John White Research Articles

Knowing and the Known: A Philosophical and Pedagogical Critique on the Concept of ‘Powerful Knowledge’

It is remarkable how the popularity of the concept of ‘powerful knowledge’ has increased during the last decade in academic circles and among politicians, too. This is especially the case when the issue of the place and function of knowledge in the curriculum is addressed. A strong impetus for the increased attention paid to this concept of knowledge came from the writings of Michael Young and Johan Muller. Based on his own critical-hermeneutical-pragmatist-and-(neo-)Vygotskian-inspired philosophy of education and philosophy of science as his ‘Vorverständnis’ (Gadamer), but also based on the recent criticism articulated by the philosophers of education John White and Ingrid Carlgren and educational theorist Gert Biesta, the author shows the philosophical, pedagogical and didactical inadequacy of this concept. The author is criticizing the philosophical and pedagogical presuppositions of Young and Muller’s stance in propagating their core concept of ‘powerful knowledge’ as it is grounded in a social realist view and the way this concept has been used in educational studies by others. It is the author’s conviction that the concept of ‘powerful knowledge’ and the underlying social realist paradigm are incompatible and even incommensurable (in a Kuhnian sense of the terms) with sociocultural and pragmatist paradigms. It is, in his view, theoretically and conceptually confusing when authors who work along the lines of these paradigms are trying to complement these with the concept of ‘powerful knowledge’ along the lines of social realism as outlined by Young and Muller. Let us stick to knowing and the known as a theoretical conceptualization of ‘knowledge’.

Knowledge, knowers, and power: understanding the ‘power’ of powerful knowledge

ABSTRACT This article seeks to contribute to recent theorizing around the concept of powerful knowledge. I begin with a discussion of the current use of the term in both academia and the wider institutional environment of schools. I then give a detailed account of its origins in social realism before exploring different iterations of the concept in recent academic work. The second half of the article seeks to develop the idea of ‘power’ in powerful knowledge by engaging with the criticisms of philosopher John White. I do this by bringing in the philosophical work on the concept of power offered by Peter Morriss. I conclude that Morriss’ analysis of power can help reveal why ‘power’ is best seen as a disposition to effect certain ends. I suggest that this helps resolve some of the concerns of White and provides a template for how to think about powerful knowledge going forward.

Introduction to the suite: Symposium on Philip Kitcher’s The Main Enterprise of the World: Rethinking Education

Abstract This paper introduces a suite of articles devoted to Philip Kitcher’s The Main Enterprise of the World: Rethinking Education (Oxford University Press, 2021). The suite opens with a paper by Kitcher, which presents the central themes of his important book. This is followed by an assessment of the work as whole by John White, and four commentaries discussing in detail various aspects of Kitcher’s position by Ben Kotzee (on science education), Alexis Gibbs (on arts education), Sheron Fraser-Burgess (on deliberative democracy and inclusivity), and Nigel Tubbs (on Kitcher’s ‘Deweyan Society’). In the final contribution, Kitcher replies to his critics. The introduction sketches the character of Kitcher’s project and comments on his pragmatist method.

Continuing the conversation

ABSTRACTI offer some responses to the principal points raised by Ben Kotzee, Alexis Gibbs, Sheron Fraser-Burgess, and Nigel Tubbs in their commentaries on my book, The Main Enterprise of the World: Rethinking Education (MEW), and to John White's penetrating and constructive review (the four commentaries and White's review all appear in this issue). In reply to Kotzee's challenge, I argue that MEW supports an improved approach to specialized scientific education, and that worries about the future of technology are unfounded. Gibbs’ critique, I contend, assumes a one-size-fits-all approach to the arts, in an area where I am concerned to make fine differentiations. Fraser-Burgess is right to wonder how my educational program can overcome the problems of multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic societies, but I maintain that the approach to educating citizens MEW outlines is the appropriate means to address those problems. Finally, I am happy to modify my conception of the Deweyan Society by introducing the kinds of Socratic explorations Tubbs proposes.John White introduces a number of significant issues and concerns. Some of these arise, I claim, from his adoption of familiar versions of concepts MEW takes pains to explicate in new ways. Since I argue for the superiority of my explicated versions, I view the correct strategy to involve discarding the presuppositions of the traditional notions White favours. With respect to moral education, for example, White's ‘precept-centered’ conception contrasts with my emphasis on the fundamental importance of skills of mutual engagement. His most extensive discussion, on my approach to fulfilment, poses a deep challenge. Here, I attempt to clarify and motivate the concepts I deploy. With respect to his review, however, as with my exchanges with the other commentators, this response can only be the beginning of what I hope will continue to be a fruitful conversation.

