RETURN TO THE CROSSROADS - MARITAIN 50 YEARS ON

Writing a little over a decade ago of developments in educational phil osophy, R. F. Dearden remarked on the dearth of alternative approaches to that of conceptual analysis which predominated, at least in Anglop hone cultures, at that time. One possible avenue of enquiry which he i dentified as conspicuously absent in this respect was the development of a distinctively Catholic approach to problems of educational philos ophy, observing that a work of the mid-war years, Maritain's Education at the Crossroads (1943), appeared to be well nigh the only modern ef fort in this direction. More than a decade on from this, in a climate no longer exclusively dominated by conceptual analysis - indeed, in wh ich there is unprecedented interest in a wealth of different schools, traditions and approaches to philosophy of education - Dearden's remar ks about the absence of a distinctively Catholic perspective still app ly. In the following essay, therefore, the authors have undertaken, vi a a critical analysis of Maritain's educational speculations of half a century ago, to try to discern some of the principal issues and consi derations which would need to be addressed in the interests of identif ying a distinctively Catholic educational philosophy.