This interview took place through email during October-November, 2019.
Michael: It’s a real pleasure to engage you in conversation. You were a foundation member of PESA and someone who in the pre-Internet era challenged the Analytic Philosophy of Education (APE) orthodoxy through a Marxist lens. Your Education and Knowledge; The Structured Misrepresentation of Reality (1979) had a huge effect on me and a generation of younger scholars drawn to philosophy of education. They are many questions I want to ask but let me start with a set that explores your biography in relation to PESA especially given that 2020 is the 50th celebration of the Society: I believe you were a foundation member? Why did you become a member? Who else joined the Society? What are your earliest memories of the Society and first conference?
Kevin: Hi Michael; it’s good to talk to you again. My association with PESA was in a very large sense accidental. I had just finished twelve years of teaching and had been appointed as a lecturer in Education at Sydney Teachers College as well as a part-time tutor in Education at Sydney University, but at heart I was in a deep state of confusion. My teaching career had been judged as highly successful, and my University studies in Education were regarded as worthy of First Class Honours and also got me the above positions, but underlying it all I knew that something major was wrong. I was regarded as a good teacher, but my pupils clearly weren’t going to be doyens of society, and five years studying Education had in no way explained to me why, for all of my, and other hard slogging teachers’ work, we were failing our students, at least socially. Now I was teaching future teachers, and frankly I didn’t believe in the stuff I was teaching, which was basically the same stuff I had learnt as a student a few years earlier.
I discussed this often with a sympathetic lecturer, Bob Peterson, who said he shared my concerns and suggested I meet up with Bill Andersen who had just returned from London having studied some new-fangled thing called ‘Philosophy of Education’ with a guy named Richard Peters. So I went to meet Bill and immediately enrolled in his post-graduate class. Bill also told me that Anna Hogg, my own Head of School at the College, had also studied with Peters and was totally frustrated that nobody was teaching or studying philosophy of education at the College. I therefore went and had a long talk with Anna, who was quite delighted that a staff member she had been ‘allocated’ might fulfil her dream of promoting a philosophical approach to educational studies. Then Anna let me in on a little ‘secret’: she and Bill had been sneaking off occasionally to meet Les Brown and some members of his staff at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) for meetings to try and work out how to start a Society like Peters’ Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain; and she asked me if I would like to join them at their next meeting. Well; seeing a potential solution to at least some of my confusions, I readily agreed, and they happily gave me a seat at the table. But I needed a title, and thus became ‘Minute Secretary’ of the ‘Australian Philosophers of Education Society Planning Committee’. My job was to take the Minutes: my personal mission was to listen, learn and take in everything.
So that’s how it began. Of course, two fundamental changes had to be made. ‘Australia’ had to be broadened to ‘Australasia’ to include interested New Zealanders; and as the name we started with provided the acronym ‘APES’, we soon had a re-named ‘Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia’ and PESA was born. Incidentally, there is quite a misconception here. Many believe that with PESA the journal Educational Philosophy and Theory was also born, but in fact the Journal was originally Les Brown’s ‘private’ Journal and preceded PESA by a number of years, although it certainly has its place as an influence in the formation of PESA.
At first, we had quite stringent membership requirements, and another of Anna’s staff, Keith Foster, joined with me and we became the ‘Qualifications Committee’. Thus, to join PESA applicants had to meet certain academic requirements and also gain the imprimatur of two people who had never read, studied or taught philosophy or philosophy of education in their lives. But the applications dribbled in, largely from Les Brown’s staff (Shirley Smith, Cec Field), members of Bill Andersen’s Graduate class (Brian Hill, Jim Walker, John Kleinig, Warren Fenley), Bill’s past students (Peter Hobson), subscribers to the already-existing Educational Philosophy and Theory, colleagues of Ivan Snook in Christchurch, and others particularly in South Australia and Western Australia; and the Society was officially proclaimed and its first Conference, a rather informal affair, took place under Les Brown’s guidance at UNSW in 1970. I missed this, and all of the following eighteen months, as I successfully overcame an unexpected encounter with cancer. My next memory is sitting next to Bill Anderson on a plane to Christchurch heading for the 1972 PESA Annual Conference, which was headlining Richard Peters himself.
