Enjoyment and the Activity of Mind: Dialogues on Whitehead and Education

Foster N. Walker was born in England in 1941. In 1963 he left industrial chemical research to train as an elementary school teacher, and from 1966 to 1971 he taught in British and Canadian elementary schools. After obtaining his B.A. in English Literature and B.A.Hons. in Philosophy at the University of Winnipeg, Manitoba, he completed doctoral studies in philosophy at The University of Western Ontario. In 1976 he taught in the philosophy depart-ment of The University of Winnipeg and in the same year moved to a permanent position teaching philosophy of education in The Department of Educational Foundations of The University of Alberta. In 1979 he was awarded a doctorate in philosophy for his thesis, Knowing and Education: An Epistemological Perspective on Whitehead's Educational Theory. He formed and co-facilitated the Edmonton Large Dialogue Group in 1991 and the Calgary Large Dialogue Group in 1994, continuing the experimentation with dialogue in the large group begun by Patrick deMaré and by David Bohm. In 1996 he left university work as Professor Emeritus to focus on writ-ing and on researching dialogue as the unique and most unfamiliar potential of human speech and relationship. Foster N. Walker has given numerous lectures and workshops for school and university teachers. He has made experimental teaching in the university a continuing area of practical research and the basis of articles and conference papers on school and university pedagogy. His unpublished book manuscript on philosophy of education, Education with a Human Face, was for many years used with students of education at the University of Alberta. He has published articles in philosophy of education and delivered papers at con-ferences on philosophy and the philosophy of education in Canada, England, and the United States. Many of these have involved the educational implica-tions of the philosophies of Alfred North Whitehead and Jiddu Krishnamurti, and the significance of dialogue for education. He is a past president of The Northwest Philosophy of Education Society. He is presently facilitating a phi-losophy dialogue group in Calgary, Alberta, and writing a novel that explores the process of large dialogue groups and the effect of dialogue in everyday life.