aims of education essay

• Our Mission

What Is Education For?

Read an excerpt from a new book by Sir Ken Robinson and Kate Robinson, which calls for redesigning education for the future.

What is education for? As it happens, people differ sharply on this question. It is what is known as an “essentially contested concept.” Like “democracy” and “justice,” “education” means different things to different people. Various factors can contribute to a person’s understanding of the purpose of education, including their background and circumstances. It is also inflected by how they view related issues such as ethnicity, gender, and social class. Still, not having an agreed-upon definition of education doesn’t mean we can’t discuss it or do anything about it.

We just need to be clear on terms. There are a few terms that are often confused or used interchangeably—“learning,” “education,” “training,” and “school”—but there are important differences between them. Learning is the process of acquiring new skills and understanding. Education is an organized system of learning. Training is a type of education that is focused on learning specific skills. A school is a community of learners: a group that comes together to learn with and from each other. It is vital that we differentiate these terms: children love to learn, they do it naturally; many have a hard time with education, and some have big problems with school.

There are many assumptions of compulsory education. One is that young people need to know, understand, and be able to do certain things that they most likely would not if they were left to their own devices. What these things are and how best to ensure students learn them are complicated and often controversial issues. Another assumption is that compulsory education is a preparation for what will come afterward, like getting a good job or going on to higher education.

So, what does it mean to be educated now? Well, I believe that education should expand our consciousness, capabilities, sensitivities, and cultural understanding. It should enlarge our worldview. As we all live in two worlds—the world within you that exists only because you do, and the world around you—the core purpose of education is to enable students to understand both worlds. In today’s climate, there is also a new and urgent challenge: to provide forms of education that engage young people with the global-economic issues of environmental well-being.

This core purpose of education can be broken down into four basic purposes.

Education should enable young people to engage with the world within them as well as the world around them. In Western cultures, there is a firm distinction between the two worlds, between thinking and feeling, objectivity and subjectivity. This distinction is misguided. There is a deep correlation between our experience of the world around us and how we feel. As we explored in the previous chapters, all individuals have unique strengths and weaknesses, outlooks and personalities. Students do not come in standard physical shapes, nor do their abilities and personalities. They all have their own aptitudes and dispositions and different ways of understanding things. Education is therefore deeply personal. It is about cultivating the minds and hearts of living people. Engaging them as individuals is at the heart of raising achievement.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights emphasizes that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,” and that “Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.” Many of the deepest problems in current systems of education result from losing sight of this basic principle.

Schools should enable students to understand their own cultures and to respect the diversity of others. There are various definitions of culture, but in this context the most appropriate is “the values and forms of behavior that characterize different social groups.” To put it more bluntly, it is “the way we do things around here.” Education is one of the ways that communities pass on their values from one generation to the next. For some, education is a way of preserving a culture against outside influences. For others, it is a way of promoting cultural tolerance. As the world becomes more crowded and connected, it is becoming more complex culturally. Living respectfully with diversity is not just an ethical choice, it is a practical imperative.

There should be three cultural priorities for schools: to help students understand their own cultures, to understand other cultures, and to promote a sense of cultural tolerance and coexistence. The lives of all communities can be hugely enriched by celebrating their own cultures and the practices and traditions of other cultures.

Education should enable students to become economically responsible and independent. This is one of the reasons governments take such a keen interest in education: they know that an educated workforce is essential to creating economic prosperity. Leaders of the Industrial Revolution knew that education was critical to creating the types of workforce they required, too. But the world of work has changed so profoundly since then, and continues to do so at an ever-quickening pace. We know that many of the jobs of previous decades are disappearing and being rapidly replaced by contemporary counterparts. It is almost impossible to predict the direction of advancing technologies, and where they will take us.

How can schools prepare students to navigate this ever-changing economic landscape? They must connect students with their unique talents and interests, dissolve the division between academic and vocational programs, and foster practical partnerships between schools and the world of work, so that young people can experience working environments as part of their education, not simply when it is time for them to enter the labor market.

Education should enable young people to become active and compassionate citizens. We live in densely woven social systems. The benefits we derive from them depend on our working together to sustain them. The empowerment of individuals has to be balanced by practicing the values and responsibilities of collective life, and of democracy in particular. Our freedoms in democratic societies are not automatic. They come from centuries of struggle against tyranny and autocracy and those who foment sectarianism, hatred, and fear. Those struggles are far from over. As John Dewey observed, “Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.”

For a democratic society to function, it depends upon the majority of its people to be active within the democratic process. In many democracies, this is increasingly not the case. Schools should engage students in becoming active, and proactive, democratic participants. An academic civics course will scratch the surface, but to nurture a deeply rooted respect for democracy, it is essential to give young people real-life democratic experiences long before they come of age to vote.

Eight Core Competencies

The conventional curriculum is based on a collection of separate subjects. These are prioritized according to beliefs around the limited understanding of intelligence we discussed in the previous chapter, as well as what is deemed to be important later in life. The idea of “subjects” suggests that each subject, whether mathematics, science, art, or language, stands completely separate from all the other subjects. This is problematic. Mathematics, for example, is not defined only by propositional knowledge; it is a combination of types of knowledge, including concepts, processes, and methods as well as propositional knowledge. This is also true of science, art, and languages, and of all other subjects. It is therefore much more useful to focus on the concept of disciplines rather than subjects.

Disciplines are fluid; they constantly merge and collaborate. In focusing on disciplines rather than subjects we can also explore the concept of interdisciplinary learning. This is a much more holistic approach that mirrors real life more closely—it is rare that activities outside of school are as clearly segregated as conventional curriculums suggest. A journalist writing an article, for example, must be able to call upon skills of conversation, deductive reasoning, literacy, and social sciences. A surgeon must understand the academic concept of the patient’s condition, as well as the practical application of the appropriate procedure. At least, we would certainly hope this is the case should we find ourselves being wheeled into surgery.

The concept of disciplines brings us to a better starting point when planning the curriculum, which is to ask what students should know and be able to do as a result of their education. The four purposes above suggest eight core competencies that, if properly integrated into education, will equip students who leave school to engage in the economic, cultural, social, and personal challenges they will inevitably face in their lives. These competencies are curiosity, creativity, criticism, communication, collaboration, compassion, composure, and citizenship. Rather than be triggered by age, they should be interwoven from the beginning of a student’s educational journey and nurtured throughout.

From Imagine If: Creating a Future for Us All by Sir Ken Robinson, Ph.D and Kate Robinson, published by Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2022 by the Estate of Sir Kenneth Robinson and Kate Robinson.

What Is Education? Insights from the World's Greatest Minds

Forty thought-provoking quotes about education..

Posted May 12, 2014 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

As we seek to refine and reform today’s system of education , we would do well to ask, “What is education?” Our answers may provide insights that get to the heart of what matters for 21st century children and adults alike.

It is important to step back from divisive debates on grades, standardized testing, and teacher evaluation—and really look at the meaning of education. So I decided to do just that—to research the answer to this straightforward, yet complex question.

Looking for wisdom from some of the greatest philosophers, poets, educators, historians, theologians, politicians, and world leaders, I found answers that should not only exist in our history books, but also remain at the core of current education dialogue.

In my work as a developmental psychologist, I constantly struggle to balance the goals of formal education with the goals of raising healthy, happy children who grow to become contributing members of families and society. Along with academic skills, the educational journey from kindergarten through college is a time when young people develop many interconnected abilities.

As you read through the following quotes, you’ll discover common threads that unite the intellectual, social, emotional, and physical aspects of education. For me, good education facilitates the development of an internal compass that guides us through life.

Which quotes resonate most with you? What images of education come to your mind? How can we best integrate the wisdom of the ages to address today’s most pressing education challenges?

If you are a middle or high school teacher, I invite you to have your students write an essay entitled, “What is Education?” After reviewing the famous quotes below and the images they evoke, ask students to develop their very own quote that answers this question. With their unique quote highlighted at the top of their essay, ask them to write about what helps or hinders them from getting the kind of education they seek. I’d love to publish some student quotes, essays, and images in future articles, so please contact me if students are willing to share!

What Is Education? Answers from 5th Century BC to the 21 st Century

• The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done. — Jean Piaget, 1896-1980, Swiss developmental psychologist, philosopher
• An education isn't how much you have committed to memory , or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don't. — Anatole France, 1844-1924, French poet, novelist
• Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. — Nelson Mandela, 1918-2013, South African President, philanthropist
• The object of education is to teach us to love beauty. — Plato, 424-348 BC, philosopher mathematician
• The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education — Martin Luther King, Jr., 1929-1968, pastor, activist, humanitarian
• Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school. Albert Einstein, 1879-1955, physicist
• It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. — Aristotle, 384-322 BC, Greek philosopher, scientist
• Education is the power to think clearly, the power to act well in the world’s work, and the power to appreciate life. — Brigham Young, 1801-1877, religious leader
• Real education should educate us out of self into something far finer – into a selflessness which links us with all humanity. — Nancy Astor, 1879-1964, American-born English politician and socialite
• Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. — William Butler Yeats, 1865-1939, Irish poet
• Education is freedom . — Paulo Freire, 1921-1997, Brazilian educator, philosopher
• Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. — John Dewey, 1859-1952, philosopher, psychologist, education reformer
• Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom. — George Washington Carver, 1864-1943, scientist, botanist, educator
• Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught. — Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900, Irish writer, poet
• The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows. — Sydney J. Harris, 1917-1986, journalist
• Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one. — Malcolm Forbes, 1919-1990, publisher, politician
• No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure. — Emma Goldman, 1869 – 1940, political activist, writer
• Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants. — John W. Gardner, 1912-2002, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare under President Lyndon Johnson
• Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another. — Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1874-1936, English writer, theologian, poet, philosopher
• Education is the movement from darkness to light. — Allan Bloom, 1930-1992, philosopher, classicist, and academician
• Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know. -- Daniel J. Boorstin, 1914-2004, historian, professor, attorney
• The aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values. — William S. Burroughs, 1914-1997, novelist, essayist, painter
• The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives. -- Robert M. Hutchins, 1899-1977, educational philosopher
• Education is all a matter of building bridges. — Ralph Ellison, 1914-1994, novelist, literary critic, scholar
• What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul. — Joseph Addison, 1672-1719, English essayist, poet, playwright, politician
• Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today. — Malcolm X, 1925-1965, minister and human rights activist
• Education is the key to success in life, and teachers make a lasting impact in the lives of their students. — Solomon Ortiz, 1937-, former U.S. Representative-TX
• The very spring and root of honesty and virtue lie in good education. — Plutarch, 46-120AD, Greek historian, biographer, essayist
• Education is a shared commitment between dedicated teachers, motivated students and enthusiastic parents with high expectations. — Bob Beauprez, 1948-, former member of U.S. House of Representatives-CO
• The most influential of all educational factors is the conversation in a child’s home. — William Temple, 1881-1944, English bishop, teacher
• Education is the leading of human souls to what is best, and making what is best out of them. — John Ruskin, 1819-1900, English writer, art critic, philanthropist
• Education levels the playing field, allowing everyone to compete. — Joyce Meyer, 1943-, Christian author and speaker
• Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten. — B.F. Skinner , 1904-1990, psychologist, behaviorist, social philosopher
• The great end of education is to discipline rather than to furnish the mind; to train it to the use of its own powers rather than to fill it with the accumulation of others. — Tyron Edwards, 1809-1894, theologian
• Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength of the nation. — John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963, 35 th President of the United States
• Education is like a lantern which lights your way in a dark alley. — Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, 1918-2004, President of the United Arab Emirates for 33 years
• When educating the minds of our youth, we must not forget to educate their hearts. — Dalai Lama, spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism
• Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or self-confidence . — Robert Frost, 1874-1963, poet
• The secret in education lies in respecting the student. — Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882, essayist, lecturer, and poet
• My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance, but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors. — Maya Angelou, 1928-, author, poet

©2014 Marilyn Price-Mitchell. All rights reserved. Please contact for permission to reprint.

Marilyn Price-Mitchell, Ph.D., is an Institute for Social Innovation Fellow at Fielding Graduate University and author of Tomorrow’s Change Makers.

• Find a Therapist
• Find a Treatment Center
• Find a Psychiatrist
• Find a Support Group
• Find Online Therapy
• United States
• Brooklyn, NY
• Chicago, IL
• Houston, TX
• Los Angeles, CA
• New York, NY
• Portland, OR
• San Diego, CA
• San Francisco, CA
• Seattle, WA
• Washington, DC
• Asperger's
• Bipolar Disorder
• Chronic Pain
• Eating Disorders
• Passive Aggression
• Personality
• Goal Setting
• Positive Psychology
• Stopping Smoking
• Low Sexual Desire
• Relationships
• Child Development
• Self Tests NEW
• Therapy Center
• Diagnosis Dictionary
• Types of Therapy

At any moment, someone’s aggravating behavior or our own bad luck can set us off on an emotional spiral that threatens to derail our entire day. Here’s how we can face our triggers with less reactivity so that we can get on with our lives.

• Emotional Intelligence
• Gaslighting
• Affective Forecasting
• Neuroscience

• The Whitehead Encyclopedia
• Thematic entries

Whitehead’s Philosophy of Education: Its Promise and Relationship to the Philosophy of Organism

1. main themes of education.

The Aims of Education and Other Essays (1929) is a series of lectures delivered primarily in England before, during, and after the First World War. [1] Whitehead envisages an egalitarian society in which a reenergized liberal education strengthens the imaginative capacities of students from every social class. [2] His views still resonate with us almost a century later.

“The whole book,” he writes, “is a protest against dead knowledge, that is to say against inert ideas” ( AE v). Indeed, “the problem of keeping knowledge alive, of preventing it from becoming inert […] is the central problem of education” ( AE 5). Inert ideas are those “ideas that are merely received into the mind without being utilized, or tested, or thrown into fresh combinations” ( AE 1). Where knowledge is transmitted to a passive learner unable to use ideas in a practical way or relate them to her own experience, the result is a “useless” waste of time. By utilizing an idea, Whitehead means “[…] relating it to that stream, compounded of sense perceptions, feelings, hopes, desires, and of mental activities, adjusting thought to thought, which forms our life” ( AE 3). The life of the learner, like that of all human beings, is a stream flowing from the past through the present to the future, one in which all events are connected to each another. The stream is a fluid mix of emotions, desires, hopes, feelings, and sense perceptions. Mental activity consists of relating one idea to another in novel and creative ways. [3] This is why inert ideas are so “harmful”: they stultify the “self-development,” or growth, of “students [who] are alive” ( AE v).

As a mathematician, Whitehead was especially concerned with the “inclusion of mathematics in a liberal education” so as “to train the pupils to handle abstract ideas.” In order for such ideas to come to life, students taking elementary courses should be spared the drudgery and “pointless accumulation of details,” since the “general use of mathematics should be the simple study of a few general truths, well illustrated by practical examples” ( AE 80, 81). The examples he has in mind have become standard fare in teaching the subject: a train passing several stations in a certain amount of time can illustrate continuous and discontinuous functions; a train can also help to explain the differential calculus; and vectors as straight lines are graphically illustrated by someone walking across the deck of a moving steamer ( IM 111-12, 167, 37).

“Another way in which the students” ideas can be generalized,” Whitehead claims, “is by the use of the History of Mathematics” ( AE 84). In An Introduction to Mathematics (1911), he gives the example of Archimedes jumping from his bath, running naked in the streets and shouting “ Eureka! ” when he first realized that a body immersed in water is pressed upwards by a force equal to the weight of the water it displaces. “This day,” writes Whitehead, “ought to be celebrated as the birthday of mathematical physics” ( IM 24) and taught to students as part of their mathematical education. The influence of the Chinese on the introduction of the compass into Europe more than three thousand years after they had first used it; Galileo’s dropping of weights from the tower of Pisa in order to show that bodies of a different weight fall from the same height in the same time; and the dispute between Newton and Leibniz about who had invented the calculus ( IM 19-20, 27-8, 163-4) all provide a rich source for bringing abstract ideas to life. [4] By means of historical examples illustrating the importance of mathematical ideas when they were first advanced, Whitehead believed it possible for students to learn “the precise connection between this world [of abstract ideas] and the feelings of actual experience” ( AE 106).

Arguably the most important contribution Whitehead made to educational thought is the rhythmic cycles of growth. The process of self-development, which lies at the base of all learning, is a natural one to which educators should pay close attention. He claims that “life is essentially periodic” with its “alternations of work and play, of activity and of sleep” punctuated by “subtler periods of mental growth with their cyclic recurrences, yet always different as we pass from cycle to cycle” ( AE 17). Learning passes through a threefold cycle of romance (“adventure” and “the joy of discovery”), precision (the “self discipline” required to master any discipline) and generalization (“a return to romanticism” coupled with a broad understanding) ( AE 33, 2, 35, 19). The cycles can overlap with one another and are conjoined in a repetitive, or more accurately reiterative, process of growth that is lifelong. [5]

According to Whitehead, “the rhythmic pulses of life” comprise a “difference within a framework of repetition” or, put differently, “an alternation of dominance” ( AE 25, 17, 28) in which freedom and discipline complement each other in a creative dance of contrasting patterns. [6] The cycle of romance is characterized by the freedom of the learner in “a process of discovery […that] is both natural and of absorbing interest” ( AE 32). Romance is arguably the most important of the cycles, since it allows the student to pursue her own interests unconstrained by the demands of others, for “its essence is browsing and the encouragement of vivid freshness.” This initial phase is too often neglected, resulting in an inertia in which the learner regards knowledge as one would “the dryness of the Sahara” ( AE 22, 17).

