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Intelligence, Sapience and Learning, part 2: Dark Science – the deathly (mal)practice of Francis Galton and Cyril Burt

By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 25 July 2024

By Sandra Leaton Gray and David Scott on 25 July 2024

This blog post is Part 2 of a series relating to our newly published book: Intelligence, Sapience and Learning: Concepts, Framings and Practices.

Grainy black and white photographs of Francis Galton (left) and Cyril Burt (right) in profile

Sir Francis Galton in 1912 (left) and Sir Cyril Burt (right). Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911) and Sir Cyril Burt (1883-1971) were two pioneers of differential psychology who had close connections to UCL and IOE respectively. They worked at a time when a theistic philosophy in education was on the decline, and the new discipline of Psychology was in the ascendancy. The lives of Galton and Burt provide us with a cautionary tale about the dangers of working unchallenged in the field of science, with little accountability. (more…)

Intelligence, Sapience and Learning, part 1: making sense of our world

By Blog Editor, IOE Digital, on 24 July 2024

2D conceptual illustration of a human head and brain surrounded by a rocket, plants; a bullseye board, a trophy, etc.

Credit: Quarta via Adobe.

By David Scott and Sandra Leaton Gray on 24 July 2024

We have just published a book about some key educational concepts, with the title: Intelligence, Sapience and Learning: Concepts, Framings and Practices. These concepts are a central consideration for educators at IOE or at least we feel that they should be. In a companionate book – Women Curriculum Theorists: Power, Knowledge and Subjectivity – we looked in a similar way at the relations and connections between the concepts and practices of ‘woman’, ‘learning’ and ‘curriculum’. Social categories of gender, race, religion, dis-ability, sexuality and class are other examples of key life-defining concepts. Our new book seeks to shed light on the workings of these social categories because a proper examination of them is an essential starting point for understanding how the world and objects in that world are arranged and ordered. (more…)