situational method: a proposal for political education in democracy

Situational Method: A Proposal For Political Education in Democracy

BY NICOLAS HAINES

EDUCATIONAL I H h O R Y , I N JULY 1967, DEDICATED A4 SPECIAL NUMBER T O A DISCUSSION OX T I I C POSSIBILITIES FOR PHILOSOPHY I N ‘I HE SECONDARY SCHOOL CURRICULUM. As a teacher in a British university 1 was impressed by references to the place philosophy is supposed to hold in the VI Form: how long will it be, one wonders, before British philosophers enquire into this and ask, among other questions, what exactly is taught in Briitish schools under the title of philosophy?

My interest is in Ithe public significance of what niay bc done in schools; my interest is in the obligation of ‘the schools to the community which intends maximal democracy but has yet to devote its educationtal resources confidently to such a way of life. Thc method to be discussed here will help to initiate a larger number of newcomers into the responsibilities of a free society than any conventional, aeadernic study of ethics or logic would do. At the same time such a method readily promotes interebt in philosophical problems and may therefore help to reduce the abysmal alivnation of academic philosophy from the general educaition of the people.

John Dewey’s claim1 that in our search for ainis in education we are not concerned “with finding an end outside the educative process to which cdu- cation is subordinate” applies in one sense to what is here called “method.” Situational method, that is, must not be understood only or primarily as a means to an end extraneous to itself since wherever such method is used for philosophical purposes its end has already in some degree been accomplished. On the other hand there is a sense of Dewey’s ststement which I would not accept as applicable to situational method. Any sense, that is, of Dewey’s statement which appears to require the independence of education to the extent that it has not to consider its obligations to a wider, public way of life has to be repudiated. It is true that once such a method claims admissim to schools it becomes partly accountablc ito the canons of educational theory. But to the extent that the method proves itself as initiation into responsible society its claims take precedence. For education today is so placed in power- ful institutions ruled by a complex organisation of administrators and bureau- crats that failure to call them to account before wider standards of the public good will prove as disastrous to genuine educational values as to the way of life which tolerates them.

The situational method is an “end hostile to encroachments on educational values preoisely because it belongs to a realm wider than and inclusive of the educational. That is the political realm whose nature it is to contain and

NICOLAS HAIMES is Reader in Philobophy u t the University of Surrey, Surrey, England.

1Democracy and Education, ch. 8.

17

18 EDUCATIONAL THEORY

regulate a variety of goods, not to reduce or distort then1 as administration, inadequately controlled by the political order, tends to do.

The method proposed, therefore, is not a special case of situational method of the sort used for years, partly under Dewey’s influence, in the teaching of language, history, and, latterly, mathematics or evcn science. Nor is there heae any intention to recommend such methods without reservation, as substitutes for the mastery of theory, the rigours of an academic discipline. Theory, scholarship, intellectual discipline will always be for the few and we ought not to debase their sublime value by methods which pretend to simpllfy or make easy and “interesting” for the many, achievements possible only for the few. On the other hand, if democratic intentions are to progress toward the responsible society many, if not the majority, of the “cducated have somehow to become involved in the self-governing activities of decision and policy making. It is to such ends that situational method is here directed.

Any method which invites newcomers to disregard distinctions in ability, levels of effort and achievement; any method which seems to put the whole cultural inheritance on the open market on easy terms is a threat to civilization and an attack on the variety of human experience. Since situational method nourishes a civilized, public way of life of which autonomous academic values are an integral and essential part one would expect it to attract to itself practical problems which might otherwise either be neglected or else obtrude adversely on the theordical preoccupations proper to other disciplines. For just as situational method is abhorrent to the academic study of history, literature and the sciences so it is exactly appropriate to problems of action. It is as important nut to subject these academic disciplines to the overspill of practical problems as it is to create and sustain a field and style of enquiry proper to the needs of “free” men in a responsible, self-managing community. The aims belong ‘to an ancient and classical pursuit of practical wisdom; the urgency is contemporary, promoted largely by the onrush of wha:t Lasswell has called “the ensemble of practices by which one uses available resources to achieve values” - that is, the techniques in which, however, Jacques Ellul, among others2 sees an end-in-itself indifferent to all human ends and values.

