Educational Philosophy Research Paper

1. Classic Philosophers Writing On Education

Philosophy of education as a recognizable branch of philosophy, or area of specialization within it, is a product of the twentieth century; most commentators would agree that its institutionalized development was relatively insignificant until just before World War II. However, many of the writings of philosophers of the past dealt with educationally relevant issues, although these educational implications were most often left implicit rather than made the object of explicit discussion; direct discussion of education was only sporadic. The nature of knowledge, the nature of human cognition, the rational bases of belief and the causes of unbelief (or of false belief ), the key aspects of critical thinking, the formal and informal logical fallacies that plague reasoning in everyday life, the nature of morality and the good life, the importance of personal autonomy, the nature of a just society, the obligations borne by those who aspire to full citizenship in a society, the education of the citizen, the logical features of inquiry in the human and social sciences, are examples of matters that have been grist to the philosophical mill, and which have great relevance to the field of education.

Indeed, it can be argued more strongly that philosophy always serves a vital educational purpose, for, as Amelie Oksenberg Rorty wrote in the introduction to a collection of essays she edited about philosophers of the past who did educationally relevant work: ‘Even ‘‘pure’’ philosophy—metaphysics and logic—is implicitly pedagogical. It is meant to correct the myopia of the past and the immediate’ (Rorty 1998, p. 1). On this account, then, almost any philosopher’s work is also a work in philosophy of education, so it is no surprise that Rorty’s volume has discussions of the educational philosophies of—or, more accurately, the educational relevance of the work of—a diverse group including Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Maimonedes, Rene Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, Spinoza, John Locke, Rousseau and other early Romantics, Kant, Hegel, Mill, the Logical Positivists, and Dewey. Notable omissions are the nineteenth and twentieth-century figures J. F. Herbart, Herbert Spencer, Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein, and the two philosophers whose writings most explicitly addressed philosophical issues in education in the second half of the twentieth century—Richard S. Peters and Israel Scheffler. Chambliss, in an essay-length review of the history of philosophy of education, discusses a set of authors that overlaps with the group in the Rorty volume (Chambliss 1996); for a work that attempts to integrate historical and contemporary writing in the field, see Noddings (1995).

1.1 Philosophy vs. ‘Cultured Reflection’

An important issue arises here, one that has not always been recognized by writers on the history of philosophy of education: When philosophers of the past—even noteworthy ones such as those listed above—have turned explicitly to address issues concerning education, it has not always been the case that their writings have been philosophical on even a charitable interpretation of this contested term. Some philosophers, to be sure, have developed educational positions that are closely related to, or which are fairly tightly derived from, their philosophical positions; but many others, when they have turned explicitly to education, have engaged in what has been called ‘cultured reflection’ upon education rather than in closely reasoned philosophical argumentation. The British analytical philosopher D. J. O’Connor noted as far back as 1957 that too often expressions like ‘philosophy of education’ or ‘philosophical reflection on the bases of education’ were ‘no more than vague though high-sounding titles for miscellaneous talk about the aims and methods of teaching,’ and he suggested that these usages ‘could well be dropped in the interest of clarity’ (cited in Phillips 1985, p. 3863). His suggestion was viewed, in some quarters, as imperious.

A book by John Locke can serve as one example of this nonphilosophical genre; his Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693 1947), which has been reprinted many times and has been cited widely in histories of educational thought, deals with the education of the young gentleman who is likely to inherit a country estate, and it is filled with advice on such matters as hardening the youngster by having him wear leaky shoes in wet weather. There is little (if anything) here that derives from Locke’s foundational work in empiricist epistemology or political philosophy; rather, his often interesting educational ideas seem to stem from his wide range of experience as a man of the world. On the other hand, his classic philosophical writings—which are not widely cited in histories of education, and which do not explicitly discuss the field at all—have been a major influence on educational thought; for example through their impact on associationist psychology, the child study movement of the late nineteenth century, and liberal social theory.