Once romance has run its course and “been properly guided another craving grows […for] the enlightenment that comes from precise knowledge.” The discipline required for the cycle of precision is important, because “there are right ways and wrong ways, and definite truths to be known,” but it is also capable of stifling romance (“training is apt to kill initiative”). Teachers and learners need “pace, pace, pace. Get your knowledge quickly, and then use it. If you can use it, you will retain it” ( AE 33-6). The freedom experienced in the cycle of generalization is built upon both the adventure of romance and the discipline of precision. Now, however, the learner can dispense with “the precise knowledge of details […] in favour of the active application of principles, the details retreating into subconscious habits.” This ability to relate general principles to the concrete facts of experience is “the final possession of wisdom” ( AE 37). It enables one to recognize the practical implications of theoretical knowledge and the possibilities for more coordinated forms of human thought and action ( AI 66-7).

Generalization is the main goal of university education, though it is not limited to this level. The University should be imbued with imagination in the form of “a contagious disease […] communicated by a faculty whose members wear their learning with imagination.” Only then will faculty and students work together as “a band of imaginative scholars,” who recognize that “the learned and imaginative life is a way of living, and is not an article of commerce.” For Whitehead, unless the imagination infects the University in this manner, faculty are likely to become “a faculty of very efficient pedants and dullards” ( AE 97, 100, 97, 99) and their students pale reflections of their professors. [7]

2. A History of Scholarship on the Relationship between Whitehead’s Philosophy of Education and the Philosophy of Organism

Over the last half century, scholars have debated whether or not Whitehead had a fully thought out and systematic philosophy of education. Some of his many essays pertaining to education were reprinted in The Aims of Education and a handful of others published posthumously in Essays in Science and Philosophy (1948). But these essays are all capable of “standing on their own,” because they are not necessarily linked to each other or to an overall philosophical framework. For this reason, some scholars have concluded that Whitehead never wrote systematically on education. Nevertheless, it is widely held that Whitehead’s Process and Reality (1929) is his magnum opus , and many scholars have asked whether or not we may interpret or apply the concepts and ideas therein for the purposes of setting forth a more systematic Whiteheadian philosophy of education.

In his 1951 essay, “Whitehead’s Views on Education,” Henry Holmes notes that Whitehead has “not written about education extensively” and that “neither Process and Reality nor Adventures of Ideas contains direct references to education as a process.” Holmes concentrates mostly on the Aims of Education and provides little evidence of how one may link Whitehead’s educational thought to his other works. However, Holmes does predict that “it is not unlikely that his influence on education will have to come in part by indirection—through interpretation of his general theory” (1951, 622, 626). Hence, from Holmes’ perspective, Whitehead’s philosophical writings may eventually prove to inform his views on education.

Likewise, in 1957, Frank Wegener notes the same problem of linking Whitehead’s respective writings on education and cosmology. Wegener writes that “although Whitehead did write and lecture on aspects of education, he did not apply his basic philosophical conceptions in the overt formulation of a systematic organic philosophy of education” (1957, 43-44). In the introduction to his much overlooked book, The Organic Philosophy of Education , Wegener raises the question of whether or not one may utilize Whitehead’s philosophy of organism for the purposes of elucidating his pedagogical views. Particularly, he asks if one logically turned

the question around it might be asked “to what extent would the Philosophy of Organism be in agreement with the Organic Philosophy of Education?” It should be clearly understood that discrepancies of interpretation, application, and emphasis would no doubt be very evident (1957, 36).

In such a case, for Wegener, there is an asymmetrical relationship in which Whitehead’s speculative metaphysics can be said to ground his philosophy of education, but not vice-versa. However, we think that there are several themes in Whitehead’s philosophy of education which may inform his cosmology, such as the interpretation of the notion of the rhythms of education as reverberating throughout nature. But, Wegener does take quite a bold approach with respect to the idea of using Whitehead’s complex philosophical notions towards the construction of an organic, “process” pedagogy. He utilizes the complex cosmological notions of Process and Reality , such as “creativity,” “prehension,” “concrescence,” “subjective aim,” and “self-realization,” in the construction of a truly novel and organic philosophy of education. At the same time, he maintains that while “the Organic Philosophy of Education is in substantial agreement with Whitehead’s philosophy of organism,” he makes no “intimation […] to convert the philosophy of organism directly into an equivalent educational philosophy” (1957, 35). In any case, Wegener uses Whiteheadian concepts in order to improve upon those previous theories of education which maintained rigid separations between the various notions of education; for example, between “teacher” and “student,” “authority” and “freedom,” and “academic” and “experiential.” [8] Wegener posits Whitehead’s cosmological notions as coextensive with education since he believes that life and experience comprise the real “classroom” of learning. Specifically, for Wegener, “education involves the blending of systematic “schooling” and “life-experience” in the total educational process” (1957, 89).

Wegener’s stance is admirable in its depiction of the connection between education and the rest of the organic universe. But, it might be argued, scholarship demands more clarity regarding the boundaries between what is practical in education and what is not. Later in the book, Wegener claims that

by and large there is an educational philosophy implicit in Whitehead’s philosophy of organism. Yet in order to make this philosophy of education explicit, one must bring a knowledge of the unique problems and content of the field of education, realized from one’s study and experience, to the general philosophy in question (1957, 324-25).

It would seem, following from Wegener’s reflections, that a philosophy of education is contained within Whitehead’s general philosophical writings, but not vice-versa. Any consideration of education in light of the theory of prehensions should appeal to one’s own experiences in education. Later, we shall consider these important notions further.

In the mid-1960s, in his book, Whitehead on Education , Harold Dunkel further raised the issue of the relationship between Whitehead’s writings on education and his general philosophizing. According to Dunkel, Whitehead’s interest in education

stemmed from being an educator in the same sense as are all professors who are sincere and conscientious about their professional duties. His educational writings are scattered essays. He never attempted to publish a specific philosophy of education or to train teachers in it. […] One may then ask why, apart from certain brief essays on Whitehead’s educational position, no extended attempt has been made to use his general philosophy as a basis for educational thought and action (1965, 7-8).

According to Dunkel, Whitehead himself made little attempt to link his views on education with his cosmology and made few references to the theory of prehensions in his writings on education. The question, then, is why scholars would want to attempt to make the connection. Dunkel goes on to write that since Whitehead

never presented his educational ideas in one organized, coherent statement […there is the] question whether his views on education represent only scattered insights and comments or whether they actually form a coherent whole. […] The question[s] immediately arise […] whether the views expressed in these earlier educational essays are congruent with (or even related in any way to) his more mature philosophic doctrines […], whether there is any relation possible between general philosophic theory, on the one hand, and educational theory, ideas, and practice, on the other […and] whether there is any significant connection [between them] (1965, 9-10).

With these problems in mind, Dunkel carefully maintains a focus primarily on The Aims of Education , while at the same time making reference to many of the key philosophical themes of Whitehead’s other writings. Education, for Dunkel, is connected with the processes Whitehead describes in his general philosophizing, and tends “to have moments or aspects [that] correspond to parts of this process.” Specifically, Dunkel points to the process of learning as “self-development,” which may be analogous to the process of concrescence of an actual entity, described by Whitehead in Process and Reality . Since the purpose of education in general is to assist such self-development, Dunkel believes that Whiteheadian cosmology offers a “comprehensive conceptual matrix” within which a philosophy of education could be elaborated. And he argues that educators should become more interested in philosophy so as to carry out this task. Dunkel concludes that “the correspondence between Whitehead’s philosophic doctrine and his educational views appears both extensive and fundamental” (1965, 102, 20, 170). But Dunkel is more reserved than Wegener in merging Whitehead’s views on education with his cosmology.

More recently, Malcolm Evans, in Whitehead and Philosophy of Education has raised similar questions regarding the possible use of Whitehead’s general philosophy for the purposes of education:

in much of his formal philosophy, Whitehead is writing about ideas that are indispensably relevant to the universe. What are the ideas in his metaphysics that are indispensably relevant to our lesser universe—education and schooling? […] Do such ideas as creativity […], prehension, concrescence, satisfaction, etc. […] fit into education? (1998, 98).

In attempting to answer these questions, Evans’ book serves as a useful introduction to understanding Whitehead’s perspectives on education. He outlines many previous commentators’ approaches to the question of the possible connection between the philosophy of organism and the philosophy of education, and uses Whitehead’s formal technical vocabulary in his discourse about the latter. From Evans’ perspective, Whitehead’s writings on education and philosophy must be joined together, for “those who would seek Whitehead, philosopher of education, must examine all of his writings.” In this direction, Evans endeavors to “tap both formal and informal philosophies for the rich insight they provide and to draw out the implicit philosophy of education found there.” He recommends that we read Whitehead’s formal,” or more systematic writings with a view to applying them to education since “Whitehead’s metaphysical writings, although far removed from traditional educational theory, provide a new and necessary frame for thinking about education and its societal setting” (1998, 34, 34, 49; emphasis added). Whitehead’s metaphysical writings provide a cosmological framework within which a philosophy of education may be situated. But, for him, the task of constructing a more complete Whiteheadian philosophy of education or of “unpacking” (2000, 5) one from Whitehead’s speculative metaphysical writings are tasks which have yet to be carried out. Evans’ book provides an excellent preparation for such an endeavor.

These four writers do not represent the whole history of scholarship on the question of the connections between Whitehead’s philosophy of education and his philosophy of organism. Many others have pondered the question extensively and have made valuable contributions on the issue. [9] However, from this particular sampling of scholars, it is evident that there is a general disagreement about the question of the putative link between Whitehead’s philosophy of organism and his views of education. While some try to connect Whitehead’s writings on education with his general philosophizing, others are more hesitant about making such links.

In summary, there are three major reasons why connecting Whitehead’s cosmology and his philosophy of education might be said to be problematic. First, Whitehead’s writings on education do not form a systematic conceptual whole, and he does not explicitly spell out the relationship between his views on education and his general philosophy. Second, the technical vocabulary employed in his philosophy of organism is a deterrent to many scholars of his philosophy of education, and especially to those who feel that such concepts have little to do with the concrete states of affairs in classrooms, schools, and universities. Third, education does not seem to have much to do with the biological or organic processes in nature at the core of his cosmology. However, we have argued that the project to merge the two in a systematic way constitutes an important advance in theoretical scholarship in the area of Whiteheadian philosophy of education. Historically speaking, since most of Whitehead’s philosophy of education is to be found in addresses and writings from 1912-1922, before his mature philosophical works were written, there is need for a reconsideration of his philosophy of education in light of his cosmological works. In short, any attempt to “put his philosophy of organism back into” Whitehead’s philosophy of education demonstrates the compatibility of both frameworks.

3. Integrating Whitehead’s Philosophies of Education and Organism

There are several key ways in which Whitehead’s philosophy of organism and his philosophy of education complement one another. First, although his account of education does not seem to be related to the organic processes in nature described in his general philosophy, both exhibit a concern for life . As Whitehead himself explains,

education is the guidance towards a comprehension of the art of life; and by art of life I mean the most complete achievement of varied activity expressing the potentialities of that living creature in the face of its actual environment. […] Each individual embodies an adventure of existence. The art of life is the guidance of this adventure ( AE 39).

The “art of life” is a journey filled with adventure in which education provides the lure that enables the learner’s self-development or self-realization. The fulfillment of this process is the actualization of the many life-possibilities of which s/he is capable in a more “comprehensive life-range,” [10] namely, a wider range of feeling, thought, and action. As such, educational institutions are a main vehicle for enhancing those organic processes and activities of appropriation, creation, self-realization, and self-enjoyment that Whitehead describes in his speculative writings.

Second, Whitehead insists that his philosophy of organism is applicable to many domains of thought. At the outset of Process and Reality , Whitehead writes that “the true method of philosophical construction is to frame a scheme of ideas, the best that one can, and unflinchingly […] explore the interpretation of experience in terms of that scheme” ( PR xiv). Furthermore, he states that a speculative scheme of ideas should “in respect to its interpretation, [be] applicable and adequate” ( PR 3), such that many forms of experience, including educational experience, should be interpretable through it. This suggests an implicit connection between his speculative cosmology and education.

Third, in The Aims of Education , Whitehead provides a possible analogy between education and his theory of prehensions. He writes,

education is not the process of packing articles in a trunk. Such a simile is entirely inapplicable. […Rather] its nearest analogue is the assimilation of food by a living organism: and we all know how necessary to health palatable food is under suitable conditions. When you have put your boots in a trunk, they will stay there till you take them out again; but this is not at all the case if you feed a child with the wrong food ( AE 33).

Both the process of education and the notion of a “prehension” are defined as the “assimilation” or the “appropriation” of food by an organism. Whereas “assimilation” designates “taking something in and making it part of the thing it has joined,” a “prehension” designates an organism’s “uncognitive apprehension” and “selective appropriation” of the elements in its environment for the sake of its own existence. To be sure, Whitehead explains that “for the foundation of its own existence” an organism feels and appropriates “the various elements of the universe out of which it arises” which, in his speculative terminology, means that “each [such] process of appropriation of a particular element is termed a prehension” ( PR , 219). The notion of a prehension as an appropriation, parallels a student’s selective reception of a lecture, taking down only those parts s/he finds of interest and importance. It is reasonable to infer that Whitehead considers learning as a similar process to an organism’s feeling and absorption of the multifarious data in the environment.

Fourth, Whitehead conceives of the theory of prehensions as primarily a “theory of feelings.” Feelings and emotions provide the ground from which cognition grows and their importance cannot be ignored as though it were some kind of encumbrance to rational thought. As such, the theory of prehensions can be favorably compared with cognitivist and behaviorist theories, both of which underestimate the importance of “affect” in learning. Jean Piaget, for example, emphasizes cognitive development as the exclusive goal of education in which the learner acquires “the critical attitude of the mind, objectivity, and discursive reflection” (1969b, 180). However noble these attributes may be as integral to an emerging critical consciousness, Piaget considers them in abstraction from the emotions and feelings of the learner. If, as Whitehead argues, our primary awareness as human beings is “emotional feeling, felt in its relevance to a world beyond” ( PR 163), then any attempt to develop a theory of cognition that does not take this concrete experience into account will “fail to explain the relationship between bodily feelings, emotions, and higher forms of consciousness in human beings” (Flynn 1995, 378). On the other hand, behaviorists of Whitehead’s day, such as J. B. Watson, reduced human beings to stimulus-response mechanisms whose “measurable behaviors” could be changed by means of classical conditioning. They gave no account of the interior lives of human beings at all, since they were part of a “black box” whose mysteries could be ignored as non-scientific. While more recent behaviorists like B. F. Skinner have proposed “operant conditioning” as a process of rewards in which “a bit of behavior is followed by a certain kind of consequence” so that “it is more likely to occur again,” their neglect of the emotions is no less striking. [11]

By way of contrast, the theory of prehensions depicts the non-linear process of intellectual development, starting from primitive bodily feelings and emotions, and ending with consciousness and self-consciousness. According to Whitehead, while feelings and emotions are more primitive than consciousness, the latter is a high level of experience belonging to high-grade organisms like human beings, but it is fraught with the problems of abstraction. The theory of prehensions describes the process by which consciousness develops from our basic feelings and emotions on the basis of which we appropriate and assimilate the data in our environment. Moreover, it speaks of the interrelation of body and mind, as well as the need to enhance our pre-conscious awareness of the world through feelings and emotions.

Fifth, Whitehead’s conception of the cyclical stages of educational growth of education (romance, precision, and generalization) has a remarkably similar structure to the theory of prehensions. Whitehead’s rhythms of education are a general articulation of the natural phases of learning, to which teachers must be attentive if they are to provide an environment conducive to learning. While each of the stages cannot be said to be rigidly separate from the others, learning is a process, which in general flows in a cyclical manner from one phase to the next. Without permitting the flow from phase to phase, and by neglecting this natural pattern in the variance of methods of presentation of a subject-matter, teachers may stunt the learning of their pupils.

The original stage of romance involves a first-step into intellectual inquiry. It is the stage of “first apprehension,” of potentiality, wonder, curiosity, and the joy of discovery, as well as of interrogative and imaginative stirrings in the body and mind regarding a particular subject-matter to be learned. Romance builds upon “the creative impulse toward growth [which] comes from within” ( AE , 39) by strengthening the emotions of the child in her love of learning. Next, the stage of precision involves an analytic engagement with the specific principles of a subject-matter, and the coming to conscious awareness of the conceptual divisions within a domain of investigation. It is the stage of self-discipline, and the development of a specialized knowledge of a subject-matter, through analysis, negation, elimination, critique, and selectivity, which, as Whitehead maintains, are intrinsic to the development of consciousness. Last, the stage of generalization is the application of the specific conceptual divisions learned in the stage of precision, creatively modifying them, and applying them to actuality. It is the stage of satisfaction, aesthetic experience, synthesis, and the awareness of logical contrasts. The stage of generalization also involves the merging and comparison of the feelings originally experienced in the stage of romance with the conscious awareness of the subject-matter attained through the stage of precision. According to Whitehead, the stage of generalization also leads to “a return to Romanticism” ( AE 19) after the acquisition of specialized knowledge, leading to a new cycle of learning. These rhythms of education correspond to a learner’s process of educational self-realization (of research and discovery in learning) are akin to Whitehead’s analogy of the creative process as the flight of an airplane, with a take-off, a flight, and a landing:

The true method of discovery is like the flight of an aeroplane. It starts from the ground of particular observation; it makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization; and it again lands for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation ( PR 5).