Michael: I’m interested in your comment that so much of what you taught and experienced in teaching was dross and trivial. This seems to be a big factor in your intellectual curiosity that drove you to look for deeper meaning in education and teaching. Is this true? You mention Les Brown, Anna Hogg and Bill Andersen, was this a nucleus of PESA? What did you learn from them? What was your initial view of Peters’ work and the London school? When did you begin to challenge Peter’s liberalism view of education? A welter of questions – respond to what you want to. I am trying to get at the transformation of your own intellectual world view, breaking from of the dominant conception in the 1970s.
Kevin: I’ll try and answer as much of that in one go, if I can.
To begin with, what comprised the undergraduate ‘Education’ courses at Sydney University was pretty uninspiring stuff. ‘Education’ was not offered to first year students and required Psychology 1 as a pre-requisite. The Year 2 Course (Education 1) consisted of a Major in ‘Child Growth and Development’ and a Minor in ‘Sociology of Education’. The former was confined to learning what Sears, Piaget and Freud had each posited as the way children develop and learn, while the latter was stuck in the paradigm of Talcott Parsons. Like I said, pretty uninspiring. The Year 3 Course (Education 2) had as its major ‘The Development of Educational Thought’, and this is where I became more interested. The problem, however, was that the course consisted of going through the ‘great thinkers’ chronologically, one a week, and that was that: Plato one week, Aristotle the next week and all the way to Dewey by November. And for suffering this you could expect exam questions such as ‘In what major ways does Rousseau’s theory of a good education differ from Plato’s?’, or ‘Discuss what you see to be the strength and weaknesses of Locke’s thoughts on education’. For me there were two major problems and frustrations with this. On the one hand we, as students, were neither offered nor pointed to methodology for comparing, or especially, evaluating these ‘great thinkers’; while on the other hand they were paraded past us in weekly episodes as if their thoughts or ideas were some sort of a-historical almost physical things that they just plucked out of, or popped into, the air – there was simply no context. And to go back to where I began; none of this helped me in any way whatsoever to understand the reality of my teaching life – namely that the kids I had taught hated school and even those who were successful didn’t gain much social benefit from it. Basically, not even a University major in Education helped explain, in any serious way, how or why kids were failing school, and more importantly, how and why schooling was failing kids.
Now to the development of my intellectual curiosity. Well, originally it had nothing to do with Education and a lot to do with luck. I went to University as a mature-age part-time student; as a maths teacher seeking a degree so that I would get paid more as a teacher. I had failed miserably a decade and a half ago at school, and I believed I would fail at University too unless I learnt the ropes. So I enrolled in two first year subjects that I expected to fail in, English and History, which would not affect my intended future of a Mathematics Major. But to my surprise I found myself in the handful of students at the top of the Order of Merit in both subjects, and I was offered a place in the Honours streams of both Departments. Well, part-time students don’t do Honours, but I decided to give it a go in the English Department – and then the world changed. Gone were the lecture theatres of 500 students and the copying down of notes, and in came classes of 15: the eleven Honours students and four staff (to show us that even staff disagreed about things) and away we went discussing and arguing and explaining and discussing again, with everybody having read the texts of course: and it didn’t hurt to have had Howard Jacobson and Germaine Greer as two of my tutors either. This was the other side of my undergraduate studies, where you were judged on what you thought rather than on what you memorised, and it led me strive for a top place in Psychology 1 (that pre-requisite for Education) which I got, and this opened the door to the Honours stream in Education as well. So basically I brought my new-found intellectual curiosity across from English to Education; but then found it somewhat thwarted by the general dullness there, even in the Honours stream (notwithstanding Bob Peterson’s and Ray Debus’s efforts), until the return of Bill Andersen.
