Philosophy of Education

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The following random selection of chapter topics gives a sense of the enormous scope of the field: Sex education, special education, science education, aesthetic education, theories of teaching and learning, religious education, knowledge, truth and learning, cultivating reason, the measurement of learning, multicultural education, education and the politics of identity, education and standards of living, motivation and classroom management, feminism, critical theory, postmodernism, romanticism, the purposes of universities, affirmative action in higher education, and professional education.

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Education Siegel contains a similarly broad range of articles on among other things the epistemic and moral aims of education, liberal education and its imminent demise, thinking and reasoning, fallibilism and fallibility, indoctrination, authenticity, the development of rationality, Socratic teaching, educating the imagination, caring and empathy in moral education, the limits of moral education, the cultivation of character, values education, curriculum and the value of knowledge, education and democracy, art and education, science education and religious toleration, constructivism and scientific methods, multicultural education, prejudice, authority and the interests of children, and on pragmatist, feminist, and postmodernist approaches to philosophy of education.

Given this enormous range, there is no non-arbitrary way to select a small number of topics for further discussion, nor can the topics that are chosen be pursued in great depth. The issue of what should be taught to students at all levels of education—the issue of curriculum content—obviously is a fundamental one, and it is an extraordinarily difficult one with which to grapple.

In tackling it, care needs to be taken to distinguish between education and schooling—for although education can occur in schools, so can mis-education, and many other things can take place there that are educationally orthogonal such as the provision of free or subsidized lunches and the development of social networks ; and it also must be recognized that education can occur in the home, in libraries and museums, in churches and clubs, in solitary interaction with the public media, and the like.

In developing a curriculum whether in a specific subject area, or more broadly as the whole range of offerings in an educational institution or system , a number of difficult decisions need to be made. Issues such as the proper ordering or sequencing of topics in the chosen subject, the time to be allocated to each topic, the lab work or excursions or projects that are appropriate for particular topics, can all be regarded as technical issues best resolved either by educationists who have a depth of experience with the target age group or by experts in the psychology of learning and the like.

Is the justification that is given for teaching Economics in some schools coherent and convincing? The justifications offered for all such aims have been controversial, and alternative justifications of a single proposed aim can provoke philosophical controversy. Consider the aim of autonomy. These two formulations are related, for it is arguable that our educational institutions should aim to equip individuals to pursue this good life—although this is not obvious, both because it is not clear that there is one conception of the good or flourishing life that is the good or flourishing life for everyone, and it is not clear that this is a question that should be settled in advance rather than determined by students for themselves.

Thus, for example, if our view of human flourishing includes the capacity to think and act autonomously, then the case can be made that educational institutions—and their curricula—should aim to prepare, or help to prepare, autonomous individuals. A rival justification of the aim of autonomy, associated with Kant, champions the educational fostering of autonomy not on the basis of its contribution to human flourishing, but rather the obligation to treat students with respect as persons Scheffler []; Siegel It is also possible to reject the fostering of autonomy as an educational aim Hand Assuming that the aim can be justified, how students should be helped to become autonomous or develop a conception of the good life and pursue it is of course not immediately obvious, and much philosophical ink has been spilled on the general question of how best to determine curriculum content.

One influential line of argument was developed by Paul Hirst, who argued that knowledge is essential for developing and then pursuing a conception of the good life, and because logical analysis shows, he argued, that there are seven basic forms of knowledge, the case can be made that the function of the curriculum is to introduce students to each of these forms Hirst ; see Phillips In the closing decades of the twentieth century there were numerous discussions of curriculum theory, particularly from Marxist and postmodern perspectives, that offered the sobering analysis that in many educational systems, including those in Western democracies, the curriculum did indeed reflect and serve the interests of powerful cultural elites.

A closely related question is this: Scheffler argued that we should opt for the latter: The function of education…is rather to liberate the mind, strengthen its critical powers, [and] inform it with knowledge and the capacity for independent inquiry. Third, should educational programs at the elementary and secondary levels be made up of a number of disparate offerings, so that individuals with different interests and abilities and affinities for learning can pursue curricula that are suitable?

Or should every student pursue the same curriculum as far as each is able? The thinking here can be explicated in terms of the analogy of an out-of-control virulent disease, for which there is only one type of medicine available; taking a large dose of this medicine is extremely beneficial, and the hope is that taking only a little—while less effective—is better than taking none at all. Medically, this is dubious, while the educational version—forcing students to work, until they exit the system, on topics that do not interest them and for which they have no facility or motivation—has even less merit.

