philosophy refer to anything more than the philosophical work conducted in Scotland during the period under scrutiny? The collection suggests an affirmative answer, at least until the early twentieth century, although the description of such a tradition and its key exponents has been contested. A narrower and a broader characterization can be discerned. The first is the limitation of “Scottish philosophy” to the common sense realism of Reid and his followers such as Oswald and Beattie. Thus identified, the tradition might include Dugald Stewart, William Hamilton, and later thinkers such as John Veitch in Glasgow, Robert Flint in Edinburgh, and William Davidson in Aberdeen. The essays in this volume suggest that such a roll call is unduly narrow and partisan, though “Scottish philosophy” thus characterized has had some distinguished advocates in nineteenth-century France and the U.S. But excluding other Enlightenment thinkers, especially Hume, who were fully committed to a “science of human nature”—as well as later figures such as Brown, Ferrier and Bain, who wrestled with the problems and questions generated by their eighteenth-century predecessors even while advancing different approaches and conclusions—such narrowing of Scottish philosophy to the school of Reid is unduly restrictive. In relation to the topics of philosophical enquiry pursued in the “Scottish Enlightenment” (a term that emerged much later than “Scottish philosophy”), Gordon Graham suggests that Hume is quintessentially Scottish by virtue of the range of his writings, which is much broader than that of Reid. Moreover, the divide between Hume and Reid has not always seemed so wide, as Brown’s aphorism reveals. “Reid bawled out that we must believe in an outward world; but added in a whisper, we can give no reason for our belief. Hume cries out that we can give no reason for such a notion; and whispers, I own we cannot get rid of it” (36). [End Page 174] If a commitment to a unified science of human nature is the originating trait of the tradition, then it is capable of displaying much greater breadth, especially when combined with those who exhibited idealist leanings in reaction to their predecessors. And more mediating figures along the way, such as Alexander Campbell Fraser, A. S. Pringle Pattison, and Norman Kemp Smith, can also be placed on this trajectory of philosophical enquiry, even though they may have departed from Reid’s realism and Hume’s skeptical naturalism without ever fully subscribing to the claims of absolute idealism. What emerges in this collection is a broad and rich conception of the Scottish philosophical tradition, yet one that exhibits some characteristic features. These include the commitment to a science of human nature, an intense discussion in conversation with German philosophy of the problems addressed by Reid and others, and a conviction regarding the wider importance of philosophy for the universities and their host society—on this last point, George Davie’s celebrated lament for the democratic intellect is subject to some searching criticism by Lindsay Paterson. What also emerges is confirmation of the ways in which Scottish thinkers were capable of engaging with continental Europe, often leading the way with commentaries and English translations of Kant and Hegel. These essays are of a uniformly high standard; each will repay study for those wishing to familiarize themselves with the leading Scottish philosophers of the period. Representing much fresh...

Taking values seriously : the democratic intellect and the place of values in the Law School curriculum

This paper treats values, including specifically ‘legal’ and ‘professional’ values, as distinct from the normative standards of legal and professional ethics as commonly understood. It treats values as powerful motivating and aspirational constructs, an important element both of individual identity construction, and of what defines and holds our academic and professional communities together. Values help us to negotiate the complex web of social roles and commitments, and are important in understanding the dynamic way in which lawyers (and others) respond to morally complex or challenging situations. However, the law school has become relatively inhospitable territory for discussions about values and the moral content of law, largely as a consequence of a flawed notion of value-neutrality and a continuing unwillingness to explore the value-laden character of either the formal or hidden curriculum. A solution is proposed that draws on and adapts the notion of the ‘democratic intellect’, a tradition of higher education that emphasises a commitment to civic values, to (applied) philosophical enquiry, and which regards knowledge in itself as a public good. The paper concludes that, while there is still significant theoretical work to be done in mapping legal values, law schools must be more willing to engage in debate about values, to take values positions consistent with their liberal (or ‘post-liberal’) mission, and to engage with the critical issues of curriculum design and learning process that would flow from the decision to take values seriously.

Countrymindedness and the democratic intellect: permutations and combinations in a Victorian country state school, 1853 to 2007

‘Countrymindedness’ is a resonant but perhaps manufactured term, given wide currency in a 1985 article by political scientist and historian Don Aitkin in the Annual, Australian Cultural History. Political ideology was his focus, as he charted the rise and fall ‐ from the late nineteenth century to around the 1970s ‐ of some ideological preconceptions of the Australian Country Party. These were physiocratic, populist, and decentralist ‐ physiocratic meaning, broadly, the rural way is best. Aitkin claimed the word was used in Country Party circles in the 1920s and 1930s, but gave no examples. Since the word is in no dictionary of Australian usage, or the Oxford Dictionary, coinage may be more recent. No matter. Countrymindedness is a richly evocative word, useful in analysing rural populism during the last Australian century. I suggest it can usefully be extended to analyzing aspects of the inner history of Euro‐settlement in recent centuries.