In the twentieth century there were many so-called ‘philosophers of education’ whose work was in this genre of ‘cultured reflection’ on education rather than being philosophical in any recognizable sense. As the twentieth century progressed there were growing numbers of nonphilosophical writers with strong educational or ideological commitments who self- identified as philosophers of education, and who thus helped to establish something of a gulf between philosophy of education and the parent discipline. (In this context it is interesting to note that Amelie Rorty had no contributor to her volume who is identifiable as a member of the philosophy of education community.) The works of these individuals are nonphilosophical in the sense that they do not contribute to the deeper development or defense of any philosophical theses, and they would not be useful in courses on the traditional epistemological, metaphysical, logical, or axiological problems of philosophy offered in departments of philosophy.

1.2 Examples Of Directly Relevant Philosophical Work

On the other hand, Plato’s educational thought was a much more integral part of his philosophical and political thought. In his Republic, for example, after developing the metaphysical theory of the underlying realities, the ‘forms,’ he detailed the educational process that would lead the future philosopher–rulers to gain knowledge of them; their education would culminate in them beholding ‘the form of the Good,’ in the light of which they would be ably to govern wisely. Plato also discussed the education of the subordinate classes (the auxiliaries and the common citizens) that would allow them to take their allotted places in society—a society marked by complete justice, with everyone serving in the role for which nature had most fitted them. Plato’s Meno is also regarded as a classic work in philosophy of education, and it has stimulated discussion down to the present; Plato depicts Socrates teaching a slave boy a variant of the Pythagorean theorem, not by direct instruction but by a process of ‘Socratic questioning’ in which the relevant information is drawn from him—illustrating Plato’s theory (closely related to his epistemology) that learning is a process of remembering (for one cannot inquire about something that one does not already know).

Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s novel Emile (1762 1955) is another work that has a niche in the history of philosophy, and an even more central place in the historical development of philosophy of education. A rather undisciplined thinker whose work is often marked by unresolved contradictions, Rousseau has nevertheless had a major impact on Western thought, in part through his influence on thinkers at the time of the French Revolution; his work on the ‘social contract’ is still discussed by political philosophers. His novel about the young man, Emile, which traces his life from birth until parenthood, created something of a furor upon its publication, and it was publicly burned in France. The novel—a founding work of modern progressive education—illustrates the philosophical view that all that is natural is good, and all that is ‘man-made’ (including the products of the civilization of Rousseau’s time) is bad; Emile is taken to live in the country where a tutor arranges for him to have a ‘natural’ education. Emile acquires morality by suffering the natural consequences of his acts; his religious views are ‘naturalistic’ and are not scripturally based, and are acquired from the ‘Savoyard Vicar’ whom he meets while on a walk in the countryside. Emile is given very little by way of formal instruction in any topic that he has not developed a natural desire to pursue. (One of the major inconsistencies is apparent here, for—as many commentators have noted—the boy’s tutor actually does not leave matters to natural happenstance but is extremely directive, albeit in a subtle way; furthermore it is notable that Rousseau does not provide a coherent account of the concept of ‘natural,’ which is so central to his line of argument (see Hardie 1962, Rorty 1998). The novel is notorious, too, for its treatment of Sophie, the young woman whom Emile eventually marries; in contrast to the rather progressive education of the latter, Sophie is raised to be ‘pleasing’ to her future mate. Late-twentieth century feminist writers and others have produced scathing analyses of this aspect of Rousseau’s work (e.g., Rorty 1998).

There can be little doubt that, since the days of Plato, the major philosopher to see an intimate relationship between philosophy and education was the American pragmatist John Dewey (1859–1952). In the course of his long and productive philosophical life Dewey published more than 40 books and 800 journal articles; and yet for many years he regarded his Democracy and Education (1966; first printed in 1916) as the work that also best summarized his general philosophical position. Indeed, in this book—probably the most famous modern work in philosophy of education—Dewey claimed that philosophy was ‘the general theory of education’; education, he said, ‘is the laboratory in which philosophic distinctions become concrete and are tested’ (Dewey 1966, pp. 328, 329). Dewey’s views on the intimate relation between activity, and learning and thinking, stemmed from the evolutionary epistemology that he developed after reading the psychological writings of William James, and were directly translated into his recommendations for educational practice. Dewey’s views on the classroom as a small community, and on the social functions of education, were part and parcel of his social philosophy that was an interesting amalgam of neoliberalism and communitarian ideas.

