TSOL 530

Philosophy of Education

(Summer '02)

Key points

Constructivism (Walker)
- Achievement gap - upper/lower class, race
- Standards Movement - whose standards? 'Equalizer' maintianing status quo instead.
- Culture of Accountablity - reducing aims of education to mechanical compliance w/ standards instead of honest exploration?
Idealism - Plato
- Aims
- Imparts general (not specific) knowlege
- search for truth (ideals - reality as illusion/distraction)
- self-realization
- charater devlopment
- Methods
- look to past
- dialectic
- Emphasis on Teacher
- Role of Teacher
- Should be philosophically-minded
- Thinks/presents in absolute terms
Realism - Aristotle
- reality (matter) points to truth (form) - form can exist w/o matter, but not vice-versa
- emphasises observation/generalization
- syllogism
- Encourages specialization (unlike Idealism)
- Knowlege is fact-based
Behaviorism - Skinner (compare to Edison)
- emphasis on what/how, not why
- Possibly never intended as global philosophy - unfair to critique it as one - techniques are very powerful resource, like electicity (Skinner, like Edison, saw reason where others only saw serendipity?)
Pragmatism (John Dewey)
1. Three central themes
  - Inductive Reasoning - Take it like you find it.
  - Centrality of Experience - If it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck ...
  - Science's Role in Society - Darwin - reality is Becoming | Dewey - education as cultural self-perpetuation
2. Advocates gradual, 'natural' social change.
Reconstructionism (Theodore Brameld)
1. Modern Reconstructionism as radical pragmatism
2. Reconstructionist principles present in Classical theories
...