Taking Values Seriously: The Democratic Intellect and the Place of Values in the Law School Curriculum

This paper treats values, including specifically ‘legal’ and ‘professional’ values, as distinct from the normative standards of legal and professional ethics as commonly understood. It treats values as powerful motivating and aspirational constructs, an important element both of individual identity construction, and of what defines and holds our academic and professional communities together. Values help us to negotiate the complex web of social roles and commitments, and are important in understanding the dynamic way in which lawyers (and others) respond to morally complex or challenging situations. However, the law school has become relatively inhospitable territory for discussions about values and the moral content of law, largely as a consequence of a flawed notion of value-neutrality and a continuing unwillingness to explore the value-laden character of either the formal or hidden curriculum. A solution is proposed that draws on and adapts the notion of the ‘democratic intellect’, a tradition of higher education that emphasises a commitment to civic values, to (applied) philosophical enquiry, and which regards knowledge in itself as a public good. The paper concludes that, while there is still significant theoretical work to be done in mapping legal values, law schools must be more willing to engage in debate about values, to take values positions consistent with their liberal (or ‘post-liberal’) mission, and to engage with the critical issues of curriculum design and learning process that would flow from the decision to take values seriously.

The Translation of the Democratic Intellect: Scottish Literary Education in Tokyo

I Method This survey of attitudes towards Scottish culture is based on fifteen-question questionnaires distributed to undergraduate students in Tokyo before and after Scottish literature courses I conducted during the period 2000-2004. The questionnaires were distributed to students at three different universities, one singlesex private, one mixed private, and one mixed national, all in Tokyo. The courses fell under various names, which had a bearing on students’ expectations and thus how well they were able to relate the national specificities of Scottish literary culture to other questions within the humanities. Approximately two-thirds of the recipients responded in all, and the larger absolute number of respondents from the first institution is mostly due to the fact that I taught the course for three years (extended from one) and that the number of students was surprisingly high, at times exceeding 100. No student filled in the questionnaire twice, even if they attended the course more than once, and all students answered independently, that is, without conferring with one another. An attendance record of two-thirds was expected, though not strictly enforced, giving rise to the possibility of students missing something apparently obvious; one irony is that Japanese students spend much of their fourth year sorting out their jobs to come (and there were a few finalists in these classes).

Review: Debatable Fictions: Scottish Cinema, Television and the Novel

Duncan Petrie's Contemporary Scottish Fictions largely succeeds in examining the novel, film and television drama in Scotland since 1980. He considers these three pervasive forms of art and entertainment as very much inter-related, and linked in significant ways to social and political developments in the context of devolution. Displaying in his approach something of George Davies's 'democratic intellect' at its best, Petrie describes his principal aim as follows: 'This book will explore the Scottish cultural renaissance of the 1980s and 1990s by focussing primarily on the novel, cinema and television drama', adding that '(t)hese are all narrativebased popular forms that provide the means by which the myths and realities, experiences and dreams of Scotland and its inhabitants have been reflected and asserted, imagined and re-imagined through a process of cultural transmission dating back to the bardic tradition of oral story-telling' (p.l).

Re- Framing the Democratic Intellect

market of ideas, as it appears in Habermas's writing. The active shapers of the 'public sphere' were involved in organised reading, publication, discussion in clubs and societies in which people came together voluntarily as individuals: 'domination-free communication' (to use Habermas' term) was the goal, but to achieve this, members had to discipline themselves corporeally and mentally. A sober dispassionate atmosphere was achieved by self-censorship: many topics were taboo, such as matters of state, religion and family (p.210). Moral virtue defined the new social elite, a quality potentially accessible to everyone, yet a code consonant with only certain social groups. As the focus of associations and clubs shifted to mobilize broader social strata such as artisans and peasants, even Jews and Catholics, women were expressly shut out of early political associations, despite the fact that the first public discussion about the emancipation of women was taking place in Masonic Lodges and reading clubs. And the clergy in Germany (and Scotland) joined the Enlightenment in large numbers, thus stamping Enlightenment discourse (and practices) with something of its old outlines (and habits) even as it was being changed. Guardians of knowledge and understanding wield tremendous social power, Hull comments. Speculation about women (and there was much at the time, especially in the late period of Enlightenment) was a function (and part and parcel) of the more fundamental task of defining men because, to repeat, practitioners of Enlightenment sought primarily to re-cast relations among men (Hull, p.225). The anthropologist, Mary Douglas, has claimed that bodily symbols, including sexual ones, are especially salient in times of socio-political re­ organisation. Sexual arguments and metaphors have been useful to those engaged in redrawing social lines, by, for example, disqualifying women or poor people from expanding political participation on sexual-biological grounds. Crucially, structured debate was taken to be the motor of social change by the practitioners of civil society and their contemporaries. They saw their task as moral reform rather than setting up political clubs. Pedagogues and writers of the late enlightenment, understanding themselves as leaders of civil society, viewed this project in terms of shaping desire. The education of women should occur entirely in relation to themselves, as future wives of the practitioners of civil society. In such teachings, marriage was universally normative. Women had to actively achieve self-effacement, like Rousseau's Sophie and even Wollstonecraft's woman whose moral perfection would redeem civil society if released from domestic bondage. The figure of

