Philosophy of Education

Week 2 and 3
Philosophical Foundations of Education

Department of foundations management and curriculum
studies
Presentation by lecturers in the module team
Section2: Philosophy of education
January- february, 2021
Philosophy of Education
Philosophy of Education can be defined as the study of the
purposes, processes, nature and ideals of education.
The word ‘education’ derives from one or both of the following

concepts:
+ ‘Educare’ – to draw out and realize potential (eg:table from
tree);
+ ‘Educere’ – to bring up and nurture. (like a plant)
Both of these concepts merge in Kant’s famous claim that the
purpose of education is to enable humanity to develop and to
improve: ‘Man can only become man by education’ (Kant
1803/1960: 6).
Education attempts to develop personality in a preferred
direction.
+ ‘Educare’ and ‘educere’ come together
here, because ‘development’ indicates
growth and
+ the ‘preferred direction’ indicates a
specific direction for that growth to occur.
We will explore major philosophical categories –
ideas, experience and development
educational implications and educational
consequences of these categories and theorists.
+ Philosophy of Education explains how educational theories
arise.
+ By examining the philosophy of education, we are able to see
why and how theories complement or oppose each other.
+ It also touches guiding and critiquing the development of
educational theory.
+ It provides a justification for teaching
methodologies;
+ It reveals and challenges assumptions about the
nature of teaching; and
+ It provides a language for educational debate.
+ It advocates for the promotion of teaching as a
scholarly and professional activity
+ It provides a pedagogical history of ideas,
theories and vocabulary.
+ It helps to place the educational discipline on a
similar philosophical footing to other disciplines
through the establishment of a distinct discourse
and rationale.
Ideas:
+ Western thought claims that ideas are more
important than, and take precedence over
experiences.
+ Ideas are universal unchanging, and act as the
template and organizing framework for experience
Implication:
+ a view of education as the acquisition of the
mental training necessary to comprehend ideas.
This view is meritocratic:
– only those capable of abstract thought can
benefit from such training.
Idealism:
+ the category of thought associated with ideas is ‘idealism’ :
– the notion that ideas represent reality.
+ there is an objective truth, expressed through the
unchanging world of the ‘Forms’
+ Socrates engages in discussions with Athenian citizens,
drawing out their ideas on virtue.
+ Knowledge is innate (from the immortality of the soul)
+ Socrates believed that there were objective
mathematical truths and more important still,
truths about virtue.
+ In his dialogue, the Theaetus, he shows that the
world of experience is misleading, transient and
personal, with the same object appearing white at
one time and grey at another
Implication for Education:
+ to be morally good is to possess true knowledge.
+ But the process of acquiring true knowledge is painful,
because most of us are chained to the world of the senses,
unable to look beyond.
Clear-sightedness and knowledge involves overcoming
prejudice and ignorance after rigorous mental and ideological
training (Republic Bk VII).
+ Descartes’ thinking was similar to Plato’s. For
both, ideas are in the mind and the senses are
deceptive.
+ Descartes proposed a method of ‘systematic
doubt’ in which everything in the universe was to
be questioned until he came to something he could
not doubt.
+ By this means he arrived at his famous principle,
‘Cogito ergo sum’ – ‘I think, therefore I am’. The
philosopher cannot doubt that he is thinking; therefore
his existence is proven
+ their ideas were instrumental in shaping the ‘problem
of knowledge’ – how do we know what we know? What
is the role of the senses? Is everything we know in the
mind?
Idealism has three main implications for
education:
+ an emphasis on theory before practice;
+ an emphasis on logical thinking;
+ a high value attached to liberal education.
+ The principle that education should concentrate
solely on conceptual and moral development is an
educational legacy of idealism.
+ Teaching should deal with abstract subjects such
as mathematics and philosophy, with principles
expounded before application.
+ The teacher’s role is to draw out the knowledge
of principles that learners already possess and help
learners to organize these coherently.
+ In this view of education, teachers are very
important.
+ Teachers are also needed for the clarification of ideas,
because texts alone are insufficient.
+ In the Phaedrus, Socrates maintains that the written
word is subject to misinterpretation by readers.
