EDUCATION, PHILOSOPHY OF

the field of inquiry, speculation, and application in which philosophical methods are applied to the study of a problem, topic, or issue in education. Characteristic of these methods is the attempt to think as accurately, clearly, coherently, and systematically as possible. Analytical philosophers would say that philosophy of education should end with the attempt to clarify and justify educational statements and arguments. In practice, however, the field includes much more than that. It considers as relevant material much that has been written on education by influential philosophers of the past. There is, therefore, much overlap with the field of history of education, and ultimately no clear demarcation can be drawn between the two fields, which nourish and illuminate each other in their interconnectedness (see education, history of). Many philosophers of education also go beyond analysis in being concerned with establishing a commitment to value judgments and substantive positions. They take pains to attempt to clarify and justify those judgments and positions on the grounds that clear and substantiated judgments have greater probability of being sound. The philosophy of education has a special concern with the applications of knowledge and theories. Thus, many philosophers of education are especially interested in the relationship between theory and practice. Moreover, they are often concerned with the ways in which philosophy relates to other fields of study in the attempt to shed light on educational problems and issues. This gives them a wide-angled approach to education, which some philosophers have called educational theory to distinguish it from a more narrowly analytical form of philosophy of education. With regard to the term education, there is a similar spectrum of views ranging from the narrow view of education as that which goes on in schools and universities to a definition of education as all those experiences that affect the growth and development of a person throughout life. The former view has tended to give way, with increased recognition of the crucially important part that informal experiences and relationships play in determining what and how an individual learns. Additional reading For an excellent example of the analytical approach to philosophy of education, see Israel Scheffler (ed.), Philosophy and Education, 2nd ed. (1966). A representative British example is P.H. Hirst and R.S. Peters, The Logic of Education (1970). Several scholars have attempted to group philosophies of education into schools of thought. The best collections are John Paul Strain (comp.), Modern Philosophies of Education (1971); and Theodore B.H. Brameld, Patterns of Educational Philosophy: Divergence and Convergence in Culturological Perspective (1971). For examples of attempts to focus on a single problem or issue and to combine clarity and commitment, see Paul Nash, Authority and Freedom in Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education (1966); Kenneth D. Benne, Education in the Quest for Identity and Community (1962); and Robert Ulich, The Human Career: A Philosophy of Self-Transcendence (1955). A good collection of Existentialist statements on education may be found in Maxine Greene (comp.), Existential Encounters for Teachers (1967). For selections from the classics on conceptions of the educated person, see Paul Nash (ed.), Models of Man: Explorations in the Western Educational Tradition (1968); and Robert Ulich (ed.), Three Thousand Years of Educational Wisdom, 2nd ed. enl. (1954). Original essays on all of these major figures may be found in Paul Nash, Andreas M. Kazamias, and Henry J. Perkinson (eds.), The Educated Man: Studies in the History of Educational Thought (1965). Contemporary problems are treated in Brenda Cohen, Education and the Individual (1982), exploring the concept of freedom of education; Mortimer J. Adler, The Paideia Proposal: An Educational Manifesto (1982); Henry A. Giroux, Ideology, Culture, and the Process of Schooling (1981), espousing radical Marxist thought; R.F. Holland, Against Empiricism: On Education, Epistemology, and Value (1980), a collection of essays of broad concern; Lawrence Kohlberg, The Philosophy of Moral Development: Moral Stages and the Idea of Justice (1981), stressing an interdisciplinary approach in education; and David Nyberg, Power Over Power: What Power Means in Ordinary Life, How It Is Related To Acting Freely, and What It Can Contribute to a Renovated Ethics of Education (1981).