PHILOSOPHY 2G03

LOCKE

A SOUND MIND IN A SOUND BODY = WELL-BEING. ONLY ACHIEVED THROUGH EDUCATION - THE GREAT PRINCIPLE OF EDUCATION; TEACH CHILDREN HOW TO OPPOSE THE INCLINATION OF THE PASSIONS THROUGH THE USE OF 'SOUND REASON' HABITS - SINCE WE KNOW NOTHING OTHER THAN WHAT WE CUSTOMARILY EXPERIENCE, THE TASK OF THE EDUCATOR IS TO CREATE (VIRTUOUS) HABITS, (I.E., REPETITION OF THE SAME ACTIVITIES IN RELATION TO THE SAME EXPERIENCE) PUNISHMENTS AND REWARDS - BECAUSE CORPORAL PUNISHMENTS MAY 1) BREAK A CHILD'S SPIRIT 2) HAVE THE REVERSE EFFECT, 3) ARE TEMPORARY - THEY SHOULD BE AVOIDED. BUT CORPORAL REWARDS SHOULD ALSO BE AVOIDED BECAUSE THEY OFFER CONDITIONAL INCENTIVES THAT UNDERMINE THE AIM OF EDUCATION. BUT IF NOT CORPORAL PUNISHMENTS OR REWARDS, HOW WILL A TEACHER INDUCE OBEDIENCE? RATIONAL PUNISHMENTS AND REWARDS

GUTMAN - PART 2

Education: parents claim exclusive authority to educate purpose of education is to transmit familial values according to parochial and traditional conceptions of 'the good' educated individuals should conserve the traditional values so that they can repeat the same with the next generation Critique Children are not exclusively members of families à children are also members of states Children are individuals à the fact of reproduction does not grant parents license to educate children as they see fit Fact of parenthood does not establish quality àparents should not be given absolute freedom over the education of children State of Individuals Fundamental Presupposition: anything warranting being called 'the good' must be chosen by an assenting individual, so individual freedom should be respected by educational authorities Education: individuals have exclusive educational authority, but in the form of negative liberty (freedom from prejudicial indoctrination) education should foster neutrality by employing professional educators 'unconstrained by parental or state authority' the purpose of education is to maximize the ability to choose among competing conceptions of the good Critique Impossibility of Neutrality à it is impossible to protect a child from all possible forms of social influence Freedom and Virtue in Conflict à even if it were possible to educate for a neutral free choice it would come at the expense of cultivating virtue Educating freedom of choice cannot claim political legitimacy à liberty is constrained by rights whose recognition demands respect; educating for virtue constrains choices Democratic Education A distribution of educational authority and responsibility among states, parents and professional educators A legitimate interest in, and express cultivation of, moral character consistent with democratic ideals themselves (viz. civic virtues, compassion, tolerance, etc.) that will serve to make children the kind of people capable of intellectual virtues (e.g. prudence, critical inquiry, etc.) Enabling a sense of cultural coherence in the child, while promoting the possibility of critical (re-) evaluation of the same culture Two principles of democratic education: Nonrepression à prevents restriction of ability to rationally deliberate about conceptions and pursuits of 'the good life' as this promotes deliberative freedom Nondiscrimination à promotes distribution of access to nonrepressive education as this cultivates communal self-determination

FOUCAULT

Maps the transition from symbolic to technological disciplinary structures that have a ubiquitous presence in all institutions (military, medicine, business, education, etc.); 'micro-physics of power' In the educational context, 'new techniques' were introduced that transformed education from an apprentice pedagogy to an analytical pedagogy ... The point of these technologies is to increase state control over individuals through disciplinary activities within allotted times Control over time enables a disciplinary control over the individuals distributed through the division and coordination of temporal series In this way, the individual becomes a 'docile body' subject to the activities within an assigned interval, and through this subjection, becomes further subjected to the stages of development