The structure of Whitehead’s theory of prehensions also mirrors that of his cyclic rhythms of education. There is, at first, experience characterized by the broad physical feeling of the interconnected environment as well as the emotions. Through integrations and eliminations of felt data, chiefly involving negation, selectivity, and eventually judgment, the prehending subject’s (e.g. the learner’s) awareness of an object in its environment (or a subject-matter) is then raised to consciousness. Subsequently, having experienced the conceptual wealth of higher conscious experience, the prehending subject overcomes the abstractions of consciousness, attains some measure of satisfaction, and “steps back” down to the level of feelings in order to begin the prehensive process anew. Thus, Whitehead’s theory of prehensions offers a more precise and comprehensive way of understanding the rhythms of education, one in which these stages are reflected as an integral part of the unfolding of the organic universe.

Sixth, there is a general correspondence between the underlying meaning of “education” and Whitehead’s notion of “concrescence.” According to the Canadian philosopher John McMurtry, the true etymological root of the word “education” is not, as is commonly held, the Latin word educere , “to lead out,” but rather educare , “to enable to grow” (1988, 39). [12] Education, defined as “enabling a learner to grow” or as authentically assisting the flourishing and self-development of learners, resonates with Whitehead’s theory of prehensions in its chief notion of “concrescence” or the “growing together” of organisms. As Dunkel explains, “the student is engaged in a process of self-development, which is more than merely analogous to the general process of concrescence described in [Whitehead’s] cosmological works” and the role of the teacher is “to guide and foster this process” (1965, 149, 269). One final similarity is that in describing a subject who is engaged in an “activity of other -formation” ( AI 193), Whitehead coins the term “subject-superject,” a notion which is consistent with the role of a teacher in enabling the learner’s growth or self-development. In short, all these connections suggest that education is an organic process consisting in the mutual “growing together” of teachers and students, in which students learn from teachers and teachers learn from students in a fusion of horizons. Moreover, as a whole, they confirm that much of Whitehead’s philosophical terminology is exemplified in education, which can indeed be interpreted through his speculative scheme.

4. Whitehead’s Contribution to Educational Thought

Of all Whitehead’s contributions to educational thought, his views on technical education are particularly striking. [13] Technical education should be integrated with the rest of the curriculum to promote a liberal education in which all students can relate knowledge to their concrete experience.

Whitehead defines technical education as “a training in the art of utilizing knowledge for the manufacture of material products,” for which are needed “manual skill, and the coordinated action of hand and eye, and judgment in the process of construction.” The process of “hand-craft” involves “a reciprocal influence between brain activity and material creative activity” in which “the hands are peculiarly important.” Students learn to put their ideas into practice by making objects with an increasing dexterity for, as he puts it, “If you want to understand anything, make it yourself” ( AE , 49-53). In the modern world, there is an overwhelming need for craftspeople, who create beautiful objects in wood and metal, as well as farmers and cooks freed from the fetters of industrialization ( AE 55-6).

In order for hand-craft to be successful, however, some scientific knowledge is required in the form of an understanding of “those natural processes of which the manufacture is the utilization.” Scientific education, which is “primarily a training in the art of observing natural phenomena, and in the knowledge and deduction of laws concerning the sequence of such phenomena” provides a theoretical base for the activities of technical education. At the same time, technical education can overcome “the narrow specialism” too often found in “a study of science” ( AE 50, 49). Once again, the interrelationship of theory and practice enables knowledge to remain fresh in students’ minds.

The full integration of the curriculum is only possible with the inclusion of literary studies, or “the study of language,” its structure, techniques of verbal expression, and relationship to intellectual feelings. Indeed, it is “the subtle relations of language to feeling […which] lead to keen aesthetic appreciations being aroused by the successful employment of language.” The language of poetry or prose appeals to “the sense organs” and fosters their “high development” as a channel for the expression of feeling in aesthetic and constructive ways. Analogously, it is “bodily feeling[s] […] focused in the eyes, the ears, the voice, the hands” which provide the “reciprocal influence between brain activity and material creative activity” at the base of technical education ( AE 49-50). On the one hand, the artistic use of language emancipates the thoughts and feelings of the speaker; on the other, the bodily feelings of the craftsperson are liberated though the creative practice of the plastic arts. The two forms of education complement one another, which is why “geometry and poetry are as essential as turning lathes” ( AE 45).

Whitehead is arguing for a kind of “spiral curriculum” (Entwistle 1970, 115) in which there is an alternating emphasis upon the literary, the scientific, and the technical. The goal is to achieve a balanced education better suited to the needs of modern (and postmodern) society than the classical education of an English gentleman of yesteryear. Just as the cycles of romance, precision, and generalization constitute the general rhythm of education, so “the problem of education is to retain the dominant emphasis, whether literary, scientific, or technical and without loss of coordination to infuse into each way of education something of the other two” ( AE 54). This alternating emphasis, or rhythm, integrates all three spirals, producing a “seamless coat of learning” that imparts “an intimate sense for the power of ideas, the beauty of ideas, and for the structure of ideas” ( AE 11-12). Nor should technical education be “conceived as a maimed alternative to the perfect Platonic education.” One of “the evil side[s] of the Platonic culture has been its total neglect of technical education,” stemming from the dualism of mind and matter” ( AE 54, 50).

The Platonic belief in “disinterested intellectual appreciation” as the goal of education and life should be replaced by an emphasis on “action and our implication in the transition of events amid the inevitable bond of cause to effect” ( AE 47). Students learn to bring about change by creating objects of beauty through a combination of thought (“headwork”) and action (“handwork”). They thereby come to appreciate the importance of “causal efficacy,” or “the “withness” of the body […] that makes the starting point for our knowledge of the circumambient world” ( PR 81). The bodily feelings expressed in the unity of mental and manual labor provide a direct epistemological connection between the learner and reality.

Education and work must both allow for the creative expression of bodily feelings. A restructuring of the workplace is required in order to overcome the alienation of labor. “Is it likely,” Whitehead asks, “that a tired, bored workman [sic], however skillful his hands, will produce a large output of first-class work?” Greed and the “desire for money” among employers is a destructive force which “will produce hard-fistedness and not enterprise.” This deadening of the purposes of life infects the whole of society, heightening class conflict, for “there can be no prospect of industrial peace so long as masters and men in the mass conceive themselves as engaged in a soulless operation of extracting money from the public.” In order to ensure “a large supply of skilled workmen, men [sic] with inventive genius […] and employers who enjoy their work,” the entire process should be “transfused with intellectual and moral vision and thereby turned into a joy” ( AE 44, 45, 44). The Benedictine approach to communal work, “stripped of its theological trappings,” provides the basis for such a vision. Since “the nation has need of a fluidity of labour,” a new breed of skilled workers should be educated to move freely “not merely from place to place, but […] from one special type of work to another” ( AE 44, 55). This vision of work as joyful, creative, non-specialized activity capable of overcoming humanity’s alienation as a species being is reminiscent of the early Marx. [14]

The craft exemplified in the human capacity for skilled work is no different in kind from that in painting, sculpture or music. The creative impulse finds its full expression in the “aesthetic emotions” at the base and forefront of Art in this most general sense. Aesthetic emotions provide students and workers alike with “the sense of value, the sense of importance […] the sense of beauty, the aesthetic sense of realized perfection” with which their own work is imbued ( AE 40). It would be quite easy, Whitehead argues, to educate an artistic population with a sense of their own potentiality for constructive and coordinated action. As men and women work together creatively, they learn to appreciate the growing “strength of beauty” in their interior lives. “The beauty of the soul,” as John Cobb calls it, enables people to work with others and share in the accomplishments of the community so that “all will understand that their achievements are products of the group and contributions to the group” (1998, 107).

This Utopian vision of a just and equitable society ( AE 41) is strengthened by the humanizing power of Art articulated in Whitehead’s philosophy of organism. [15] Unlike scientific materialism, whose “assumption of the bare valuelessness of mere matter led to a lack of reverence in the treatment of natural or artistic beauty” so that “art was treated as a frivolity,” the goal of an organic philosophy of education is “to strengthen habits of concrete appreciation of the individual facts in their full interplay of emergent values” ( SMW 196, 198). Only where students appreciate the beauty in nature and human artifacts, and the panoply of changing values inherent in both, will they learn “the art of life,” namely “(i) to live, (ii) to live well, (iii) to live better.” Art and aesthetic appreciation enable human beings to lead civilized lives in which they strive “towards the attainment of an end realized in imagination but not in fact” ( FR 4, 8). At the same time, art brings the potentiality of the imagination into the actuality of everyday life. Artists, like craftspeople, are engaged in a bodily activity in which they create tangible objects expressive of human perfection, “a finite fragment of human effort achieving its own perfection within its own limits.” As a result, “Art heightens the sense of humanity. It gives an elation of feeling which is supernatural […]. It requires Art to evoke into consciousness the finite perfections which lie ready for human achievement” ( AI 270, 271). Art enables us to recognize the perfection of which humanity is capable. It acts as a lure to consciousness in discriminating between what is worthwhile in human life and what is not. It is for this reason that Whitehead regards “the use of art as a condition of healthy life […] analogous to sunshine in the physical world” ( AE 58).

[1] We wish to thank the other members of the University of Saskatchewan Process Philosophy Research Unit—Mark Flynn, Bob Regnier, and Ed Thompson—for their continuing support and collegiality.

[2] Whitehead’s vision of a liberal education is similar to that of Russell in Principles of Social Reconstruction (1916, Chapter 5) except that Russell places a greater emphasis on education for peace. For a comparison of the educational thought of Russell, Whitehead, and Dewey, see Woodhouse 1983.

[3] This is similar to Dewey’s principle of the continuity of experience (1959, 26-27).

[4] Whitehead’s influence can be seen today in such works as de Berg 1992, Thompson 1997, and Ernst 2000.

[5] This contrasts with Piaget who conceives of the stages of learning as linear, discrete, invariant, and sequential (1969a, 123). For a full account of Whitehead’s rhythmic cycles of growth, see Entwistle 1970, 212-17.

[6] For a connection between the rhythmic cycles of growth and the “characteristics of life,” see Woodhouse 1995. For a similar connection, based on the notion of concrescence, see Garland 2005.

[7] See Woodhouse 1999 and 2005c, and Regnier 2005.

[8] According to Wegener, “existing conflicts between educational theories—formal versus informal, conservative versus progressive, classic versus subjective, liberal versus practical, realistic versus idealistic, academic versus pragmatic, logical versus psychological, external versus internal, and many others—are really complementary and reciprocal when viewed organically” (1957, 29).

[9] See for example Mellert 1998: “the third chapter of The Aims of Education , entitled, ‘The Rhythmic Claims of Freedom and Discipline,’ is where I find the essence of Whitehead’s educational philosophy. This philosophy, I shall argue, is simply a reiteration in educational language of the core principles of his general philosophy as stated in Process and Reality and in Science and the Modern World .” Hendley quotes a letter from Whitehead stating that working in Harvard’s philosophy department would provide him with “a welcome opportunity of developing in systematic form my ideas on Logic, the Philosophy of Science, Metaphysics, and some more general questions, half philosophical and half practical, such as Education” (1986, 80). Breuvart writes: “Whitehead’s reflection about the educative process ought to be first found in his book The Aims of Education . But my point in this paper is to prove that one could find a more complete conception through a closer examination of Process and Reality ’s Categoreal Scheme. For we could find in it a conception of responsibility which is more relevant for a theory of educational process, and for a practice as well, in the sense of a more effective commitment in the educative process” (2001, 286). See also Cobb 1998, which takes up some of the work of Woodhouse and Regnier; and Flynn 1995 and 2005, which relate Whitehead’s philosophy of organism to his philosophy and psychology of education.

[10] Woodhouse 2001, 223. For Whitehead’s cosmological explanation of the notion of “the art of life,” see FR , 4.

[11] See Skinner 1972, 5, 147-48, 27. For a critique of behaviorism, see Woodhouse 2005b, 399-401.

[12] Cf . Woodhouse 2001b, 224.

[13] See Hendley 1986, 87-88; Allan 1999; Collins 1996, 70-71, 82.

[14] See Marx 1972; Spring 1994, 11-12; Nivens 2005. Johnson claims that Whitehead believed in strict limits to the freedom of craftspeople who would simply add the “finishing touches” to mass-produced articles (1962, 92).

[15] Cf . Taggart 2004.

Works Cited and Further Readings

Breuvart, J.-M. 2001. “How Could Be Related Ethics and Education in Whitehead’s Process Philosophy?” Proceedings of the Whitehead and China in the New Millenium Conference .

Cobb, J. B., Jr. 1998. “Beyond Essays,” Interchange , 29, 1, 105-110.

Dewey, J. 1959. Experience and Education (New York, MacMillan).

Dunkel, H. B. 1965. Whitehead on Education (Ohio, Ohio State University Press).

Evans, M. 1998. Whitehead and Philosophy of Education (Atlanta, Rodopi).

Evans, M. 2000. “Process, Teaching, and Learning,” Process Perspectives , Winter. 3, 225-41.

Entwistle, H. 1970. Child-Centred Education (London, Methuen).

Flynn, M. 1995. “Conflicting Views on the Importance of Emotion to Human Development and Growth: Piaget and Whitehead,” Interchange , 26, 4, 365-381.

Hendley, B. 1986. Dewey, Russell, and Whitehead: Philosophers as Educators (Carbondale, Southern Illinois University).

Holmes, H. 1951. “Whitehead’s Views on Education,” in The Library of Living Philosophers, Volume 3: The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead , edited by P.A. Schilpp (New York, Tudor Publishing), 621-40.

Johnson, A. H. 1962. Whitehead’s Philosophy of Civilization (New York, Dover Publications).

Marx, K. 1972. “The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts,” in The Marx-Engels Reader , edited by R.C. Tucker (New York, W.W. Norton), 56-65

McMurtry, J. 1988. “The History of Inquiry and Social Reproduction: Educating for Critical Thought,” Interchange , 19, 1.

Nivens, P. 2005. “Gramsci and Whitehead Rate Consent in Politics,” in Chromatikon 1: Annuaire de la philosophie en procès , edited by M. Weber, M. and D. D’Epremesnil (Louvain-la-Neuve, Presses universitaires de Louvain), 177-93.

Piaget, J. 1969a. Psychology of Intelligence (Totowa, N.J., Littlefield, Adams).

Piaget, J. 1969b. Science of Education and the Psychology of the Child (New York, Penguin Books).

Russell, B. 1916. Principles of Social Reconstruction (London, George Allen and Unwin).

Taggart, G. 2004. “Whitehead and Marcuse: Teaching the ‘Art of Life’,” Process Papers , 8, 53-67.

Wegener, F. C. 1957. The Organic Philosophy of Education (Dubuque, Wm.C. Brown). “Whitehead’s Philosophy and Education,” Special Issue, Process Studies , 34, 2, 2005.

Author Information

Adam Scarfe Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies California State University, Bakersfield, 9001 Stockdale Hwy, Bakersfield, California, 93311 U.S.A. [email protected]

Howard Woodhouse Department of Educational Foundations University of Saskatchewan, 28 Campus Drive, Saskatoon, SK S7N 0V6, Canada http://www.usask.ca/usppru/ [email protected]

How to Cite this Article

Scarfe, Adam, and Howard Woodhouse, “Whitehead’s Philosophy of Education: Its Promise and Relationship to the Philosophy of Organism”, last modified 2008,  The Whitehead Encyclopedia , Brian G. Henning and Joseph Petek (eds.), originally edited by Michel Weber and Will Desmond, URL = <http://encyclopedia.whiteheadresearch.org/entries/thematic/education/whiteheads-philosophy-of-education/>.

The Whitehead Encyclopedia is proudly powered by WordPress

"The Purpose of Education"

Author:  King, Martin Luther, Jr. (Morehouse College)

Date:  January 1, 1947 to February 28, 1947

Location:  Atlanta, Ga.

Genre:  Published Article

Topic:  Martin Luther King, Jr. - Political and Social Views

Writing in the campus newspaper, the  Maroon Tiger , King argues that education has both a utilitarian and a moral function. 1  Citing the example of Georgia’s former governor Eugene Talmadge, he asserts that reasoning ability is not enough. He insists that character and moral development are necessary to give the critical intellect humane purposes. King, Sr., later recalled that his son told him, “Talmadge has a Phi Beta Kappa key, can you believe that? What did he use all that precious knowledge for? To accomplish what?” 2

As I engage in the so-called “bull sessions” around and about the school, I too often find that most college men have a misconception of the purpose of education. Most of the “brethren” think that education should equip them with the proper instruments of exploitation so that they can forever trample over the masses. Still others think that education should furnish them with noble ends rather than means to an end.

It seems to me that education has a two-fold function to perform in the life of man and in society: the one is utility and the other is culture. Education must enable a man to become more efficient, to achieve with increasing facility the ligitimate goals of his life.

Education must also train one for quick, resolute and effective thinking. To think incisively and to think for one’s self is very difficult. We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half truths, prejudices, and propaganda. At this point, I often wonder whether or not education is fulfilling its purpose. A great majority of the so-called educated people do not think logically and scientifically. Even the press, the classroom, the platform, and the pulpit in many instances do not give us objective and unbiased truths. To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.

The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.

