A SKEPTICAL EDUCATION

In a turn on the familiar notion that learning is inquiry, Dennis Senchuk suggests in this essay that an otherwise exemplary educational curriculum could benefit from the inclusion of some distinctively skeptical modes of inquiry. Senchuk construes two pertinent varieties of skepticism as inquiries into inquiry-one involving an inquiry into the methodology of inquiry, and the other focused argumentatively on specific outcomes of inquiry. The author stops short of interpreting these skeptical modes as the core of critical thinking, but sees them as affording opportunities for valuable linkages between philosophy and education. To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it. - Bertrand Russell