2 research outputs found
Management, skills and creativity: the purpose and value of instrumental reasoning in education discourse
Reason is a heterogeneous word with many meanings and functions. Instrumental reasoning is the âuseful but blindâ variant that, for Horkheimer, presupposes âthe adequacy of procedures for purposes more or less taken for granted and supposedly self-explanatoryâ. The paper argues that the root of instrumental reasoning is to be found in Hume and Weber and suggests that the problems associated with portraying reason as âinertâ or âformalâ underpin many areas of education policy today. A scrutiny of discourses on managerialism, skills and creativity suggests that they are not only bound by instrumental reasoning but tied to unacknowledged purposes associated with what Marcuse called âcapitalist rationalityâ. The paper concludes by reflecting upon Habermasâ notion of substantive reasoning that offers education a way forward