Philosophical Questions about Education; Clip 8 Video Lecture | Philosophy of Education: Introductory Course - Self Help Learning

all right I'm going to go back to our
initial output statement here we want
adult human beings capable of
functioning in the real world we focused
on human beings trying to figure out
what it is to be a human being raising
lots of philosophical questions about
human nature they're focused on the
three words the real world raising
metaphysical questions about what we
take the real world to be now I want to
focus on the remaining three words these
central words here capable of
functioning right we want to develop in
our students that capacities right to
function right in certain ways when they
are adults taking on the real world this
of course leads to some obvious
questions here what capacities do the
students have that we want to develop
with lots of capacities I have a
capacity for ax murdering right for
example but presumably that's not one of
the capacities that we wanted to develop
we have the capacity for doing
philosophy when we are young and that is
the capacity that I think we should want
to develop in our students what kind of
functions do adult human beings perform
what do they do with their lives so we
have to have some kind of a connect
ception of what lifestyle or living or
acts of going through achieving certain
goals and doing certain things in life
that we want adult human beings on
average to be able to do and it's going
to require that certain capacities that
they have be developed to a point of
proficiency so that they can perform
those kinds of functions so we can start
then asking what are in adult human life
some of the key functions that we that
we engage in well certainly one of them
is we want to have a career maybe career
as a philosophy professor wouldn't that
be great or a career in business right
in banking right or career as a teacher
or a career as an artist and as we know
particularly as we're into the 20th
century 21st century rather one of the
great beauties of our civilization is
that there are thousands and thousands
of career opportunities that will be
available to students and if we don't
like any of those career Roberts
we can go entrepreneurial and make our
own career opportunity alright so but
career is one important functional part
of life but it's not the whole of life
we also know that an important part of
life is having friends we also know that
people will have love lives and sex
lives typically what happens as a result
of that is people have like family lives
we know that they also will engage in
leisure activities such as traveling the
world and enjoying and learning various
things there there's the entire realm of
art and literature that is an important
part of human life as well so we can
then start saying okay here are the
things that constitute a life what do we
need to teach students so that they are
capable of doing all of these things and
doing them doing them well we might
focus on capacities some of the
capacities involve knowledge traits they
might need to know what career options
are available to them what places in the
world are worth traveling to knowing the
various kinds of artistic genres and
media that are that are out there and
then there are capacities that have to
be developed here they there are certain
skills that are going to be necessary in
career or in in literature social skills
and friendship love and sex and family
and so forth all of that have to be
developed as well on other kinds of
capability are going to be various kinds
of character traits so we might focus on
issues of the necessary virtues that
students are then going to have to
acquire if they're going to be able to
function well in all of these areas of
their lives for example many of these
things like career friendships romantic
relationships family right and so forth
are longer-term projects and longer-term
commitments are necessary so we might
say that T came students a certain
amount of perseverance is is a necessary
character trait if they're going to be
able to function capably right as adults
human beings and this then poses an
educational challenge for us because we
know when we're starting with young
people their attention span is
necessarily quite limited but as they
develop their
and their ability to focus and stay on
task and visualize the longer-term
should be should be increase in our job
as teachers certainly self-consciously
has to be explicitly to build in lessons
that build the character trait of
perseverance for example we might also
say that in careers and friendships and
and family relationships and so on
a certain kind of honesty all right is
important and we know there are lots of
temptations to lie to fudge the truth to
do to avoid unpleasantness can be
prevalent at all stages of human life so
how do we deal with and inculcate in
students the appropriate attitudes to
honesty and make that part of their
character so that when they are
functioning in all of these important
areas of their lives they have the
requisite character skill right and so
forth right all the way down the road
now all of these things are the subject
matter of ethics which is another
important branch of philosophy here I
have called these things functions or
things that we do but we do these things
because we think they're valuable we
think they're important that we think
they're a significant part of what it is
to live a full human life and to the
extent that we do all of these things
well and we're successful in all of
those areas of our lives we have a life
that's a flourishing human life as
opposed to a dysfunctional human life a
life that's a happy right and
self-realized human life as opposed to
an unhappy and unrealized right human
life so here we can substitute the
concept of or rather add the concept of
values right and I've left it open-ended
here with these ellipses here what are
the important values in life such that
we as educators are going to single
these out always say we can't teach
every value that's possible to human
beings but what are the major categories
what things are we going to emphasize
are we going to emphasize art as a value
social skills as a value career
preparation right as a trout as a value
right and so forth and how are we going
to prioritize those values in however
going to build them into our curriculum
at what particular points certainly
there are going to be developmental
issues friendship right from the
beginning love and sex issues though
don't come along until later in the
process after puberty and so forth there
are lots of questions about what the
right values are and how to
operationalize them build them into our
curriculum if we're going to focus on
character education here here we're
talking about virtues what are good
traits to the extent that human beings
their personalities and their characters
are not hardened already by the time
they they come to school there's a
certain plasticity and its developmental
ism that's possible there how do we make
real and motivate and and operationalize
lessons that are going to build the
appropriate virtue traits and again I
have an open-ended list here because
there are any number of virtues that can
be put forth as candidates which ones
are going to be the important ones that
we will focus on and build into our our
lesson plans here