I1

Situational method is teuching which confronts newcomers* with authentic, critical situations objectively represented, in order to increase awarelzess of such situations and to equip decision procedures, policy making and othm critical, evaluative and intentional activities with an appropriate language.

I shall first explain this sbtement and then illustrate the explanation in rather more detail mainly by reference to a book which uses such a method, somewhat tentatively and for a rather limited audience. Finally I shall meet

2The Technological Society. *“Newcomers” because words such as “children”, “stu- dents”, or “pupils” beg important questions. For instance, one problem of political education has to do with immigrants. “Initiates”, on the otlher hand, implies a mystique wholly contraxy to the aims of situational method.

SITUATIONAL METHOD 19

ceittain objections and at the same time locate the method on the map of human cultural activities.

A situation is a site or location - not, however, in \the “empty” or “vacant” sense as when Bosinney could say to Soames Farsyte of Robin Hill: “I could build you a teaser here.” Dewey’s “contextual whole,” perhaps. To grasp “s4tuation” we have both to accept Dewey’s preference for contexts, not objects,3 and appreciate Luciana’s assurance that

“nothing situate under heaven’s eye But hath his bound. . . .’74

Situations call be made to fade or dissolve when obsercers assume a different level or point of view. A whole, dominant tradition in philosophy may be traced to Aristotlo’s elevation of the observer above the participant and his subordination of the praotical to the theoretical.5 Those whose interest is in avoidance of participation in critical situations benefit by such a tradition - by reference to wider levels of generality or by reduction to objects, they can disperse the concrete situation and evade the crisis, the judgment. The teacher who wants men to come to terms wilth reality, however, knows that for most people, most of the time this means confronting, adjusting to, reckon- ing with and partioipating in changing, critical, determinate situations.

A situation is critical when it engages judgment, when it provokes evaluation, when it invites intentional beings to act. Twenty people in one Toom are without doubt “in a situation.” It does not follow that the situation is critical for all, for any, or for all alike. If, however, one is a high court judge, two are lawyers, one a man accused of an offence and twelve jurymen it is likely that the situation is critical for all in various ways. (This is the type of critical situation which concerned the Sophists - those practical philosophers who, for their sins, suffered most from the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle.)

Some people, perhaps, pass much of their lives in situations which do not appear critical to them. Some practical philosophers, on the other hand, have made this (the model of the good l i f e 6 Whatever the merits of such quietism the liberal democrat cannot accept it into his proposals for political education: his notions of liberty require that a large number of citizens shall accept a measure of responsibility for the management of affairs, that is, a large number must engage in critical situations.

No description “exactly reproduces” a situation the essence of which is critical participation, All communication is modificaltion of the initial experience. It still makes sense, however, to talk of minimising such modifications in at least two ways: by careful choice of words and style, and by providing critical equipment designed, in part, to correct inclinations of teachew and text-book writers.

How do we represent such siltua~bions to newcomers?

3Logic: The Theory of Enquiry, ch. 4. 4Comedy of Errors, Act 2, sc. i. 5In Book A of the Metaphysics for instance. GEpicurean apathy is of this sort, so, perhaps, same models not in the western

philosophical tradition.


Authenticity is mandatory and is here opposed to contrivance, not to representation or even a measure of interpretation. Moralists contrive when they invent situations to “point a moral” or “prove” the praotical validity of a principle. For situational method to contrive would be contradictory: the method is committed to a certain faith in the moral capacities of newc~mers before it is committed to any particular moral formulae. One may believe both that there are principles and values of wide, comprehensive acceptability and that education for responsible soc;ety requires that these be found, not in- sinuated. In order to contrive you have to have somc end in view other than critical participation - you contrive to suit some interest in a judgment or evaluation not that of the newcomer.

A critical apparatus accompanies the situation represented. This consists of questions and directives designed to advance thc newcomer’s understanding in two ways. First, the apparatus is meant to provoke the newcomer to anticulate those judgments most likely to appear on the threshold of utterance as he confronts the situation alone. Second, the apparatus is prepared in order to expose all such immediate judgments to a dialogue in which sonie iudg- m a t s will appear incompatible, others assimilative, others agGn compatible. The aim is to construct confidcnce in judgment and to diminish dogmatism. Involved in both stages are provisions for the ncwconier to test his judgment in various ways but particularly by tests of consistency and coherence and practical application.

