3 - The durable flotsam of the binary view
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 September 2022
Summary
It is not so easy to escape the effects of the binary view. Even approaches that depart sharply from elements of the view can, paradoxically, rely on some of its most problematic underlying assumptions and implications. Some believe that the binary view has been sunk by decades of criticism. This is, in general, untrue. But even in intellectual circles where the binary view seems to have vanished, the flotsam that has survived its wreckage proves durable. We will examine a few of these survivals here.
Before examining examples of flotsam within policy theory itself, I wish to take up an example of a broader cultural influence that has a powerful impact on education policy in particular. The example will help tease out an important distinction between a consistent rejection of the binary view and a widespread outlook that superficially resembles such rejection.
Many histories
There are various directions in which one may head after accepting that thought is inevitably value-aden. One might opt for ‘confessional statements of value preferences’, as Mary Hawkesworth termed them (1992, 325). As Hodgson and Irving argue, the ideal of value-neutrality ‘seems ever more untenable given the now widespread acceptance that all inquiry is value-aden. Here the job for researchers is to be able to recognise the values we bring to bear, and use these to work for explicit ends’ (2007, 201). But even if one succeeds in identifying one's operative values, the crucial question is what comes next. Philosopher Eric Voegelin observed in the 1950s that
If science was defined as exploration of facts in relation to a value, there would be as many political histories and political sciences as there were scholars with different ideas about what was valuable … As a matter of fact, the idea was advanced, and could find wide consent, that every generation would have to write history anew because the ‘values’ which determined the selection of problems and materials had changed. (1952, 13)
This notion would seem quite close to the approach advocated in this book. But let us note where it can lead. Much controversy was sparked in Japan when the government approved a revisionist history text.
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- Facts, Values and the Policy World , pp. 40 - 48Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2022