The late Eugene Talmadge, in my opinion, possessed one of the better minds of Georgia, or even America. Moreover, he wore the Phi Beta Kappa key. By all measuring rods, Mr. Talmadge could think critically and intensively; yet he contends that I am an inferior being. Are those the types of men we call educated?

We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. The broad education will, therefore, transmit to one not only the accumulated knowledge of the race but also the accumulated experience of social living.

If we are not careful, our colleges will produce a group of close-minded, unscientific, illogical propagandists, consumed with immoral acts. Be careful, “brethren!” Be careful, teachers!

1.  In 1925, the  Maroon Tiger  succeeded the  Athenaeum  as the campus literary journal at Morehouse. In the first semester of the 1947–1948 academic year, it won a First Class Honor Rating from the Associated Collegiate Press at the University of Minnesota. The faculty adviser to the  Maroon Tiger  was King’s English professor, Gladstone Lewis Chandler. King’s “The Purpose of Education” was published with a companion piece, “English Majors All?” by a fellow student, William G. Pickens. Among the many prominent black academicians and journalists who served an apprenticeship on the  Maroon Tiger  staff were Lerone Bennett, Jr., editor of  Ebony ; Brailsford R. Brazeal, dean of Morehouse College; S. W. Garlington, city editor of New York’s  Amsterdam News ; Hugh Gloster, president of Morehouse College; Emory O. Jackson, editor of the  Birmingham World ; Robert E. Johnson, editor of  Jet ; King D. Reddick of the  New York Age ; Ira De A. Reid, chair of the Sociology Department at Atlanta University; and C. A. Scott, editor and general manager of the  Atlanta Daily World . See  The Morehouse Alumnus , July 1948, pp. 15–16; and Edward A. Jones,  A Candle in the Dark: A History of Morehouse College  (Valley Forge, Pa.: Judson Press, 1967), pp. 174, 260, 289–292.

2.  Martin Luther King, Sr., with Clayton Riley,  Daddy King: An Autobiography  (New York: William Morrow, 1980), p. 143. In an unpublished autobiographical statement, King, Sr., remembered a meeting between Governor Eugene Talmadge and a committee of blacks concerning the imposition of the death penalty on a young black man for making improper remarks to a white woman. King, Sr., reported that Talmadge “sent us away humiliated, frustrated, insulted, and without hope of redress” (“The Autobiography of Daddy King as Told to Edward A. Jones” [n.d.], p. 40; copy in CKFC). Six months before the publication of King’s article, Georgia’s race-baiting former governor Eugene Talmadge had declared in the midst of his campaign for a new term as governor that “the only issue in this race is White Supremacy.” On 12 November, the black General Missionary Baptist Convention of Georgia designated his inauguration date, 9 January 1947, as a day of prayer. Talmadge died three weeks before his inauguration. See William Anderson,  The Wild Man from Sugar Creek: The Political Career of Eugene Talmadge  (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1975), pp. 226–237; Joseph L. Bernd, “White Supremacy and the Disfranchisement of Blacks in Georgia, 1946,”  Georgia Historical Quarterly  66 (Winter 1982): 492–501; Clarence M. Wagner,  Profiles of Black Georgia Baptists  (Atlanta: Bennett Brothers, 1980), p. 104; and Benjamin E. Mays,  Born to Rebel: An Autobiography  (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987), pp. 221–223.

Source:   Maroon Tiger  (January-February 1947): 10.  

©  Copyright Information

Dewey on Educational Aims

• Reference work entry
• First Online: 01 January 2018
• Cite this reference work entry

• Avi I. Mintz 2  

2184 Accesses

1 Citations

Aims ; Educational ideals ; Purpose of education

Introduction

Throughout his oeuvre, John Dewey tackled broad questions about the purposes of education. What does education provide for society? How might education best serve individuals? Dewey’s answers to these questions about educational aims sometimes varied. In 1916, in Democracy and Education , Dewey wrote that “the aim of education is to enable individuals to continue their education… the object and reward of learning is continued capacity for growth” (Dewey 1916 /1980, p. 107). In 1921, in an essay on “Aims and Ideals in Education” contributed to the Encyclopaedia and Dictionary of Education , Dewey again defended “growth as aim and ideal” in education (Dewey 1921 /1983). In 1930, in the essay “Philosophy and Education,” Dewey wrote that “the ultimate aim of education is nothing other than the creation of human beings in the fullness of their capacities” (Dewey 1930 /1984, p. 289). And in 1938 in Experience and Education ,...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

• Available as PDF
• Read on any device
• Instant download
• Own it forever
• Available as EPUB and PDF
• Durable hardcover edition
• Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
• Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Dewey, J. (1916/1980). Democracy and education: An introduction to philosophy of education. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), The middle works: 1899–1924, volume 9, 1916 (pp. 1–370). Carbondale/Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

Google Scholar  

Dewey, J. (1921/1983). Contribution to the encyclopaedia and dictionary of education. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), The middle works, 1899–1924, volume 13, 1921–1922 (pp. 399–405). Carbondale/Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

Dewey, J. (1930/1984). Philosophy and education. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), The later works, 1925–1953: Voume 5, 1929–1930 (pp. 289–298). Carbondale/Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

Dewey, J. (1938/1988). Experience and Education. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), The later works of John Dewey, 1925–1953: volume 13,1938-1939 (pp. 1–62). Carbondale/Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

The University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK, USA

Avi I. Mintz

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Avi I. Mintz .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

Michael A. Peters

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 Springer Science+Business Media Singapore

About this entry

Cite this entry.

Mintz, A.I. (2017). Dewey on Educational Aims. In: Peters, M.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-588-4_50

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-588-4_50

Published : 08 March 2018

Publisher Name : Springer, Singapore

Print ISBN : 978-981-287-587-7

Online ISBN : 978-981-287-588-4

eBook Packages : Education Reference Module Humanities and Social Sciences Reference Module Education

Share this entry

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

Philosophy of Education

All human societies, past and present, have had a vested interest in education; and some wits have claimed that teaching (at its best an educational activity) is the second oldest profession. While not all societies channel sufficient resources into support for educational activities and institutions, all at the very least acknowledge their centrality—and for good reasons. For one thing, it is obvious that children are born illiterate and innumerate, and ignorant of the norms and cultural achievements of the community or society into which they have been thrust; but with the help of professional teachers and the dedicated amateurs in their families and immediate environs (and with the aid, too, of educational resources made available through the media and nowadays the internet), within a few years they can read, write, calculate, and act (at least often) in culturally-appropriate ways. Some learn these skills with more facility than others, and so education also serves as a social-sorting mechanism and undoubtedly has enormous impact on the economic fate of the individual. Put more abstractly, at its best education equips individuals with the skills and substantive knowledge that allows them to define and to pursue their own goals, and also allows them to participate in the life of their community as full-fledged, autonomous citizens.

But this is to cast matters in very individualistic terms, and it is fruitful also to take a societal perspective, where the picture changes somewhat. It emerges that in pluralistic societies such as the Western democracies there are some groups that do not wholeheartedly support the development of autonomous individuals, for such folk can weaken a group from within by thinking for themselves and challenging communal norms and beliefs; from the point of view of groups whose survival is thus threatened, formal, state-provided education is not necessarily a good thing. But in other ways even these groups depend for their continuing survival on educational processes, as do the larger societies and nation-states of which they are part; for as John Dewey put it in the opening chapter of his classic work Democracy and Education (1916), in its broadest sense education is the means of the “social continuity of life” (Dewey, 1916, 3). Dewey pointed out that the “primary ineluctable facts of the birth and death of each one of the constituent members in a social group” make education a necessity, for despite this biological inevitability “the life of the group goes on” (Dewey, 3). The great social importance of education is underscored, too, by the fact that when a society is shaken by a crisis, this often is taken as a sign of educational breakdown; education, and educators, become scapegoats.

It is not surprising that such an important social domain has attracted the attention of philosophers for thousands of years, especially as there are complex issues aplenty that have great philosophical interest. Even a cursory reading of these opening paragraphs reveals that they touch on, in nascent form, some but by no means all of the issues that have spawned vigorous debate down the ages; restated more explicitly in terms familiar to philosophers of education, the issues the discussion above flitted over were: education as transmission of knowledge versus education as the fostering of inquiry and reasoning skills that are conducive to the development of autonomy (which, roughly, is the tension between education as conservative and education as progressive, and also is closely related to differing views about human “perfectibility”—issues that historically have been raised in the debate over the aims of education); the question of what this knowledge, and what these skills, ought to be—part of the domain of philosophy of the curriculum; the questions of how learning is possible, and what is it to have learned something—two sets of issues that relate to the question of the capacities and potentialities that are present at birth, and also to the process (and stages) of human development and to what degree this process is flexible and hence can be influenced or manipulated; the tension between liberal education and vocational education, and the overlapping issue of which should be given priority—education for personal development or education for citizenship (and the issue of whether or not this is a false dichotomy); the differences (if any) between education and enculturation; the distinction between educating versus teaching versus training versus indoctrination; the relation between education and maintenance of the class structure of society, and the issue of whether different classes or cultural groups can—justly—be given educational programs that differ in content or in aims; the issue of whether the rights of children, parents, and socio-cultural or ethnic groups, conflict—and if they do, the question of whose rights should be dominant; the question as to whether or not all children have a right to state-provided education, and if so, should this education respect the beliefs and customs of all groups and how on earth would this be accomplished; and a set of complex issues about the relation between education and social reform, centering upon whether education is essentially conservative, or whether it can be an (or, the ) agent of social change.

It is impressive that most of the philosophically-interesting issues touched upon above, plus additional ones not alluded to here, were addressed in one of the early masterpieces of the Western intellectual tradition—Plato's Republic . A.N. Whitehead somewhere remarked that the history of Western philosophy is nothing but a series of footnotes to Plato, and if the Meno and the Laws are added to the Republic , the same is true of the history of educational thought and of philosophy of education in particular. At various points throughout this essay the discussion shall return to Plato, and at the end there shall be a brief discussion of the two other great figures in the field—Rousseau and Dewey. But the account of the field needs to start with some features of it that are apt to cause puzzlement, or that make describing its topography difficult. These include, but are not limited to, the interactions between philosophy of education and its parent discipline.

1.1 The open nature of philosophy and philosophy of education

1.2 the different bodies of work traditionally included in the field, 1.3 paradigm wars the diversity of, and clashes between, philosophical approaches, 2.1 the early work: c.d. hardie, 2.2 the dominant years: language, and clarification of key concepts, 2.3 countervailing forces, 2.4 a new guise contemporary social, political and moral philosophy, 3.1 philosophical disputes concerning empirical education research, 3.2 the content of the curriculum, and the aims and functions of schooling, 3.3 rousseau, dewey, and the progressive movement, 4. concluding remarks, bibliography, other internet resources, related entries, 1. problems in delineating the field.

There is a large—and ever expanding—number of works designed to give guidance to the novice setting out to explore the domain of philosophy of education; most if not all of the academic publishing houses have at least one representative of this genre on their list, and the titles are mostly variants of the following archetypes: The History and Philosophy of Education , The Philosophical Foundations of Education , Philosophers on Education , Three Thousand Years of Educational Wisdom , A Guide to the Philosophy of Education , and Readings in Philosophy of Education . The overall picture that emerges from even a sampling of this collective is not pretty; the field lacks intellectual cohesion, and (from the perspective taken in this essay) there is a widespread problem concerning the rigor of the work and the depth of scholarship—although undoubtedly there are islands, but not continents, of competent philosophical discussion of difficult and socially-important issues of the kind listed earlier. On the positive side—the obverse of the lack of cohesion—there is, in the field as a whole, a degree of adventurousness in the form of openness to ideas and radical approaches, a trait that is sometimes lacking in other academic fields. This is not to claim, of course, that taken individually philosophers of education are more open-minded than their philosophical cousins!

Part of the explanation for this diffuse state-of-affairs is that, quite reasonably, most philosophers of education have the goal (reinforced by their institutional affiliation with Schools of Education and their involvement in the initial training of teachers) of contributing not to philosophy but to educational policy and practice. This shapes not only their selection of topics, but also the manner in which the discussion is pursued; and this orientation also explains why philosophers of education—to a far greater degree, it is to be suspected, than their “pure” cousins—publish not in philosophy journals but in a wide range of professionally-oriented journals (such as Educational Researcher , Harvard Educational Review , Teachers College Record , Cambridge Journal of Education, Journal of Curriculum Studies , and the like). Some individuals work directly on issues of classroom practice, others identify as much with fields such as educational policy analysis, curriculum theory, teacher education, or some particular subject-matter domain such as math or science education, as they do with philosophy of education. It is still fashionable in some quarters to decry having one's intellectual agenda shaped so strongly as this by concerns emanating from a field of practice; but as Stokes (1997) has made clear, many of the great, theoretically-fruitful research programs in natural science had their beginnings in such practical concerns—as Pasteur's grounbreaking work illustrates. It is dangerous to take the theory versus practice dichotomy too seriously.

However, there is another consequence of this institutional housing of the vast majority of philosphers of education that is worth noting—one that is not found in a comparable way in philosophers of science, for example, who almost always are located in departments of philosophy—namely, that experience as a teacher, or in some other education-related role, is a qualification to become a philosopher of education that in many cases is valued at least as much as depth of philosophical training. (The issue is not that educational experience is irrelevant—clearly it can be highly pertinent—but it is that in the tradeoff with philosophical training, philosophy often loses.) But there are still other factors at work that contribute to the field's diffuseness, that all relate in some way to the nature of the discipline of philosophy itself.

In describing the field of philosophy, and in particular the sub-field that has come to be identified as philosophy of education, one quickly runs into a difficulty not found to anything like the same degree in other disciplines. For example, although there are some internal differences in opinion, nevertheless there seems to be quite a high degree of consensus within the domain of quantum physics about which researchers are competent members of the field and which ones are not, and what work is a strong contribution (or potential contribution). The very nature of philosophy, on the other hand, is “essentially contested”; what counts as a sound philosophical work within one school of thought, or socio-cultural or academic setting, may not be so-regarded (and may even be the focus of derision) in a different one. Coupled with this is the fact that the borders of the field are not policed, so that the philosophically-untrained can cross into it freely—indeed, over the past century or more a great many individuals from across the spectrum of real and pseudo disciplines have for whatever reason exercised their right to self-identify as members of this broad and loosely defined category of “philosophers” (as a few minutes spent browsing in the relevant section of a bookstore will verify).

In essence, then, there are two senses of the term “philosopher” and its cognates: a loose but common sense in which any individual who cogitates in any manner about such issues as the meaning of life, the nature of social justice, the essence of sportsmanship, the aims of education, the foundations of the school curriculum, or relationship with the Divine, is thereby a philosopher; and there is a more technical sense referring to those who have been formally trained or have acquired competence in one or more areas such as epistemology, metaphysics, moral philosophy, logic, philosophy of science, and the like. If this bifurcation presents a problem for adequately delineating the field of philosophy, the difficulties grow tenfold or more with respect to philosophy of education.

This essay offers a description and assessment of the field as seen by a scholar rooted firmly in the formal branch of “philosophy of education”, and moreover this branch as it has developed in the English-speaking world (some of which, of course, has been inspired by Continental philosophy); but first it is necessary to say a little more about the difficulties that confront the individual who sets out, without presuppositions, to understand the topography of “philosophy of education”.

It will not take long for a person who consults several of the introductory texts alluded to earlier to encounter a number of different bodies of work (loosely bounded to be sure) that have by one source or another been regarded as part of the domain of philosophy of education; the inclusion of some of these as part of the field is largely responsible for the diffuse topography described earlier. What follows is an informal and incomplete accounting.

First, there are works of advocacy produced by those non-technical, self-identified “philosophers” described above, who often have an axe to grind; they may wish to destroy (or to save) common schooling, support or attack some innovation or reform, shore-up or destroy the capitalist mode of production, see their own religion (or none at all) gain a foothold in the public schools, strengthen the place of “the basics” in the school curriculum, and so forth. While these topics certainly can be, and have been, discussed with due care, often they have been pursued in loose but impressive language where exhortation substitutes for argumentation—and hence sometimes they are mistaken for works of philosophy of education! In the following discussion this genre shall be passed over in silence.

Second, there is a corpus of work somewhat resembling the first, but where the arguments are tighter, and where the authors usually are individuals of some distinction whose insights are thought-provoking—possibly because they have a degree of familiarity with some branch of educational activity, having been teachers (or former teachers), school principals, religious leaders, politicians, journalists, and the like. While these works frequently touch on philosophical issues, they are not pursued to any philosophical depth and can hardly be considered as contributions to the scholarship of the discipline. However, some works in this genre are among the classics of “educational thought”—a more felicitous label than “philosophy of education”; cases in point would be the essays, pamphlets and letters of Thomas Arnold (headmaster of Rugby school), John Wesley (the founder of Methodism), J.H. (Cardinal) Newman, T.H. Huxley, and the writings on progressive schooling by A.S. Neill (of Summerhill school). Some textbooks even include extracts from the writings or recorded sayings of such figures as Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and Jesus of Nazareth (for the latter three, in works spanning more than half a century, see Ulich, 1950, and Murphy, 2006). Books and extracts in this genre—which elsewhere I have called “cultured reflection on education”—are often used in teacher-training courses that march under the banner of “educational foundations”, “introduction to educational thought”, or “introduction to philosophy of education”.