I11

In my book, Person to Person7 the main features of the situational method for teaching practical philosophy appear. The book was not written, however, to illustrate a method, notr was the intended audience one I would expect to r id in schools except, possibly, in a British VI Form. Nevertheless it will do to illustrate what has been said not least by its faults. I shall select two of the situations used in that book - Rhodesiu and Bs~ychedelics~ - to make a little clearer what has been said alrcady about the method.

Rhodesia, of course, represented not the country but the situation, mainly for British people. The focus of the “contextual whole” was Ian Smith’s unilateral declaration of independence ( VDZ) , Taking UDZ “in context” with proposed sanctions by the British government against Smith‘s regime we saw the situation “going critical” for all who cared, in Britain at any rate, to exercise their judgment.

Psychedelics indicated an extensive and somewhat diffuse situation giving rise to two distinct problems. On the one hand the more personal or evem private problem of accepting or rejecting an experience; on the other, the public problem of regulating the experiences of others. If I had been doing what some philosophers call a “rigorous analysis” of ‘the situation it might have been necessary to break this down into two or three or even to abandon

7Person to Person: A W o r k Rook in Princifiles a n d T ’ n l u r ~ (Jfnchfi l lan, J.ondon, 1967) SOP. cit., chs. 2 and 4.


the situation for the general principles or concepts involved. But this is exactly what the teacher using situational method is out to avoid: dissipating the situation in which people have to make decisions and replacing i’t with objects calling for no decision. The psychedelic situation was constituted by tbcre being people who took “consciousness altering” drugs for fun. This is t-ie focus. This gives rise to the two problems already mentioned (among others, no doubt).

These were situations in the news at the time of writing and for some months later.9 It followed that most possible rcadcrs were aware of them; i t did not follow that they were critically aware (or, for that matter, that those noi so already would pay $3 for Ithe experience). What Mill said of eduoation generally is true in particular of social, moral and political education: the “interest and judgment of the consumer’’ are not “a sufficient sccurity for the goodncss of the commodity.”lO

How do these two accounts illustrate the principle of authenticity in situational method? In the most obvious sense the situations were not con- trived. Reference was made to documents readily available and “available” here means accersible and intelligible to the kind of educated but non- specialist audience intended for the book. (There is a deceit in appeals to tcxts or documents abstruse, hard to get at, or even not likely to be referred to by readers or audiences who nevertheless are intelligent enough to question the authenticity of a situation or of its representation in teaching.)

Sabction, of course, has to be taken into account and a careful critic will want to know why a teacher selects these particular situations when at any given time there must be a range from which to choose, even on the criterion of publicity. Does a teacher select his situations on the grounds that they “illustrate” principles he adheres to, in the hope that they will confirm such principles? Suppose he does; how does this cast doubt on authenticity, provided his critical apparatus exposes these principles togethcr with others in conflict with When, for euample, the principle of national self- ddtermination is being applied to Rhodesia questions are put which indicate alternakives, special attention is given to the principle of minimal democracy and this is shown in m e way to accord with a cefiain conception of national self-determination but in another Yo conflict with it. The ‘intention is neitheT

9The internal demands of the communications industry create problem8 for the teacher of practical philosophy. He is bound to draw attmtion to widely publicised situations and indccd the temptation to cnpitalise the immediate intcrcst thcy crcate is irresistible. On the other hand the tempo created by such demands is to be resisted. For instance, the personal problems representcd by the PsychPdeZic situation do not necessarily abatc when drugs cease to be front page news or the Hippies change their name. At the same time this does not justify abandoning situational method in favour of academic teaching in terms of universals and general principles. The teacher must use topicality, not he ruled by it, and this is difficult.

loJohn Mill, Princiflles of Political Economy, bk. 5, ch. 11, section 9. 11In my case one notiLe hab alrcady said that the author of Person to Person seems

to bc wholly impartial. If that is what appears from a caieful study of the book I would regard that as a serious fault in my presentation. Fox initance, I would want h e book to show my partiality for “maximal democracy” in the sense of “responsible freedom”.


propagandist nor is it to achieve a paralytic impartiality; we aim rather at such precision as we can hope for, at a refinement of crude principles so that where there has to be conflict the lines may be drawn ‘as clearly as possible.

