Pursuing an Educational Philosophy

1. Pursuing an Educational Philosophy Chapter 8

2. 5 0 My philosophy is • Live for today, tomorrow we die. • Reach for the stars. • Expect little and you won’t be disappointed. • It doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you’re sincere.

3. Branches of Philosophy • Metaphysics…what is the nature of reality • Epistemology…what can be known • Axiology…ethics and aesthetics: the good, the true and the beautiful • Logic…principles of right reasoning: induction and deduction

4. The value of philosophy • Brings new interpretation and syntheses as well as analyzing, refining, modifying existing concepts and procedures • Acts as a clearinghouse for analyzing and clarifying ideas and problems • Offers a source of ethical guidance • Induces habits of mind like tolerance, impartiality, and suspension of judgment

5. Philosophy • Love of wisdom , the quest for knowledge • Philosophers often concerned with such things as power, provocation, personality offering ideas to people caught up in the whirlwinds of social crisis, ideological arguments • Philosophers of education concerned with questions of schools and society

6. Western philosophy • Thales, 6th century B.C.E., founder of western philosophy…searching for the unity of things in the world…not satisfied with religious and mythical answers, but sought “scientific” answers • Themistoclea, a priestess of Delphi significant in Pythagoras’ development of ideas of deductive ethical doctrines

7. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle • Socrates (470-399B.C.E.) philosophy was a way of life to Socrates Socratic dialogue, dialectic method of questions and answers…what makes humans sin is the lack of knowledge • Plato (427-347B.C.E.) founder of the Academy The Republic outlines a plan for a perfect society ruled by the philosopher king, knowledge consistent with temperance and justice…for women as well as men • Aristotle (384-322B.C.E.) founded the Lyceum, the first person to classify knowledge by dividing and subdividing, developed syllogistic, deductive logic

8. 250 110 All fish can swim. This is a fish. Therefore…. • This is a Platonic dialectic • This is Socratic questioning • This is Aristotelian logic

9. Far Eastern Philosophy • 21st century technology, global commerce, and population demographics demand that we know something of Eastern philosophy • Confucianism…concerned with ethics and morality (foundation of Chinese civilization) five key relationships: ruler and subject, father and son, husband and wife, elder brother and younger brother, friend and friend • Confucius (Kung Fu-tzu, 551-479B.C.E.)those most capable, should govern…moral and ethical men make the best rulers, principle of li…courtesy and ceremony • Confucianism…a language of morals and laws • Taoism…oneness with nature, noninterference

10. Indian Philosophy • Karma…what a person does influences what will happen to that person in the future • Study, meditation, yoga can lead one to transcend cares and suffering • Buddha…Siddhartha Gautama (6th century B.C.E.)…all suffering is based on an inability to discern what is real and what is fictitious • Gandhi (1869-1948) nonviolence toward living things Satyagraha…holding fast to the truth

11. Educational Philosophies • Perennialism…there are absolute truths and standards…related to idealism, experiences are a mental representation rather than a representation of the world, classical humanism refers to the Greek philosophers dedicated to discovering reason and truth for humankind • Essentialism…preserve the basic elements of human culture and transmit them to the young

12. Educational Philosophies • Experimentalism…the primary purpose of school is to teach children to think effectively…analyze, criticize, select between alternatives, propose solutions • Experimentalism…progressivism…pragmatism Dewey, Peirce, William James • Social Reconstructionism…change society through education…George Counts, Theodore Brameld, Paulo Freire

13. Existentialism • What is it like to be an individual living in the world • Passionate encounter with the problems of life and the inevitability of death • Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Camus, Buber, Simone de Beauvoir • Important decisions with limited knowledge

14. Postmodernism • Roots in 1950s world of art • Themes including truth, language and its relation to thought, human nature and the self, the Other • “What kind of power is embedded in educational issues, problems, and traditions?” • Michel Foucault, Cleo Cherryholmes

15. Philosophy of Education • The nature of the learner • The nature of the subject matter • The nature of the learning process

16. Philosophies of Education • Perennialism…stresses intellectual attainment and the search for truth • Idealism…all material things are explainable • Realism…propositions are true only if they correspond with known facts • Pragmatism…search for things that work • Reconstructionism…seeks to reconstruct society through education

17. Philosophies of Education • Existentialism…importance of the individual, subjectivity, inner nature • Postmodernism…de-centers the subject

18. “This then is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well….True generosity lies in striving so that these hands whether of individuals or of whole peoples– need be extended less and less in supplication, so that more and more they become human hands which work, and working, transform the world.” Paulo Freire: Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970)

19. Michel Foucault • “Power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society.”   •       “The work of an intellectual is not to mould the political will of others; it is, through the analyses that he does in his own field, to re-examine evidence and assumptions, to shake up habitual ways of working and thinking, to dissipate conventional familiarities, to re-evaluate rules and institutions and to participate in the formation of a political will (where he has his role as citizen to play).”