Third, there are a number of educational theorists and researchers, whose field of activity is not philosophy but—for example—might be human development or learning theory, who in their technical work and sometimes in their non-technical books and reflective essays explicitly raise philosophical issues or adopt philosophical modes of argumentation—and do so in ways worthy of careful study. If philosophy (including philosophy of education) is defined so as to include analysis and reflection at an abstract or “meta-level”, which undoubtedly is a domain where many philosophers labor, then these individuals should have a place in the annals of philosophy or philosophy of education; but too often, although not always, accounts of the field ignore them. Their work might be subjected to scrutiny for being educationally important, but their conceptual or philosophical contributions are rarely focused upon. (Philosophers of the physical and biological sciences are far less prone to make this mistake about the meta-level work of reflective scientists in these domains.)

The educational theorists and researchers I have in mind as exemplars here are the behaviorist psychologist B.F. Skinner (who among other things wrote about the fate of the notions of human freedom and dignity in the light of the development of a “science of behavior”, and who developed a model of human action and also of learning that eschewed the influence of mental entities such as motives, interests, and ideas and placed the emphasis instead upon “schedules of reinforcement”); the foundational figure in modern developmental psychology with its near-fixation on stage theories, Jean Piaget (who developed in an abstract and detailed manner a “genetic epistemology” that was related to his developmental research); and the social psychologist Lev Vygotsky (who argued that the development of the human youngster was indelibly shaped by social forces, so much so that approaches which focused on the lone individual and that were biologically-oriented—he had Piaget in mind here—were quite inadequate).

Fourth, and in contrast to the group above, there is a type of work that is traditionally but undeservedly given a prominent place in the annals of philosophy of education, and which thereby generates a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding about the field. These are the books and reflective essays on educational topics that were written by mainstream philosophers, a number of whom are counted among the greatest in the history of the discipline. The catch is this: Even great philosophers do not always write philosophy! The reflections being referred-to contain little if any philosophical argumentation, and usually they were not intended to be contributions to the literature on any of the great philosophical questions. Rather, they expressed the author's views (or even prejudices) on educational rather than philosophical problems, and sometimes—as in the case of Bertrand Russell's rollicking pieces defending progressive educational practices—they explicitly were “potboilers” written to make money. (In Russell's case the royalties were used to support a progressive school he was running with his current wife.) Locke, Kant, and Hegel also are among those who produced work of this genre.

John Locke is an interesting case in point. He had been requested by a cousin and her husband—possibly in part because of his medical training—to give advice on the upbringing of their son and heir; the youngster seems to have troubled his parents, most likely because he had learning difficulties. Locke, then in exile in Europe, wrote the parents a series of letters in which alongside sensible advice about such matters as the priorities in the education of a landed gentleman, and about making learning fun for the boy, there were a few strange items such as the advice that the boy should wear leaky shoes in winter so that he would be toughened-up! The letters eventually were printed in book form under the title Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), and seem to have had enormous influence down the ages upon educational practice; after two centuries the book had run through some 35 English editions and well over thirty foreign editions, and it is still in print and is frequently excerpted in books of readings in philosophy of education. In stark contrast, several of Locke's major philosophical writings—the Essay Concerning Human Understanding , and the Letter on Toleration —have been overlooked by most educational theorists over the centuries, even though they have enormous relevance for educational philosophy, theory, policy, and practice. It is especially noteworthy that the former of these books was the foundation for an approach to psychology—associationism—that thrived during the nineteenth century. In addition it stimulated interest in the processes of child development and human learning; Locke's model of the way in which the “blank tablet” of the human mind became “furnished” with simple ideas that were eventually combined or abstracted in various ways to form complex ideas, suggested to some that it might be fruitful to study this process in the course of development of a young child (Cleverley and Phillips, 1986).

Fifth, and finally, there is a large body of work that clearly falls within the more technically-defined domain of philosophy of education. Three historical giants of the field are Plato, Rousseau, and Dewey, and there are a dozen or more who would be in competition for inclusion along with them; the short-list of leading authors from the second-half of the 20 th century would include Richard Peters, Paul Hirst, and Israel Scheffler, with many jostling for the next places—but the choices become cloudy as we approach the present-day, for schisms between philosophical schools have to be negotiated.

It is important to note, too, that there is a sub-category within this domain of literature that is made-up of work by philosophers who are not primarily identified as philosophers of education, and who might or might not have had much to say directly about education, but whose philosophical work has been drawn upon by others and applied very fruitfully to educational issues. (A volume edited by Amelie Rorty contains essays on the education-related thought, or relevance, of many historically-important philosophers; significantly the essays are almost entirely written by philosophers rather than by members of the philosophy of education community. This is both their strength and weakness. See Rorty, 1998.)

The discussion will turn briefly to the difficulty in picturing the topography of the field that is presented by the influence of these philosophers.

As sketched earlier, the domain of education is vast, the issues it raises are almost overwhelmingly numerous and are of great complexity, and the social significance of the field is second to none. These features make the phenomena and problems of education of great interest to a wide range of socially-concerned intellectuals, who bring with them their own favored conceptual frameworks—concepts, theories and ideologies, methods of analysis and argumentation, metaphysical and other assumptions, criteria for selecting evidence that has relevance for the problems that they consider central, and the like. No wonder educational discourse has occasionally been likened to Babel, for the differences in backgrounds and assumptions means that there is much mutual incomprehension. In the midst of the melee sit the philosophers of education.

It is no surprise, then, to find that the significant intellectual and social trends of the past few centuries, together with the significant developments in philosophy, all have had an impact on the content and methods of argument in philosophy of education—Marxism, psycho-analysis, existentialism, phenomenology, positivism, post-modernism, pragmatism, neo-liberalism, the several waves of feminism, analytic philosophy in both its ordinary language and more formal guises, are merely the tip of the iceberg. It is revealing to note some of the names that were heavily-cited in a pair of recent authoritative handbooks in the field (according to the indices of the two volumes, and in alphabetical order): Adorno, Aristotle, Derrida, Descartes, Dewey, Habermas, Hegel, Horkheimer, Kant, Locke, Lyotard, Marx, Mill, Nietzsche, Plato, Rawls, Richard Rorty, Rousseau, and Wittgenstein (Curren 2003; Blake, Smeyers, Smith, and Standish 2003). Although this list conveys something of the diversity of the field, it fails to do it complete justice, for the influence of feminist philosophers is not adequately represented.

No one individual can have mastered work done by such a range of figures, representing as they do a number of quite different frameworks or approaches; and relatedly no one person stands as emblematic of the entire field of philosophy of education, and no one type of philosophical writing serves as the norm, either. At professional meetings, peace often reigns because the adherents of the different schools go their separate ways; but occasionally there are (intellectually) violent clashes, rivaling the tumult that greeted Derrida's nomination for an honorary degree at Cambridge in 1992. It is sobering to reflect that only a few decades have passed since practitioners of analytic philosophy of education had to meet in individual hotel rooms, late at night, at annual meetings of the Philosophy of Education Society in the USA, because phenomenologists and others barred their access to the conference programs; their path to liberation was marked by discord until, eventually, the compromise of “live and let live” was worked out (Kaminsky, 1996). Of course, the situation has hardly been better in the home discipline; an essay in Time magazine in 1966 on the state of the discipline of philosophy reported that adherents of the major philosophical schools “don't even understand one another”, and added that as a result “philosophy today is bitterly segregated. Most of the major philosophy departments and scholarly journals are the exclusive property of one sect or another” ( Time , reprinted in Lucas, 1969, 32). Traditionally there has been a time-lag for developments in philosophy to migrate over into philosophy of education, but in this respect at least the two fields have been on a par.

Inevitably, however, traces of discord remain, and some groups still feel disenfranchised, but they are not quite the same groups as a few decades ago—for new intellectual paradigms have come into existence, and their adherents are struggling to have their voices heard; and clearly it is the case that—reflecting the situation in 1966—many analytically-trained philosophers of education find postmodern writings incomprehensible while scholars in the latter tradition are frequently dismissive if not contemptuous of work done by the former group. In effect, then, the passage of time has made the field more—and not less—diffuse. All this is evident in a volume published in 1995 in which the editor attempted to break-down borders by initiating dialogue between scholars with different approaches to philosophy of education; her introductory remarks are revealing:

Philosophers of education reflecting on the parameters of our field are faced not only with such perplexing and disruptive questions as: What counts as Philosophy of Education and why?; but also Who counts as a philosopher of education and why?; and What need is there for Philosophy of Education in a postmodern context? Embedded in these queries we find no less provocative ones: What knowledge, if any, can or should be privileged and why?; and Who is in a position to privilege particular discursive practices over others and why? Although such questions are disruptive, they offer the opportunity to take a fresh look at the nature and purposes of our work and, as we do, to expand the number and kinds of voices participating in the conversation. (Kohli, 1995, xiv).

There is an inward-looking tone to the questions posed here: Philosophy of education should focus upon itself, upon its own contents, methods, and practitioners. And of course there is nothing new about this; for one thing, almost forty years ago a collection of readings—with several score of entries—was published under the title What is Philosophy of Education? (Lucas, 1969). It is worth noting, too, that the same attitude is not unknown in philosophy; Simmel is reputed to have said a century or so ago that philosophy is its own first problem.

Having described the general topography of the field of philosophy of education, the focus can change to pockets of activity where from the perspective of this author interesting philosophical work is being, or has been, done—and sometimes this work has been influential in the worlds of educational policy or practice. It is appropriate to start with a discussion of the rise and partial decline—but lasting influence of—analytic philosophy of education This approach (often called “APE” by both admirers and detractors) dominated the field in the English-speaking world for several decades after the second world war, and its eventual fate throws light on the current intellectual climate.

2. Analytic philosophy of education, and its influence

Conceptual analysis, careful assessment of arguments, the rooting out of ambiguity, the drawing of clarifying distinctions—which make up part at least of the philosophical analysis package—have been respected activities within philosophy from the dawn of the field. But traditionally they stood alongside other philosophical activities; in the Republic , for example, Plato was sometimes analytic, at other times normative, and on occasion speculative/metaphysical. No doubt it somewhat over-simplifies the complex path of intellectual history to suggest that what happened in the twentieth century—early on, in the home discipline itself, and with a lag of a decade or more in philosophy of education—is that philosophical analysis came to be viewed by some scholars as being the major philosophical activity (or set of activities), or even as being the only viable or reputable activity (for metaphysics was judged to be literally vacuous, and normative philosophy was viewed as being unable to provide compelling warrants for whatever moral and ethical positions were being advocated).

So, although analytic elements in philosophy of education can be located throughout intellectual history back to the ancient world, the pioneering work in the modern period entirely in an analytic mode was the short monograph by C.D. Hardie, Truth and Fallacy in Educational Theory (1941; reissued in 1962). In his Introduction, Hardie (who had studied with C.D. Broad and I.A. Richards) made it clear that he was putting all his eggs into the ordinary-language-analysis basket:

The Cambridge analytical school, led by Moore, Broad and Wittgenstein, has attempted so to analyse propositions that it will always be apparent whether the disagreement between philosophers is one concerning matters of fact, or is one concerning the use of words, or is, as is frequently the case, a purely emotive one. It is time, I think, that a similar attitude became common in the field of educational theory. (Hardie, 1962, xix)

The first object of his analytic scrutiny in the book was the view that “a child should be educated according to Nature”; he teased apart and critiqued various things that writers through the ages could possibly have meant by this, and very little remained standing by the end of the chapter. Then some basic ideas of Herbart and Dewey were subjected to similar treatment. Hardie's hard-nosed approach can be illustrated by the following: One thing that educationists mean by “education according to Nature” (later he turns to other things they might mean) is that “the teacher should thus act like a gardener” who fosters natural growth of his plants and avoids doing anything “unnatural”(Hardie, 1962, 3). He continues:

The crucial question for such a view of education is how far does this analogy hold? There is no doubt that there is some analogy between the laws governing the physical development of the child and the laws governing the development of a plant, and hence there is some justification for the view if applied to physical education. But the educationists who hold this view are not generally very much concerned with physical education, and the view is certainly false if applied to mental education. For some of the laws that govern the mental changes which take place in a child are the laws of learning …. [which] have no analogy at all with the laws which govern the interaction between a seed and its environment. (Hardie, 1962, 4)

About a decade after the end of the Second World War the floodgates opened and a stream of work in the analytic mode appeared; the following is merely a sample. D.J. O'Connor published An Introduction to Philosophy of Education (1957) in which, among other things, he argued that the word “theory” as it is used in educational contexts is merely a courtesy title, for educational theories are nothing like what bear this title in the natural sciences; Israel Scheffler, who became the paramount philosopher of education in North America, produced a number of important works including The Language of Education (1960), that contained clarifying and influential analyses of definitions (he distinguished reportive, stipulative, and programmatic types) and the logic of slogans (often these are literally meaningless, and should be seen as truncated arguments); Smith and Ennis edited the volume Language and Concepts in Education (1961); and R.D. Archambault edited Philosophical Analysis and Education (1965), consisting of essays by a number of British writers who were becoming prominent—most notably R.S. Peters (whose status in Britain paralleled that of Scheffler in the USA), Paul Hirst, and John Wilson. Topics covered in the Archambault volume were typical of those that became the “bread and butter” of analytic philosophy of education throughout the English-speaking world—education as a process of initiation, liberal education, the nature of knowledge, types of teaching, and instruction versus indoctrination.

Among the most influential products of APE was the analysis developed by Hirst and Peters (1970), and Peters (1973), of the concept of education itself. Using as a touchstone “normal English usage”, it was concluded that a person who has been educated (rather than instructed or indoctrinated) has been (i) changed for the better; (ii) this change has involved the acquisition of knowledge and intellectual skills, and the development of understanding; and (iii) the person has come to care for, or be committed to, the domains of knowledge and skill into which he or she has been initiated. The method used by Hirst and Peters comes across clearly in their handling of the analogy with the concept of “reform”, one they sometimes drew upon for expository purposes. A criminal who has been reformed has changed for the better, and has developed a commitment to the new mode of life (if one or other of these conditions does not hold, a speaker of standard English would not say the criminal has been reformed). Clearly the analogy with reform breaks down with respect to the knowledge and understanding conditions. Elsewhere Peters developed the fruitful notion of “education as initiation”.

The concept of indoctrination was also of great interest to analytic philosophers of education, for—it was argued—getting clear about precisely what constitutes indoctrination also would serve to clarify the border that demarcates it from acceptable educational processes. Unfortunately, ordinary language analysis did not lead to unanimity of opinion about where this border was located, and rival analyses of the concept were put forward (Snook, 1972). Thus, whether or not an instructional episode was a case of indoctrination was determined by: the content that had been taught; or by the intention of the instructor; or by the methods of instruction that had been used; or by the outcomes of the instruction; or, of course, by some combination of these. Adherents of the different analyses used the same general type of argument to make their case, namely, appeal to normal and aberrant usage. Two examples will be sufficient to make the point: (i) The first criterion mentioned above—the nature of the content being imparted—was supported by an argument that ran roughly as follows: “If some students have learned, as factual, some material that is patently incorrect (like ‘The capital city of Canada is Washington D.C.’), then they must have been indoctrinated. This conclusion is reinforced by the consideration that we would never say students must have been indoctrinated if they believe an item that is correct!” However, both portions of this argument have been challenged. (ii) The method criterion—how the knowledge was imparted to the students—usually was supported by an argument that, while different, clearly paralleled the previous one in its logic. It ran roughly like this: “We never would say that students had been indoctrinated by their teacher if he or she had fostered open inquiry and discussion, encouraged exploration in the library and on the net, allowed students to work in collaborative groups, and so on. However, if the teacher did not allow independent inquiry, quashed classroom questions, suppressed dissenting opinions, relied heavily on rewards and punishments, used repetition and fostered rote memorization, and so on, then it is likely we would say the students were being indoctrinated”. (The deeper issue in this second example is that the first method of teaching allows room for the operation of the learners' rationality, while the second method does not. Siegel, 1988, stresses this in his discussion of indoctrination.)

After a period of dominance, for a number of important reasons the influence of APE went into decline. First, there were growing criticisms that the work of analytic philosophers of education had become focused upon minutiae and in the main was bereft of practical import; I can offer as illustration a presidential address at a US Philosophy of Education Society annual meeting that was an hour-long discourse on the various meanings of the expression “I have a toothache”. (It is worth noting that the 1966 article in Time , cited earlier, had put forward the same criticism of mainstream philosophy.) Second, in the early 1970's radical students in Britain accused the brand of linguistic analysis practiced by R.S. Peters of conservatism, and of tacitly giving support to “traditional values”—they raised the issue of whose English usage was being analyzed?

Third, criticisms of language analysis in mainstream philosophy had been mounting for some time, and finally after a lag of many years were reaching the attention of philosophers of education. There even had been a surprising degree of interest in this arcane topic on the part of the general reading public in the UK as early as 1959, when Gilbert Ryle, editor of the journal Mind , refused to commission a review of Ernest Gellner's Words and Things (1959)—a detailed and quite acerbic critique of Wittgenstein's philosophy and its espousal of ordinary language analysis. (Ryle argued that Gellner's book was too insulting, a view that drew Bertrand Russell into the fray on Gellner's side—in the daily press, no less; Russell produced examples of insulting remarks drawn from the work of great philosophers of the past. See Mehta, 1963)

Richard Peters had been given warning that all was not well with APE at a conference in Canada in 1966; after delivering a paper on “The aims of education: A conceptual inquiry” that was based on ordinary language analysis, a philosopher in the audience (William Dray) asked Peters “ whose concepts do we analyze?” Dray went on to suggest that different people, and different groups within society, have different concepts of education. Five years before the radical students raised the same issue, Dray pointed to the possibility that what Peters had presented under the guise of a “logical analysis” was nothing but the favored usage of a certain class of persons—a class that Peters happened to identify with. (See Peters, 1973, where to the editor's credit the interaction with Dray is reprinted.)

