Philosophical Questions about Education; Clip 1 Video Lecture | Philosophy of Education: Introductory Course - Self Help Learning

I suppose just in this formulation our
goal is to produce adult human beings
who are capable of functioning in the
real world I'm just going to isolate
here two words human beings and now I
ask the question what is it to be a
human being
what is that right what is it to be a
fully developed human being what is our
conception of that what makes me me what
makes you you what makes all of us right
as human beings human beings what's
distinctive about us what's important
about us what's essential to being the
kinds of being that we are now that's a
hard question there's lots of different
answers given to it it's a hard question
part of it because we're very
complicated kind of being and so a a
full answer to that question necessarily
has to be very complicated but if all of
the complicating things that make us us
what of them seem to be most
distinctively important to our being the
kinds of beings that we are let me give
you one answer to this question one
thing we can say is important to being a
human being is that we are very smart
with a big brain we have a powerful mind
we have a capacity of reason and of
course there's some controversy and and
animal psychology circles over where
there other animal species perhaps
chimpanzees or dolphins also have a
capacity for reason I'm not going to
weigh in on that debate but nonetheless
true an obvious thing an important thing
about human beings is that we have
whether those other animal species have
reason or not an extraordinarily
powerful right rational capacity we can
think very abstractly and our ability to
think very abstractly very generically
and to reason our way in the world is an
important part of our functioning as
human beings we are for example
physically not very Hardy right the
temperature gets a little bit hot we
started getting whiny about how hot and
humid it is it gets a little bit cooler
and again we start whining as well
there's a fairly limited temperature
range within which we can function
as human being nonetheless because we
are smart we are we have the power of
reason we can devise clothing we can
devise shelters we can devise central
air conditioning and central heating
systems to to compensate and overcome
our our lack of physical hardiness we're
not particularly strong even if you take
the most powerful human being
weightlifter and he or she is not
particularly muscular ly strong the
average chimpanzee for example my
understanding is is at least six or
seven times as strong as the most strong
adult human being so we don't survive
for example by wrestling our prey into
the ground and ripping it limb from limb
or using powerful jaws to to rip food
from it rather we're smart right we can
outsmart prey animals we can develop
farming and all sorts of very
complicated food production techniques
and as a result we can overcome again
our rather frail physiques compared to
other animal species again we're not
particularly fast right the world-record
holder in the hundred meters is very
fast by human standards but by most
other animal species standards he is not
very fast at all and so it's not the
case again if we just focus on food
issues that we're going to survive very
effectively if it's a matter of being
swifter and the kinds of prey that we
would like to to be able to eat so we
could say for example just at a very
basic biological level our being able to
survive in the sense of putting food on
the table our reason is very important
to to whom we are but beyond that simple
putting food on the table issues our
reason is very important early
explanatory for huge parts of our lives
because we are rational beings we think
abstractly we can think in terms of
abstract cause-and-effect and start to
understand the world around us more
theoretically we can go on to do
scientific enterprises and this gives us
a great deal of rational power and
existential power over our lives we can
think about the world in the past and we
have strong historical memory and we can
use reason to probe further and further
into the
so we could use our theoretical
understanding of the world including our
cause-and-effect understanding to think
about the future so we are beings for
whom the past is important to us the
future is important to us as well of
course the present being important to us
but we are not species who live only in
the present or only with a very limited
time Sensibility
we're also beings that as a result of
our rational capacity enjoy art we enjoy
painting sculpture and literature and
theatre and music and so forth we do
philosophy we understand jokes and so
all of these important things about who
we are we can then say is a result of
our being rational beings all right so
that's one possible answer we could then
say an implication of this for the
educational process is this is the right
answer hosting the essential answer the
core answer to the question what it is
to be a human being then that primarily
what we should be doing in the
educational process is taking young
human beings and doing lots of things
with them but primarily developing their
rational capacity the rational capacity
being the most important capacity that
they have to have fully developed and
functional if they're going to survive
as adult human beings all right so
that's a philosophical question what is
a human being a human being is
essentially defined by reason that kind
of answer has certain kinds of important
educational implications now one of the
themes of this course though will be
that everything is controversial in
philosophy and as a result of that
everything in educational practice is
going to be controversial because
different philosophical answers are
going to dictate very different
educational practices so I want to go
back to this question again and suppose
we said all right fine we can understand
that but what else might we say is a
true or an important answer to the
question what it is to be a human being