Philosophical Questions about Education; Clip 7 Video Lecture | Philosophy of Education: Introductory Course - Self Help Learning

I'll give you a couple of examples
historically speaking to drive this
point home here when I was in graduate
school for a couple of summers I've
worked in the library and in the library
department I was working on there was a
collection of old maps and I remember
one month very pleasantly my job was to
take some of these old maps that were
starting to decay and ship slipped them
rather between sheets of mylar and seal
them up to slow down the the decay
process and so I got to look look spend
some time looking at a lot of maps and
that was kind of fun some of the old
maps that were in the in the collections
and in the books that the library had
were pre-columbian maps that is to say
maps that had been drawn by European
cartographers before Columbus crossed
the Atlantic Ocean to discover the new
world and what was interesting about
those maps for these purposes and I'm
not sure how many medieval maps fit this
characterization but there I know there
was a significant sub-genre here is that
they the maps would typically have you
know various parts of Europe worked out
pretty well North Africa was pretty well
known things when you got to the Middle
East also were fairly well blocked out
things got a little less determinant as
you got further to the far east into the
Japan's India and China although the
Europeans at this time knew of those
places existence what was interesting is
if you went to the places that were the
terra incognita right now the unknown
lands right so to speak the the western
ocean right what we now call the
Atlantic Ocean where nobody had gone
before at least as far as the Europeans
knew their state of knowledge and the
interesting thing was that on many of
these maps there would be illustrations
that the cartographers that had put
there so they would have illustrations
on the Terra Cotta various features
geographically that they knew existed
but the interesting thing was that in
many of these maps on the in the it
terra incognita or the unknown sea
places they would have maps or sort of
little graphics or little icons
depicting horrible things that would
happen to ships and sailors if they went
in that particular direction so they
would have for example a little tiny
ship sailing over the edge of
huge waterfall presumably to everybody's
death in the disruption of the ship or
at another part of the of the ocean at
the edge they would have a giant fish
with huge teeth right about to to attack
and swallow up for presumably again a
very tiny ship that was sailing along or
a huge sea serpent II type of monster
that dwarfed the ship that was and
circling that the ship and crushing it
in a coil is again presumably destroying
it the interesting thing about these
maps is the projection of the world at
large and particularly the part of the
world that the cartographers don't know
about there's an implicit metaphysical
view and I'm going to call it a
malevolent view of the universe in this
particular case what's striking is that
the cartographers at the edge of the map
where they didn't actually know what was
there if you went off in that direction
didn't simply say well we don't know
what's here and so we're not going to
put anything there or they didn't say
for example that we we think or we hope
that out there there are all these flush
paradises and row a sees there's lots of
beautiful women and maybe the thoughts
of gold and so they didn't put pictures
of beautiful women or pots of gold or
lush tropical oasis that the sailors
could then find instead in their
estimation what was real about the
unknown world is hostile forces that are
waiting to destroy you if you venture
forth out into the unknown lands there's
an implication here that if if there is
a safe of the lands that we know and
obviously there are lots of dangers and
problems there but the point is don't
sail off into the unknown because going
forth into the world right being the
kind of world that it is is a dangerous
enterprise chances are very good that
you will fail you will be destroyed by a
various hostile forces of the universe
so stay close to home stick with what
you know and insulate yourself from the
hostile forces of the universe I'm using
that as an example of a malevolent right
approach to the universe the idea being
that the dominant forces of the world
are negative and inhospitable to human
design to human interest to human
aspiration I think by contrast another
fictional example here
the the television series Star Trek
there's also been a series of movies
based on this I've only seen a half a
dozen or so episodes of Star Trek but I
am struck by the opening sequence which
has my understand this is a Star Trek
goes is every episode is an adventure of
precisely going forth into unknown parts
of reality places that no no man has
gone before right so to speak and having
all sorts of colorful colorful
adventures and the idea there is of
course there's lots of danger and there
are lots of inhospitable forces out
there but there's lots of exciting stuff
and interesting stuff and erotic stuff
and wealth making stuff and if human
beings are resourceful and intelligent
and courageous they can venture forth
right into the unknown world and have
all kinds of exciting adventures and
live and survive and prosper for another
day to go forth into further unknown
worlds to to have more adventures and so
if we think of the the the tagline of
the show split infinitive and all to
boldly go right where no man has gone
before right that idea that you're set
toward reality particularly the parts of
the world that you don't know yet about
that you can't have that attitude of
going forth boldly and expecting to have
great fun great adventure great
excitement that is a very different
right metaphysical attitude and I'm
going to call that a benevolent right
universe right approach now the
implications here clearly are
significant for education if we as
teachers come to believe that the
universe is largely a malevolent place
then the way we teach lots and lots of
things particularly value orientations
and the kind of attitude toward the the
rest of their lives that we're going to
inculcate in students is going to be
very different than the kind of attitude
that we will be trying to inculcate in
our students if we have a more
benevolent universe so this raises the
question is the universe such that we
can and should prepare students to go
forth and live their great adventures
and dreams and urge them or is the
universe such that we should teach
students to lower their
aspirations to play it safe and hope to
avoid the various dangerous forces that
if they stick their necks out are going
to damage them is the universe such that
it's ruled by chaos and so it's a more
of a matter of managing unpredictability
or is it a matter of the universe being
such that it is a causal and therefore
predictable and so therefore long-range
planning and strategy is something we
should urge upon our our students and
again it's the case that the reality
that we're preparing them for their very
complicated natural reality or is the
case that as complicated as the natural
reality is the more important and more
complicated issues alive in terms of
one's relation to a supernatural reality
and so should our educational content be
primarily focused on the natural world
or should that be a secondary concern to
supernatural focus all right those are
some metaphysical issues that become
absolutely essential to our figuring out
what we're going to do in this
educational production process if we're
going to have students prepared as
adults to take on the real world
wherever we take the real world to