I mentioned earlier that, on meeting the man, I immediately enrolled in Bill’s post-graduate class, but there’s a bit more to it than this. A pre-requisite for entry into Bill’s course was an undergraduate major in philosophy, and as you can see from what I said above, I had not taken even a single subject in that discipline. Bill, however, waived the requirement because of my overall record, and possibly my enthusiasm, but he suggested I catch up on a bit of philosophy just in order to be able to keep up with the discourse in class. So I decided to do my own ‘Major’ in a single year, and without formally enrolling, of course, I attended a first year, a second year and two third year subjects in Philosophy in the day time while doing Bill’s course at night. This was academic heaven, with everything to gain and nothing to give back. I read all the set texts, and whatever else I could fit in. I sat in all the lectures and attended all the tutorials (the tutors were all happy to have an interested participating student, and no extra marking), and I could have it all without having to hand in the assignments or sit the final exams. Talk about a free rider! Well, I learnt an awful lot of philosophy that year, and sat at the feet of a lot of people who would influence both my later life and my academic work. And in addition to this there was Bill’s class itself. Through some marvelous alignment of the stars, among the students sat (Professor) Brian Hill, (Professor) Louis Arnaud Reid, John Kleinig, Warren Fenley, the almost unbelievably sharp and widely-read Michael Matthews, and the finest philosopher I have known in my life, Jim Walker. Basically, from this time on I was surrounded by, and benefitted from, the company of the best philosophers in Sydney. This was an education and a half, further enhanced by Bill’s approach of insisting that we ‘philosophise’ by openly putting out our ideas to the testing intellects of our classmates.
I learnt a lot more from Bill than just that. I learnt, but could never hope to match, the depths of his humanity: his love, his patience, his caring, his ability to be a critic without hurting and a friend without intruding or asking for anything in return. Bill supervised my not just my Masters thesis, written largely during my illness, but also my recovery: neither would have been complete without him.
You also asked about Anna Hogg and Les Brown. At different times each was my Head of School, and while we shared some administrative duties it stayed strictly on that level: they were never my teachers. But there is one more thing I would like to add before I get on to my approach to philosophy and philosophy of education. There was another teacher, one who I never met but who totally permeated the School of English which was so influential on me, namely Cambridge Don, F.R.Leavis. I was never really a Leavisite, but on the other hand I never lost sight of his central dictum: ‘Words on the page! There is nothing but words on the page.’ That’s how I learnt to do my literary criticism, and that’s the focus I brought to my philosophic studies. It certainly paid off, even with, as we shall see, just one little word.
You asked next about my initial view of Peters’ work and that of the London School; when I began to challenge Peters’ liberalism view of education and how and when I managed to break free from the dominant analytic conception of philosophy of education in the 1970s. I would like to bypass those questions in a direct sense as I have twice given rather full accounts of those matters elsewhere,Footnote 1 and instead just focus on a few small but what I feel are fairly central points.
My journey from being totally enthralled by Peters to almost total rejection began on my first reading of Ethics and Education yet took more than half a decade to play out. I felt, in fact knew, that there were problems with that book but what held me back was that so many people, far more experienced in philosophy than I was, seemed not to notice the myriad of things I was finding on my countless readings and re-readings of the text. Peters was committing the naturalistic fallacy almost at will, he was openly contradicting himself often, his central chapter on ‘Worthwhile Activities’ was nothing short of banal, he was reaching conclusions in no way supported by the text (and at times not even supported by common sense), and on it went. And yet in the Preface he had acknowledged the critical reading of drafts by many of Britain’s leading philosophers, and nowhere in the mainstream literature (or in our class) could I find anything critical of the book in general or of the individual errors in particular. I seriously doubted the objectivity of my ‘scholarship’: how could someone so new to this discipline find so much allegedly wrong with the work everybody was praising? I had to find the key, and when I did, after a number of years - literally a six-year apprenticeship - I was completely shaken by what it opened for me.