+ Dialogue is preferable because the teacher can offer
clarification or challenge misinterpretations, guiding
learners towards true principles and away from faulty
conclusions.
An example of Socratic questioning In Book I of The Republic
(37),
the Sophist Thrasymachus claims that ‘justice is the advantage
of the stronger’.
+ Socrates questions him about this. Here is a simplified
version of their dialogue:
+ Socrates: Do you think it is just to obey all laws?
+ Thrasymachus: Yes. Laws are made by the stronger for their
advantage so it is just to obey all laws.
+ Socrates: Does a ruler sometimes make mistakes when making laws?
+ Thrasymachus: Yes. Sometimes he may make a law that is not to his
advantage.
+ Socrates: Because it is just to obey all laws, is it therefore sometimes
just to obey laws that are not to the advantage of the ruler?
+ Thrasymachus: Yes. (Plato The Republic 335 a–d) Here Socrates has
led Thrasymachus to contradict himself. Justice both is and is not to
the advantage of the stronger
• Socratic or dialogic questioning provides not only a
useful classroom technique but a basic justification of
the teacher’s role
In recent times, there has been a renewed interest in
teacher questioning and classroom discussion as an aid
to students’ acquisition of concepts.
• Even in distance or online learning contexts, it is
important to create a learning environment that
allows for the possibility of multiple
interpretations in order to guide learners towards
a better understanding of concepts.
Theory before practice: educational implications
+ Theoretical subjects are valued more than
practical ones in the curriculum.
+ Learners’ previous ideas are established.
+ Misconceptions are challenged. + Ideas are
organized in a subject outline.
+ General theories are extracted from examples.
+ Theory is presented and then tested.
+ General principles are emphasized over particular
examples.
+ Learning is guided through dialogue and questioning.
+ Understanding ideas is emphasized over their
memorization.
• Logical thinking is the second educational legacy of
idealism.
• Logical ideas are the bases of mathematical and
geometrical theorem construction.
• They allow us to explain why some arguments faulty
as a result of incorrect relationships between premises
and their conclusions.
• Descartes’ thinking has also had implications for
contemporary education.
• For example, systematic doubt became a forerunner of
empiricism and the western scientific method, and is
particularly important in defenses of higher education
whose role is to develop skeptical, critical and
independent thinkers.
Logical thinking: educational implications:
+ Critical thinking is encouraged in schools.
+ Scepticism is a valued academic stance.
+ Educators search for a range of analytical
tools.
+ Convergent and divergent thinking are developed
as part of education.
+ Intellectual freedom and freedom of speech are
prized by academic institutions.
+ Thinking is promoted as a generic transferable
skill.
Liberal education:
Aristotle claimed that the good life can be
achieved through an education in the liberal
arts, where knowledge is valued for its own
sake and is its own reward.
• This is the third educational legacy of
idealism.
• A liberal education is devoted to the study
of first principles, or theoretical ideas,
because humanity’s goal is to acquire
knowledge.
• Newman claims that a liberal education promotes the
attributes of freedom, equitableness, calmness, moderation
and wisdom – in short, a philosophical habit of mind (Heath
1959).
• On the contrary, ‘illiberal subjects’ like trades and skills
‘absorb and degrade the mind’ and are only suitable for
slaves and wage-earners.
• Therefore, no subject should be included in the curriculum
• Cartesian mind–body dualism has also influenced
curriculum design in the past;
• Some subjects have been valued above others
because of their emphasis on ideas and the mind,
at the expense of experience and the body
• The role of the liberal education teacher or curriculum
designer is to introduce learners to the finest
exemplars of thought from all ages.
• For Hirst (1965), a British educationalist, the
curriculum must initiate the learner into all the major
forms of thought.
• The curriculum should therefore be broad and wide-
ranging,
Liberal education: educational implications
Education is valued for its own sake rather than for its
usefulness.
+ A balanced curriculum is necessary to develop the whole
person intellectually and morally.
+ Some subjects are more highly valued than others – for
example, the arts and humanities are valued over vocational
subjects.
+ Liberal education introduces learners to a range
of disciplines and ways of thinking.
+ Teaching is a complex human activity demanding
personal characteristics and insight.
+ Debate and discussion are encouraged in liberal
