EDU 304 Philosophy of Education Dowling College
Christian Perring
Spring 2003
Course notes
Feb 4 Introduction
The Books:
David Jacobsen: Philosophy in Classroom Teaching
The summaries of philosophical theories, especially in Chapter One, are unreliable sources of information. Jacobsen’s explanations of philosophy are often rather misleading and inadequate. The strength of the book lies in the cases he uses and the sustained attempt to make philosophy relevant to classroom experience.
Gerald Gutek. Historical and Philosophical Foundations of Education
This has a good selection of philosophers from a variety of perspectives, but the texts are very short. They cannot provide a good indication of the sustained arguments of the philosophers, but only give a sample of the philosophers’ views and writing style. For your papers, any attempt to discuss the views of philosophers will require going back to the original sources.
A central question for us in this course concerns what we can hope to achieve. What is it for a person to have “a philosophy of education”? Does this just mean one’s own personal approach? Does one need to have a philosophy of education in order to be a teacher, or to be a good teacher? (Do fishes need to study hydrodynamics to swim?) How could taking this course help students? Does one need to understand philosophy of education to be a good administrator or policy-maker in education?
I should be clear that I shall not expect students to agree with the views that I discuss or argue for. Indeed, I welcome disagreement, because it will help us get clearer about the issues. I am somewhat skeptical about the idea of students developing a philosophy of education in this course. I do not think we have enough time for students to do this, and I am unclear how helpful it would be anyway. On the other hand, I am certain that philosophy can be helpful on some issues, and that teachers can benefit from studying philosophy and learning about the philosophical debate on issues relevant to their teaching.
It is helpful to think about what makes a discussion philosophical. Generally, philosophy addresses difficult questions that cannot be answered by empirical investigation. Indeed, one of the benefits of philosophy is not to provide answers, but rather to help people see the complexities of issues and how difficult it is to get to certainty on the difficult issues. Studying philosophy can help people understand other points of view, and have more tolerance for difference. It can also destabilize one’s own point of view, leaving one less convinced about one’s former beliefs. While there is a clear tradition of philosophy and a cannon of great philosophical works, it is often more helpful to think of philosophy as a method or style of thinking rather than a topic for study. One might argue that within a university of college, there should not be a department of philosophy, but rather teach other department should have at least one member who is able to think philosophically. Philosophical thought looks at the foundations of a topic, and focuses on the areas of dispute and controversy. Central to philosophy is the attempt to provide rational arguments to defend ideas and to criticize the ideas of other people. While it is difficult to achieve consensus through philosophical debate, it is important to keep in mind that constructive debate and dialog are essential to the philosophical enterprise – it is not just a matter of people sticking to their views and criticizing each other. Furthermore, in applied philosophy that deals with issues of everyday concern, there can be a surprising amount of progress on some topics.
I am expecting students to work hard at finding ways to make philosophy of education useful to them. This will involve reading texts carefully and engaging with them. You will have to read the assigned texts ahead of time, and consider what the authors are saying, and how this might be relevant to your teaching. The midterm and final exams will aim to find to what extent you have understood the philosophers we have studied, while papers will be more about getting you to establish a link between the philosophers and your teaching experience.
February 11, 2003
Ancient Thought on Education
Our aim in these early classes is to:
(a) understand what great philosophers said about education.
(b) discuss what relevance their thoughts have for contemporary education.
(c) formulate the central issues in philosophy of education that we want to address in this course.
For Plato, philosophy is about the search for truth, and education should aim to teach students the truth. The teacher seems to be a philosopher.
For Plato, teaching is not a matter of generating the power of seeing in students, but turning them towards the light.
Discussion Question: Can we find any value in this metaphor in contemporary teaching?
Aristotle proposed a liberal education for students in order to help them to be able to make informed choices and to become virtuous people.
Discussion Question: Is there any point in teachers thinking about what kind of education children should receive when the curriculum is laid down by state education authorities?
Aristotle discusses how people form their characters and the importance of childhood training in making a person virtuous. He does not say much about whether this should be done by parents or the state.
Discussion Question: Should educators try to make their students good people capable of leading fulfilling lives?