The key was, of course, that now ‘famous’ line in the Preface: ‘Advances [in philosophy] are made when two or three are gathered together who speak more or less the same language and can meet frequently for the purpose of hitting each other politely on the head’. Or in other words, the London School were all engaging in polite discourse using the same language. Was it any wonder, then, that no criticism emanated from within, and especially from those Institutions controlled by Peters? And then I really read that other little line from Hirst and Peters’ The Logic of Education (which I had glossed over so many times) regarding aims of education: ‘… in formulating aims of education we are attempting to specify more precisely what qualities … we think it desirable to develop’ (p.16). Now Peters had written many times in Ethics and Education that the vast majority of people do not care about things beyond their instant material circumstances, and also that the major political parties and forces in Britain gave scarce consideration to education. So, who were those ‘we’? Peters had also written, in Ethics and Education, that no educated person, in their right mind would want to sweep the streets. But as I read rather than glossed over this as well, I realized that, as there were countless street-sweeping type jobs that simply had to be done if society were to function, it followed that no State (or no power or entity identifying itself as ‘we’) could tolerate, let alone encourage, schools educating all the kids. Some, probably many kids, had to remain uneducated. At last I was beginning to get the answers I had been seeking.
Now it all started to come together for me (the theoretical issues, the lack of critique and, finally some realization of why there was a disjunction between what we read about education and what was really going on in schools). A year’s agonizing and rewriting (spurred on by Jim Walker) resulted in the Auckland 1976 paper ‘Peters on Schooling’. But there was a bigger moment. I felt that I had to take my critique to the lions’ den itself to see how well it stood up, if at all, so in 1977 I presented a paper titled ‘What Philosophy of Education Might Be’ to the Annual Conference of the Philosophy of Education Department of the University of London Institute of Education, and laid out my full argument against analytic philosophy of education before Richard Peters himself, as well as a number of his staff and a whole bunch of Masters and Doctoral students. A polished version of the paper was published in Educational Philosophy and Theory Vol.12; No.1, pp.19–35; 1980 under the title ‘Philosophers of Education: Detached Spectators or Political Practitioners’ and as the title suggested, it argued that philosophers of education could not possibly take up the role of detached spectators, that ‘detachment’ and neutral second order philosophical investigations were myths, that supposed detached conceptual analysis was nothing more than laying down stipulative definitions from positions of professional rather than epistemic privilege, that analytic philosophy either masked or ignored what was really happening in and with schooling, and that, like it or not, when philosophers of education went to work they were actually professional practitioners, such that (doing) philosophy of education was really a political practice.
Amazingly, for me at least, the paper was met by silence, and the most frantic pleas by the Chair for questions failed to gain a single response. The same happened when ‘Peters on Schooling’ was published in 1977 as well as upon the publication of this one in 1980. Even though both were very frequently cited positively in Australasia and America, and notwithstanding that both were re-published in collections, not a single reply, attack, mild rebuke or anything emanated from the London School, even up to this very day. It was as if, for one part of the world, the papers had never happened.
I would like to say two final things about these papers, which, incidentally, were only my third and fourth publications respectively. First; many people categorise me as a Marxist, and it is true that I have written a lot from a Marxist perspective. But here I have to challenge your initial question. These two papers challenged analytic philosophy of education, but not through a Marxist lens. They are a response to analytic philosophy, largely, as Ivan Snook was always at pains to point out, by turning the weapons of analytic philosophy back on itself. Secondly: while people seem to give me most credit for ‘Peters on Schooling’, I firmly believe the other paper, ‘Philosophers of Education etc. ‘is by far the better one. And although it was only my fourth published paper, it also marks my last engagement with Peters, the London School, and analytic philosophy. The next hundred or so had other sights in view.
Michael
What did your future work concentrate on?
Kevin
Well, it would come as no surprise to you that virtually everything I wrote after that concentrated on the role of teachers in schools and society in general, on the role of schooling in society, and indirectly how we were failing or at least disillusioning the majority of our children. Philosophically, I concentrated on epistemology, given that teachers and schooling were concerned with the dissemination of knowledge; and on social philosophy, given that I had a major interest in social theory and how social structures and social relations were fostered, produced and re-produced.