classrooms
Experience:
• The second major category of western thought
identified in this chapter claims that experience is
more significant than theory.
• Learning involves either ‘doing’ or being ‘done to’.
This category is split into two philosophical strands:
empiricism and romanticism.
• Empiricists claim that the learner is the passive recipient of
experience. What matters is the way this experience is
organized. This perspective leads to a technical conception of
education, in which teachers and curriculum developers are
important arrangers of appropriate experiences
• Diametrically opposed is the romanticist claim that formal
education is unnecessary and restrictive. Children learn
naturally from their experiences and from contact with key
influences.
Empiricism:
• The view that all knowledge is gained from the senses
• John Locke in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding
argued that ‘there is nothing in the mind which was not first
in the senses’ (Smith et al. 2004).
• In this view, the mind is a blank slate on which experiences
are imprinted. According to Locke, all primary and secondary
ideas, including abstract ideas, come either from the senses
or the mind’s reflections on sensory experience.
• In establishing a science of human nature, Hume
attempted to rely solely on the evidence of the
senses and experience.
• He denied the existence of any ideas which did
not come from experience, including those of
God, the self, causation and inductive knowledge
• Concerning causation, he said that all we perceive from our
experience is a regular association between two events. We
cannot prove that one event is the cause of another.
• Using the same argument, Hume attacked the principle of
induction – the process of inferring from particular cases to
general rules, the basis of the scientific experimental
method.
• According to the empiricists, for a statement to
be valid it must either be true by definition or it
must be open to verification by experience.
• A.J. Ayer, a twentieth century empiricist,
endorsed this view. He classified valid statements
as either analytic or synthetic.
• Analytic: Verifiable by analyzing the meaning of the
words: ‘A bachelor is an unmarried man.’
• Synthetic: Verifiable by empirical observation: ‘The
heart contains four chambers.’
• He dismissed statements on ethics, aesthetics, and
theology as mere value judgements (Ayer 1952).
• A compromise between idealism and empiricism is found in
the theory of knowledge proposed by the eighteenth-
century German philosopher Immanuel Kant.
According to this theory, the world consists of:
• Noumena – representing ultimate reality and unknowable,
but giving rise to mental organizing structures or categories;
• Phenomena – things as they appear to us, structured by the
mental categories that organize our perceptions. (Körner
1955: 91)
• Kant’s intermediate view suggests that the mind
structures experience, as spectacles structure sight
• Empiricism leads to the commonplace view of
education as the ‘filling of empty vessels’ – that is,
imparting knowledge to those who lack it.
• It requires nothing from the learner but passivity and a
willingness to learn.
• This view emerges in the work of nineteenth-
century experimental psychologists such as
Pavlov, behaviourist.
• The emphasis on the careful structuring of stimuli
and the observation of learners’ responses led to
the behaviourist concept of a ‘technology of
education’.
• Behaviourism was highly influential in education in the
first part of the twentieth century, especially in the
area of training and competencies.
• Its curricular approach was ‘technical–rational’ or
‘means–end’ because it prioritized technical questions
about the correct approach to methods over a
consideration of the ends of education.
• The American educationalist Benjamin
Bloom expanded on the technical–
rational model (Bloom and Krathnohl
1956).
+ His Cognitive Taxonomy of Learning specifies
different levels of knowledge (from knowledge, the
lowest, to evaluation, the highest) and
+ He shows how they can be demonstrated in
observable and verifiable behaviours, rather than
in mental acts:
1.knowledge – demonstrated in outlining,
recounting, defining and enumerating ideas;
2.comprehension – demonstrated in paraphrasing,
recognizing, illustrating and explaining ideas;
3.application – demonstrated in transferring,
employing and organizing ideas;
4. analysis – demonstrated in breaking down,
categorizing, comparing and contrasting ideas;
5. synthesis – demonstrated in summarizing,
generalizing about, integrating and constructing ideas
and arguments;
6. evaluation – demonstrated in appraising,
discriminating between and assessing ideas or resolving
problems and arguments.
Educational implications of the technical–rational model:
