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AMBIDEXTROUS SCHOLARSHIP: A REVIEW ESSAY
"[T]heory is ever only an abstraction from life and must always be referred back to it for meaning."
- Martin Heidegger, "Heidegger on the Art of Teaching"1
Being a philosopher of education at a time when theory and practice - the life of the mind and the life of the body, thinking and action, philosophy and education - are divided by grand canyons can be a difficult and confusing task. On the one hand, there is one's commitment to philosophy, which often requires severe estrangement from the physical world in order to contemplate principles, ideas, and logical structures that have no appearance in the everyday world. On the other hand, there is one's commitment to education, which entails engagement with actual people and societies that are growing. Philosophers of education are ambidextrous; we are adept with and committed to both these hands, being concerned equally with the development of ideas and humans and, further, unable to conceive of the growth of one in isolation from the other.
Unfortunately, this is a peculiar stance in a culture that polarizes theory and practice, making us rare and even unwelcome characters in the academy. Philosophers condescend to our concern with the everyday, while educators accuse us of living in an ivory tower. Although it has become trendy recently for academics to proclaim the interconnectedness of theory and practice, the zealousness of this trend suggests that precisely the opposite is the case: if we already had genuine understanding of the connection between theory and practice, then we would not have to force them together through academic slogans and awkward curricular requirements. Perhaps we ambidextrous philosophers of education can lead academia in its search for an organic union of thought and action.
It seems, in fact, that we have already begun to do so. Three recent works in philosophy of education show an exemplary ability to bridge the theory-practice divide in order to show the interrelation of philosophical and educational concerns: Heidegger, Education, and Modernity, edited by Michael Peters; Aristotle on the Necessity of Public Education, by Randall Curren; and Hannah Arendt and Education, edited by Mordechai Gordon. As their titles suggest, each book brings the works of a major philosophical thinker to bear...