Education and the adequacy of options: An interview with John White

Abstract

Mitja Sardoč’s interview with John White discusses a neglected aspect of the educational goal of equipping learners to lead a life of autonomous well-being – trying to ensure that they have adequate options from which to choose worthwhile activities and relationships. Following a brief account of the nature of autonomous well-being, White outlines and critiques Joseph Raz’s views on the adequacy of options in general as well as an earlier inadequate approach of his own to this topic in relation to the school curriculum. He then picks up and critically discusses Eamonn Callan’s curricular suggestions about how to open up a range of options. Drawing on both these discussions, the interview then leads to a threefold proposal about how schools and other agencies could go about providing the adequate range required. The last two short sections underline the wider changes needed in society if the work of these educational institutions is to bear fruit.