In 1983 the Royal Institute of Philosophy organized a conference for teachers of Liberal Studies, designed to help them to develop critical skills in their Sixth Form and Further Education pupils. The announcement said that the conference would ‘explore the competing claims of objectivity and relativism in different areas of inquiry, asking in each case to what extent there are objective ways of assessing competing views’. The event was innocently advertised under the title ‘Critical Thinking’. The innocence was in the intention more than in the effect. One transatlantic visitor, though he expressed himself with New World courtesy, accused the organ-isers of something between bad faith and false pretences. Unknown to Gordon Square, the phrase ‘critical thinking’ had by then (to speak with Old World candour) been hijacked by a new movement and taken out of the main current of its currency, like ‘peace’ and ‘gay’ and ‘anti-Nazi’ before it.
The Historical Experience of Liberal Studies for Vocational Learners in Further Education