Some will object that situations such as Rhodesia ought not to be presented except in historical “depth”; that situations such as psychedelics should be presented with full medical and psychiatric “coverage.” To reply that such conditions would mean that teaching of this sort would not be done at all may at first seem to accept the objection: since we cannot find teachers, materials, time or audiences adequate to such requirements plainly the method itself is discredited. The first answer is that critical situations will not go away simply because academic edgucational theory turns its back on an effective method of preparation for them. But we must go further than this. Are we not Eaced, in this objection, with another instance of the ancient quarrel between the canons of sound theory and the insistent demands of action? The man of theory, quite righltly, must have what he calls a proper account of the situation even if, as was said above, this means abandoning the situation altogether and certainly refusing cliitical participation in it. The theoretical man will have only the “strongest” reasons for preferning one course of adion to another; to him, weak reasons are no reasons at all even if these are all that are available in a given situation.12 Whether we have here a persistence of the old Socratic drcam - the dream of a “knowing” whlich will resolve all problems of “doing” - I cannot pause to determine but it may well be that part of the illusion created by our modern human sciences is this: that we have only to “get at” the facts (or the basic facts) in any given situation to resolve all problems of evaluation. ( A very different belief is the recognition that some conflicts of judgment and evaluation may be resolved by a reduction of ignorance.) It is not merely that most men have to live with immediate, critical situations which will not wait for a proper (historical, scientific) account but insist on decision, on action now and continuously. It is not merely that this is the reality with which the practical teacher must help his newcomers to come to terms. There may also be here a fundamental preference: we do not wish the majority to enjoy moral inertia while various skilled bands of theorists disperse one criltical situation after another working for “a full and proper account” (of what reality?). We may even suspeot that such theorists conceal their own preferences and make their own decisions even while they disparage attempts to engage the larger number in the public debate.

The situations dealt with, then, do no more than present the newcomer with a world he can live in and change. All teaching, all making of aids to teaching is bounded by the obduracies of time, money, men and mlaterials. All praatical problems, similarly, arise because there is a reality intolerant of too much delay, unready to wait upon perfeotions. That does not absolve us, of course, from making the fullest use possible in a given context of all relevant information and the method used in Person to Person, as I have

lWor an exposure of this insistence on the strongest reasons and an exemplification of the practical approach to politics see The Principles of Politics by J. R. Lucas (Oxford, 1966 ) and note especially Section 6.


said, was to refer to sources readily accessible. Furthermore, when we tuirn from the book used t o illustrate certain features of situational method to proposals for school curriculae, it is assumed, of course, that ‘the method will be used in one very small area wi‘th easy access to and quickened interest fn those areas of information and theory which will interact with situational method to the advantage of both. If we are agreed that the educated man is one who has learnt how to detach attention from the immediate, dissolve the local into the typical, relate the particular to the universal, subsuming the incidental under one law; if we see education as (partly) initiation into the explanatory, the dcscriptive and the predictive activities of the saiences, into the language of a cultural tradition, thie skills of logical detachment firom emation - all of which equip a man to stand for an hour above the stream of events or even to navigate it with some assurance that there may be “land when they see nothing but siea’’13 - then we are now being asked to add something to our conceptian of the educated man. We are asked to believe that he has also to be taught how to codront the immediate, assess the local, evaluate the particular ,and ratain what advantage he has from theory without sufhring it to deprive him of [action. To add this to the educational task it is not only permissible to present the situation as it is likelier to appear to most, but proper; for if we attempt “exhaustive accounts” and perfect reasons we are climbing out of the situation to that “wit of elevation situate as upon a clif€”14 whose benefits we are seeking to complement, not duplicate.

