Philosophy of Education

Realism, essentialism, perennialism and constructivism name some of the main schools of thought in the philosophy of education.  The Wikipedia article on philosophy of education lists others and does a good job of clarifying what a philosophy of education is.  One meaning identified there and followed here regards the philosophy of education as, “a normative educational theory that unifies pedagogy, curriculum, learning theory, and the purpose of education and is grounded in specific metaphysical, epistemological, and axiological assumptions.”

PHILOSOPHY vs. PRACTICAL REALITIES

To start with, an important qualification to the significance and practical use of philosophy is in order and this is especially so where education is concerned.  While parents who need schools for their children and teachers who need to find work can THEORETICALLY seek out schools with curriculums and education philosophies which resonate with their own values and concerns, PRACTICALLY they usually cannot.  Context reigns as all important.  Where one lives and why one is there, may be the deciding factor determining where one ends up.  A family's choices are limited if they have to live in Phoenix because of work and even teachers may have any number of personal issues to manage.  If they consider a school's philosophy at all, teacher's generally do not make that the only deciding factor when looking for a job because they usually simply don't have the luxury of time and money to do so.  Making a move is very difficult and can involve many other important factors such as how to manage a mortgage, stay connected to an extended family, minimum income requirements, their own children’s special needs, and so on.  As interesting and important to know as some ideologies are, the expectation that everyone learn them is not reasonable.  

Why should parents familiarize themselves with Waldorf, Regio-Amelio or Montessori if these are NOT options for them?  And never mind cities in the U.S.  What about people living in poverty in Africa or India?  Not only will such people not have choices; they might not even be getting an education at all.  Even teachers, for whom the expectation to be familiar with philosophies is a little more reasonable, may legitimately question the practicality of switching careers, moving, incurring a likely cut in pay and going through training all over again for the sake of an ideology. And when that's the case, education goes on regardless of how well we iron out our metaphysics or whether we bother to try at all.

Even at federal levels, where one might think educational philosophies reign as all important, practical concerns can dictate policy despite the ideals of a philosophy. Governments have the practical problem of needing to accommodate families that move to another city and consequently, their children to another school. Can children pick up their education where they left off when they move?  If the child was half way through grade three, then shouldn’t the subjects she was learning and the level she was learning them at be the same so that she can continue and not be behind or too advanced for the new school?  While common sense would suggest this is how things should be and while, in fact, this is pretty much how things are done in most places, there is a growing body of evidence to suggest children don’t learn at the same pace and shouldn’t be forced to do so.  Even having a canon of things that “should” be learned can and arguably has been taken too far.

The practical reality is that the educational philosophies that prevail may have little to do with their relative or comparative merit so much as with the issue of how to change or adapt what already exists. We might consider, for example, exchanging 3 months of summer vacations for one week of vacation after every three weeks of school. As good of an idea as that might be, how would we make that change?  Can this be done to K-12 schools only without changing universities?  Can and should a federal government have so much jurisdiction over states and both public and private schools in each so as to enforce such a change? 

THE NEED FOR PHILOSOPHY THAT REMAINS NONETHELESS

Still, there is the need to get schools to make needed changes and to keep them accountable to the degree that change is in their power; and a philosophy is the heart and root of the matter of what changes need to be made and what schools need to be held accountable for.  How the power and role of each stakeholder should be balanced is also based on philosophy.  And there are several stakeholders from parents with their PTAs to teachers with their union, to state and federal legislatures, textbook publishers, and most certainly school districts and the department of education.  The dissonant voices about what should be done each have their forums and spheres of influence and a set of values and concerns guiding them. A point that cannot be underscored too much is that failure to think straight will have dire consequences for any attempt to apply that thinking by those with the power and influence to make changes.

Besides political issues of power, deep philosophical issues of value can also be a source of division.  The part of a philosophy concerned with how to effect change and cause things to become what they should be, needs to be consistent with all the other parts of that philosophy. Put another way, democracy or for that matter, multiculturalism, that is forced upon people is not going to seem very much like democracy or multiculturalism.  In this regard, one might note that the most reasonable evaluations regard, as wishful thinking, the idea that democratic values reconcile with survival of the fittest views of human nature. Again, failure to think straight will have dire consequences for any attempt to apply that thinking. And so ways of doing things may not change even when they need to be changed and not only because change is just too difficult but also because attempts to affect change are all wrong-headed.

THE DIFFERENT SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT

In the interests of getting our thinking straight about education, we need to study the different schools of thought and judge which parts are mutually exclusive and which are reconcilable. There is no point in advocating the views of one philosopher to the exclusion of others. If others, especially subsequent thinkers, have more to offer, then the best policy is to borrow appropriately from each. This is also actually necessary insofar as few philosophers of education addressed themselves to all there is to talk about on this subject. We need to remember that getting our thinking straight entails coming up with a view that, "unifies pedagogy, curriculum, learning theory, and the purpose of education." Even philosophers who have touched on each of these areas eventually become outdated especially where learning theory is concerned because that area is constantly informed and transformed in accordance with advances in psychology and brain research.

Among the views mentioned at the start, realism, essentialism and perennialism are more about curriculum and the purpose of education than they are about pedagogy and learning theory. Constructivism, which is the predominant trend now and which has had far more advocates and apologists than the others, has undergone a more thorough-going development. But a common mistake among self-described contructivists is to misrepresent the other views and to regard them as irreconcilably different. Constructivist learning strategies truly did anticipate researched that confirmed how children learn most effectively--i.e. when teachers consider student prior knowledge and interests and design ways for them to experience for themselves how things work or to discover mathematical solutions to real life situations. But this practice was never an exclusively constructivist strategy. Even advocates of the other philosophy curriculums that prescribe rigid canons of knowledge and literature understood the need for the Socratic method, for science labs and to offer students, at least, some choices such as between different electives or in music, which instrument they wanted to play. 

I don't see any reason why St. John's (speaking of the college level for the moment for an extreme example) should dispense with their perennialist philosophy based on Adler's Great Books and adapt a more constructivist curriculum based on Piaget. But I would NOT advocate continuing a great books curriculum with a teacher center pedagogy and I would NOT advocate the enforcement of AP learning, throughout a school district, with any portion of the Great Books. Such a curriculum is NOT for all people everywhere. But a truly democratic, multicultural and pluralistic society should celebrate the presence of some traditional institutions which make continuing in a tradition possible for those who prefer such an option. Even if the ideals taught at an institution are not democratic, multicultural and pluralistic, such an institutions worth can still be weighed in terms of serving as a foil for a society that is, if not a corrective for excessive relativism, for example.

Like mutually assured destruction, I think the harsh criticisms of fierce opponents of different camps do everyone a disservice. The idea that any one curriculum will do students irreparable harm is a gross exaggeration which fails to recognize the resilience of human beings. Excessive teacher talking time is at worst, counter productive as is excessively unstructured lessons. As with everything, balance is the key.

If anything can do students harm, that would be uncaring, insensitive, sarcastic and mean teachers (or parents who behave similarly) and no curriculum can compensate for damage that this will do.

Essentialism's contribution to educational philosophy with the idea of common core standards differs from the perennialists focus on a liberal arts education and a canonical list of lasting ideas and their thinkers. The common core resembles a canonical list, but is not limited to the thinkers, like Euclid, who originally developed geometry. Essentialism is better understood as a concern with facts everyone should know. In math, students have to know how to graph; they don't have to know the method was invented by Descartes or even have to read Descartes.


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