Michael
You made a special note that the two papers we just talked about were not written from a Marxist perspective, yet you are commonly regarded as a Marxist. Can you comment on that.
Kevin
Certainly. My personal growth as a philosopher occurred during an exciting and particularly radical milieu of political activity, and I was drawn strongly to Marxism not only by my background as a kid from the working class, but also by both what was happening physically around me (Vietnam of course, apartheid in South Africa, and so on) and by my studies which introduced me to neo-Marxists and Louis Althusser in particular. And this deeply permeated my writing in general, as well as my political activities. In 1976, along with fellow PESA members Jim Walker and Bob Mackie, I founded a new Journal which was distinctly, but not inviolably Marxist. My first book, Education and Knowledge, written in 1976 but held back from publication till January 1, 1979, took a strong Marxist perspective, and my next book Teachers and Classes, written in 1979/80 but published in 1982, had as its sub-title, ‘A Marxist Analysis’. In fact, notwithstanding that Marxism does, to varying extents, permeate a lot of my later stuff (and frankly I can’t see how anybody can claim to be a genuine philosopher without at least recognizing the value of Marxist epistemology), Teachers and Classes is the only work I ever wrote that attempted to lay out a strict Marxist analysis. And lest anybody think that I might be resiling from a once-held position, I certainly am not. As a pacifist I was never a ‘full blown’ Marxist calling for the ‘violent overthrow of existing social relations’, and as a realist I never subscribed to ‘the dictatorship of the proleteriat’, but I still wish to see the end of unequal social relations, the exploitation of the weak and the poor, and I would be most delighted to see the end of capitalism and the growth of the socialist state.
Michael
Can you tell us a bit about how matters developed in Britain after your experience in England in 1977.
Kevin
Basically, things could not have been more pleasant, and fruitful. The University of London Institute of Education hosted me on four further half-yearly sabbaticals, in 1984, 1992, 1995 and 1999, and although I was as prickly and argumentative as ever, these were all most friendly and productive periods. The Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain eventually took the opportunity of throwing questions at me by graciously giving me the honour of presenting the opening Keynote Address to its 1990 Annual Conference – not surprisingly my paper was entitled ‘Empowering Teachers’ – and I gave further papers at the 1992, 1994 and 1996 Annual Conferences. And the Journal of the Society, The Journal of Philosophy of Education, (both Journal and Society ‘founded’ by Richard Peters), published four of my papers in the period 1990–1996.
There was one other thing of very special significance to me. When I was in London in 1999 those associated with me knew that this would be my last professional visit, and I was given the honour of presenting a final paper to the London Branch of the Philosophy of Education Society at the Institute of Education. When I gave that paper I looked up from the lectern and saw that the Director of the Institute, the late Geoff Whitty, was sitting in the second row. Geoff and I had met in Sydney in 1976 when he was on sabbatical and he credited me, rightly or wrongly, with turning on a couple of lights for him. This day he had made space in his hopelessly crammed calendar to attend my paper, listen, and say farewell. Such a man was Geoffrey.
Michael
Why did you decide to move to Macquarie University, and how did that work out?
Kevin
Macquarie University had a long-standing tradition of producing what it called ‘the scholar teacher’ and was the only University in the State to require prospective teachers to undertake academic studies in Education along with their specific Teacher Education Program. Well, this was as near as I could find to what I had been writing about for years, so I was eager to join the program. But when I did, I discovered two weaknesses. First; the academic requirement was limited, but being a Professor gives you some power and soon I was able to have the regulations changed to require all teacher-education students to complete a major in Education along with their practical studies. This was instrumental to the writing of my 1995 book Teachers: Constructing the Future (Falmer Press). And second: Macquarie taught no Philosophy of Education, and only one Education Staff member had ever joined PESA (and that for only a fleeting moment). So, I was able to introduce Philosophy of Education right through the School, from a small portion in the first year compulsory course, to a larger portion in a second year compulsory core subject, and then to a full semester stand-alone third year course. I also offered six Units in the Masters Program, two per Semester on a rotational basis, such that it was possible for students to build in up to four philosophy of education units in a full eight Unit MEd Program, and by the end of my second year there Macquarie graduated its first PhD with a thesis in Philosophy of Education. More were to follow on a regular basis until my retirement, which also brought an end to the discipline there.