LOCKE - PART TWO

RATIONAL PUNISHMENT: DISGRACE - SINCE WE HAVE AN AVERSION TO WHAT RECEIVES DISAPPROVAL, THOSE VICES THE EDUCATOR WISHES TO CURB IN THE CHILD SHOULD REPEATEDLY BE ACCOMPANIED BY DISGRACE/DISAPPROVAL SO THAT THE CHILD FEELS SHAME RATIONAL REWARD: ESTEEM - SINCE WE ARE INCLINED TO VALUE WHAT RECEIVES APPROVAL, THOSE VIRTUES THE EDUCATOR WISHES TO PROMOTE IN THE CHILD SHOULD REPEATEDLY BE ACCOMPANIED BY APPROVAL SO THAT THE CHILD WILL FEEL ESTEEMED TEACHING - 1) DON'T TEACH BY RULES WHAT CAN BE TAUGHT THROUGH HABITUAL PRACTICE 2) DON'T TEACH BY FORCE WHAT SHOULD BE TAUGHT BY EXAMPLE 3) DON'T TEACH BY IMPOSING WORK WHAT COULD BE TAUGHT THROUGH PLAYFUL EXPLORATION 4) DON'T TEACH BY COMMAND WHAT COULD BE TAUGHT BY RATIONAL EXPLANATION

KANT

THE PURPOSE OF EDUCATION IS TO BRING ABUT THE FULL POTENTIAL OF HUMANITY IN EACH INDIVIDUAL HUMAN BEING, SO EDUCATORS MUST: 1) CARE FOR CHILDREN SO THAT THEY DON'T MAKE HARMFUL USE OF THEIR CAPACITIES 2) DISCIPLINE CHILDREN IN ORDER TO REMOVE THEIR 'ANIMALITY' AND 'SAVAGERY' 3) INSTRUCT CHILDREN IN ORDER TO DEVELOP 'HUMAN' CAPACITIES FOR HUMAN PURPOSES

THE PEDAGOGICAL-POLITICAL PROBLEM

DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT PRESUPPOSES A DIVERSE MEMBERSHIP SEEKING THE RETENTION OF INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY ENTERING INTO CONSTRUCTIVE COMMUNITY WITH OTHERS THIS INVOLVES A SIGNIFICANT TENSION BETWEEN THE DEMANDS OF CIVIL SOCIETY (I.E., SECURITY, COMMON IDEALS) AND THE DEMANDS OF THE RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS OSTENSIBLY GUARANTEED WITHIN CIVIL SOCIETY(I.E., LIBERTY, DIVERSITY, AND EQUALITY) BECAUSE POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY ENTAILS ACTIVE PARTICIPATION, A DEMOCRATIC STATE MUST SEEK TO TRANSMIT ITS CIVIC CULTURE BY MEANS OTHERS THAN AN EDUCATION IN THE PASSIVE RECEPTION OF RULES AND NORMS (FOR TO DO SO WOULD BE AUTHORITARIAN OR DESPOTIC)

SCHEFFLER AND HOOK

If a democratic society is possible, a necessary condition of its realization is the derivation of authority from the consent of the governed An OPEN society à democratic social organization is a construct of consent; it is always open to revocation by virtue of critical evaluation A DYNAMIC society à society operates by means of institutions: patterns of organization providing structures in which individuals function; institutional policy is a public concern and is progressively revisable through collective critical evaluation The democratic education should: 1) liberate the mind, 2) strengthen its critical powers, 3) inform it with knowledge and the capacity for independent inquiry, 4) illuminate its moral and practical choices The question of moral education: How can a democratic society provide moral education without imposing a set of principles that undermine the capacities for independent inquiry and critical deliberation? The moral sense Moral education can either be taught dogmatically or democratically Dogmatic: appealing to authority, command-obedience, consequences linked to reward/punishment, arbitrary rules Democratic: appealing to reason, guidance through individual inquiry, linked to personal practice, meaningful and justifiable