Licensing libel in seventeenth-century England: John White’s First Century of Scandalous, Malignant Priests in context/s

Abstract This article explores the polemical history of John White’s First Century of Scandalous, Malignant Priests (1643) to argue that the revolutionary public culture of England’s mid-century civil wars transformed seventeenth-century libellous politics by rendering ad hominem defamation into a routine element of formal partisan print culture for the first time in English history. The article concludes by demonstrating that when the Century reappeared in print eighty years later to excoriate a new generation of clergymen, public defamation had become a mundane, although still controversial, element of English political culture.

Fish in Watercolour : John White’s Lively Specimens

The gentleman-limner John White took part in England's second voyage to the New World in 1585, whose aim was to plant a colony in Virginia. The reason for his presence on board is well documented. In a manuscript dated circa 1584-1585 entitled Inducements to the Liking of the Voyage intended towards Virginia in 40. and 42. degrees, Richard Hakluyt suggested that the expedition needed, among the tradesmen on board, « a skilful painter [...] which the Spaniards used commonly in all their discoveries to bring the description of all beasts, birds, fishes, townes, &c. » Following a tradition attributed to the Spanish, John White was thus endowed with a mission to « drawe to life all strange birds beastes fishes plantes hearbes Trees and fruictes and bring home of eache sorte as nere as you may ». John White's drawings ‘to life’ now appear clearly as having been mediated through classical knowledge and previous illustrated publications. Besides, the finesse of many of White's neat and meticulous drawings indicates that they were quite probably the result of substantial posterior working up, thus not qualifying as ad vivum per se, as was common in the early modern period. Among the British Museum's seventy-five drawings in watercolour on paper presumably made by John White and assembled in an album whose title-page describes them as « pictures of sondry things collected and counterfeited according to the truth », pictures of fish amount to more than a third. From this point of departure, the present paper explores the reason why fish feature so prominently among White's images. I argue that in addition to their practical, religious and commercial purposes, these drawings also testify to a courtly and artistic presentation of their subjects. I will therefore adopt a medium-specific approach of fish depiction in the British Museum album. My paper contends that the development of watercolour (or ‘limning’ as it was then known in England) as a pictorial medium gave rise to a conception of ichthyological illustration which differed rather markedly from other types of then popular media (such as engraving). The colourful and luminescent quality of pigments used in watercolour seems to have been explored to the full by John White in his depiction of fish, and may also partly account for his choice of species and specimens, thus adding an aesthetic and distinctly pictorial dimension to the transmission of ichthyological knowledge.

Imperfect Freedom: The Failed Plot to Kidnap John Felix White

Imperfect Freedom: The Failed Plot to Kidnap John Felix White Carol E. Mull (bio) In the fall of 1847, John Felix White labored on a farm in southeast Michigan, some three hundred miles from the place he had been enslaved since age two. A few years earlier, he fled Kentucky with assistance from activists who directed him toward Canada. He found little joy in freedom, however, envisioning his wife and children still suffering in slavery, and decided to resettle in Michigan. With every strike of the hoe and swing of the scythe, he sought to fund his family’s rescue, unaware that the Kentuckian who planned to carry him to the New Orleans slave market had tracked him northward, determined to derail the seemingly impenetrable networks protecting self-emancipators in the Great Lakes region.1 White’s escape, near-kidnapping, rescues, and continued involvement with the Underground Railroad add to our understanding of the transnational antislavery movement in Michigan and beyond. It begins with White’s horrific choice between being sold far from his young wife and children or making a risky permanent escape. He chose the latter. His initial flight from Kentucky started with protection from free Blacks in Indiana and ended in a Black settlement in Canada West (contemporary Ontario). The corroborating accounts of famed abolitionists Rev. Levi Coffin and Laura Smith Haviland describe White’s conveyance northward along an established interracial network from the Ohio River borderlands to the Detroit River borderlands.2 [End Page 67] The attempt in late 1847 to forcibly take White back into bondage reveals the escalation of proslavery activism beyond the border states. Following kidnapping attempts in Marshall, Detroit, and Cass County, slaveholders made another foray to Raisin, Michigan, to capture White. The men who schemed to forcibly kidnap him could rely on associations that funded retrieval of their “Servants.” Proslavery advocates in southern border states created associations to recapture self-emancipators. A stated object of the Kenton County Association was “the security of our Servants, and the recovery of such as may be absconded from their masters or owners.” Politically, they sought a stronger federal fugitive slave law that would curtail free states’ resistance.3 The men who expected to capture and return White must have been mystified to discover farmers in rural Michigan protecting a runaway. The reach of practical abolitionism extended far beyond Michigan’s major cities to small towns and rural properties, such as Watkins Farm.4 Before the Civil War, prominent self-emancipators—such as Josiah Henson and Henry Bibb—wrote autobiographical accounts of their attempts to rescue family from bondage. White’s story, penned by others after Emancipation, specified people by name, providing the means for a full investigation. White was described as an esteemed friend. He gained an education, worked and saved, and maintained friendships with those who aided him in his initial escape. White took charge of his future, rebuffing every suggestion that created distance from his family, and continually prevailed on abolitionists Levi Coffin and Laura Haviland to support his desperate recovery strategies. He twice persuaded Haviland to risk travel into Kentucky, while a bounty for her arrest could have led to a lengthy prison term. White financed, planned, and initiated the liberation of his family on the Ohio River borderlands. He enlisted Black and White friends in careful, clandestine preparations. Of course, he could not plan for the weather.5 [End Page 68] John White and the Transnational Great Lakes Network to Freedom White was born into bondage in Virginia and enslaved in northern Kentucky from the age of two. He was known as Felix during the twenty-five years he described as being “whipped up,” rather than “raised up.”6 Despite severe limitations on his freedom, the young man formed a relationship with Jennie [Jane] Stephens, who lived nearby, and they bore four children by 1845. Jennie was raised on the farm of Benjamin Stephens Jr., her legal possessor and reputed father, in the rural hamlet of Rabbit Hash in Boone County. In 1840, Stephens held nineteen people, including Jennie and her children, enslaved on his property.7 It was the fate of the enslaved to face sudden, horrific changes. The...