Thomas Aquinas has a very religious approach to interpreting the world. He believes in the power of reason to prove religious truths.
Discussion Question: Does religion have any role to play in education today? Does the failure of the project to prove the truth of religion undermine any reason for compulsory religious education?
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Rousseau Class
Rousseau's views:
·
A defender of
"Naturalism"
·
Childhood is an
intrinsically valuable period of growth and development, and children are not
little adults.
·
Children learn
best in a permissive atmosphere where they can make their own choices and learn
from the consequences of their actions.
·
Children should
be educated far away from society, because we are born innocent and are
corrupted by society.
·
Empiricism: all
knowledge reaches the mind through the senses.
He favored experiential learning.
·
We should live
in harmony with nature, and the development of human character should follow
nature.
·
Education
should involve the development of capacities rather than the imposition of
ideas.
·
Nature's
processes are slow and evolutionary, so education should be unhurried.
Issues:
·
Does Rousseau
make assumptions about psychology, and if so, is he justified in making
them? Do we need scientific research to
justify claims about how best to rear children? Can educational and psychological research decide all the important
issues in how best to educate children?
·
Is there any
good reason to take seriously the views of the "Great Philosophers"
on education? What is to be learned
from studying them?
·
Gender
differences in education
http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/470/
·
What justifies
taxpayers paying for children's education?
·
Ethical
Theories: Utilitarianism, Kantianism, Social Contract Theory, Aristotelian
approaches
Justifications in
terms of consequences (Utilitarianism, Consequentialism)
·
It is better
economically, education is an investment
·
Education as
insurance, insuring against what?
Against an uncivilized society (life would be nasty, brutish, and
short).
·
Social
investment, ensure that we have a democracy.
Justification in
terms of fairness (Kantian, rights-based)
·
Radical
libertarians say there should be no taxes (except for maybe police, justice
system, and armed forces)
·
Some others
think that increasing the social differences in society is unfair. Making the rich richer and the poor
poorer.
·
Egalitarianism
says that everyone has equal value, and so privilege should not be allowed to
be too powerful in society.
·
Everyone should
have the opportunity to earn a good standard of living, and if there were not
free education, the poor people would never have the chance.
·
You can’t have
a democracy unless citizens are educated.
Education is a precondition of democracy.
Alternative view,
that education should only be free for those who cannot afford it. That is what we do with health.
Are the cases of health
and education parallel or different?
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Different views
of rights:
Divine Right of
Kings: The Royal Family has a right to govern a country through the will of
God.
Democracy did away
with the Divine Right of Kings.
two different
foundations of democracy;
Natural rights: every person, simply in virtue of being a
human being, has certain rights. Life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Locke and Jefferson were natural rights proponents.
Some base their
justification of rights on a social contract. A contract gives you contractual rights that didn’t exist before
the contract. On this view, rights are
created by humans, and are not natural.
Rousseau was social contract theorist (also Hobbes).
Social contract
theorists often say the contract is implicit rather than explicit. There is no actual contract.
John Stuart Mill was
a Utilitarian.
There is plenty of
philosophical debate over the justification of rights, but never forget that
the rhetoric of rights is extremely powerful.
His most famous work
On Liberty, in which he gave a defense of Freedom of speech
He believed in the marketplace
of ideas. In order to discover truth,
we need to have the most free possible marketplace.
In the exchange of
ideas, we criticize and analyze ideas, and improve them.
It is only by doing
this that we can be sure to get to the truth.
He believed this
holds for many kinds of truth: Philosophical, scientific, political, moral,
educational.
So his defense of freedom
of speech rests on his Utilitarian theory: it is good for society – it is not
based on any natural rights of individuals.
Utilitarianism: the moral theory that right actions should maximize the happiness of
society – the whole of society, in the long run.
There are different
qualities of pleasure. In order to
appreciate the finer or higher pleasures, we need to be exposed to different
experiences (art, music, other cultures) from an early age.
Mill also emphasized
the importance of nurturing individuality.
He thought that this is good both for individuals and for society as a
whole.
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Owen, Marx, Spencer
These thinkers provide us with different visions of what education could do to improve society.