For a critique of Adler and his Paideia Proposal , see Noddings Over time, as they moved up the educational ladder it would become obvious that some had reached the limit imposed upon them by nature, and they would be directed off into appropriate social roles in which they would find fulfillment, for their abilities would match the demands of these roles. Those who continued on with their education would eventually become members of the ruling class of Guardians. The book spurred a period of ferment in political philosophy that included, among other things, new research on educationally fundamental themes.

Fair equality of opportunity entailed that the distribution of education would not put the children of those who currently occupied coveted social positions at any competitive advantage over other, equally talented and motivated children seeking the qualifications for those positions Rawls Its purpose was to prevent socio-economic differences from hardening into social castes that were perpetuated across generations.

One obvious criticism of fair equality of opportunity is that it does not prohibit an educational distribution that lavished resources on the most talented children while offering minimal opportunities to others. So long as untalented students from wealthy families were assigned opportunities no better than those available to their untalented peers among the poor, no breach of the principle would occur. Even the most moderate egalitarians might find such a distributive regime to be intuitively repugnant.

All citizens must enjoy the same basic liberties, and equal liberty always has moral priority over equal opportunity: Further, inequality in the distribution of income and wealth are permitted only to the degree that it serves the interests of the least advantaged group in society. But even with these qualifications, fair equality of opportunity is arguably less than really fair to anyone.

But surely it is relevant, given that a principle of educational justice must be responsive to the full range of educationally important goods. Suppose we revise our account of the goods included in educational distribution so that aesthetic appreciation, say, and the necessary understanding and virtue for conscientious citizenship count for just as much as job-related skills. An interesting implication of doing so is that the rationale for requiring equality under any just distribution becomes decreasingly clear. That is because job-related skills are positional whereas the other educational goods are not Hollis If you and I both aspire to a career in business management for which we are equally qualified, any increase in your job-related skills is a corresponding disadvantage to me unless I can catch up.

Positional goods have a competitive structure by definition, though the ends of civic or aesthetic education do not fit that structure. If you and I aspire to be good citizens and are equal in civic understanding and virtue, an advance in your civic education is no disadvantage to me. On the contrary, it is easier to be a good citizen the better other citizens learn to be.

At the very least, so far as non-positional goods figure in our conception of what counts as a good education, the moral stakes of inequality are thereby lowered. In fact, an emerging alternative to fair equality of opportunity is a principle that stipulates some benchmark of adequacy in achievement or opportunity as the relevant standard of distribution.

But it is misleading to represent this as a contrast between egalitarian and sufficientarian conceptions. Philosophically serious interpretations of adequacy derive from the ideal of equal citizenship Satz ; Anderson This was arguably true in A Theory of Justice but it is certainly true in his later work Dworkin The debate between adherents of equal opportunity and those misnamed as sufficientarians is certainly not over e.

Further progress will likely hinge on explicating the most compelling conception of the egalitarian foundation from which distributive principles are to be inferred. In his earlier book, the theory of justice had been presented as if it were universally valid.

But Rawls had come to think that any theory of justice presented as such was open to reasonable rejection. A more circumspect approach to justification would seek grounds for justice as fairness in an overlapping consensus between the many reasonable values and doctrines that thrive in a democratic political culture. Rawls argued that such a culture is informed by a shared ideal of free and equal citizenship that provided a new, distinctively democratic framework for justifying a conception of justice.

But the salience it gave to questions about citizenship in the fabric of liberal political theory had important educational implications. How was the ideal of free and equal citizenship to be instantiated in education in a way that accommodated the range of reasonable values and doctrines encompassed in an overlapping consensus? Political Liberalism has inspired a range of answers to that question cf.

Callan ; Clayton ; Bull Other philosophers besides Rawls in the s took up a cluster of questions about civic education, and not always from a liberal perspective. As a full-standing alternative to liberalism, communitarianism might have little to recommend it. But it was a spur for liberal philosophers to think about how communities could be built and sustained to support the more familiar projects of liberal politics e.

Furthermore, its arguments often converged with those advanced by feminist exponents of the ethic of care Noddings ; Gilligan One persistent controversy in citizenship theory has been about whether patriotism is correctly deemed a virtue, given our obligations to those who are not our fellow citizens in an increasingly interdependent world and the sordid history of xenophobia with which modern nation states are associated. The controversy is related to a deeper and more pervasive question about how morally or intellectually taxing the best conception of our citizenship should be.