DEWEY

In the same way biological life is preserved and increased through constant renewal, so too is social life preserved through constant renewal à EDUCATION Education <-> Communication: education is the communication of commonly shared beliefs, practices and institutions through the experiences and actions of individuals forming a community In/Formal Education: Informal: non-systematic transmission of culture (viz. incidental experiences, no definite order and aims of knowledge acquisition or employment) Formal: systematic cultural transmission (viz. intentionally organized experiences with a definite order and aim of knowledge acquisition and employment) In/Direct Education: Indirect: mediated experience and passive participation Direct: immediate experience and active participation The more formal education becomes, the more indirect its methods become Dewey calls this the Conspicuous Danger: The more specialized a communities knowledge, the formal its education, but the more formal it is, the more removed from direct experience, and the more removed from experience the more detached from individual life (concrete experience, motivation, interest) This is how we come to a disconnect between the child and the curriculum E.g. 1) the unity of the child's life and the compartmentalized divisions of the curriculum, 2) the practical and emotional interests of the child and the abstract interests of logical classification The Problem of Education Balancing the individual developmental and experiential interests of the child and the developed and logical interests of the community From the side of the child: we should understand that the variety of experiences anticipate and connect with the variety of subjects of study From the side of the studies: attend to the ways in which the subjects of study have connection to the experiences of the child at various stages of their development The child's developmental interests are indications of the appropriate environmental stimuli that should both structure and direct learning It is neither preferable nor beneficial to educate a child to passively receive information disconnected from experience Not preferable because it has no attachment to the developing capacities and interests of the child Not beneficial because this type of education will effect a system of knowledge incapable of genuine inquiry, critical thinking, creative problem solving if not these, then neither a democratic community (i.e. a community depending on these as common interests and as means of communication) Democracy and Education Despotism involves a LACK of 1) a variety of interests and values; 2) free and equitable intercourse; 2) reciprocal modifications between groups Democracy involves an ABUNDANCE of 1) a variety of interests and values; 2) free and equitable intercourse; 2) reciprocal modifications between groups The viability of a democratic form of government is directly related to the cultivation of the mode of 'associated living' which it demands

FORMS OF EDUCATION - KANT

Mechanical Education: this is passive and negative education and it involves disciplining our passions by becoming obedient to objective rules. Practical Education: this is active and positive education and it involves cultivating our understanding and morality by becoming obedient to subjective rules. The pedagogical problem: we need to enlist both forms of education how to unite submission under lawful constraint with the capacity to use one's freedom? Restrain and direct freedom, but don't extinguish it: Neither total fulfillment, nor refusal of a child's desires - teach them restraint in both desires and their fulfillment. Don't allow a child to fritter away time in play, but teach them to work as this combines knowledge with ability Cultivate the lower powers of the mind in relation to the higher powers (e.g. imagination and memory in service of understanding and judgment) The goal of education is to cultivate in the child the capacity to make rational judgments and act from autonomy, so children should be progressively challenged to 1) enlist their own capacity of understanding, and 2) make their own judgments

ROUSSEAU AND WOLLSTONECRAFT

Rousseau: Natural feminine education Male - Female binary difference involves other binaries: Man is active and strong - Woman is passive and weak Man is dominant - Woman is submissive As a consequence, the task of woman is to serve man ... this means that the female should receive a different education Not promote liberty through idleness, but duty through discipline Not cultivate assertiveness through exploration, but 'sweetness' through docility Not to develop complex reasoning, but to promote simplicity of judgment with respect to 'conduct' and 'taste' according to 'public opinion' Wollstonecraft: Conventional feminine education Because of 'false refinement' women have, through convention, been rendered Weak, docile and incapable Subordinate, slavish and inferior Objects of gratification Fundamental Insight If is true that both men and women are human, and (b) that qua human it is necessary to cultivate certain virtues in men, then (c) the cultivation of the same virtues should be provided to women qua human beings Since humanity is prior to sexual difference education should be fundamentally gender neutral National Co-Education If national, then all children should learn to think for themselves girls and boys should not be subjected to separate educations, but should be mixed together to 'jointly pursue the same objects' If the myth of sexual inequality were abandoned, then society would benefit because both sexes would exercise reason and virtue promote mixed day schools: a happy and free society based on virtue, and virtue based on the development of independent understanding

