The Significance, Nature and Role of Philosophy of Education

The Significance, Nature and Role of Philosophy of Education

G-one T. Paisones

	Plants are shaped by cultivation and men by education. .. We are born weak, we need strength; we are born totally unprovided, we need aid; we are born stupid, we need judgment. Everything we do not have at our birth and which we need when we are grown is given us by education. (Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emile, On Philosophy of Education)

Significance = the quality of being significant (Webster Dictionary)

Significant = meaning, importance (T.F. Hoad, 1996)

Nature = character, kind, or sort (http://dictionary.reference.com)

Role = proper or customary function (The Random House Dictionary)

Philosophy of Education – means an analytical treatment of education together with an attempt to relate it in a certain way to certain parts of speculative philosophy (Kingsley Price, 1967)

According to Noddings, Philosophy of education is "the philosophical study of education and its problems...its central subject matter is education, and its methods are those of philosophy" (1995).

Significance of Philosophy of Education = the philosophy of education which students ought now to study is therefore something which might properly called “the philosophy of curriculum.”

Nature of Philosophy of Education = is a normative theory of education that unifies pedagogy, curriculum, learning theory, and the purpose of education and is grounded in specific metaphysical, epistemological, and axiological assumptions.

Role of Philosophy of Education = ways of conceiving education coupled with the multiple fields and approaches of philosophy make philosophy of education not only a very diverse field but also one that is not easily defined.

Below are some renowned educational philosophers that had been greatly contributed to the foundation of education.

Ø Plato - Education would be holistic, including facts, skills, physical discipline, and music and art, which he considered the highest form of endeavor (retrieve from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_education)

Ø St. Thomas Aquinas – used of the Aristotelian distinction between potentiality and actuality, the notion that life as a goal intended by God is also potentially present in all men as what they strive to make equal (Price, 1967)

Ø St. Augustine – Sensation and introspection yield knowledge(Price, 1967)

Ø Comenius – everything we know is discovered by introspection(Price, 1967)

Ø Quintilian – suppose that internal equability has some relation to the order of nature(Price, 1967)

Ø Herbart – advocates religious teaching as a means of moral improvements (Price, 1967)

Ø Locke – the rules of morality follow from the relation of the idea of God and the idea of His Creature (Price, 1967)

Ø Kant – believed that education differs from training in that the latter involves thinking whereas the former does not. In addition to educating reason, of central importance to him was the

Word Power Introspection - observation or examination of one's own mental and emotional state, mental processes, etc.; the act of looking within oneself. Maxims - an expression of a general truth or principle, especially an aphoristic or sententious one Philosophy – from Greek words philo and sophy meaning love of wisdom Axiology - the branch of philosophy dealing with values, as those of ethics, aesthetics, or religion. Epistemology - a branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge.

development of character and teaching of moral maxims.

(retrieve from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_education)

Ø Dewey – All proposition can be mean only experiences connected by operation;

	· 1 Philosophy of Education 1.1 Idealism 1.1.1 Plato 1.1.2 Immanuel Kant 1.1.3 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 1.2 Realism 1.2.1 Aristotle 1.2.2 Avicenna 1.2.3 Ibn Tufail 1.2.4 John Locke 1.2.5 Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1.2.6 Mortimer Jerome Adler 1.2.7 Harry S. Broudy 1.3 Scholasticism 1.3.1 Thomas Aquinas 1.3.2 John Milton 1.4 Pragmatism 1.4.1 John Dewey 1.4.2 William James 1.4.3 William Heard Kilpatrick 1.4.4 Nel Noddings 1.4.5 Richard Rorty		1.5 Analytic Philosophy 1.5.1 Richard Stanley Peters 1.5.2 Paul H. Hurst 1.6 Existentialism 1.6.1 Karl Jaspers 1.6.2 Martin Buber 1.6.3 Maxine Greene 1.7 Critical Theory 1.7.1 Paulo Freire 1.8 Postmodernism 1.8.1 Martin Heidegger 1.8.2 Hans-Georg Gadamer 1.8.3 Jean-François Lyotard · 2 Normative Educational Philosophies 2.1 Perennialism 2.1.1 Allan Bloom 2.2 Progressivism 2.2.1 Jean Piaget 2.3 Essentialism 2.3.1 William Chandler Bagley 2.4 Social Reconstructionism and Critical Pedagogy 2.4.1 George Counts