Relevance of Philosophy to Education Video Lecture | Philosophy of Education: Introductory Course - Self Help Learning

the reason for the connection to
educational practice is is several fold
teachers themselves to the extent that
they are strategic in in doing their
profession think about philosophical
issues and Institute various sorts of
philosophical practices into their into
their classrooms it's also been the case
that as education has become
professionalize there's been the
development of undergraduate education
majors graduate programs in education
and over the course of the 20th century
especially this might be a little bit to
flip but there have been successive
waves of philosophical fashions right
that have been dominant at different
points in in professional schools of
Education what this then men was the
professor's of Education then were
training a whole new generation of
teachers principals superintendents and
so forth
and those students then would go forth
armed with or committed to a different
kind of philosophical tradition than in
the previous generation and they would
Institute various changes or in their in
their judgment reforms to the
educational system from from within it's
also been the case in the twentieth
century that the educational world
became largely politicized or much more
politicized than it had been
traditionally at least in the American
context and this led to different
political philosophies wanting to make
certain kinds of changes in the
educational system and so one would have
top-down initiatives coming from
politicians either at the state level or
increasingly at the federal level of the
20th century went on and so there would
then be politically instituted to
top-down philosophical changes on the
educational world the end result of that
was by the time we got to the end of the
20th century in my judgment there is no
coherent philosophy going on in American
education it really is a smorgasbord or
hodgepodge as different waves of
educational theory political philosophy
and teachers with their own commitments
all added various kinds of elements one
value of the course though I will
hope for is that as a professional
teacher when you go forth into the
educational world you can then start to
see how this particular practice comes
out of say pragmatism or that particular
practice comes out of idealism or
post-modernism or whatever the the case
may be so many cases that can be just
clarifying to know why you've given the
educational system that nobody is
particularly satisfied with why we have
the mix of practices sometimes
complementary sometimes contradictory
that we do to a large extent philosophy
has a part of the answer to that and so
knowing the different philosophies and
and why they predict and and cause
certain kinds of educational practices
to be instituted that can be enormous ly
valuable another value of the course
though will be to understand these
philosophies in their own rights so that
we as educators can make a more informed
opinion about how philosophically we are
going to approach educational issues one
of my favorite quotations is from a
renaissance thinker Pico della Mirandola
who wrote that one cannot reasonably
write to make a commitment to any
philosophy without knowing all of them
and so part of the motivation for this
course should be to become familiar with
all of the major educational
philosophies we saw the ones that have
been influential on on American
education so that we as educational
professionals can make our own informed
commitments to whichever one we think is
best or whatever combination that we
Forge in our own thinking that we think
is best
one other value I think is going to be
important here is that education is as
much as individuals do it themselves and
I think that's the most important thing
what we decide as individuals to to get
out of our own educational process
education is nonetheless an intensely
social process and that means we learn
with other people we learn from other
people sometimes we're students
sometimes we are teachers teachers are
then dealing with students and vice
versa
teachers are also dealing with other
teachers we as teachers might also be
dealing with parents or we're dealing
with politicians right
and so forth and so we're in the midst
of a very complicated social world right
that is contemporary educational
practice and in that social practice
there are lots and lots of different
people with very different philosophical
commitments and very different ideas
about what education should be if we're
going to do this in the kind of
hopefully open democratic pluralistic
peaceful way that we want to do things
in in our civilization it's going to be
absolutely essential that we all know
what we're talking about and that when
we're talking with each other and we
have disagreements about important
educational matters we were able to
understand where the other person is
coming from not necessarily I have to
agree with the other person but we do
have to be able to articulate our own
views clearly we have to be able to
understand the other person's clearly
and in many cases we have to be able to
understand the philosophical background
or philosophical context that the other
person is coming from and be able to
communicate our own philosophical
context if we are going to have the
fruitful kind of strategic discussions
that are necessary to fix education and
take it in the direction that we think
is appropriate or to salvage from the
current system the parts that we think
are true and important than done well in
order to to serve our students in the
next generation well