2. The Rise Of Philosophy Of Education As A Specialization

There are a number of widely recognized subdisciplines within the field of philosophy: epistemology, metaphysics, moral philosophy, social and political philosophy, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, logic, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of law, history of philosophy, and so on. During the early decades of the twentieth century philosophy of education started to emerge as another subfield, although it never won the widespread acceptance accorded to these other specializations within the philosophical community. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of philosophers of education around the world are members of schools or departments of education or pedagogy rather than being in departments of philosophy; a very small number hold joint appointments.

Despite their relative physical and intellectual isolation from their colleagues in academic philosophy, philosophers of education have interests that span the subdisciplines mentioned above. For example, there are some who pursue epistemological issues as they relate to education—such as the epistemic status of the bodies of subject matter taught in schools, or the epistemological issues that arise in educational research; some—taking a political theory, or neo-Marxist, or even a postmodernist, perspective—are concerned with issues such as what groups in society have the power to decide the structural features of the educational system, or what is taught (or not taught) in schools; others are interested in the philosophical issues surrounding citizenship, and the educational rights of individuals (including parents and children) versus sociocultural groups, in democratic societies— and the related issue of the nature of equality of opportunity; some are concerned with the philosophical issues involved in the field of moral education and moral development; others are concerned with issues that fall into the category of philosophy of psychology, such as the nature of human abilities, the relation between intelligence and creativity, and so forth.

The philosophers of education who pursue such issues are quite interdisciplinary, and follow the relevant literature in educational and psychological research, pedagogy, educational theory and policy, as well as philosophy; they tend to publish in a wide variety of journals, and not just in the philosophical ones. Other philosophers of education, reflecting the fact that the majority of those in the field are actively involved in the preparation of teachers, apply philosophical ideas drawn from a wide variety of sources (plus ideas drawn from other disciplines) to issues of classroom pedagogy and curriculum; there is no clear counterpart to their area of expertise to be found in traditional departments of philosophy. They tend to publish only in educational journals, and their work is unknown to the vast majority of their peers in such departments.

It is difficult to pinpoint the precise date of the emergence of philosophy of education as a field in its own right; the origins seem to lie in the second half of the nineteenth century when many ‘normal schools’ devoted to the training of teachers were established, and university departments of education or pedagogy were emerging around the world. Influential public intellectuals such as Herbert Spencer, T. H. Huxley, and Cardinal J. H. Newman in England were occasionally writing on education in a philosophical vein— again blurring the boundary between philosophy and philosophy of education, and illustrating the fact that one does not have to be a professional philosopher to sometimes write philosophically interesting material.

The expression ‘philosophy of education’ first seems to have been used in a systematic way in an encyclopedia produced in 1911–13; but the John Dewey Society was not established until 1935. The Philosophy of Education Society was founded in North America in 1941, and similar societies in the United Kingdom, and Australia and New Zealand, followed some 25 years later (Kaminsky 1996). Philosophical writing about education was not, of course, confined to the English-speaking world, but in Europe the intellectual landscape traditionally was carved up quite differently, leading to a different conception of philosophical reflection on education.

On the Continent there seems to have been a longstanding and stronger appreciation by those scholars working in the field of education that philosophical reflection was a vital part of the ‘pedagogical sciences,’ and that it was too important to be left to a small number of academic specialists. Thus there has been a lot of philosophical activity, but few have been labeled as doing ‘philosophy of education’ per se— rather, many have been engaged in discussing ‘pedagogical theory’ or ‘pedagogical science.’ As the German educationist Wolfgang Brezinka has put it, in the English-speaking world ‘educology (or pedagogics) as an autonomous scientific discipline does not exist’ (Brezinka 1992, p. 3). He goes on to show that in German-speaking countries, pedagogics as a mixed normative–descriptive discipline is understood to be a theory suitable for ‘supplying guidelines for praxis.’ Pedagogics should simultaneously ‘attain a comprehension of reality and a determination of what should be.’ It cannot ‘limit itself to studying what is,’ but is ‘at least in part also a normative science which … develops guiding ideals and measures existing reality against its own claims.’ It ‘includes normative decisions’ and should combine ‘the establishment of facts’ with the ‘critical evaluation of these facts in the service of an obligatory norm’ (Brezinka 1992, p. 5).