In Person to PeTson the critical apparaitus was both integral to the style and provided separately in additional material “for discussion.” I do not think the method would be best used in this way for most schools. Certain corn+/ ponents of the apparatus, however, might be generally acceptable. Take, for example, the use made in the book of principles and ualues. We would not, I think, use these in the same way when teaching younger children, Or if such constructs were usled they would appear much later in any given study and stand outside the body of it. Nevertheless, among the proximat!e, $short term teaching aims in situational method is this grasp on the uses $and abuses of “principle,” and such an articulation of what is meant by “value.” (By “short term” I mean that such an aim would indeed be susceptible to tests comparable to those applicable to other teaching aims, whereas, in the long term, what is intended is a general personal and political competenoe not readily subject to tests and certainly not to the internal, autonomous tests of the educational institution. ) This use of prinoiples and values, moreover, raises a question about the morality of situational method to which I shall come in a moment.

Person to Person used an interrogatory or dialectical style intended to make criticism and counter-crit’icism continuous. This was done sometimes to the point of tedium and certainIy exposed the author to the charge of non- commitment. In books for schools15 situations would be presented “straight”

13Bacor1, Advancement of Zxarning, 11, vii, 5. 14Zbid. It is germane that Bacon is here talking about Plato “in his opinion of ideas.” 15A British publisher commissioned the author to edit a serics of such books using the

situational method.


with questions for rcfiection or discussion intruding only at moments when they are likely #to have begun to shape themselves. On the other hand simply to present situations without giving the ~eacher some guidance in salient questions or some help in structuring discussion would leave too much to chance. We have in any case to work through generations of teachers many of whom have themselves no preparation for this kind of work. There is EL

field of teacher-training here which philosophers, among others, might culti- vate (always supposing that profkssional philosophers oan be found who are suitably equipped).

Situational method is intended to promote both private reflection and public dialogue as two aspects of a way of life. Consider, in Person to Person, the psychedelic situation.lG Reference was made here to a whole cluster of valucs: self-recognitioa, consciousness, self-forgetfulness, integxation, integrity, personal independence and also to such principles as self-management, all belonging primarily to self-’regarding intentions. True, it was suggested that a “kind of inside reliability” might be positively related to reliability in human relations but the personal “goods” were formulated for their own sakes, as ends-in-themselves, however intimately they may have been relalted to public, other-regarding goods.

Such attention to the newcomer’s developing, self-creating “self” is an important facet of situational method and one good reason for making provision in such teaching for private judgment, prior to discussion. We work for a procedure which allows the newcomer to form a judgment he can call his own before exposing it and himself to the group.

The discovery through discussion that practical problems, often if not usually, admit of no unanimous, single-minded “answers” is an important advance in political education for democracy. Consider ‘the following question put at the end of the chapter on psychedelics:

Suppose you could rhoose appropriate poIicies or legislative programmes. Would you prefer (a) to encourage chemical methods and even drugtaking if this promised reduction of violence or (b) to make maximal democracy fundamental even at the Iisk of unrest and war? In answering say what differenoe it makes whether you think in terms of your own or your dependents’ well-being.

Such a question hardly admits of an “answer” if by answer we mean a response which disposes of the question. The discussion is meant to show up the limitations of judgments freely made ‘in comparable situations; it is itself an exploratory operation; it initiatmes into Ithe style of political life in a responsible society. At the s8ame time ‘there are radical, fundamental moral dccisions pending and such discoveries are likely to be made in the huirly- burly of a dialogue not too rigidly structured. On the other hand they would most likely be missed if there were not present some person who knew what was at stake and this brings me to questions of moral substance about sitil-

160fi. cit., ch. 4 but especially Problem 5 (pp. 81ff).


ational method in discussing which we shall be able to place the method somewhere on the map of our traditions.

IV

Situational method us practical philosophy is necessary to the democratic intention in education.

Sophists such as Protagoras, Gorgias, and, in another sense, Socrates, probably laid foundations for a tradition in practical philosophy shontly to be buried under the vast edifices of Platonic and Aristotelian idealism. Th’is is not the place to expound ,this view but I have argued elsewhere that some recognition of the positivc relation between sophistic methods and democracy is to be found, together with its rejection, among those who took part in pol(itica1 and educational reform in nineteenth century England.17 My position is not that we have to make a simple choice between practical philosophy as represented by such Sophists (of whom, in any case, we know far too little) and the great idealist traditions but rather that in honouring the democratic intention we have to equip a growing number for responsible self-management and that this necessity in our present condition inclines us to a Sophist-type method ralther than to its rejection. We cannot bo’th claim an inkcrest in maximal democracyl8 and limit ourselves to a philosophy which makes no provision for the participation by newcomers in critical situations. Some well paid Sophists, at least, having a clientele who would have taken their custom elsewhere had their teachers neglected concrete situations, would to this extent have shared our vantage point. On the other hand, philosophers in every generation who have managed to purchase or secure their withdrawal from such commitment to public realities may or may not approve democr’atic objectives; they are unlikely to have seen themselves or their pursuits as relevant to the education necessary to maximal democracy.