Bernard Bailyn's Barbarous Modernity

Bernard Bailyn's Barbarous Modernity

Riding East—Western Myths, Nostalgia, and the Crossing of Generic Boundaries in Hidalgo (2004)

<i>Riding East</i>—Western Myths, Nostalgia, and the Crossing of Generic Boundaries in <i>Hidalgo</i> (2004)

“The Board is Blue”: Kentucky Registers a Woman Pharmacist

“The Board is Blue”: Kentucky Registers a Woman Pharmacist Lynn E. Niedermeier (bio) On November 8, 1883, a native of Clay County, Kentucky, applied to the state’s Board of Pharmacy to be licensed as a druggist. The twenty-one-year-old exhibited a diploma from the University of Michigan’s School of Pharmacy and paid the ten-dollar fee, but the board’s Executive Committee unanimously denied the application. The individual, it held, was not a graduate in pharmacy, a rank that would ordinarily guarantee its holder registration as a lawful compounder and dispenser of prescriptions.1 The applicant sued, challenging the board’s methods of regulating pharmacy practice, and in particular its position on what constituted a qualifying pharmaceutical education. Only a decade old, the board had struggled with such questions since its creation, but its assertion of dominion over pharmacy practice was about to encounter a novel complication: the applicant whose credentials it rejected was a woman. The ensuing dispute constituted a unique chapter in the progress of pharmacy in Kentucky. It brought into focus the barriers faced by [End Page 145] women seeking to enter this newly professionalized field and dramatized a wider debate over the sources of pharmaceutical expertise. It invigorated an educational initiative sponsored by some of the state’s leading citizens and drew a response from the state’s highest court. In its aftermath, Kentucky clarified its standards for determining professional competency, but for women, no matter how well educated or resourceful, registration remained a distant goal. The applicant, Elizabeth “Bessie” Woods White, promised to be a formidable plaintiff, for she was not groomed to be a mute casualty of the law. Born on August 5, 1862, she belonged to one of eastern Kentucky’s most powerful and enterprising families. Her grandfather, Hugh Lowry White, was a judge for newly created Clay County, and her uncle, John White, was Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1841, Bessie’s father, Daugherty White, defeated Theophilus T. Garrard, grandson of Kentucky’s second governor, for a term in the state House of Representatives. On his return to Clay County, Daugherty rejoined the business with which the Whites and Garrards had been identified since the days of Grandfather Hugh, namely the manufacture of salt from the briny spring waters along Goose Creek near Manchester. By 1860, Daugherty and a network of relatives also controlled some 20,000 acres of farmland in Clay and nearby counties, and more than one hundred enslaved persons. Bessie and her five older siblings were all born at Highland Cottage, the family home near the salt works.2 Clay County’s salt industry suffered irreversible decline during the Civil War, but the Whites remained economically and politically powerful. They also maintained their bitter and complex rivalry with the county’s other first family, the Garrards. Beginning around the [End Page 146] Click for larger view View full resolution Bessie Woods White received her pharmaceutical chemist degree from the University of Michigan’s School of Pharmacy in 1883. Image courtesy of University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library. [End Page 147] time of Daugherty’s election victory, the White-Garrard feud grew to encompass political warfare, bare-knuckled competition in the salt industry, and the taking of opposite sides in disputes, some murderous, between other families.3 Despite his tumultuous public life, Daugherty White evidenced considerable tenderness toward his daughters and showed particular concern for their education. In letters to one who was away at school, he urged her to be diligent in her studies. “I know you are as Smart as any of the Girls and all you need is health and industry to keep up with the foremos [sic] or in fact out Strip any of them.” To twelve-year-old Bessie, attending Hocker College in Lexington, he expressed his wish “to take you in my arms and cress [sic] you as I used to do,” but declared that “you must have an education and for a time Papa must forego the pleasure.”4 Only months later, however, Daugherty drowned himself. After her father’s suicide, two other family members took charge of Bessie. One was her twenty-two-year...