DEWEY - PART 2

The aim of education is to provide for equitable interactions, mutually beneficial exchanges, by fostering individual capacities Aims of Education The AIM of education is to increase the capacities of individuals as they exist in relation to others à Education should cultivate our abilities of thought and action by ordering activities according to foreseeable results in relation to present conditions about which we are personally concerned à Aims should correspond to existing conditions, should be flexible and testable, and should result in further conditions for future aims Democratic Education If direct participation in the political process is a democratic ideal, it will only be fostered by direct participation in the educative process achieved through interest and discipline Interest: the aims, conditions and results of learning are directly related with the concerns of the individual à the material must intersect with the interests of the individual according to her present powers Discipline: the persistence in realizing the results of one's aims according to the conditions and concerns of the individual à the individual must be encouraged to persist in an activity and to endure its difficulties with ingenuity Educating for Thinking Thought concerns the ability to understand things and their relations through methodical interactions with environments Experience: encounters situated in developmentally appropriate occupations and directed toward results by means of trial and error Problem: novel situations introducing unknown variables connected to known variables and tasking the learner to produce perceptible results Data: the material of thinking, information = known 'actions, facts, events, and relations of things,' that will be used as resources to solve problems Ideas: suggestions, suppositions, hypotheses, etc. created as potential solutions to introduced problems - why 'all thinking is original' Solutions: tentatively established data (viz. always revisable) that can be enlisted in relation to future experiences and problems Educating for Virtue Since every experiential encounter involves a modification of the disposition of the individual, all learning involves character formation If the method of education expresses a divorce between knowledge and activity it will not succeed in developing virtues in the learner Virtue = capacity to learn, capacity to act, capacity to understand in relation to others School Environment à should be communal, should foster shared interests, should promote common virtues

FREIRE

The narrative character of education is predicated on 'the banking concept of education' à students are viewed as empty vessels waiting for the narration of the teacher to deposit the information-content into the container Freire's indictment of the banking concept of education is grounded in a positive anthropological commitment: that the 'ontological vocation' of humanity is to become 'more fully human' à i.e. to develop the capacities for independent, critical and creative thinking, intentional and interpersonal activity Contradictory Features of the Banking Model Teacher is the active agent, the source of knowledge and its communication <-> Student is the passive recipient, receptacle and receiver Teacher is authoritative and independent Subject <-> Student is the ignorant and dependent Object The banking concept fundamentally negates humanity by reducing subjects to things; must be liberated from this dehumanizing education Problem-posing education This pedagogy discards the one-sided nature of the teacher-of-the-student / student-of-the-teacher model and replaces it with a reciprocal model of teacher-students / student-teachers Problem-posing Education conflicts with the banking model in various ways: the former promotes dialogue, critical thought, creative problem solving, fluid interaction and progression, the latter stifles it

THE ETHICAL IDEAL

The teacher bears a special responsibility to develop the moral sense in the child The repeated exposure of student to teacher demands that the teacher provide a model of caring à rather than teaching moral education, the teacher conducts the cooperative activity of engaging in educating morally 'What shall I do?' is not answered by rote memorization of rules, but through the practice of caring that induces 'an enhanced moral sense in the student' (389)