The Belgian scholar Paul Smeyers also sees marked differences between the way philosophy of education has been pursued in Europe and in the English-speaking world. Especially since World War II, AngloSaxon philosophy of education has been primarily— though not exclusively—a philosophy of schooling. Continental philosophy of education, however, concerned itself mainly with problems within the broad field of child-rearing. It is also important to realize that the Continental philosophy of education has to be situated within the legacy of the Enlightenment tradition. In this philosophical stance, education was regarded as the ‘means’ by which individuals became rational members of the human race (Smeyers 1994, p. 4456).

But it should not be assumed that all European writers adopt the same stance towards philosophy of education; the intranational differences are almost as great as the cross-national ones. For example, in Holland there are several philosophers of education whose work strikes a resonant note with that of their colleagues in the English-speaking world, and who are recognizably within the analytic tradition that up until recently was dominant in the latter (and indeed they often publish in English, for example van Haaften et al. 1997); and in the USA there are some who work in a manner close to that of many of their colleagues on the Continent.

3. Some Features Of The Modern History Of Philosophy Of Education

As indicated above, the field of philosophy of education is extremely diverse, with interesting cross-national differences, and with much variation even within the local scenes in North America, the UK, Australasia, The Netherlands and other nations on the Continent. This makes it impossible to generalize about the development of the field as a whole, but a few historical highlights from the twentieth century can be mentioned as significant.

3.1 The ‘Isms’ Approach

For several decades around the middle of the twentieth century it was common to find philosophers of education suggesting that educators should first select a philosophical position that they found appealing, and then ‘deduce’ the implications for educational practice that followed from this. The ‘isms’ recommended as possibilities were such positions as idealism, realism, Thomism, existentialism, and pragmatism (see Broudy, in Lucas 1969). This approach was reflected in textbooks, journal articles, conference proceedings, and there was even a series of instructional films; the approach could be found in Europe as well as in the English-speaking world, and philosophers of all stripes seem to have accepted it as a valid approach.

It was some time before it was realized that this approach rested upon a serious philosophical mistake, and even late in the century an occasional textbook was released bearing its stamp. There is not a simple one-to-one correspondence between a person’s deep philosophical commitments (such as to idealism or realism) and his or her everyday actions, or actions in the classroom. Idealists and realists, for example, are not offering different empirical theses about the world (e.g., that matter does, or does not, exist), but are giving different philosophical analyses of the concepts of ‘matter’ and ‘existence.’ Ludwig Wittgenstein captured the core issue well in his Zettel (Wittgenstein 1970, p. 413):

One man is a convinced realist, another a convinced idealist and teaches his children accordingly … But the idealist will teach his children the word ‘chair’ after all, for of course he wants them to do this or that, e.g., to fetch a chair. Then where is the difference between what the idealist-educated children say and the realist ones? Won’t the difference only be one of battle cry?

Those who advocated the ‘isms’ approach to philosophy of education were also making use of an over-simple notion of implication; a variety of premises are required to link an abstract position such as realism to the realm of schooling; clearly it is a non-sequitur to argue, as one adherent of the ‘isms’ approach did in 1957, that ‘reality is independent of man’s knowledge of it,’ therefore ‘man must learn impersonal science, and history; and the school plays the role of transmitter of knowledge’ (see Phillips 1971, pp. 11–12).

3.2 The Prominence Of Analytic Philosophy Of Education

The ‘isms’ approach started to decline as the influence of analytic philosophy spread from ‘pure’ philosophy into philosophy of education during the late 1950s and 1960s. Philosophical analysis—considered broadly as involving careful attention to rooting out vagueness or ambiguity in concepts, to making the use of language more precise, and to scrutinizing trains of argument in order to expose hidden assumptions and logical imprecision—can be traced back at least to the work of Plato. The Republic is a book-length attempt to throw light on the notion of justice, and Plato depicts the main character in the book, Socrates, showing up the defects in the arguments and assumptions of those whom he engages in dialog. The tradition never died, but in the work of Plato and subsequent philosophers analysis was mixed together with metaphysical and speculative philosophical activity. During the twentieth century there were notable accomplishments that led to the rise of analytic philosophy as a separate movement in philosophy (for example, the work of Gottlob Frege, Russell, the early Wittgenstein, and the members of the Vienna Circle)—a movement that was for some time quite hostile towards metaphysics. For several decades analysis became the dominant type of philosophical activity in the English-speaking philosophical world, although there certainly were analytic centers in Europe (e.g., the logical positivists centered in Vienna).