Fourth, during the decade of the seventies when these various critiques of analytic philosophy were in the process of eroding its luster, a spate of translations from the Continent stimulated some philosophers of education in Britain and North America to set out in new directions, and to adopt a new style of writing and argumentation. Key works by Gadamer, Foucault, and Derrida appeared in English, and these were followed in 1984 by Lyotard's foundational work on The Postmodern Condition . The classic works of Heidegger and Husserl also found new admirers; and feminist philosophers of education were finding their voices—Maxine Greene published a number of pieces in the 1970s; the influential book by Nel Noddings, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education , appeared the same year as the work by Lyotard, followed a year later by Jane Roland Martin's Reclaiming a Conversation . APE was no longer the center of interest.

By the 1980s, the rather simple if not simplistic ordinary language analysis practiced in philosophy of education, was reeling under the attack from the combination of forces sketched above, but the analytic spirit lived on in the form of rigorous work done in other specialist areas of philosophy—work that trickled out and took philosophy of education in rich new directions. Technically-oriented epistemology, philosophy of science, and even metaphysics, flourished; as did the interrelated fields of social, political and moral philosophy. John Rawls published A Theory of Justice in 1971; a decade later MacIntyre's After Virtue appeared; and in another decade or so there was a flood of work on individualism, communitarianism, democratic citizenship, inclusion, exclusion, rights of children versus rights of parents, rights of groups (such as the Amish) versus rights of the larger polity. From the early 1990s philosophers of education have contributed significantly to the debates on these and related topics—indeed, this corpus of work illustrates that good philosophy of education flows seamlessly into work being done in mainstream areas of philosophy. Illustrative examples are Creating Citizens: Political Education and Liberal Democracy , Callan (1997); The Demands of Liberal Education , Levinson (1999); Social Justice and School Choice , Brighouse (2000); and Bridging Liberalism and Multiculturalism in American Education , Reich (2002). These works stand shoulder-to-shoulder with semi-classics on the same range of topics by Gutmann, Kymlicka, Macedo, and others. An excerpt from the book by Callan nicely illustrates that the analytic spirit lives on in this body of work; the broader topic being pursued is the status of the aims of education in a pluralistic society where there can be deep fundamental disagreements:

… the distinction must be underlined between the ends that properly inform political education and the extent to which we should tolerate deviations from those ends in a world where reasonable and unreasonable pluralism are entangled and the moral costs of coercion against the unreasonable variety are often prohibitive. Our theoretical as well as our commonsense discourse do not always respect the distinction…. If some of the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church conflict with our best theory of the ends of civic education, it does not follow that we have any reason to revise our theory; but neither does it mean we have any reason to impose these ends on Catholic schools and the families that they serve. (Callan, 1997, 44)

Callan and White (2003) have given an analysis of why the topics described above have become such a focus of attention. “What has been happening in philosophy of education in recent years”, they argue, mirrors “a wider self-examination in liberal societies themselves”. World events, from the fall of communism to the spread of ethnic conflicts “have all heightened consciousness of the contingency of liberal politics”. A body of work in philosophy, from the early Rawls on, has systematically examined (and critiqued) the foundations of liberalism, and philosophy of education has been drawn into the debates. Callan and White mention communitarianism as offering perhaps “the most influential challenge” to liberalism, and they write:

The debate between liberals and communitarians is far more than a theoretical diversion for philosophers and political scientists. At stake are rival understandings of what makes human lives and the societies in which they unfold both good and just, and derivatively, competing conceptions of the education needed for individual and social betterment. (Callan and White, 2003, 95-96)

It should be appended here that it is not only “external” world events that have stimulated this body of work; events internal to a number of democratic societies also have been significant. To cite one example that is prominent in the literature in North America at least, the US Supreme Court issued a ruling ( Wisconsin v. Yoder ) in which members of the Amish sect were allowed to withdraw their children from public schools before they had reached the age of sixteen—for, it had been argued, any deeper education would endanger the existence of the group and its culture. In assessing this decision—as of course philosophers have frequently done (see, for example, Kymlicka, 1995)—a balance has to be achieved between (i) the interest of civic society in having an informed, well-educated, participatory citizenry; (ii) the interest of the Amish as a group in preserving their own culture; and (iii) the interests of the Amish children, who have a right to develop into autonomous individuals who can make reflective decisions for themselves about the nature of the life they wish to lead. These are issues that fall squarely in the domain covered by the works mentioned above.

So much work is being produced on the complex and interrelated issues just outlined, that in a different context it seemed fair for me to remark (descriptively, and not judgmentally) that a veritable cottage industry had sprung up in post-Rawlsian philosophy of education. There are, of course, other areas of activity, where interesting contributions are being made, and the discusion will next turn to a sampling of these.

3. Other areas of contemporary activity

As was stressed at the outset, and illustrated with a cursory listing of examples, the field of education is huge and contains within it a virtually inexhaustible number of issues that are of philosophical interest. To attempt comprehensive coverage of how philosophers of education have been working within this thicket would be a quixotic task for a large single volume, and is out of the question for a solitary encyclopedia entry. Nevertheless, a valiant attempt to give an overview was made in the recent A Companion to the Philosophy of Education (Curren, 2003), which contained more than six-hundred pages divided into fourty-five chapters each of which surveyed a subfield of work. The following random selection of chapter topics gives a sense of the enormous scope of the field: Sex education, special education, science education, aesthetic education, theories of teaching and learning, religious education, knowledge and truth in learning, cultivating reason, the measurement of learning, multicultural education, education and the politics of identity, education and standards of living, motivation and classroom management, feminism, critical theory, postmodernism, romanticism, purposes of universities in a fluid age, affirmative action in higher education, and professional education.

There is no non-arbitrary way to select a small number of topics for further discussion, nor can the topics that are chosen be pursued in great depth. The choice of those below has been made with an eye to filling out—and deepening—the topographical account of the field that was presented in the preceding sections. The discussion will open with a topic that was not included in the Companion , despite it being one that is of great concern across the academic educational community, and despite it being one where adherents of some of the rival schools of philosophy (and philosophy of education) have had lively exchanges.

The educational research enterprise has been criticized for a century or more by politicians, policymakers, administrators, curriculum developers, teachers, philosophers of education, and by researchers themselves—but the criticisms have been contradictory. Charges of being “too ivory tower and theory-oriented” are found alongside “too focused on practice and too atheoretical”; but particularly since publication of the book by Stokes mentioned earlier, and also in light of the views of John Dewey and William James that the function of theory is to guide intelligent practice and problem-solving, it is becoming more fashionable to hold that the “theory v. practice” dichotomy is a false one.

A similar trend can be discerned with respect to the long warfare between two rival groups of research methods—on one hand quantitative/statistical approaches to research, and on the other hand the qualitative/ethnographic family. (The choice of labels here is its not entirely risk-free, for they have been contested; furthermore the first approach is quite often associated with “experimental” studies, and the latter with “case studies”, but this is an over-simplification.) For several decades these two rival methodological camps were treated by researchers and a few philosophers of education as being rival paradigms (Kuhn's ideas, albeit in a very loose form, have been influential in the field of educational research), and the dispute between them was commonly referred-to as “the paradigm wars”. In essence the issue at stake was epistemolgical: members of the quantitative/experimental camp believed that only their methods could lead to well-warranted knowledge claims, especially about the causal factors at play in educational phenomena, and on the whole they regarded qualitative methods as lacking in rigor; on the other hand the adherents of qualitative/ethnographic approaches held that the other camp was too “positivistic” and was operating with an inadequate view of causation in human affairs—one that ignored the role of motives and reasons, possession of relevant background knowledge, awareness of cultural norms, and the like. Few if any commentators in the “paradigm wars” suggested that there was anything prohibiting the use of both approaches in the one research program—provided that if both were used, they only were used sequentially or in parallel, for they were underwritten by different epistemologies and hence could not be blended together. But recently the trend has been towards rapprochement, towards the view that the two methodological families are, in fact, compatible and are not at all like paradigms in the Kuhnian sense(s) of the term; the melding of the two approaches is often called “mixed methods research”, and it is growing in popularity. (For more detailed discussion of these “wars” see Howe, 2003, and Phillips, 2008.)

The most lively contemporary debates about education research, however, were set in motion around the turn of the millenium when the US Federal Government moved in the direction of funding only rigorously scientific educational research—the kind that could establish causal factors which could then guide the development of practically effective policies. (It was held that such a causal knowledge base was available for medical decisionmaking.) The definition of “rigorously scientific”, however, was decided by politicans and not by the research community, and it was given in terms of the use of a specific research method—the net effect being that the only research projects to receive Federal funding were those that carried out randomized controlled experiments or field trials (RFTs). It has beome common over the last decade to refer to the RFT as the “gold standard” methodology.

The National Research Council (NRC)—an arm of the U.S. National Academies of Science—issued a report, influenced by postpostivistic philosophy of science (NRC, 2002), that argued this criterion was far too narrow. Numerous essays have appeared subsequently that point out how the “gold standard” account of scientific rigor distorts the history of science, how the complex nature of the relation between evidence and policy-making has been distorted and made to appear overly simple (for instance the role of value-judgments in linking empirical findings to policy directives is often overlooked), and qualitative researchers have insisted upon the scientific nature of their work.

Nevertheless, and possibly because it tried to be balanced and supported the use of RFTs in some research contexts, the NRC report has been the subject of symposia in four journals, where it has been supported by a few and attacked from a variety of philosophical fronts: Its authors were positivists, they erroneously believed that educational inquiry could be value-neutral and that it could ignore the ways in which exercise of power constrains the research process, they misunderstood the nature of educational phenomena, they were guilty of advocating “your father's paradigm”(clearly this was not intended as a compliment). One critic with postmodernist leanings asserted that educational research should move “toward a Nietzschean sort of ‘unnatural science’ that leads to greater health by fostering ways of knowing that escape normativity”—a suggestion that evokes the reaction discussed in Section 1.3 above, namely, one of incomprehension on the part of most researchers and those philosophers of education who work within a different tradition where a “way of knowing”, in order to be a “way”, must inevitably be normative.

The final complexity in the debates over the nature of educational research is that there are some respected members of the philosophy of education community who claim, along with Carr, that “the forms of human association characteristic of educational engagement are not really apt for scientific or empirical study at all” (Carr, 2003, 54-5). His reasoning is that educational processes cannot be studied empirically because they are processes of “normative initiation”—a position that as it stands begs the question by not making clear why such processes cannot be studied empirically.

The issue of what should be taught to students at all levels of education—the issue of curriculum content—obviously is a fundamental one, and it is an extraordinarily difficult one with which to grapple. In tackling it, care needs to be taken to distinguish between education and schooling—for although education can occur in schools, so can mis-education (as Dewey pointed out), and many other things can take place there that are educationally orthogonal (such as the provision of free or subsidized lunches, or the development of social networks); and it also must be recognized that education can occur in the home, in libraries and museums, in churches and clubs, in solitary interaction with the public media, and the like.

In developing a curriculum (whether in a specific subject area, or more broadly as the whole range of offerings in an educational institution or in a system), a number of difficult decisions need to be made. Issues such as the proper ordering or sequencing of topics in the chosen subject, the time to be allocated to each topic, the lab work or excursions or projects that are appropriate for particular topics, can all be regarded as technical issues best resolved either by educationists who have a depth of experience with the target age group or by experts in the psychology of learning and the like. But there are deeper issues, ones concerning the validity of the justifications that have been given for including particular subjects or topics in the offerings of formal educational institutions. (Why is evolution included, or excluded, as a topic within the standard high school subject Biology? Why is Driver Education part of the high school curriculum, and methods of birth control usually not—even though sex has an impact on the life of teenagers that at least is comparable to the impact of car-driving? Is the justification that is given for teaching Economics in some schools coherent and convincing? Does the justification for not including the Holocaust or the phenomenon of wartime atrocities in the curriculum in some countries stand up to critical scrutiny?)

The different justifications for particular items of curriculum content that have been put forward by philosophers and others since Plato's brilliant pioneering efforts all draw upon, explicitly or implicitly, the positions that the respective theorists hold about at least three sets of issues. First, what are the aims and/or functions of education (aims and functions are not necessarily the same), or alternatively, what constitutes the good life and human flourishing. These two formulations are related, for presumably our educational institutions should aim to equip individuals to pursue this good life. Thus, for example, if our view of human flourishing includes the capacity to act rationally and/or autonomously, then the case can be made that educational institutions—and their curricula—should aim to prepare, or help to prepare, autonomous individuals. How this is to be done, of course, is not immediately obvious, and much philosophical ink has been spilled on the matter. One influential line of argument was developed by Paul Hirst, who argued that knowledge is essential for developing a conception of the good life, and then for pursuing it; and because logical analysis shows—he argued—that there are seven basic forms of knowledge, the case can be made that the function of the curriculum is to introduce students to each of these forms. Luckily for Hirst, the typical British high school day was made up of seven instructional periods. (Hirst, 1965; for a critique see Phillips, 1987, ch.11.)

Second, is it justifiable to treat the curriculum of an educational institution as vehicle for furthering the socio-political interests and goals of a ruler or ruling class; and relatedly, is it justifiable to design the curriculum so that it serves as a medium of control or of social engineering? In the closing decades of the twentieth century there were numerous discussions of curriculum theory, particularly from Marxist and postmodern perspectives, that offered the sobering analysis that in many educational systems, including those in Western democracies, the curriculum did indeed reflect, and serve, the interests of the ruling class. Michael Apple is typical:

… the knowledge that now gets into schools is already a choice from a much larger universe of possible social knowledge and principles. It is a form of cultural capital that comes from somewhere, that often reflects the perspectives and beliefs of powerful segments of our social collectivity. In its very production and dissemination as a public and economic commodity—as books, films, materials, and so forth—it is repeatedly filtered through ideological and economic commitments. Social and economic values, hence, are already embedded in the design of the institutions we work in, in the ‘formal corpus of school knowledge’ we preserve in our curricula….(Apple, 1990, 8-9)

Third, should educational programs at the elementary and secondary levels be made up of a number of disparate offerings, so that individuals with different interests and abilities and affinities for learning can pursue curricula that are suitable? Or should every student pursue the same curriculum as far as each is able—a curriculum, it should be noted, that in past cases nearly always was based on the needs or interests of those students who were academically inclined or were destined for elite social roles. Mortimer Adler and others in the late twentieth century (who arguably were following Plato's lead in the Republic ), sometimes used the aphorism “the best education for the best is the best education for all”.

The thinking here can be explicated in terms of the analogy of an out-of-control virulent disease, for which there is only one type of medicine available; taking a large dose of this medicine is extremely beneficial, and the hope is that taking only a little—while less effective—is better than taking none at all! Medically, this probably is dubious, while the educational version—forcing students to work, until they exit the system, on topics that do not interest them and for which they have no facility or motivation—has even less merit. (For a critique of Adler and his Paideia Proposal , see Noddings, 2007.) It is interesting to compare the modern “one curriculum track for all” position with Plato's system outlined in the Republic , according to which all students—and importantly this included girls—set out on the same course of study. Over time, as they moved up the educational ladder it would become obvious that some had reached the limit imposed upon them by nature, and they would be directed off into appropriate social roles in which they would find fulfillment, for their abilities would match the demands of these roles. Those who continued on with their education would eventually be able to contemplate the metaphysical realm of the “forms”, thanks to their advanced training in mathematics and philosophy. Having seen the form of the Good, they would be eligible after a period of practical experience to become members of the ruling class of Guardians.

Plato's educational scheme was guided, presumably, by the understanding he thought he had achieved of the transcendental realm of fixed “forms”. John Dewey, ever a strong critic of positions that were not naturalistic, or that incorporated a priori premises, commented as follows:

Plato's starting point is that the organization of society depends ultimately upon knowledge of the end of existence. If we do not know its end, we shall be at the mercy of accident and caprice…. And only those who have rightly trained minds will be able to recognize the end, and ordering principle of things. (Dewey, 1916, 102-3)

Furthermore, as Dewey again put it, Plato “had no perception of the uniqueness of individuals…. they fall by nature into classes”, which masks the “infinite diversity of active tendencies” which individuals harbor (104). In addition, Plato tended to talk of learning using the passive language of seeing, which has shaped our discourse down to the present (witness “Now I see it!” when a difficult point has become clear).

In contrast, for Dewey each individual was an organism situated in a biological and social environment in which problems were constantly emerging, forcing the individual to reflect and act, and learn. Dewey, following William James, held that knowledge arises from reflection upon our actions; and the worth of a putative item of knowledge is directly correlated with the problem-solving success of the actions performed under its guidance. Thus Dewey, sharply disagreeing with Plato, regarded knowing as an active rather than a passive affair—a strong theme in his writings is his opposition to what is sometimes called “the spectator theory of knowledge”. All this is made clear enough in a passage containing only a thinly-veiled allusion to Plato's famous analogy of the prisoners in the cave whose eyes are turned to the light by education:

In schools, those under instruction are too customarily looked upon as acquiring knowledge as theoretical spectators, minds which appropriate knowledge by direct energy of intellect. The very word pupil has almost come to mean one who is engaged not in having fruitful experiences but in absorbing knowledge directly. Something which is called mind or consciousness is severed from the physical organs of activity. (164)

This passage also illuminates a passage that many have found puzzling: “philosophy is the theory of education” (387). For in the sentences above it is easy to see the tight link between Dewey's epistemology and his views on education—his anti-spectator epistemology morphs directly into advocacy for anti-spectator learning by students in school—students learn by being active inquirers. Over the past few decades this view of learning has inspired a major tradition of research by educational psychologists, and related theory-development (the “situated cognition” framework); and these bodies of work have in turn led to innovative efforts in curriculum development. (For a discussion of these, see Phillips, 2003.)