The more taxing it is, the more constraining its derivative conception of civic education will be. Contemporary political philosophers offer divergent arguments about these matters. The need arises from the obligation of reciprocity which they like Rawls believe to be integral to citizenship. Because I must seek to cooperate with others politically on terms that make sense from their moral perspective as well as my own, I must be ready to enter that perspective imaginatively so as to grasp its distinctive content.

Many such perspectives prosper in liberal democracies, and so the task of reciprocal understanding is necessarily onerous. Still, our actions qua deliberative citizen must be grounded in such reciprocity if political cooperation on terms acceptable to us as diversely morally motivated citizens is to be possible at all.

This is tantamount to an imperative to think autonomously inside the role of citizen because I cannot close-mindedly resist critical consideration of moral views alien to my own without flouting my responsibilities as a deliberative citizen. Civic education does not exhaust the domain of moral education, even though the more robust conceptions of equal citizenship have far-reaching implications for just relations in civil society and the family.

The study of moral education has traditionally taken its bearings from normative ethics rather than political philosophy, and this is largely true of work undertaken in recent decades. Waldorf education also known as Steiner or Steiner-Waldorf education is a humanistic approach to pedagogy based upon the educational philosophy of the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy.

Learning is interdisciplinary, integrating practical, artistic, and conceptual elements. The approach emphasizes the role of the imagination in learning, developing thinking that includes a creative as well as an analytic component. The educational philosophy's overarching goals are to provide young people the basis on which to develop into free, morally responsible and integrated individuals, and to help every child fulfill his or her unique destiny, the existence of which anthroposophy posits.

Schools and teachers are given considerable freedom to define curricula within collegial structures. Steiner founded a holistic educational impulse on the basis of his spiritual philosophy anthroposophy. Schools are normally self-administered by faculty; emphasis is placed upon giving individual teachers the freedom to develop creative methods.

Principal historical figures

Steiner's theory of child development divides education into three discrete developmental stages predating but with close similarities to the stages of development described by Piaget. Early childhood education occurs through imitation; teachers provide practical activities and a healthy environment. Steiner believed that young children should meet only goodness. Elementary education is strongly arts-based, centered on the teacher's creative authority; the elementary school-age child should meet beauty. Secondary education seeks to develop the judgment, intellect, and practical idealism; the adolescent should meet truth.

Democratic education is a theory of learning and school governance in which students and staff participate freely and equally in a school democracy. In a democratic school, there is typically shared decision-making among students and staff on matters concerning living, working, and learning together. Neill founded Summerhill School , the oldest existing democratic school in Suffolk, England in He wrote a number of books that now define much of contemporary democratic education philosophy.

1. Problems in Delineating the Field

Neill believed that the happiness of the child should be the paramount consideration in decisions about the child's upbringing, and that this happiness grew from a sense of personal freedom. He felt that deprivation of this sense of freedom during childhood, and the consequent unhappiness experienced by the repressed child, was responsible for many of the psychological disorders of adulthood. Educational progressivism is the belief that education must be based on the principle that humans are social animals who learn best in real-life activities with other people.

Progressivists , like proponents of most educational theories, claim to rely on the best available scientific theories of learning. Most progressive educators believe that children learn as if they were scientists, following a process similar to John Dewey's model of learning known as "the pattern of inquiry": In , Dewey opened the Laboratory School at the University of Chicago in an institutional effort to pursue together rather than apart "utility and culture, absorption and expression, theory and practice, [which] are [indispensable] elements in any educational scheme.

The two most influential works that stemmed from his research and study were The Child and the Curriculum and Democracy and Education We get the case of the child vs. Jean Piaget was a Swiss developmental psychologist known for his epistemological studies with children.

His theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called " genetic epistemology ". Piaget placed great importance on the education of children. As the Director of the International Bureau of Education, he declared in that "only education is capable of saving our societies from possible collapse, whether violent, or gradual. According to Ernst von Glasersfeld , Jean Piaget is "the great pioneer of the constructivist theory of knowing. Jean Piaget described himself as an epistemologist , interested in the process of the qualitative development of knowledge.

Another important contributor to the inquiry method in education is Bruner.

Philosophy of education - Wikipedia

His books The Process of Education and Toward a Theory of Instruction are landmarks in conceptualizing learning and curriculum development. He argued that any subject can be taught in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development. This notion was an underpinning for his concept of the " spiral " helical curriculum which posited the idea that a curriculum should revisit basic ideas, building on them until the student had grasped the full formal concept.

