Subjects, Disciplines and Practices

This article attempts to show how Hirst’s earlier work on forms of knowledge, and his later work on education as an inculcation into practices, have close connections, closer than those made explicit in his own writings. In fact, it can be argued that, in some sense, the idea of a practice is fundamental to understanding the ways in which knowledge is organized, and thus to the epistemic claim that knowledge is organized differently according to the various ways in which it is acquired and evaluated. This approach allows us to make a distinction between disciplines and subjects that in turn allows us to distinguish knowledge-seeking from knowledge transmitting activities, particularly in the context of school subjects and thus to bring out more clearly the relationship between the practical side of knowledge acquisition and evaluation, on the one hand, and the structure of the knowledge thus acquired, on the other. By doing this, we can see an underlying unity in Hirst’s concerns that is not so obvious at first sight.