Article Review

Foundation of Education
Submitted: Evelyn D. Magbaril

A Companion to the Philosophy of Education

Blackwell Companions to Philosophy) ed. by Randall Curren

Introduction:

"The philosophy of education encompasses problems from many areas of philosophy

–epistemology, philosophy of mind, professional ethics, and the theory of distributive justice,
to name just a few – and the essays in this useful volume accurately reflect the field's breadth.
A Companion to the Philosophy of Education is a comprehensive guide to
philosophical thinking about education. Written by an international team of leading experts,
the volume opens with an authoritative survey of major figures and movements and then
explores the most important - and at times controversial - topics of current interest in
philosophy of education. Contributors explore such topics as educational testing and
measurement, knowledge and truth, critical thinking, intelligence, and learning disabilities.
They also address a range of much debated issues in the politics and ethics of schooling,
including church - state issues, educational choice, educational justice, equality and standards
of living, multiculturalism, the ethics of special education, and sex education. The final
section looks at issues in the philosophy and ethics of higher education, including academic
freedom, conflicts of academic and economic values, and racial justice. This volume is a vital
and comprehensive resource for anyone interested in the philosophy of education. 

Article Review

This Companion would not have existed without the initiative and assistance of Jeff
Dean, and the encouragement and advice of Steve Cahn and Eamonn Callan. Their
recognition of the need for a volume of this kind was essential to getting the project off the
ground. As the plan for the volume took shape in the spring of 2000, Jeff, Eamonn, David
Cooper, Harry Brighouse, and Ken Westphal all provided helpful suggestions. Others who
offered valuable formative advice in the months that followed include Ronald Barnett, Steve
Cahn, Jane Roland Martin, Michael Matthews, Emily Robertson, Amelie Rorty, Francis
Schrag, Harvey Siegel, Paul Standish, Patricia White, and an anonymous referee for the
press. Like earlier volumes in the Blackwell Companions to Philosophy series, this
Companion aims to provide in one volume a comprehensive and authoritative overview of its
field. Every effort has been made to produce a work of the highest philosophical quality, and
one that is accessible to undergraduates and the interested lay public; one that guides readers
through the terrain in a way that is not only informative and accurate, but also philosophically
fresh and engaging; one that brings together in a coherent manner work of philosophical
significance spanning several disciplines, several continents, and several intellectual styles;
and one that brings readers face-to-face, as much as possible, with the very thinkers who have
shaped the debates and literature of their topics. In an enterprise of this complexity, not every
dream can be fulfilled - more than one chapter that was planned did not materialize - but a
format that makes space for genuinely creative contributions yields more than enough
compensation in the form of unexpected gifts. The 53 contributors to this volume not only
provide an unparalleled guide to the philosophy of education as it is, they move the field
forward. In accomplishing this, they persevered through more than the normal distractions of
academic life, and he was grateful to them for their excellent work, their fortitude, and their
patience with my countless queries and requests. Many others provided suggestions,
corrections, bibliographical assistance, and other forms of help. The author probably
forgotten as many of them as he can now remember, but they certainly include Julia Annas,
Myles Burnyeat, Ann Cudd, Walter Feinberg, Thomas Groome, Paul Hirst, Steve Macedo,
Wolfgang Mann, Kathleen McGowan, Ralf Meerbote, Martha Nussbaum, Shirley Ricker,
Amartya Sen, Ken Strike, Harold Wechsler, Ed Wierenga, Nicholas Wolterstorff, and Tom
Wren. Gabriel
The philosophy of education has enjoyed a notable resurgence in recent years, a
resurgence fueled in part by developments in related branches of practical philosophy, or
philosophy that is concerned with the conduct and guidance of human affairs. Philosophy of
education is a field that is nourished by and largely ancillary to political philosophy and
ethics, and much of what is most admirable in philosophy of education pertains to the politics
and ethics of education. This is only part of the truth, however. Public debates have been an
important stimulus to philosophical examination of educational issues, other philosophical
sub-disciplines provide vital foundations for philosophy of education, and the wealth of
recent work on the history of philosophy - work that is both philosophically significant and
seriously historical - has been salutary in documenting the wealth of attention to educational
questions through much of the history of philosophy, and in retrieving forgotten but valuable
ways of thinking about education. From the time of Socrates onward, philosophy's claim to
be a worthwhile enterprise has rested largely on its educative functions, and to flesh out this
defense of philosophy (as Plato does in his dialogue the Gorgias, for instance) is inter alia to
