The Imprint of Business Norms on American Education By Dameon V ...

For this reason, I think revisiting the rationalist arguments of certain educational philosophers (Charles Bailey, Richard Peters, Paul Hirst, and Israel Scheffler) is important. The rationalist tradition views the aim of education as motivating autonomy, linked with a certain “cognitive perspective,” as I highlighted earlier (Peters, 1966). Motivating the autonomous cognition in students allows for them to connect what is learned to patterns in life, which enables them to make “rationally informed choices” (Bonnett & Cuypers, 2003). The philosophy of education I am arguing is to motivate rational autonomy in the learner.

I appreciate how Charles Bailey (1984) stated that “the liberally educated person is capable of responding to the stimuli of his present and particular environment in a way that stands in starkest possible contrast to animal reaction”—and that most people are in some way able to escape the “tyranny of the present and particular, but the extent of this escape is the measure of the liberal education they have received” (p. 20). This is why the rationalist tradition advocates for the development of the rational mind in learners.

Furthermore, motivating the rationality of a learner’s own thinking allows one to retain authentic thinking (Bailey, 1984). Authenticity in this sense means that education creates the opportunity for the pupil to be genuine to his or her “constitutive core self” (Bailey, 1984, p. 132). Bonnett and Cuypers (2003) argued that “authenticity” needs to be distinguished more fully from rational autonomy in that authenticity is concerned with meaning and personal identity in a different way,¹ whereas rationality is concerned only with knowledge acquisition. They asserted that this is a one-dimensional view of autonomy.

But, Bailey (1984) suggested the authentic view makes way for false characterizations of child-centered education. For example, “it could be