„Wyspa doktora Moreau” Herberta George’a Wellsa – rewizja tropów mitologicznych

This article puts forward a reinterpretation of the presence of mythological tropes in H. G. Wells’s, “The Island of Doctor Moreau”. Once the various contexts within which the novel tends to be read have been presented, attention is drawn to the interpretative approaches adopted by literary critics, such as Bergonzi, Bowen, Hayes, to name but a few, who search for connections between the author’s chosen text and myths. Among the cited interpretations, we will find references to, among others, Circe, Comus and Prometheus. Availing himself of the research methodology adopted by John White and Marie Miguet-Ollagnier, the author identifies the sections where allusions to the myths pertaining to Daedalus and Dionysus are to be most frequently encountered. At the same time, the author expands on the findings of previous research by highlighting newly-found mythological motifs. In his conclusion, the author of this article highlights the need for Wells’s work to be now read against the background of the mythological allusions which he has identified as being present in the world of this novel.

“East Asia as a Method of Research,” Illustrated by an Interpretation of Japanese Edo-Period Haiku by a Western Art Historian

The significance of East Asian research is a longstanding issue in the humanities that is yet to be sufficiently addressed. At the same time, it is true that Buddhist thought is now a research subject shared among scholars across and beyond the boundaries of the East and the West. Then, the question may well be posed as to whether Buddhist thought ought to be examined through a specific East Asian research lens. With this question in mind, I will focus on the topic of “East Asia as a Method of Research” by considering the example of haiku interpretations, with reference to the work of John White (1924–2021), a preeminent scholar of Medieval and Renaissance art. In so doing, this short article will demonstrate that the haikus cited here vividly expound the content of such Buddhist principal concepts as impermanence, non-self, emptiness, dependent origination, and the unity of being and not being, without referring to them explicitly. Second, it elucidates the universal nature of this phenomenon, which has been discerned by John White, a specialist in Western humanities. Third, it will enable us to reconsider the conventional methods of Buddhist studies not only from the viewpoint of East Asia but also from that of literariness.

Utility of Using the Sensory Profile in a Criminal Justice Setting

Abstract Date Presented Accepted for AOTA INSPIRE 2021 but unable to be presented due to online event limitations. Incarceration exposes individuals to a negative combination of sensory deprivation and sensory overstimulation, which has serious health consequences. The Sensory Profile (SP) was administered to 345 men and women residing in a corrections facility and who participated in OT programming. This presentation will illustrate how the SP data discriminate and then discuss the implications for using the SP in justice settings and designing appropriate intervention based on SP data. Primary Author and Speaker: Sandra Rogers Additional Authors and Speakers: John White

The Contemporary Western: An American Genre Post-9/11 by John White

The Contemporary Western: An American Genre Post-9/11 by John White

Listening for the Pictures

This essay is inspired by the words of Pulitzer Prize–winning Chicago Sun Times photographer John White, who once told me to “listen for the pictures.” His message rang clear but never more so than when in 1990 we were covering the release of Nelson Mandela in Cape Town, South Africa. The Cape Town scene was alive and filled with so much vibrance. I was keenly aware that I must not just look, but I must listen, and use all my God-given senses to take it in. I can only describe the moment I started listening to the layer of sound, which was my own clicking camera superimposed on the chorus of sounds that surrounded me as both meta and sonorific. There was a certain rhythm to the sensation I felt in being one with my camera. It transported me to a wonderful place in time where visuals and cadences danced together. I realized there was alchemy in this and in all the other moments and locations I had spent behind a camera developing and exercising that “inner ear” my ancestors, some gone, like Gordon Parks, but others here, like White, taught me to revere. This essay is a snapshot of some of those moments—a proof sheet, if you will—from a life that began, as did the civil rights era, with instances of terror and triumph. This essay chronicles my journey as a young photographer and the many influences that shaped my creative process and eventually my worldview. This essay is an invitation to travel with me through time and see life as my camera and I witnessed it, and to hear and sense the world as I do.