The final important difference with Plato is that, for Dewey, each student is an individual who blazes his or her unique trail of growth; the teacher has the task of guiding and facilitating this growth, without imposing a fixed end upon the process. Dewey sometimes uses the term “curriculum” to mean “the funded wisdom of the human race”, the point being that over the course of human history an enormous stock of knowledge and skills has accumulated and the teacher has the task of helping the student to make contact with this repertoire—but helping by facilitating rather than by imposing. (All this, of course, has been the subject of intense discussion among philosophers of education: Does growth imply a direction? Is growth always good—can't a plant end up misshapen, and can't a child develop to become bad? Is Dewey some type of perfectionist? Is his philosophy too vague to offer worthwhile educational guidance? Isn't it possible for a “Deweyan” student to end up without enough relevant knowledge and skills to be able to make a living in the modern world?)

Dewey's work was of central importance for the American progressive education movement in its formative years, although there was a fair degree of misunderstanding of his ideas as progressives interpreted his often extremely dense prose to be saying what they personally happened to believe. Nevertheless, Dewey became the “poster child” or the “house philosopher” of progressive education, and if he didn't make it onto many actual posters he certainly made it onto a postage stamp.

His popularity, however, sharply declined after the Soviets launched Sputnik, for Dewey and progressive education were blamed for the USA losing the race into space (illustrating the point about scapegoating made at the start of this essay). But he did not remain in disgrace for long; and for some time has been the focus of renewed interest—although it is still noticeable that commentators interpret Dewey to be holding views that mirror their own positions or interests. And interestingly, there now is slightly more interest in Dewey on the part of philosophers of education in the UK than there was in earlier years, and there is growing interest by philosophers from the Continent (see, for example, Biesta and Burbules, 2003).

To be a poster child for progressivism, however, is not to be the parent. Rather than to Dewey, that honor must go to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and to his educational novel written in soaring prose, Emile (1762). Starting with the premise that “God makes all things good; man meddles with them and they become evil” (Rousseau, 1955, 5), Rousseau held that contemporary man has been misshapen by his education; the “crushing force” of social conventions has stifled the “Nature within him”. The remedy adopted in the novel is for the young Emile to be taken to his family estate in the country where, away from the corrupting influence of society, and under the watchful eye of his tutor, “everything should … be brought into harmony with these natural tendencies”. (This idea of education according to nature, it will be recalled, was the object of Hardie's analytic attention almost two centuries later.)

Out in the countryside, rather than having a set curriculum that he is forced to follow, Emile learns when some natural stimulus or innate interest motivates him—and under these conditions learning comes easily. He is allowed to suffer the natural consequences of his actions (if he breaks a window, he gets cold; if he takes the gardener's property, the gardener will no longer do him favors), and experiences such as these lead to the development of his moral system. Although Rousseau never intended these educational details to be taken literally as a blueprint (he saw himself as developing and illustrating the basic principles), over the ages there have been attempts to implement them, one being the famous British “free school”, A.S. Neill's Summerhill. (It is worth noting that Neill claimed not to have read Rousseau; but he was working in a milieu in which Rousseau's ideas were well-known—intellectual influence can follow a less than direct path.) Furthermore, over the ages these principles also have proven to be fertile soil for philosophers of education to till.

Even more fertile ground for comment, in recent years, has been Rousseau's proposal for the education of girls, developed in a section of the novel (Book V) that bears the name of the young woman who is destined to be Emile's soul-mate, Sophy. The puzzle has been why Rousseau—who had been so far-sighted in his discussion of Emile's education—was so hide-bound if not retrograde in his thinking about her education. One short quotation is sufficient to illustrate the problem: “If woman is made to please and to be in subjection to man, she ought to make herself pleasing in his eyes and not provoke him …her strength is in her charms” (324).

The educational principles developed by Rousseau and Dewey, and numerous educational theorists and philosophers in the interregnum, are alive and well in the twenty-first century. Of particular contemporary interest is the evolution that has occurred of the progressive idea that each student is an active learner who is pursuing his or her own individual educational path. By incorporating elements of the classical empiricist epistemology of John Locke, this progressive principle has become transformed into the extremely popular position known as constructivism, according to which each student in a classroom constructs his or her own individual body of understandings even when all in the group are given what appears to be the same stimulus or educational experience. (A consequence of this is that a classroom of thirty students will have thirty individually-constructed, and possibly different, bodies of “knowledge”, in addition to that of the teacher!) There is also a solipsistic element here, for constructivists also believe that none of us—teachers included—can directly access the bodies of understandings of anyone else; each of us is imprisoned in a world of our own making. It is an understatement to say that this poses great difficulties for the teacher. The education journals of the past two decades contain many thousands of references to discussions of this position, which elsewhere I claimed has become a type of educational “secular religion”; for reasons that are hard to discern it is particularly influential in mathematics and science education. (For a discussion of the underlying philosophical ideas in constructivism, and for an account of some of its varieties, see the essays in Phillips, ed., 2000.)

As stressed earlier, it is impossible to do justice the whole field of philosophy of education in a single encyclopedia entry. Different countries around the world—France, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, to mention only a few—have their own intellectual traditions, and their own ways of institutionalizing philosophy of education into the academic universe, and no discussion of any of this appears in the present essay. But even in the Anglo-American world, there is such a diversity of approaches to the discipline that any author attempting to produce a synoptic account will quickly run into the borders of his or her areas of competence. Clearly this has happened in the present case.

Fortunately, in the last twenty years or so resources have become available that significantly alleviate these problems. There has been a flood of encyclopedia entries, commenting on the field as a whole or on many specific topics not well-covered in the present essay (see, as a sample, Burbules, 1994; Chambliss, 1996; Phillips, 1985; Siegel, 2007; Smeyers, 1994); two large volumes—a “Guide” (Blake, Smeyers, Smith and Standish, 2003) and a “Companion” (Curren, 2003)—have been produced by Blackwell in their well-known philosophy series; and the same publisher recently released an anthology, with 60 papers considered to be important in the field, and which also are representative of the range of work that is being done (Curren, 2007). Several encyclopedias of philosophy of education have been published or are in the works (for example, Chambliss, 1996; Siegel, 2008); there is a dictionary of key concepts in the field (Winch and Gingell, 1999), and a good textbook or two (see Noddings, 2007); in addition there are numerous volumes both of reprinted selections and of specially commissioned essays on specific topics, some of which were given short shrift in the present work (for another sampling see A. Rorty, 1998; Smeyers and Marshall, 1995; Stone, 1994); and several international journals appear to be flourishing— Educational Philosophy and Theory , Educational Theory , Journal of Philosophy of Education , Studies in Philosophy and Education , Theory and Research in Education . Thus there is enough material available to keep the interested reader busy, and to provide alternative assessments to the ones presented in this present essay.

• Apple, M., 1990, Ideology and Curriculum , New York: Routledge, 2 nd . Editon.
• Archambault, R., (ed.), 1965, Philosophical Analysis and Education , London: Routledge.
• Biesta, G., and Burbules, N., 2003, Pragmatism and Educational Research , Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
• Blake, N., Smeyers, P., Smith, R., and Standish, P., (eds.), 2003, The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Education , Oxford: Blackwell.
• Brighouse, H., 2000, Social Justice and School Choice , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Burbules, N., 1994, “Marxism and Educational Thought”, in The International Encyclopedia of Education , (Volume 6), T. Husen and N. Postlethwaite (eds.), Oxford: Pergamon, 2 nd . Edition, pp. 3617-22.
• Callan, E., 1997, Creating Citizens: Political Education and Liberal Democracy , Oxford: Clarendon Press, Oxford.
• Callan, E., and White, J., 2003, “Liberalism and Communitarianism”, in The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Education , N. Blake, P. Smeyers, R. Smith and P. Standish (eds.), Oxford: Blackwell, pp.95-109.
• Carr, D., 2003, Making Sense of Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy and Theory of Education and Teaching , London: RoutledgeFalmer.
• Chambliss, J., 1996, “History of Philosophy of Education”, in Philosophy of Education: An Encyclopedia , J. Chambliss (ed.), New York: Garland, pp.461-72.
• Cleverley, J., and Phillips, D.C., 1986, Visions of Childhood , New York: Teachers College Press.
• Curren, R., (ed.), 2003, A Companion to the Philosophy of Education , Oxford: Blackwell.
• Curren, R., (ed.), 2007, Philosophy of Education: An Anthology , Oxford: Blackwell.
• Dewey, J., 1916, Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education , New York: Macmillan.
• Gellner, E., 1959, Words and Things , London: Gollancz.
• Hardie, C., 1962, Truth and Fallacy in Educational Theory , New York: Teachers College Bureau of Publications.
• Hirst, P., 1965, “Liberal Education and the Nature of Knowledge”, in Philosophical Analysis and Education , R. Archambault, (ed.), London: Routledge, pp. 113-138.
• Hirst, P., and Peters, R., 1970, The Logic of Education , London: Routledge.
• Howe, K., 2003, Closing Methodological Divides: Toward Democratic Educational Research . Dordrecht: Kluwer.
• Kaminsky, J., 1996, “Philosophy of Education: Professional Organizations In”, in Philosophy of Education: An Encyclopedia , J. Chambliss, (ed.), New York: Garland, pp. 475-79.
• Kohli, W., (ed.), 1995, Critical Conversations in Philosophy of Education , New York: Routledge.
• Kymlicka, W., 1995, Multicultural Citizenship , Oxford: Clarendon Press, Oxford.
• Levinson, M., 1999, The Demands of Liberal Education , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Lucas, C., (ed.), 1969, What is Philosophy of Education? London: Macmillan.
• Martin, J., 1985, Reclaiming a Conversation , New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.
• Mehta, V., 1963, Fly and the Fly-Bottle : London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
• Murphy, M., (ed.), 2006, The History and Philosophy of Education: Voices of Educational Pioneers , New Jersey: Pearson.
• Noddings, N., 1984, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education , Berkeley: University of California Press.
• –––, 2007, Philosophy of Education , Boulder, CO: Westview, 2 nd . Edition.
• National Research Council (NRC), 2002, Scientific Research in Education , Washington, DC: National Academies Press.
• O'Connor, D., 1957, An Introduction to Philosophy of Education , London: Routledge.
• Peters, R., (ed.), 1973, The Philosophy of Education , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Phillips, D.C., 1985, “Philosophy of Education”, in International Encyclopedia of Education, T. Husen and N. Postletwaite, (eds.), pp.3859-3877.
• –––, 1987, Philosophy, Science, and Social Inquiry , Oxford: Pergamon.
• –––, (ed.), 2000, Constructivism in Education: Opinions and Second Opinions on Controversial Issues , (Series: 99 th . Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education), Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• –––, 2003, “Theories of Teaching and Learning”, in A Companion to the Philosophy of Education , R. Curren, (ed.), Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 232-245.
• –––, 2008, “Empirical Educational Research: Charting Philosophical Disagreements in an Undisciplined Field”, in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Education , H. Siegel (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, in press.
• Reich, R., 2002, Bridging Liberalism and Multiculturalism in American Education , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Rorty, A., (ed.), 1998, Philosophers on Education: New Historical Perspectives , New York: Routledge.
• Rousseau, J-J., 1955, Emile , B. Foxley, (tr.), London: Dent/Everyman.
• Scheffler, I., 1960, The Language of Education , Illinois: Thomas.
• Siegel, H., 1988, Educating Reason: rationality, Critical Thinking, and Education , New York: Routledge.
• –––, 2007, “Philosophy of Education”, in Britannica Online Encyclopedia , [ Available online ].
• –––, (ed.), 2008, The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Education , Oxford: Oxford University Press, in press.
• Smeyers, P., 1994, “Philosophy of Education: Western European Perspectives”, in The International Encyclopedia of Education , (Volume 8), T. Husen and N. Postlethwaite, (eds.), Oxford: Pergamon, 2 nd . Edition, pp. 4456-61.
• Smeyers, P., and Marshall, J., (eds.), 1995, Philosophy and Education: Accepting Wittgenstein's Challenge , Dordrecht: Kluwer.
• Smith, B., and Ennis, R., (eds.), 1961, Language and Concepts in Education , Chicago: Rand McNally.
• Snook, I., 1972, Indoctrination and Education , London: Routledge.
• Stokes, D., 1997, Pasteur's Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation , Washington, DC: Brookings.
• Stone, L., (ed.), 1994, The Education Feminism Reader , New York: Routledge.
• Ulich, R., 1954, Three Thousand Years of Educational Wisdom , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Revised Ed.
• Winch, C., and Gingell, J., 1999, Key Concepts in the Philosophy of Education , London: Routledge.
• PES (Philosophy of Education Society, North America)
• PESA (Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia)
• PESGB (Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain)
• INPE (International Network of Philosophers of Education)
• UNESCO/International Bureau of Education: Thinkers on Education

autonomy: personal | -->Dewey, John --> | feminist (interventions): ethics | feminist (interventions): liberal feminism | feminist (interventions): political philosophy | -->feminist (topics): perspectives on autonomy --> | feminist (topics): perspectives on disability | Foucault, Michel | Gadamer, Hans-Georg | liberalism | Locke, John | -->Lyotard, Jean François --> | -->ordinary language --> | Plato | postmodernism | Rawls, John | rights: of children | -->Rousseau, Jean Jacques -->

Home — Essay Samples — Education — Importance of Education

Essays on Importance of Education

Hook examples for importance of education essays, anecdotal hook.

Imagine a world where knowledge is the currency of progress, where the pursuit of education opens doors to endless opportunities. As we embark on a journey to explore the profound significance of education, let's delve into the transformative power it holds.

Quotation Hook

""Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world."" These words from Nelson Mandela underscore the transformative potential of education. Join me as we examine the impact of education on individuals and societies.

Educational Equality Hook

Access to quality education is a fundamental right. Explore the role of education in promoting equality, breaking down barriers, and addressing social disparities.

Empowerment Through Learning Hook

Education empowers individuals to take control of their lives and shape their destinies. Analyze how education equips people with the knowledge and skills to navigate challenges and make informed decisions.

Educational Innovation Hook

Education is not static; it evolves with the times. Delve into the world of educational innovation and explore how technology and new teaching methods are revolutionizing the learning experience.

Education for Global Citizenship Hook

Education is a bridge to global understanding and cooperation. Investigate how education fosters the development of global citizens who are aware of pressing global issues and actively engaged in solving them.

Lifelong Learning Hook

Learning doesn't end with graduation; it's a lifelong journey. Explore the concept of lifelong learning and how it contributes to personal growth, adaptability, and staying relevant in a rapidly changing world.

The Power of Education: Lessons from The Life of Malala Yousafzai

The importance of civic education in college students, made-to-order essay as fast as you need it.

Each essay is customized to cater to your unique preferences

+ experts online

The Importance of Teaching Cursive in Schools

Why education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world, importance of education in life and for our future, the importance of education and its role in society, let us write you an essay from scratch.

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Everyone Has The Right to Education

The importance of education in the development of a country, how education mirrors and shapes society, a major role of education in a person’s life, get a personalized essay in under 3 hours.

Expert-written essays crafted with your exact needs in mind

My Views on Education and Its Importance

Education or values, the gauge of becoming a human, women education and the futures wheel, the importance of education to my future, the importance of education in society, the importance of education in shaping the society, a discussion on the importance of education for a person, the possibility of education to eradicate rural poverty, the role of education and learning in today's society, the benefits versus the cost of higher education, the arguments why education should be free for everyone, why post-secondary education should be free for everyone in canada, importance of every subject connected to our lives, the role of education in evolution, review of education priority, online education and education in indiana state, why school is actually really important in our lives, importance of girls’ education, importance of school environment in light of sustainable development goals, a teacher's perspective on the purpose of education, the role of civic education - my civic journey.

Education is the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, morals, beliefs, habits, and personal development.

Education originated as transmission of cultural heritage from one generation to the next. Today, educational goals increasingly encompass new ideas such as liberation of learners, critical thinking about presented information, skills needed for the modern society, empathy and complex vocational skills.

Relevant topics

• Academic Interests
• Critical Thinking
• Academic Challenges
• Physical Education
• Studying Abroad
• Middle School
• Stem Education
• High School
• College Experience
• School Uniform

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Bibliography

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

THE AIMS OF EDUCATION (1990)

A handbook-style essay on the aims of education 'The Aims of Education' in N Entwistle (ed) Handbook of Educational Ideas and Practices (Routledge)

Related Papers

* ‘The Aims of School Education’ London: IPPR (2006) www.ippr.org/.../Education/The%20Aims%20of%20School%20Ed%20FINAL.pdf

Susi Kiranawd

Michael J Reiss

Riris Sapitri

A standard analysis of the aims of education might proceed by offering three possible areas for their location: first, to serve the needs of society; second, to pass on and develop those ways of knowing and understanding which are the common heritage; third, to help individual learners to develop, either through a process of unfolding from within or through an authentic creation of themselves. Within these parameters, though not entirely co-extensive with these categories, ideas of progressivism (child-centred education) and liberal education can be differentiated. Most obviously progressivism is concerned with the third aim, with the development of the learner. The liberal position seems to align itself with the second aim, of the passing on of ways of knowing and understanding. These are slippery terms, however. The second and third aims, and thus the progressivist position, are liberal in that they are concerned in some sense with the freeing of the learner; both reject an education which is primarily instrumental.

