engleski

Philosophy of education contemplating contemporary education

In the historical development of humans as cultural beings, not many will today contest that education played a crucial role, and that humans – as well as their humanity – affirm themselves only through their educatability, which makes us open to education and spirituality conveyed to us through education. Equally, not many will contest the interest that philosophy has had in education already from the earliest stages of its development. Philosophers have been showing undeniable interest in education from the sophists as the first professional instructors in the 5th century B.C., through Socrates who, with his maieutic method (maieutikē tékne), coherently and dialectically linked education and philosophy, having founded education in philosophy and philosophy in education, through Plato who saw a means in education for the development of the ideal philosophical state, through Aristotle and all the other philosophers all up to the present, neither of whom – or at least neither of the most important ones – had failed to at least superficially touch upon the question of education. This is not at all surprising if we consider the involvement of education in the very essence of the being of humans, in particular in the development of their spirituality. Thus, historical overviews of the philosophy of education begin, for the most part, with the sophists or at least with Plato. However, even though philosophical interest in education unquestionably existed at the time in question, this does not at all mean that there existed something which could justifiably be called a philosophy of education. On the contrary, all up to the beginning of the 20th century, philosophers had not been differentiating education from seemingly similar, though essentially different or even contrary phenomena, nor had philosophy posed the fundamental question, with which the philosophy of education – in order that it be a philosophical discipline on education at all – should and must begin: What is education? Consequently, what we first and foremost have is a lack of both theoretic thought and knowledge on education – which is apparent already through the indistinctness and unintelligibility of the concept of education itself – and an inconsistency of action desiring to be educational based upon such invalid theoretic foundations. Instead, as a rule, education is more or less only manipulation. In this, pedagogy has a particularly infamous place.

educatio; manipulation; philosophy of education

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