Professor Michael HAND, University of Birmingham
Chair: Dr LIN Cong Jason
The epistemic criterion purports to tell us when we should teach things directively and when nondirectively. To teach a problem or question directively is to teach it with the intention of guiding pupils towards an approved solution or correct answer; to teach it nondirectively is to withhold such guidance and to present different possible solutions or answers as impartially as possible. According to the epistemic criterion, a matter should be taught nondirectively if, and only if, ‘contrary views can be held on it without those views being contrary to reason’. That is to say, we should teach things directively when they are epistemically settled, and nondirectively when they are epistemically unsettled.
Here I should like to consider the possibility that there is a special class of questions we should teach nondirectively even though they are epistemically settled. A question belongs to the class I have in mind when, although the balance of evidence and argument falls decisively on one side, it is nevertheless a matter of current political disagreement in a democratic polity. Diana Hess and Paula McAvoy argue that political questions should be taught nondirectively when ‘they have traction in the political sphere, appearing on ballots, in courts, within political platforms, in legislative chambers, and as part of political movements’, and they think the requirement to teach such questions nondirectively trumps the epistemic criterion. Should we, then, make a principled exception to the epistemic criterion when dealing with questions of this kind?
