New Essays in the Philosophy of Education (International Library of the Philosophy of Education Volume 13) PDF
Preview New Essays in the Philosophy of Education (International Library of the Philosophy of Education Volume 13)
NEW ESSAYS IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION Edited by GLENN LANGFORD AND D.J.O’CONNOR Volume 13 LONDON AND NEW YORK First published in 1973 This edition first published in 2010 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 1973 Routledge & Kegan Paul All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0-203-86111-6 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 10:0-415-55946-4 (Set) eISBN 10:0-2038-6097-7 (Set) ISBN 10:0-415-56451-4 (Volume 13) eISBN 10:0-203-86111-6 (Volume 13) ISBN 13:978-0-415-55946-1 (Set) eISBN 13:978-0-2038-6097-7 (Set) ISBN 13:978-0-415-56451-9 (Volume 13) eISBN 13:978-0-203-86111-0 (Volume 13) Publisher’s Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imper- fections in the original copies may be apparent. Disclaimer The publisher has made every effort to trace copy- right holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace. New essays in the philosophy of education Edited by Glenn Langford and D.J.O’Connor Routledge & Kegan Paul London and Boston First published in 1973 by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd Broadway House, 68–74 Carter Lane, London EC4V 5EL and 9 Park Street, Boston, Mass. 02108, U.S.A. This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk. © Routledge & Kegan Paul 1973 No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except for the quotation of brief passages in criticism ISBN 0-203-86111-6 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0 7100 7690 8 (Print Edition) Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 73-83120 Contents page General editor’s note viii Preface x Acknowledgments xi Part 1 Education 1 The concept of education 2 Glenn Langford 2 The concept of indoctrination 25 Patricia Smart 3 The nature and scope of educational theory (1) 36 D.J.O’Connor 4 The nature and scope of educational theory (2) 51 P.H.Hirst Part 2 Education and values 5 Education—a moral concept 60 T.F.Daveney 6 Moral autonomy as an aim of moral education 73 Kurt Baier 7 Values in education (1) 87 Glenn Langford 8 Values in education (2) 102 R.S.Peters Part 3 Aspects of education 9 Language and moral education 112 R.M.Hare 10 Is religious education possible? 125 W.D.Hudson Contents vii 11 Aesthetic education 147 Diané Collinson 12 The problem of curriculum sequence in mathematics 162 Christopher Ormell 13 Philosophy of education and the place of science in the curriculum 176 P.H.Nidditch Index 195 Name index 201 General editor’s note There is a growing interest in philosophy of education amongst students of philosophy as well as amongst those who are more specifically and practically concerned with educa- tional problems. Philosophers, of course, from the time of Plato onwards, have taken an interest in education and have dealt with education in the context of wider concerns about knowledge and the good life. But it is only quite recently in this country that philosophy of education has come to be conceived of as a specific branch of philosophy like the philoso- phy of science or political philosophy. To call philosophy of education a specific branch of philosophy is not, however, to suggest that it is a distinct branch in the sense that it could exist apart from established branches of philosophy such as epistemology, ethics, and philosophy of mind. It would be more appropriate to conceive of it as drawing on established branches of philosophy and bringing them together in ways which are relevant to educational issues. In this respect the analogy with political philosophy would be a good one. Thus use can often be made of work that already exists in philosophy. In tackling, for instance, issues such as the rights of parents and children, punishment in schools, and the authority of the teacher, it is possible to draw on and develop work already done by philosophers on ‘rights’, ‘punishment’, and ‘authority’. In other cases, however, no systematic work exists in the relevant branches of philosophy—e.g. on concepts such as ‘education’, ‘teaching’, ‘learning’, ‘indoctrina- tion’. So philosophers of education have had to break new ground—in these cases in the philosophy of mind. Work on educational issues can also bring to life and throw new light on long-standing problems in philosophy. Concentration, for instance, on the particular predicament of children can throw new light on problems of punishment and responsibility. G.E.Moore’s old worries about what sorts of things are good in themselves can be brought to life by urgent questions about the justification of the curriculum in schools. There is a danger in philosophy of education, as in any other applied field, of polariza- tion to one of two extremes. The work could be practically relevant but philosophically feeble; or it could be philosophically sophisticated but remote from practical problems. The aim of the new International Library of Philosophy of Education is to build up a body of fundamental work in this area which is both practically relevant and philosophically competent. For unless it achieves both types of objective it will fail to satisfy those for whom it is intended and fall short of the conception of philosophy of education which the International Library is meant to embody. This volume of essays which emanates, in the main, from the University of Exeter has two distinctive features. First, it attempts to explore what is meant by ‘education’ and ‘educational theory’. In part it does this by containing articles which are critical of what many regard as the current orthodoxy in British philosophy of education as represented by R.S.Peters and P.H.Hirst. Replies by Peters and Hirst are included. General editor’s note ix Second, an attempt is made to open up discussion about the main spheres of education— i.e., moral, religious, aesthetic, mathematical and scientific education. This is very much to be welcomed; for philosophers of education in Great Britain have tended to concentrate more on central issues. Although they have done a lot of work on moral education and on indoctrination, they have tended to neglect the other spheres of education dealt with by this volume. It is to be hoped, therefore, that this volume will be influential not only in continuing the controversy about the nature of education and of educational theory, but also in open- ing up discussion about more specialized forms of education. There has been a great deal of work, of course, in philosophy generally, on aesthetics, philosophy of religion, philoso- phy of mathematics and philosophy of science but little investigation of the educational implications of the positions adopted. The relevance of such detailed studies to problems of the curriculum is obvious enough. They fit very well into the concept of philosophy of education underlying the International Library which is to link established branches of philosophy with educational issues. Preface It seems advisable, in order to avoid possible misunderstanding, to explain our policy in compiling and editing this book. The intention was to collect together newly-written essays on the concept of education and related topics such as indoctrination and theory of educa- tion; and on aspects of education of particular interest, such as moral education, or which, as a matter of fact, are reflected prominently in the curricula of schools and colleges. The most regrettable omission, from this point of view, relates to history and the social sci- ences. Contributors were informed of this general plan but beyond that were left to develop their own views in their own ways. Though contributors therefore share roughly the same view of philosophy and roughly the same view of education, since all are writing within the same philosophic and educational traditions, no further agreement than this suggests is to be expected from them. Indeed we are of the opinion that the philosophy of education is an embryonic field of enquiry in which no orthodoxies have been established. It would be a mistake therefore to expect the essays to support one another in dealing with different aspects of a single underlying theme. G.L. D.J.O’G.
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