+ Learning is a science and has general principles.
+ The teacher or designer determines what is learned
and how, according to scientific principles.
+ The purposes or ends of education are not
discussed; values are taken for granted.
+ The learner will respond to learning stimuli in a
predictable way.
+ The technical–rational model works best in the
training of skills and competencies, where
behaviour can be observed.
Romanticism:
• According to Rousseau, humans are naturally good
but corrupted by civilization.
• Therefore, the child should be kept away from
society and learn through exposure to natural
influences,
• for example, if the child breaks a window, they should
suffer the consequences of the cold wind that will rush
through.
• Rousseau thought that formal learning, such as that
acquired through reading or mathematics, should be
delayed until the moral and psychological foundations
of personality had been laid down through interaction
with the natural world.
• Girls should learn to be the primary
educators of children in the private and
moral sphere, whereas boys should
learn to carry out their public
responsibilities in the wider world.
• Romanticism also attached importance to the emotions and
therefore to the education of the whole person.
• This included the cultivation of feeling and an emphasis on
the individual, as opposed to the group.
• It encouraged self-expression and self-actualization. ‘Senses
and feeling were primary; thought and abstraction were to
be at their service’ (Noddings 2007: 15).
• Unlike the technical–rational model, which places the
teacher at the centre of the educational process,
romanticism is child-centred.
• Rousseau’s text Émile was the foundation for many current
theories of child-centred education.
• Other examples of Romanticism as the origin of child
centred:
+ Steiner teaching methods emphasize an education that
balances head, heart and hands (Easton 1997).
+ Montessori methods of infant teaching emphasize
learning through natural materials and natural
environments (Montessori 1912).
+ A. S. Neill’s experiment with progressive education in
his famous school, Summerhill, emphasized the natural
goodness of the child and the rejection of all compulsory
tuition in favour of the child’s right to choose what and
what not to learn (Neill 1992).
• The modern western emphasis on
recognizing and encouraging differences
in individuals can be seen as originating
in Rousseau’s theory.
Educational implications of child-centred education:
+ The purpose of education is the development of the whole
person.
+ The child’s experiences are the central elements of
education.
+ Children should be free to choose what to learn and how to
learn.
+ Individual experiences, expression and creativity are
encouraged as part of the curriculum.
+ Individual learning plans can be used to recognize the unique
characteristics of every child.
+ All learners are different, and their individuality is
unconditionally prized.
+ Teachers exert minimal control but act as facilitators of
learning experiences.
+ The teacher provides an appropriate and rich environment.
Development:
• Development is shaped by the idea that human growth
involves the unfolding of some innate human,
cognitive or biological potential towards a final
destination.
• Education consists of providing the conditions
favourable to the full expression of this development.
• Think of the metaphor of the seed, which will grow to
its full potential in an enriched environment or fail to
thrive because of a lack of proper nutrients.
• This idea is common to many school mission
statements, which often state ‘We will help every child
to achieve his or her potential’. How that potential is
identified is another matter.
Teleology:
• The philosophical strand that emerges from the
development category is teleology, the study of
purposes, which has its origins in Aristotelian thinking.
• he wanted to know what things were for and their
function or ‘goodness’ – he was interested in their
teleology
Living things develop according to their animating principles and
natures. For example, Aristotle saw human nature as made up of:
The figure shows
+ an ‘irrational’ element, shared with the animal
kingdom and concerned with bodily appetites and
passions;
+ a rational, cognitive element, unique to humans
and capable of governing the irrational elements.
In humanity, the highest and most fulfilling
form of human activity is directed towards the
acquisition of knowledge and rationality: ‘All
human beings by nature desire to know’
(Aristotle 1995).
• There is another aspect of rationality, however – moral
goodness. Humans seek happiness as their ultimate
goal, and happiness is achieved only through the
rational pursuit of the virtuous life.
• For Aristotle, the acquisition of knowledge and the