Michael
Apart from all that you have told us, what other interest do you have in your life?
Kevin
I’ll mention three. First there are movies. Maureen and I are both film buffs, and for almost half a century we have haunted Film Festivals, revival houses and the like. And when lack of mobility became an issue we began to build up a home library of film on DVD. There’s no longer the joy and luxury of ‘foyer chat’ with kindred souls, but our movie nights are still most enjoyable.
Second comes cricket. I played representative cricket in my younger days and some medicos sheet my knee problems back to decades of keeping wicket. But Maureen and I find the gradual working out of a five-day cricket game fascinating, and luxuriate in watching Test Matches from beginning to end (on TV now, of course). Shorter limited overs forms of the game have no such appeal.
And at the very peak is footy, which for us is the Hawthorn Football Club. Someone once said that footy is a matter of life and death, to which a wag replied: ‘No; it’s far more important than that.’ And I feel that maybe that’s right. We need sleep to get us from one day to the next, just as we need sabbaths and holidays to get us from one week or one year to the next. But footy provides something more. It is the total escape, where no phones ring, no emails pop up, and where every rational aspect of all those things that bother your life is rendered non-existent. A good game is three hours of pure joy, win or lose, for an unrestrained self. We will be renewing our membership next season.
Emeritus Professor, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
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Additional information
Notes on contributors
Michael A. Peters
Kevin Harris was born in Sydney to working class Polish emigrants in 1938. He finished High School in 1954 and trained as Primary School Teacher at Balmain Teachers College in the years 1955–6, becoming a Primary School teacher first in Sydney and then in the bush during 1957–9. In 1960 he was transferred by the Department of Education to a secondary school to teach Geography (1960–1), and Maths/Science in inner city Sydney (1962–8). He began University studies as a part-time evening student at Sydney University in 1964, graduating BA Hons 1st in English and Education. He was appointed Lecturer in Education at Sydney Teachers’ College and Tutor at Sydney University during the years 1969–73. Kevin graduated MEd (Hons 1st, Uni Medal) in 1972. During 1968–72 he worked on the PESA 'formation committee'. He was appointed probationary lecturer in Education at UNSW in 1974 and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1975. He became highly active in PESA and elsewhere and wrote a great deal during 1974–79. He was awarded PhD UNSW in 1979 and published Education and Knowledge in 1979, Teachers and Classes (1982), and Sex Ideology and Religion (1984). He met his wife Maureen in 1979, married in 1982, and their son David was born in 1984. He attended many international conferences 1976–1999 including Hong Kong as Visiting Professor, Auckland University twice, and posts in London, Birmingham, and Malaysia. Kevin was promoted to Associate Professor in 1987 and appointed Professor of Education Policy Studies, Macquarie University in 1990. He published Teachers: Constructing the Future in 1994. He was honoured as a PESA Fellow 1995, retired in 2000 and was awarded Emeritus status by University Council. Since retirement Kevin initially enjoyed travel. He became very active again in NSW schools and with teachers' organizations in 2001–5. He lost effective use of his legs through four botched knee replacements 2005–8 and became ‘largely chained to a computer, where he wrote small opinion pieces, political comment, occasional Journal articles and worked helping aged folk become computer literate.’ As he comments, riffing on Hamlet: ‘I generally suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and just about every torment this flesh is subject to.’ He was hospitalized again 2011–2013 but is still kicking as best he can.
Notes
1 See Harris, K. (2013). Not your average red-headed Irish catholic: Reflections of and by the person behind the byline. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 44 (5), 450–463, and Harris, K. (2013). Ripples from a passing ship: Memories and a legacy of Richard Peters. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 45(2), 182–190.