He emphasized intuition as a neglected but essential feature of productive thinking. He felt that interest in the material being learned was the best stimulus for learning rather than external motivation such as grades. Bruner developed the concept of discovery learning which promoted learning as a process of constructing new ideas based on current or past knowledge. Students are encouraged to discover facts and relationships and continually build on what they already know.

Unschooling is a range of educational philosophies and practices centered on allowing children to learn through their natural life experiences, including child directed play , game play, household responsibilities, work experience, and social interaction , rather than through a more traditional school curriculum.

Unschooling encourages exploration of activities led by the children themselves, facilitated by the adults. Unschooling differs from conventional schooling principally in the thesis that standard curricula and conventional grading methods, as well as other features of traditional schooling, are counterproductive to the goal of maximizing the education of each child. In Holt published his first book, How Children Fail , asserting that the academic failure of schoolchildren was not despite the efforts of the schools, but actually because of the schools.

Not surprisingly, How Children Fail ignited a firestorm of controversy. Holt was catapulted into the American national consciousness to the extent that he made appearances on major TV talk shows, wrote book reviews for Life magazine, and was a guest on the To Tell The Truth TV game show. Contemplative education focuses on bringing introspective practices such as mindfulness and yoga into curricular and pedagogical processes for diverse aims grounded in secular, spiritual, religious and post-secular perspectives.

Parker Palmer is a recent pioneer in contemplative methods. Contemplative methods may also be used by teachers in their preparation; Waldorf education was one of the pioneers of the latter approach. In this case, inspiration for enriching the content, format, or teaching methods may be sought through various practices, such as consciously reviewing the previous day's activities; actively holding the students in consciousness; and contemplating inspiring pedagogical texts. Zigler suggested that only through focusing on their own spiritual development could teachers positively impact the spiritual development of students.

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Philosophy portal Education portal. In Guthrie, James W.

Introduction: Philosophy of Education and Philosophy

Encyclopedia of Education, 2nd edition. Transactionalism in Contemporary Philosophy and Ch.

In Tibbels, Kirkland; Patterson, John. An Historical and Interpretive Study. Teachers College - Columbia University. Harvard Graduate School of Education. The Art of Manliness. Phaedo Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy".

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Classic and Contemporary Readings in the Philosophy of Education. Asimov, Clifford Edmund Bosworth The Age of Achievement: Locke's Conduct of the understanding; edited with introd. Grant and Nathan Tarcov.

Retrieved 22 December New Perspectives on Philosophy and Education. In Peters, Michael A. Heidegger, Education, and Modernity. Her Life And Work , E.

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Random House, , http: Ballantine Books, , http: Logic, the theory of inquiry. The Elementary School Teacher. Tibbels, Kirkland; Patterson, John, eds. An Historical and Interpretive Study 2 ed. Educational philosophy for a post-secular age. Critical Studies in Education. Studies in Religion and Education. Retrieved 12 November Christian philosophy Scholasticism Thomism Renaissance humanism. Kyoto School Objectivism Russian cosmism more Formalism Institutionalism Aesthetic response.

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Philosophy of education

Alternative education Homeschooling Andragogy Adult education Portal. Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic Somaliland. Book Category Asia portal. Education in North America. In the late 17th Century, John Locke produced his influential "Some Thoughts Concerning Education" , in which he claimed that a child's mind is a tabula rasa or "blank slate" and does not contain any innate ideas. According to Locke , the mind is to be educated by a three-pronged approach: He maintained that a person is to a large extent a product of his education, and also pointed out that knowledge and attitudes acquired in a child's early formative years are disproportionately influential and have important and lasting consequences.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau , in the 18th Century, held that there is one developmental process , common to all humans, driven by natural curiosity which drives the child to learn and adapt to its surroundings. He believed that all children are born ready to learn from their surroundings so as to grow into virtuous adults, but due to the malign influence of corrupt society , they often fail to do so. To counter this, he advocated removing the child from society during education.

He also believed that human nature could be infinitely developed through a well-thought pedagogy. John Dewey was an important progressive educational reformer in the early part of the 20th Century. For Dewey , it was vitally important that education should not be the teaching of mere dead fact , but that the skills and knowledge which students learn be integrated fully into their lives as persons, citizens and human beings, hence his advocacy of "learning-by-doing" and the incorporation of the student's past experiences into the classroom.

Rudolf Steiner was another very influential educational reformer, and his Waldorf Education model emphasizes a balance of developing the intellect or head , feeling and artistic life or heart and practical skills or hands , with a view to producing free individuals who would in turn bring about a new, freer social order.

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