An Aims-based Curriculum: The Significance of Human Flourishing for Schools

The almost universal practice when designing school curricula is to start with subjects – mathematics, science, music and so on. In this book we argue that this approach starts too far in. If a subject like geography or English is to be included, we need to ask why. What larger educational aims does it help to promote? An aims-based curriculum can take different forms. Ours starts with general aims that we hope are broadly acceptable – to do with equipping students for a fulfilling life and for helping others, e.g. as citizens and workers, to lead one too. We spell out how we see these aims and the complexities in them that need to be unravelled. Then we see what further, more specific, aims these very general ones generate. For instance, the fulfilling life for which students are being prepared has a lot to do with wholehearted engagement in worthwhile activities and relationships. Since students will make their own autonomous choices among these, they will need understanding and experience of them across a wide range. We explore this at some length, drawing attention to, among other things, the role that imagination and student choice can play, the especial importance of the arts, cooperative activity and discussion; and what can be achieved through what we call the ‘taster-option model’, whereby, as with more recondite parts of mathematics, for instance, students are able to take up an activity on an optional basis after a preliminary introduction to it.

Journal of Education and Research

Mahesh Nath Parajuli

Dr. Abdulwasiu I S I A Q Nasirudeen

The role of education is to be reflective (about what? Why? and how?) in preserving the civilization identity and human capability of a nation. This is particularly true because education is the cornerstone to building human capability and capacity that can develop a country. A well-formulated educational goal will serve as a moral compass for individuals in order to be fully aware of the reasons behind their existence. Education should lead a person to be reflective of his/her life, jettison vague norms or ideas and to chat the future on the right direction. Determining or articulating the goals of education have always been a challenge, be it present or in the past due to it multifaceted manifestation in a different aspect of society. This study provides a capsule representation of what should be the goal (s) of education by looking into arguments and opinions of past education philosophers and scholars. It is concluded that the goal of education is diverse along historically and civilization spectrum but the essence—as human development remains its nucleus.

An examination of the educational legacy of T H Green and other British Idealists. A fuller version in book form is Philosophers as Educational Reformers (with Peter Gordon) (Routledge and Kegan Paul) (Chapters by JW: 1,2,3,4,5,10,11,12,13,14). Reissued by Routledge 2010 'The Aims of Education: three legacies of the British Idealists' in Journal of Philosophy of Education Vol. 12.

Journal of Philosophy of Education

Ronald Barnett

Atli Harðarson

RELATED PAPERS

Field Environmental Philosophy

El Call Center Global: Cultura, trabajo y poder en el capitalismo digital

Rafael Alarcón Medina

Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) - Biomembranes

The Journal of infectious diseases

Annick Antierens

European eating disorders review : the journal of the Eating Disorders Association

Maria La Via

Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical

Ricardo Souto

Turkish journal of surgery

Burhan Mayir

Journal of Biogeography

Revista Brasileira de Saúde e Produção Animal

Luisa Paiva

THE STAINED GLASS WINDOW OF THE TRADING FLOOR AT THE BANCO DE ESPAÑA

Conservaduria BdE

Share: Jurnal Ekonomi dan Keuangan Islam

Jarita Duasa

Eliete Correia dos Santos

paolo chiabert

José Manuel Torres Nieto

Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications

Carolina Salguero

Kiran Kumari

European Journal of Heart Failure

Hans-Peter Brunner-La Rocca

Revista Ibero-Americana de Saúde e Envelhecimento

Antonia Oliveira Silva

Journal of Quaternary Science

Erwin Appel

Oliver de Peyer

RELATED TOPICS

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

• Education & Teaching
• Schools & Teaching

Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime Try Prime and start saving today with fast, free delivery

Amazon Prime includes:

Fast, FREE Delivery is available to Prime members. To join, select "Try Amazon Prime and start saving today with Fast, FREE Delivery" below the Add to Cart button.

• Cardmembers earn 5% Back at Amazon.com with a Prime Credit Card.
• Unlimited Free Two-Day Delivery
• Streaming of thousands of movies and TV shows with limited ads on Prime Video.
• A Kindle book to borrow for free each month - with no due dates
• Listen to over 2 million songs and hundreds of playlists
• Unlimited photo storage with anywhere access

Important:  Your credit card will NOT be charged when you start your free trial or if you cancel during the trial period. If you're happy with Amazon Prime, do nothing. At the end of the free trial, your membership will automatically upgrade to a monthly membership.

Buy new: .savingPriceOverride { color:#CC0C39!important; font-weight: 300!important; } .reinventMobileHeaderPrice { font-weight: 400; } #apex_offerDisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventPriceSavingsPercentageMargin, #apex_offerDisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventPricePriceToPayMargin { margin-right: 4px; } -18% $15.47 $ 15 . 47 FREE delivery Wednesday, June 5 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35 Ships from: Amazon.com Sold by: Amazon.com

Return this item for free.

Free returns are available for the shipping address you chose. You can return the item for any reason in new and unused condition: no shipping charges

• Go to your orders and start the return
• Select the return method

Save with Used - Good .savingPriceOverride { color:#CC0C39!important; font-weight: 300!important; } .reinventMobileHeaderPrice { font-weight: 400; } #apex_offerDisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventPriceSavingsPercentageMargin, #apex_offerDisplay_mobile_feature_div .reinventPricePriceToPayMargin { margin-right: 4px; } $5.96 $ 5 . 96 FREE delivery Wednesday, June 5 on orders shipped by Amazon over $35 Ships from: Amazon Sold by: Kuleli Books

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required .

Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.

Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

Image Unavailable

• To view this video download Flash Player

Follow the author

The Aims of Education and Other Essays Paperback – January 1, 1967

Purchase options and add-ons.

• Print length 165 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Free Press
• Publication date January 1, 1967
• Dimensions 5.5 x 0.5 x 8.5 inches
• ISBN-10 0029351804
• ISBN-13 978-0029351802
• See all details

Frequently bought together

Similar items that may deliver to you quickly

Editorial Reviews

About the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Free Press; Reissue edition (January 1, 1967)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 165 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0029351804
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0029351802
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.8 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.5 x 8.5 inches
• #262 in Education Reform & Policy
• #418 in Curricula (Books)

About the author

Alfred north whitehead.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Essay on The Purpose of Education or The Aim of Education

The purpose of education or the aim of education, 150 words the purpose of education or the aim of education.

Today children are being forced to be educated by their parents to get professionally recognized. While education is extremely important for this purpose, the aim of education is much more than this. Education’s main purpose is to develop a student into a full, whole, and integrated person. It is not only about reading the school or college syllabus. Education helps a person to achieve their goal and developing skills and abilities. 

Education aims are to bring out the best of a student’s inner personality, without neglecting the outer and material aspects. An educated person is supposed to face the challenges of his or her life bravely and successfully. The aim of education should be to help the society and get over the weaknesses and superstition also helping the country to be one of the most credible and self-dependent countries of the world. No person can be called educated if he is fail in making a true and meaningful contribution to society and country.

200 Words The Purpose of Education or The Aim of Education

The aim of education should be to help society be autonomous and free from evil powers. An educated mind doesn’t come under any influence easily. This is the reason; I believe that the real aim of education should be making people independent thinkers and good decision-makers.

250 Words The Purpose of Education or The Aim of Education

Education aims are to bring out the best of a student’s inner personality, without neglecting the outer and material aspects. An educated person is supposed to face the challenges of his or her life bravely and successfully.

Another main purpose of education should be to equip the people with means to face the problem of unemployment . This utilitarian aspect of education is also very important. It also means that students become capable of standing on their own feet, or at least to earn their bread and butter.

 The aim of education should be to help the society and get over the weaknesses and superstition also helping the country to be one of the most credible and self-dependent countries of the world. No person can be called educated if he is fail in making a true and meaningful contribution to society and country.

300 Words The Purpose of Education or The Aim of Education

Another main purpose of education should be to equip the people with means to face the problem of unemployment. This utilitarian aspect of education is also very important. It also means that students become capable of standing on their own feet, or at least to earn their bread and butter.

If you’re passionate about getting an education then you should know the true meaning of education, what is the real value of it. You should not get an education just to use it for your own benefit. If you can spread the benefits of education to the whole society, remember, you’re also going to be a beneficiary in the end.

We have an Essay on every topic, Check the complete list  here . If you are Studying in Matric Free Video Lectures of  Maths ,  Physics  and  English  are here, and we have got you covered for I.COM  Business Maths  also. 

More Related Posts

GOOD MANNERS ESSAY

Essay on Parents

Knowledge is Power

The Annual School Sports Day Essay

A Picnic at Sea-side

A Morning Walk Essay

We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us!

Internet Archive Audio

• This Just In
• Grateful Dead
• Old Time Radio
• 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings
• Audio Books & Poetry
• Computers, Technology and Science
• Music, Arts & Culture
• News & Public Affairs
• Spirituality & Religion
• Radio News Archive

• Flickr Commons
• Occupy Wall Street Flickr
• NASA Images
• Solar System Collection
• Ames Research Center

• All Software
• Old School Emulation
• MS-DOS Games
• Historical Software
• Classic PC Games
• Software Library
• Kodi Archive and Support File
• Vintage Software
• CD-ROM Software
• CD-ROM Software Library
• Software Sites
• Tucows Software Library
• Shareware CD-ROMs
• Software Capsules Compilation
• CD-ROM Images
• ZX Spectrum
• DOOM Level CD

• Smithsonian Libraries
• FEDLINK (US)
• Lincoln Collection
• American Libraries
• Canadian Libraries
• Universal Library
• Project Gutenberg
• Children's Library
• Biodiversity Heritage Library
• Books by Language
• Additional Collections

• Prelinger Archives
• Democracy Now!
• Occupy Wall Street
• TV NSA Clip Library
• Animation & Cartoons
• Arts & Music
• Computers & Technology
• Cultural & Academic Films
• Ephemeral Films
• Sports Videos
• Videogame Videos
• Youth Media

Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet.

Mobile Apps

• Wayback Machine (iOS)
• Wayback Machine (Android)

Browser Extensions

Archive-it subscription.

• Explore the Collections
• Build Collections

Save Page Now

Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future.

Please enter a valid web address

• Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape

The aims of education, and other essays

Bookreader item preview, share or embed this item, flag this item for.

• Graphic Violence
• Explicit Sexual Content
• Hate Speech
• Misinformation/Disinformation
• Marketing/Phishing/Advertising
• Misleading/Inaccurate/Missing Metadata

obscured text on front cover

plus-circle Add Review comment Reviews

139 Previews

Better World Books

DOWNLOAD OPTIONS

No suitable files to display here.

PDF access not available for this item.

IN COLLECTIONS

Uploaded by station26.cebu on March 11, 2021

SIMILAR ITEMS (based on metadata)

Essay On Aim Of Education

• Post category: Essay
• Reading time: 10 mins read

The main aim of education is the all-round development of a student. Its purpose is to develop a student into a full, whole and integrated person. Thus, the objectives to be achieved through education and training are many and very comprehensive. Education helps in achieving and developing skills, abilities, insights and scientific temper. Besides literary and aesthetic appeal of education, there are utilitarian aspects as well and they are equally important.

Education aims at developing and bringing out the best of a student’s inner personality, but at the same time it cannot neglect the outer and material aspects. Education also means that a student is made capable to stand on his own feet, to earn his bread and butter.

An educated person is supposed to face the challenges of life bravely and successfully in the fields of money, material and social utility. No person can be called properly educated if he or she fails in making a meaningful contribution to the income and economy of a society and country. An educated person is supposed to earn well for himself and his dependents. He should not be a burden on the society and family from economic point of view. Without realization of this aim young men and women can never be called properly educated and trained because they would prove unfit in the economical and utilitarian structure of the society.

The purpose of education is to strike a proper balance between inner and outer, emotional and practical aspects of one’s personality and life. If it is not done, then it would prove lopsided education resulting in or imbalanced development of a personality. It should help in flowering of both the spiritual and physical potentialities.

All-round development and enfolding of innate qualities means the growth and development of mind, spirit and body. All these three are integral and interdependent aspects of a man’s personality. It only means that there should be integrated development and none of these aspects be neglected.

Man is both emotional and rational being and both of these should be properly developed so as to form parts of an integrated and organic whole. The development of the one at the expense of the other would result in disaster. Man is neither a thinking machine nor a heap of emotions, nor a bundle of flesh and bones.

If one is guided simply by emotions, his vision is bound to be distorted. Similarly, if one goes by reason alone then he would be a mere thinking robot. Likewise, in a weak body there cannot exist sound mind and spirit. Physical strength also reflects the inner strength of spirit and mind. Physically weak people cannot be morally strong. They would soon fall prey to all sorts of undesirable pressures and manoeuvres.

The main task of education is to produce useful, intelligent, patriotic, emotionally integrated, morally strong, cultured, scientifically tempered and healthy young men and women. In short, the aim and objective of education should be proper integration and harmony between feeling, thinking and doing. Education should produce people properly adjusted with the rhythm of life and it cannot be achieved unless and until there is the much desired adjustment between rhythms of mind and heart in the individual.

One of the primary aims of education is to develop character. Now, character is a very comprehensive term and means not only pattern of behaviour of an individual but also moral strength, mental presence, self-discipline, fortitude, reputation etc. Most of our modern problems have their origin in our lack of strong moral character.

The modern age has been suffering from the crisis of character. If the character of the people is improved many of the problems would take care of themselves. If the character of the people of a country is strong, it would be very easy to overcome any crises, however, great for that country. It is said that if character is lost, everything is lost. What makes a man, really a man in its true sense of the term, is his character. Without character a man is nothing but a beast, a mere organism just existing selfishly without any values and ethical sense.

According to a poet “Sow a habit and you reap a character. So a character, and you reap a destiny.” Thus, the men of character are the men of destiny. TANGI Only those with strong moral character have capabilities to control and guide the destinies of the nations and the world. Mahatma Gandhi was such a man of character and so also a man of destiny. Sow were Gokhale, Tilak, Nehru, Rajendra Babu. Vivekananda and Subhash Bose. The aim of education should be to make our students follow in the foot-steps of these men of strong character and destiny.

The Education imparted in our schools, college and universities be such as to mould the personalities of the students to enable them to face the realties of life with courage and confidence. In this context the valuable concept of Basic Education championed by Mahatma Gandhi comes to mind. Basic education means that it should be based on work-experience.

It should not be theoretical and isolated but intimately related with a students social and family background and relevant to the needs of the society. Work and training should form an integral part of education and not be an isolated activity.

It should aim at producing artisans, craftsmen, doctors, engineers, technicians, teachers and such other professionals who may set up their own workshops, factories, mills, dispensaries, schools etc. and also fill up the vacant posts advertised by the government and other agencies. It only means that education should be work and employment oriented. The essence of education and training lies in the removal of unemployment by producing skilled, talented and well trained personnel and professionals. One of the main purpose of education should be to equip the people with means to face the problem of unemployment.

If it fails to produce people with creative minds and working hands to create employment avenues and career opportunities it is a bad type of education. No education worth its name can divert itself from the responsibility of providing suitable careers to the people. This utilitarian aspect of education is as important as that of emotional and spiritual development.

Education should also aim at achieving national integration and generation of stronger sense of unity and oneness among the people. In a country such as India with all sorts of diverties, it becomes all the more vital. Every educated man and woman in India should be imbued with the sense of pride and honour for our common heritage culture and history.

It is this oneness of culture and heritage that has always stood us in good stead in times of crises and catastrophe as a nation. Whether it was a Chinese aggression, Pakistani attack or any other crises, the whole nation rose like one man to face it successfully. The cultural and emotional integration, affected through true and purposeful education, can very easily effect the singleness of purpose leading to desired results. The developed and advanced countries like Japan, Canada, France, Germany, America etc. are so, because they have been continuously investing heavily in education for the last many years.

This clearly shows that education is an essential investment and input to realize the utmost possible output. The long term returns and benefits of investment in education, training and human resources development have been quite phenomenal as is evident from the fantastic growth and development of these nations.

Obviously, a purposeful education makes human resources and capital far more dividend- paying than it would be otherwise. Good moral character, scientific temper, self-dependence, patriotism, social and environmental awareness, singleness of purpose, secular and broad outlook, fortitude and sense of human values like compassion, truth, peace, non-violence, and charity is the another name of education.

• Essay On Aids And HIV-An Explosive Situation
• Essay On Advantages of Technical Education
• Essay On Advantages of Forests
• Advantages And Disadvantages of Online Shopping
• Essay On Advantages And Disadvantages Of Mobile Phone
• Essay On Action Speaks Louder Than Words
• Essay On Acid Rain
• Essay On A Winter Day
• Essay On A Visit to an Earthquake-Affected Area
• Essay On A Visit to an Aerodrome

Please Share This Share this content

• Opens in a new window

You Might Also Like

Essay on god helps those who help themselves.

Essay On Cow

Autography Of An Umbrella

Essay on the autobiography of a class-room table, essay on feelings when sister gets late.

Essay on Good Manners

Leave a reply cancel reply.

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.