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There is an emerging consensus that to teach something as controversial is to present it as a matter on which different views are or could be held and to expound those different views as impartially as possible. This raises an important normative question that has yet to receive the attention it deserves from educational theorists: how are we to decide which topics to teach in this way? The answer suggested by Robert Dearden is that we should apply the epistemic criterion: a matter should be taught as controversial when contrary views can be held on it without those views being contrary to reason. In this essay, Michael Hand aims to defend that answer. In the first part of the article he revisits Dearden’s rather thin and unsatisfactory justification for the epistemic criterion and attempts to mend its deficiencies. In the second part, Hand examines an alternative to the epistemic criterion in the area of moral education, an alternative he labels the political criterion, and explains why he thinks we should reject it.

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Philosophers of education disagree on how the question of the moral status of homosexual acts should be tackled in the classroom. Some argue that the question should be taught as a controversial issue, that we should present rival moral positions as even-handedly as possible; others maintain that we should actively promote the view that homosexual acts are morally legitimate or unproblematic. Here I attempt to resolve this disagreement. In the first part of the article I defend the use of Robert Dearden's epistemic criterion for identifying the questions that should be taught as controversial issues. In the second part I argue that the question of the moral status of homosexual acts does not satisfy this criterion because moral objections to homosexuality are rationally indefensible. I conclude that we ought to affirm the moral legitimacy of homosexual acts in the moral education of children and young people.

Discussion is widely held to be the pedagogical approach most appropriate to the exploration of controversial issues in the classroom, but surprisingly little attention has been given to the questions of why it is the preferred approach and how best to facilitate it. Here we address ourselves to both questions. We begin by clarifying the concept of discussion and justifying it as an approach to the teaching of controversial issues. We then report on a recent empirical study of the Perspectives on Science AS‐level course, focusing on what it revealed about aids and impediments to discussion of controversial ethical issues.