The Modernising of the Democratic Intellect: the Role of English in Scottish Secondary Education, 1900U–1939

The Modernising of the Democratic Intellect: the Role of English in Scottish Secondary Education, 1900U–1939

‘[An] Educational Crisis in Scotland’: The Democratic Intellect Revisited

In George Elder Davie’s 1961 work “The Democratic Intellect”, it was noted that there was a distinctive Scottish intellectual and academic tradition, one of philosophical quizzicality, which was disrupted and mortally wounded in the 1850s by a calculated programme of anglicisation of the Scottish universities. This article takes as its starting point Davie’s central, though as yet untested, empirical claim that the relatively poor performance of Scottish candidiates in the 1853-8 examinations for entry into the prestigious Indian Civil Service (ICS) gave a significant fillip to those seeking grounds to reform Scottish higher education. It suggests how this proposition (which is vital to Davie’s argument) might be scrutinised using extant archival records of the erstwhile ICS. Understandably, the conclusion suggests the need for future work.

James Clerk Maxwell and the democratic intellect

James Clerk Maxwell and the democratic intellect

God, Locke, and Equality: Christian Foundations in Locke's Political Thought

Preface Citations and abbreviations 1. Introduction 2. Adam and Eve 3. Species and the shape of equality 4. 'The democratic intellect' 5. Kings, fathers, voters, subjects and crooks 6. 'Disproportionate and unequal possession' 7. 'By our Saviour's interpretation' 8. Tolerating atheists? Bibliography Index.

The Survival of the Democratic Intellect: Academic Values in Scotland and England

AbstractUsing the results of a sample survey of academics in higher education institutions in Scotland and England, the paper assesses attitudes to the civic role of higher education. It places these in the context of debates about core academic values, about the public accountability of higher education institutions, and about the devolution of political power in the United Kingdom. It finds that there is widespread attachment to a civic role for higher education, alongside strong attachment to traditional academic values. These values are not significantly influenced by individual academics’ gender, age or social class of origin, and differences by academic discipline are not as strong as might be expected. Academics in Scotland tend to hold a somewhat more civic view than academics in England. This national difference seems to be a product of distinctive national systems, since academics of English origin in Scotland share in the majority Scottish views.

George Jardine: Champion of the Scottish philosophy of democratic intellect

George Jardine: Champion of the Scottish philosophy of democratic intellect

“Intellectual instruction is best left to a man”: the feminisation of the scottish teaching profession in the second half of the nineteenth century

Abstract This paper builds on the work of Helen Corr concerning the gender division of labour in the Scottish teaching profession. Whereas Corr's focus is on the patriarchal nature of Scottish society, this discussion centres on the interaction of gender and nationality. The nineteenth century saw a crisis of national identity in Scotland, reflected in widespread fears of declining educational standards and the undermining of what was essentially a masculine myth of the democratic intellect. The debate on the state of education in Scotland, and fears of what were regarded as inferior English practices, led to a strong defence of the male-dominated profession, which by the end of the nineteenth century had become feminised in numbers only. Yet although in a subordinate position, the Scottish schoolmistress considered herself to be an essential part of the teaching profession, a partner, albeit junior, in preserving the traditional educational ideal of universality and meritocracy.

“Intellectual instruction is best left to a man”: the feminisation of the scottish teaching profession in the second half of the nineteenth century

This paper builds on the work of Helen Corr concerning the gender division of labour in the Scottish teaching profession. Whereas Corr's focus is on the patriarchal nature of Scottish society, this discussion centres on the interaction of gender and nationality. The nineteenth century saw a crisis of national identity in Scotland, reflected in widespread fears of declining educational standards and the undermining of what was essentially a masculine myth of the democratic intellect. The debate on the state of education in Scotland, and fears of what were regarded as inferior English practices, led to a strong defence of the male-dominated profession, which by the end of the nineteenth century had become feminised in numbers only. Yet although in a subordinate position, the Scottish schoolmistress considered herself to be an essential part of the teaching profession, a partner, albeit junior, in preserving the traditional educational ideal of universality and meritocracy.

Championing The Democratic Intellect

[This brief note discusses the philosophical basis of the Scottish vision of civil society and the Scots championing of Democratic Intellectualism. The Scottish tradition of academic generalism, trust in lay scholars, and the practice of technical and practical competencies is alive at the Arctic Institute and is expressed in the ASTIS database, the journal Arctic, PAR and co-management research. The article notes that intermarriage between Native women and Scotsmen has produced an intermarriage of intellectual traditions, particularly among the Canadian Metis.] ... The challenge now before us as citizens is to continue championing the Democratic Intellect, especially in settings such as academia and corporations where the arguments of specialization, hierarchies, and elites still find appeal and adherents. ...

The Revival of the Democratic Intellect, Andrew Lockhart Walker (Polygon, 1995), pp. 382, £13.95

The Revival of the Democratic Intellect, Andrew Lockhart Walker (Polygon, 1995), pp. 382, £13.95