Philosophical Questions about Education; Clip 3 Video Lecture | Philosophy of Education: Introductory Course - Self Help Learning

another thing I think is importantly
distinctive about human beings and what
we expect of human beings and what in
part we are training human beings for is
a certain kind of responsibility when we
are parents when we are teachers we want
children to learn their responsibilities
to become self responsible adult human
beings and when we think about
responsibility in the human context I
think we just think about it
distinctively compared to any other
animal species and this gives an
importantly different cast - to human
education I'll use one of my dogs right
as an example we have a dog who's fairly
tall is very long legs he has some Great
Dane in his background and so he has the
capacity to in the kitchen just kind of
go along and look over the kitchen
counter without really straining his
neck very much see whether there's any
food of interest to him that he can
steal now he's actually he's a good dog
we've taught him that if there's food
left on a table or food on the counter
it's off-limits and for the most part he
is respectful of that so one thing I can
then say about our dog his name is
Hamlet
for various reasons is that he knows
right that he's not supposed to eat food
that is on the table right so to speak
okay
I suppose then I think I have trained
Hamlet not to eat food that is on the
table and so I have a sandwich that I've
made for my lunch and I put it on the
table and I see Hamlet eyeing it and I
say Hamlet don't eat my sandwich that's
my sandwich leave that one alone and I
leave the room when I come back three
minutes later and the sandwich is gone
large surprise so I look at Hamlet and I
say to him bad dog I used my stern voice
and his ears go back and he slinks off
because he knows right that he's done
something wrong and he feels guilty all
right so we hold him responsible and we
start then to use moral language right
in that case and he seems to be in
Vincent
shame the response in that particular
case now that might be true but it'll be
different if we were to have a
human being in the same sort of
circumstance suppose my brother was
visiting my brother's a few years
younger than I but he's in an adult
human being suppose he were visiting and
it's lunchtime and I've made a sandwich
for myself and I put the sandwich on my
table or on and my brother is there and
I see him looking at it hungrily and I
say to him that's my sandwich
I feel welcome to make one for yourself
but please don't eat my sandwich and
then I go off if I come back again in a
few minutes and the sandwich is gone all
right and I look at my brother and it's
clearly he's the one who's who was
eating it I will say to him bad brother
right and then hopefully he will feel
some guilt or feel ashamed right or or
he's done here but in this case I'm
going to hold my brother responsible for
having eaten the sandwich in a way that
is different and I'm going to hold my
dog Hamlet right responsible for for
being a Hamlet for for having eaten the
sandwich for example we might hold both
of them as was the responsible party but
we're not going to hold the dog morally
responsible we're not going to say that
he's a bad dog in the sense of being an
immoral dog we hold him to a lesser
standard on the other hand my brother if
he were to steal my sandwich in that
particular case we would be more likely
to use morally charged language right in
his particular case but so then here's
the question right if we take that
phenomenon as a real phenomenon what
does it say about our distinctive nature
as human beings such that we're going to
hold ourselves morally responsible right
for the good things that we that we do
we should then be be rewarded in various
ways and get praise for the bad things
that we do we should be held responsible
and receive punishments or at least
various condemn natori types of words
and so on in a way that we don't hold
other animal species responsible and
won't praise or blame morally right so
to speak
well one common answer to that is to say
that we as human beings
unlike other animal species are beings
that have a capacity for making choices
that it's not the case that we do things
because we're pushed around by forces
beyond our control so we might say for
example you can't really hold
Hamlet the dog responsible for what he
did because he's just a dog he might be
a smart dog and he might know right that
he's not supposed to eat the sandwich
but nonetheless a dog is a dog and if
the dog is hungry then there are certain
biochemical things that are going on
he's feeling the hunger pangs if there's
a certain kind of stimulus in the
environment right the smell of a
sandwich right there on the table within
his visual field and I'm not in the room
as a countervailing force to be feared
I'm out of the picture altogether all we
have then as strong hunger pangs
salivation in response to a taste each
sandwich sitting there on the table when
those urges get strong enough dogs being
dogs they necessarily are just going to
eat the sandwich and that's just the way
it is so you can't blame them they're
just doing what their biological natures
are dictating in the presence of certain
kinds of environmental stimuli it's not
the same story that if we put a human
being in the equation we might say my
brother is visiting he sees the sandwich
he might be a hungry guy and so he's
having the same hunger pangs and he put
it in the presence of the same
environmental stimulus there's a tasty
sandwich sitting on the table there he
smells that he starts to salivate so he
is subject to environmental pressures
the subject of biochemical pressure but
nonetheless there's an other factor
that's awkward for him he has the
capacity of choice he has the capacity
to override those environmental stimuli
to override his biological urges and to
choose whether or not he's going to act
on certain stimuli or not and so what we
then say since human beings have choices
they have some sort of volitional
control over their thoughts their
behaviors we can hold them responsible
for how they choose to exercise that
control if they give in inappropriately
then we blame them if they give in but
it's an appropriate context and that's
fine and if they use their volitional
control actively to bring goodness into
the world then we will we will praise
them so we can then make a claim that
this is an important thing about human
beings human beings are being such that
they have a capacity of choice
as adult human beings an important thing
is to responsibly exercise choice over a
vast range of things what this then
implies for education is that moral
education teaching students
responsibility in all of the areas of
life that they're going to experience as
adult that should be front and center in
our educational system so moral
education of this caste becomes central
to to what we're doing as professional
educators