Conflicts between different traditions in philosophy do not now concern us. It is useful, however, to recall ‘the substance of three major charges brought against thelg Sophists since comparable objections to situational method may still be made. Subversion, corruption and relativism indicgte the gist of long- standing objections to sophistry. We may use these symbols to meet comparable objections to situationlal method in practical philosophy.

Subversion as the deliberate attempt to overthrow established institutions, customs, mores or nomoi is a familiar enough conception today. Totalitarian imperiahms such as Russian and Chinese communism have lent a certain

17“The Ballot and thc Drcam: A Century of ‘Educational Democracy’,” Political Science Quarterly, December 19668. Apart from George Grote. appraisals of the sophists which I have followed are to be found in such woib as Karl Poppcr’s, The Open Society and its Enernirs; Untcrsteiner’s, The Sophists (1954) , (Freeman’s translation) ; Gomperz, T h e Greek Thinkem (vol. i) .

180n thc principle of maximal democracy and some of its implications see Person to Person.

1y‘Thc sophists” has long been recogniscd as a misleading catcgary as a subject for judgments. W e might as wcll try to formulate meaningful criticisms today of “teachlers,” “entertainers” or even “mcchanics.”


rationality to paranoiac beliefs in conspiracy. Nor need we doubt that some teachers - in higher education if not in schools - regard subversion as their privilege with a persistence seeming at times to pay no regard to justification, no regard to the alternatives to the institutions they subvert. Then again, some people take the view that the communications industry (in the United Kingdom at any rate) harbours irresponsible subversion on such a scale that it is now virtually impossible for any constructive progressive conception of prevailing ways of life to find utterance.

We do not need to accept such views in order to agree that widespread habits of subversion make the role of the teacher as practical philosopher of very great importance. Unless we are prepared to leave the forming of opinions, attitudes and interests to “communicators” whose own values, intentions and aims have seldom benef3ed from education of this sort let alone from other forms of public criticism, we teachers are obliged to concern ourselves with the public way of life by methods consistent both with autonomous educational values and with the way of life which tolerates them. In our present condition such an education is necessary to turn widespread habits of subversion into constructive, critical participation in (responsible society.

Corruption, charged against the Sophists, meant this at least: they were accused of using their rhetoric to “make the wolrse case seem the better” - an accusation which in our own time has been brought against lawyers, ad- vertisers, poIiticians and public relations officers. Professional philosophers can hardly be accused of corruption in this sense as they seldom say anything substantial about “cases” - good or bad. The teacher in practical philosophy today has to pick his way with some care among the diverse contributions of academic philosophy in the recent past, The influence of linguistic analysis allied to positivism lingers “outside the walls” however outmoded academic philosophers may suppose it to be. This is an influence which has helped to cast doubt on the validity of ordinary speech, inspiring the clever to dismiss value judgments as “mere” words and generally discrediting the public language together with ‘the disciplines necessary to its full enjoyment. Ironically ( and not, perhaps, without some causal explanation) this disparagement of literacy among the intelligentsia has gone on at a time when the “communicators” have exercised through the mass media an influence which may or may not be corrupting but which is certainly enormous and equally certainly owes little to philosophy.

Disparagement of the verbal arts - sometimes aided by scientists who talk as if numeracy were a human skill equal in value if not superior to literacy - has to be resisted by those who believe in responsible society. For it is only by an adequate and flexible public language that men of diverse experience and training can come together in community to confront critical simtuations and make human decisions. On the other hand liberal democracy guards against the corruptibility of verbal skill and assists the development of responsible society by enlarging the number of “competent judges”m and

2oAn argument used by George Grote in his defence of the sophists. See my paper The Ballot and the Dream and the reference in Note 17 above.


providing the institutions in which the public language may be responsibly deployed.