NUSSBAUM AND NODDINGS

The university should be open to (cultural and conceptual) diversity but should not merely promote an uncritical, unreflective, and intellectually lazy form of inclusivism If liberal democratic societies hold out ideals of popular sovereignty, equality, diversity, inclusion, and justice ... What should a liberal and plural education involve? How should humanity be cultivated in a multicultural society? No one culture can rightfully lay claim to preeminence over another, but we should yet cultivate certain human capacities that will promote those noble ideals of diversity, inclusion, equality and justice with respect to cultural difference ... (and not indifferent to it) Nussbaum advocates for the cultivation of 3 basic human capacities Critical examination à authority, tradition, habituation, etc. are not justifications of beliefs; 'they must survive reason's demands for consistency and justification' (446) Recognition of, and Concern for others à identification as a human community through understanding of common needs in different communities Narrative imagination à extension of imagination in encounter with an other in order to understand their expression Noddings appeals to a caring relation in education The openness and inclusion needed for cultivating a citizenry both sensitive to a plurality of differences while simultaneously being capable of critical judgment and respectful disagreement, should be fostered by an caring relation in education The one-caring (i.e. the teacher) must have a regard for the cared-for (i.e. the student) such that the former is at the service of the concerns of the latter To say that education is a caring relation is to say that the teacher becomes involved in the life-world of the students under her care This involvement is a form of inclusion: within the pedagogical exchange the student-as-apprentice is involved in the world of the teacher-as-master Rather than involving a one-sided 'banking' relation, inclusion involves the co-operation of both student and teacher in the process of learning

ROUSSEAU

Three Teachers: Nature: physiological structures and intellectual 'faculties' that naturally develop over time (independent of our control). Things: experience of objects through affect (limited dependence on our control). 'Men': instruction of how to use our naturally given capacities (may fall under our own control) - The Task of Education: coordinate these three means of education to realize 'nature's own goal' Three Developmental Stages: Absorption affect and sensation Interaction consciousness of affects and desire to pursue or avoid the objects causing them Ratiocination the pursuit or avoidance of objects that are at first agreeable/disagreeable, then satisfactory/unsatisfactory, and finally rational judged in relation to our conception of happiness Principles of Educating Don't remove passions, but regulate them according to the particular inclinations of the pupil Not rational/verbal explanation, but empirical interaction and first-hand knowledge Not authority of commands, but authority of natural necessity Not regimented schedule and curriculum, but the 'present interest' of the pupil Individual and Community Individual education: individuals should be educated in accordance with their own INDEPENDENT natural inclinations Communal education: individuals are DEPENDENT on one another and must be educated to develop a sense of social/communal obligation There is a tension between individual and communal education, so Rousseau opts for fostering the former in order to achieve the latter education that tries to teach social cooperation before teaching individual ability will succeed in neither By fostering self-love with which existence itself begins and is preserved, we can foster love of others through which life is cultivated by the 1) utility of industry whereby we provide benefit to others and 2) self-esteem whereby we compare ourselves to others

GUTMAN

We must develop a normative account of the educational aims of society and the means of achieving them without being relativistic (transmission of cultural values) or foundationalist (education should follow universal principles) Four options: 1) Family State, 2) State of Families, 3) State of Individuals, 4) Democratic Education Family State Fundamental Presupposition: we cannot understand or implement good educational aims or methods without first knowing 'what a just society and a virtuous person are' Education: centralized state claims exclusive authority to educate the purpose is to promote interpersonal harmony by cultivating the desire to pursue 'the good' educated individuals perform their social function by following the directives of their education Critique Plurality of Plausible Conceptions of 'the good' à no state could be justified in educating individuals to passively adopt one conception Paternalism à the presumption that the state knows what is best for its citizens makes obedience to the laws a matter of honor and duty Virtue and Freedom in Conflict à even if the stat had a true conception of 'the good' it would undermine the freedom of individuals to choose Non-Participation à the education in the good could only enlist a methodology of imposition State of Families Fundamental Presupposition: since offspring biologically belong to parents, they will know what is best for their children and will educate them with these best interests in mind