Analytic philosophy of education (APE) was chiefly influenced by the so-called ‘ordinary language philosophy’ of the later Wittgenstein, and Gilbert Ryle’s ‘philosophical behaviorism’ (which also drew from Wittgenstein) was another important influence—an extract from Ryle’s The Concept of Mind (1949) was reprinted in one of the early compendiums in analytic philosophy of education edited by Israel Scheffler (Scheffler 1958).

As suggested by the titles of many books, the analytic philosophers of education focused much of their attention on the language of education; their work on the concept of ‘education’ itself can serve as a typical example of their work. Hirst and Peters (1970), writing separately and together, developed an analysis according to which individuals have been educated insofar as they have acquired a broad cognitive perspective which changes them for the better; educating individuals is equivalent to initiating them into a new and valuable form of life about which they will come to care.

They wrote that if ‘this analysis is correct, therefore, teachers who enter the profession because they are concerned about education, would be striving to initiate others into a form of life, which they regard as desirable, in which knowledge and understanding play an important part’ (Hirst and Peters 1970, p. 20). Their analysis placed a great deal of emphasis on the normal usage of words; it would be extremely odd, they suggested, if a person claimed to be educated and yet virtually always preferred to play bingo than pursue good literature or study science and the like. Their work, as a result, was later attacked as reflecting a class-based set of attitudes, and it was argued that some classes in British society do not have the same linguistic intuitions as Peters and Hirst; one rebuttal was even titled ‘In Defense of Bingo.’ (Robin Barrow, in a reassessment of their work, defends Hirst and Peters against the general charge outlined above; see Barrow 1994. See also the debate between Peters, Woods and Dray in Peters 1973.)

Other topics that were widely discussed by analytic philosophers of education in the English-speaking world in the 1960s and 1970s were the (conceptual) differences between teaching and indoctrinating, the conceptual relationship between teaching and learning, the concept of autonomy, the concept of development, the logical structure of the disciplines taught in schools, and the conceptual bases of progressive education.

The criticism concerning reliance on ordinary usage, however, coupled with the related but philosophically more interesting attack on Wittgenstein’s ordinary language philosophy by Gellner in his Words and Things (1959), and an increasing air of sterility associated with APE, all took their toll. The fall of analytic philosophy of education was also accelerated by the spread of neo-Marxism and critical theory, and then the rise of postmodernism and feminist philosophy, all of which found fertile soil in philosophy of education (Burbules 1994, Kohli 1995). In a relatively short period the center of interest in philosophy of education shifted from concepts and language usage, to the pressing social and political issues (and the associated social injustices) that play out in educational contexts. Many contemporary philosophers of education are socially more activist than the analytic philosophers of education, who are seen (rightly or wrongly) as having been educationally and socially rather conservative. Analytic philosophy of education, then, has only a shadow of its former influence; but, controversially, some would argue that on balance the analytic movement was a positive force and its example is sorely missed in the present climate where debates are marked by a certain lack of rigor (see Barrow 1994; and the debates in Kohli 1995).

3.3 What Is ‘Philosophy Of Education’?

The debates over ordinary language philosophy, sketched above, inspired much discussion about the nature of philosophy of education itself, although philosophers and philosophers of education have long been debating the nature of their discipline. In 1969 Christopher Lucas edited a collection of essays with the revealing title What is Philosophy of Education? and debate has continued down to the present—as recently as 1998 the Newsletter of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain published a number of letters from members on the topic ‘where should philosophy of education go?’; one of the chief issues was how close the relationship should be between philosophy of education and the general field of philosophy itself.

A related development has been the growing number of encyclopedia articles devoted to philosophy of education. To cite just several of these: Phillips wrote a 16,000 word essay for an international encyclopedia in 1985; the second edition of this work in 1994 contained more than 30 entries covering the discipline and its history, and in 1996 Chambliss edited a one-volume encyclopedia covering the field with more than 200 entries (Chambliss 1996).

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