A further guard against the corruptibility of speech has been provided by those skills in analytical, conceptual clarity which professional, academic philosophy has developed in the past few decades. Conceptual clarity and logical rigour practised for their own sake, away $om the problems of theory and practice, are sterile accomplishments. To give these pride of place in a philosophy syllabus would be a poor contribution to the school cu’rriculum, a miserly offering from the rich resources of western philosophy. Relate them at the start, however, on the one hand to the established parts of the curriculum, on the other to a course in practical philosophy using the situational method and a significant advance would have been made to the initiation of newcomers into a responsible society.

Situational method is not concerned primarily with verbal skill. Or, to put the matter more pointedly, in using the method at any rate we doubt the usefulness of the concept, “mere words.” Words provoked by and referred to critical situations are never “mere”, their interaction with principles and values is so intimate as to make them difficult to sepalrate. To some this alone constitutes a major objection to such methods: they argue that by verbalising the issues involved in crjtical situations and by teaching newcomers to do this we teach the diversity of principles, the contingency of values and that this is corruption of a special sort.

Relativism in principles and values may seem to be offensive, properly speaking, only to those who believe they comprehend certain absolutes or else (and these need not be the same persons) to those who think men will accept and act upon no principle, value no end, unless the rule or thc good has absolute authority. Yet imt is not only to such people that the prudential maxim, “when in Rome do as the Romans do,” seems morally unsatisfactory. If cultural diversity is “fact” so also is moral, rational interest in the hniver- salisability of principles and values. The situational method is meant to deal with both aspects of the human condition. To assert on the one hand that there are principles of “absolute” validity (where this means “irrespective of human, moral-rational judgment) and on the other that there is no ground of obligation apart from such absolutes does not on the face of it contribute effectively to our public education. If “relativism” means regarding such assertions as non-functional then the user of situational method is in a position necessarily relativist. If on the other hand relativism means accepting a sociological description as prescriptive and abandoning the attempt to univer- salise principles and values; or if it means discouraging respect for principles and values acceptable to a community on the ground that they are not acceptable in the same way to other communities then on both counts the method is intended to be non-relativist. For much of the apparatus discussed here is concerned with ways of modifying or extending or adapting or reconciling principles. The method for confronting critical situations is designed to end in action within a given community though not necessarily in any given group or without respect to other communities. The imperatives


of action and of the social criteria which govern action are ever present and coming to terms with them is so much the concern of the method that relativism in this scnse is precisely what the method rejects.

Several important concepts have been indicated in this paper without that meticulous explanation and analysis philosophers are expected to give. Intention, for example, action, value, principle and, indeed, situation itself. We have sometimes to choose between meticulous attention to detail and the broad presentation of ideas whose urgency seems to require some postpone- ment of such care. In this case I wished to thrust to the forefront of discussion on philosophy in schools the requirements of the practical, or, to put the matter in another way, I wished to confront teachers generally with what I regard as a highly critical situation confronting our civilization at this kime and therefore not to obscure the situation with overmuch attention 40 detail. One such conception, however, cannot be left without further comment the more particularly because it involves conditions to which every teaching method is subject, the conditions provided by the teacher’s own attitudes, interests and values : the conception, that is, of democratic intention.

“Drmocracy”, as we have often been told, can be used to mean a number of things, not all of them compatible. By “democratic intention” here I stipu- late the intention to increase the number of those who can take part effectively in the management and determination of their own, their groups’ and the public interest. Teachers who lack ma moderate confidence in the moral and rational capacities of the newcomcrs they teach do not have the democratic intention (in this sense). They lack it, too, who though they protest such a trust, take no steps within their own competency to equip newcomers for such self management ( in both the private and public senses of that phrase). Just as, by comparable tokens, statesmen lack this intention when they think they have done their duty to “democracy” by maintaining “representative” government on the principle of one-man-one-vote. Situational method is intended to provide some of the equipment essential to responsible society. While its propcr use, as we said at the start, implies democracy in this sense and even reulises it in the teaching group, it is not likely to be properly used unless the teacher himself has such intentions.

situational method: a proposal for political education in democracy

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