목적 기반 교육평가의 적용 가능성 탐색: 존 화이트 이론에 근거한 고찰

이 연구의 목적은 대안적 평가 관점으로서 ‘목적 기반’ 교육평가의 개념과 실제를 밝히고, 그 적용 가능성을 탐색해 보는 데 있다. 시험을 중심으로 전개되는 현행 평가는 ‘교육’평가로서의 그 교육적 위상과 기능에서 상당히 멀어져 있으며, 교육과 관련한 다양한 문제들의 원인이 되고 있다. 연구자는 현행 교육평가의 문제를 교육의 목적과 평가 방법의 측면에서 밝혔으며, 이에 대한 대안적 평가 관점으로서 목적 기반 교육평가를 제안하였다. 뿐만 아니라 목적 기반 교육평가의 준거와 실제에 대한 논의를 통해 목적 기반 교육평가의 구체적인 모습을 제시하였으며, 이를 토대로 우리 교육에의 적용 가능성에 대해 논구하였다. 목적 기반 교육평가는 평가 이론 측면에서의 논리적 일관성, 평가 정책 측면에서의 진보성, 평가 방법 측면에서의 타당성 등 세 가지 면에서 우리 교육에 적용될 수 있는 가능성을 지닌 것으로 판단된다. 반면 표준화된 교육과정 적용에의 어려움, 평가 범위 및 평가자로서 교사의 전문성 문제, 실효성의 문제 등이 실천적인 부분에서 보완되어야 할 난점으로 지적되었다. 논의를 종합해 볼 때, 목적 기반 교육평가는 실천적인 부분에서 생겨날 수 있는 몇 가지 난점들에도 불구하고 그것이 내포하고 있는 철학적 타당성과 적용 가능성으로 인해 현행 교육평가를 개선 또는 대체할 수 있는 적절한 대안적 평가 관점으로 볼 수 있다.

Specialized, systematic and powerful knowledge

This article starts with a comment on John White’s article published in 2019 in the London Review of Education, 17 (3), entitled ‘The end of powerful knowledge?’, and particularly on the point made about specialized knowledge and its relation to powerful knowledge. It is argued here that it is important to clarify the distinction between specialized knowledge, systematic knowledge, and what Young and Muller mean by powerful knowledge, as, while these are related, they are not equivalent. Not all specialized knowledge is codified and systematized, and not all systematic specialized knowledge is necessarily powerful. It is suggested that some of the characteristics attributed to powerful knowledge by Young and Muller, in particular ‘systematic revisability’ and its enactment in specialized communities, are crucial for understanding what they mean by powerful knowledge.

A Reflection on Arts‐Based Research

Concerns are raised regarding the place of the arts in education, specifically as they are used in the social science context of educational research under the title ‘arts-based research’. An examination of Elliot Eisner’s claim that art is research concludes that, though the arts may be used for display, data, or heuristic in educational research, they are not being recognised for their distinctive characteristics. John White’s critique of the theory of multiple intelligences is revisited to mitigate common claims for the arts based upon Gardner. Given the dominance of scientism in today’s research climate, it is argued that the arts should take their rightful place to balance research in its quest for certainty; that they be the antagonist mode of thought called for by John Stuart Mill.

One More Span in the Bridge: A Rejoinder to Michael Apple, Ulf Lundgren, and John White

One More Span in the Bridge: A Rejoinder to Michael Apple, Ulf Lundgren, and John White

A Reflection on Arts-Based Research

Concerns are raised regarding the place of the arts in education, specifically as they are used in the social science context of educational research under the title ‘arts-based research’. An examination of Elliot Eisner’s claim that art is research concludes that, though the arts may be used for display, data, or heuristic in educational research, they are not being recognised for their distinctive characteristics. John White’s critique of the theory of multiple intelligences is revisited to mitigate common claims for the arts based upon Gardner. Given the dominance of scientism in today’s research climate, it is argued that the arts take their rightful place as foil to research in its quest for certainty; that they be the antagonist mode of thought called for by John Stuart Mill.