achievement of happiness are two sides of the same
coin.
• The ends or purposes of human development are
determined, but the methods of achieving these
purposes are not. Rather, they involve activities that
need to be controlled and learned.
• Nature, habit and reason are three equally important
forces that need to be cultivated through education,
according to Aristotle (Politics).
• One of the primary tasks of the educator is to train the
young to control the irrational part of their natures
and achieve self-discipline.
• Aristotle considered repetition very important as part
of this aspect of learning.
• For example, the essence of moral behaviour is in
following the right rule, and the ability to do so
depends on forming the right habit.
• Similarly, intellectual qualities such as rationality
are produced through teaching that develops
the facility to recognize the right scientific or
ethical principle in any given situation.
• Aristotle also thought it was important to
balance the theoretical, practical and
imaginative parts of nature
• Unlike Plato, he endorsed play and leisure as part
of liberal education: ‘There are branches of
learning and education which we must study
merely with a view to leisure spent in intellectual
activity, and these are to be valued for their own
sake’ (Politics).
Educational implications of teleological thinking:
curriculum design
• Aristotelian thinking has been influential in curriculum
design.
• Because people are driven by the desire to achieve
various ends, it is important for the curriculum (in
Latin, the course for a chariot race) to set clear aims
and objectives.
• The technical–rational model of curriculum
planning focuses on teaching objectives or
outcomes and on appropriate instructional
techniques to achieve them.
• This is in accord with Aristotle’s interest in aims or
ends and their achievement.
Educational implications of teleological thinking:
development theory
• In the modern era, developmental theories have
become attached to the modern discipline of
psychology.
• One of the most significant thinkers in this area was
the Swiss developmental theorist Jean Piaget
• According to his theory of cognitive
development, ‘Constructivism’ and, ‘Life
course development’, children progress
through several identifiable, pre-determined
stages in their intellectual growth
• Piaget’s contemporary, the Russian
psychologist Lev Vygotsky, while agreeing that
there are identifiable stages, disagreed about
their determined nature.
Key ideas :
+ The philosophy of education studies the
purposes, processes, nature and ideals of
education.
+ The philosophy of education explains how
educational theories arise, and how they
complement or oppose each other.
+ Idealism holds that ideas represent ultimate
reality so theory precedes practice and
conceptual organization is paramount
+ Empiricism and romanticism stress the
significance of experience so learning is natural
– but requiring the provision of experiences.
+ Development philosophies emphasize the
purpose of human activity and the nature of
such development.
+ The purposes of education are articulated
and expressed at a practical level through the
curriculum.
Conclusions:
In the educational field, the philosophy of education:
• shows that opposing positions such as idealism and
empiricism are defensible;
• enables us to consider the origin and provenance of
educational practices;
• provides a language for educational discourse and
debate;
• presents well thought-out arguments for
different theoretical stances;
• challenges faulty argument, superficial debate
and educational fads;
• provides a source of alternative ideas to
challenge prevailing orthodoxies;
• analyses education’s aims, roles and methods.
For the education profession, the philosophy of
education:
• justifies educational practices;
• contributes to the scholarship of teaching;
• provides education with deep intellectual roots;
For the education profession, the philosophy of
education:
• links educators with a tradition of educational
discourse;
• facilitates argument and debate;
• helps develop evaluative and critical thinking
For the individual educator, the philosophy of
education:
• enriches and deepens personal experience;
• gives intellectual credence to instinctive or
intuitive practice;
• provides pleasure in the exploration of
educational ideas;
• provides intellectual backing for educational
views;
• facilitates open-mindedness by presenting
alternative perspectives.
Therefore, philosophy forms an important part of

every educator’s education.

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Week 2 and 3

Philosophical Foundations of Education

The word ‘education’ derives from one or both of the following

Therefore, philosophy forms an important part of

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