What Education Is; Clip 2 Video Lecture | Philosophy of Education: Introductory Course - Self Help Learning

all right so I've rewritten the initial
definition of Education up in the
right-hand corner in order to make more
room here start making connections to
this as a statement of the educational
goal to philosophy I want to develop an
analogy to a production line suppose we
think of a factory where your your job
is to make something or other if you're
going to do your job well and there are
certain things that are absolutely
necessary you have to have you so you
have a clear conception of what it is
that you're trying to produce you also
have to have a clear conception of what
your initial raw materials are what
they're capable of and then you have to
have a process a central process that
takes those raw materials and
systematically transforms them in in
such a fashion so that you get the
desired output right so to speak so I'm
going to put a production line
abstractly right on the on the board
here and say this is at the beginning of
the process we have an input we have
some sort of raw materials right that
are coming in and then we have some
conception of an output at the end of
the process and what it is that we want
to to come out and then in the middle
here we have rightt productions okay
so we take the raw materials we do
various sorts of productive things with
them to them on their behalf and then at
the end of the result we have the
desired output and it's off and running
now let's draw the analogy crudely to to
education in the case of education our
input is going to be someone who is
young a youngster right a child right at
some point the person comes into the the
formal educational system we then work
with the student on the student and so
forth whatever verbs are appropriate at
this point through a long process that
we call the process of education and
what we're trying to produce is an
educated youngster who at the end of the
process is and
adult now I want to add just a few more
clarifying things obviously at the
beginning we're talking in our context
about a young human being so the first
thing we have to do is understand as
anybody in any productive field
understand what our raw material is so
we have young human being coming into
the process has raw material what am i
dealing with him I if I'm a teacher I'm
a kindergarten teacher about 15 or 20 of
them show up in my classroom on day one
of the new school year what am i dealing
with what kinds of beings have I here
what are their capacities what can I
expect of them and so forth well so we
started saying things like the following
well young human beings we know they
have certain needs so I start to
brainstorm various kinds of needs that
they have and certainly they have
various nutrition needs they can go for
a certain amount of time and then they
need to have a snack right off something
like that or perhaps lunch and that is a
physical need so we can use the symbol
Phi or things physical in this context
here so one need they have is a
nutrition need it might be the case that
they can go for a certain amount of time
and then they need to take a break so
they might have a point at which they
need to have a little nap right or or
take a break of some other need now in
addition to having various
straightforward physical needs they're
more complicated being they have
psychological needs and I'll use the
Greek symbol Sai here for the
psychological they have a curiosity
needs and so they might need certain
sorts of stimulus otherwise they get
bored and they tune various things out
they might have various needs for
comfort if they get overwhelmed by
certain amounts of tear of material and
so they might have us an emotional need
right for comfort right at at a certain
point we could also specify their
capacities
we know for example if they are four or
five years old right then physically
they on average have a certain amount of
strength we can expect them to be able
to lift something say I'm just making
this number up up to ten pounds but they
do not have the physical capacity or
lift things that are 50 pounds or 100
pounds so we should be attentive in any
sort of physical thing that we're asking
them to do to whatever their their their
strengths are in this case or they might
have various kinds of dexterity they
might be able to manipulate certain
objects with their hands right can they
hold a pencil or pen in such a way as to
be able to to write letters and so forth
that would be something that we would
need to know if we're going to do to
educate them and we also know that they
have certain psychological capacities
that would be important here they do
have a capacity for a certain amount of
abstract thought right they have a
fairly well-developed vocabulary by the
time there are four or five years old
but nonetheless they're not yet ready
for abstract algebra let alone kepada
calculus so we have to figure things out
at appropriate capacity level here and
we also know that they may have a
certain amount of emotional resilience
say they are dealing with challenging
issues new circumstances a certain
amount of failures and disappointments
but they can bounce back under certain
circumstances emotionally but that
capacity is not unlimited at the age of
five so what we then are doing is
developing a kind of chart here what are
the needs of the of the young human
being both physically and
psychologically what capacities does
that human being have both again
psychologically and
physically