engage in philosophy of education. Like other forms of normative inquiry concerned with
distinct domains of practice, philosophy of education is shaped not only by the philosophical
problems and resources it brings to its domain, but by the practical problems and perplexities
intrinsic to that domain. Issues of authority, liberty, responsibility, justice, equality, and
professional ethics are common to the various branches of practical philosophy, but
philosophy of education must grapple with normatively significant features of and
developments in the world of education, just as bioethics must grapple with normatively
significant features of and developments in the world of medicine and biomedical research.
The shortcomings and strengths of educational practices, policies, proposals, and theories are
grist for the philosopher of education's mill. So while it is true that philosophy of education
has benefited from the fact that political philosophy has recently begun to address questions
about children that had been long neglected, philosophy of education has also benefited from
the fact that some of the prominent public debates about education in recent years, including
debates about parental choice in education, public support for religious schools, and the
accommodation of students with disabilities, have been good candidates for philosophical
inquiry. The author, RANDALL CURREN Philosophy of education is also like other
branches of practical philosophy in requiring serious engagement with the facts about its
domain. Progress depends, as it does in any field of practical philosophy, on getting the facts
right and developing conceptual frameworks adequate to the specific phenomena and
institutional contexts in question. As it happens, the facts about education are dauntingly
complex and elusive, and are also in some respects the concern of other philosophical sub-
disciplines. Hence, although philosophy of education was integral to moral and political
philosophy through much of the history of philosophy (the point of ethics being, in the view
of Aristotle and others, not just to know what virtue is, but to possess and exercise it), it has
also been associated with epistemology, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of
language. This should not be surprising. Knowledge is a goal of education and the primary
object of epistemological inquiry. Learning, understanding, remembering, thinking, and
reasoning are mental phenomena that epistemology, the philosophy of mind, and the
philosophy of psychology have been concerned with. Teaching is, among other things, a form
of communication that relies upon language and shapes the language acquisition and
language patterns of learners. It is thus not far removed from phenomena that philosophy of
language and cognitive science are legitimately concerned with. The present situation is
admittedly quite different from that faced by Plato, Aristotle, Locke, or Rousseau, however.
Philosophical accounts of human nature and the mind have been significantly displaced by
scientific inquiry - displaced enough that one cannot pretend to have a serious philosophical
account of such things without thoroughly mastering and in some way accommodating,
contributing to, or cogently critiquing the relevant science. The demands inherent in this,
especially in the decades since the displacement of behaviorist psychology by cognitive
science, no doubt explain the decline in recent years of philosophy of education that is
directly engaged with learning theory and topics associated with it. Nevertheless, some
legitimate philosophical tasks remain even here. Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary
enterprise to which philosophers have made substantial contributions, and it is certainly
possible that they might do so in a way that sheds light on learning and instruction. Quite
apart from this, however, there are conceptual and synthetic aspects of educational theory that
fall within the purview of philosophy. Educational theory aspires to provide a systematic
body of principles generated, tested, and justified by practical success as much as through
research in the disciplines, and philosophy can play several roles in this enterprise. Because
educational theories are necessarily transdisciplinary, any approximation to a systematic
theory of education will outstrip the resources of any one discipline. However, philosophy
seems to be better equipped than other disciplines to undertake the conceptual and synthetic
work necessary to the construction of a transdisciplinary practical theory. Philosophy is
unlike other disciplines in engaging in rigorous normative inquiry, and in concerning itself
with the nature and structure of theories as such. Inasmuch as a theory of education is a
practical theory, aiming to guide educational practice, it has essential normative components:
what are the educational aims to which the lessons of empirical investigation and educational
experience will be harnessed, and what are the normative constraints on the manner, content,
circumstances, and distribution of education? Philosophy is uniquely equipped to secure these
normative components of educational theory. It is also well suited to theoretical synthesis and
critique. The role of philosophical synthesis is illustrated by constructivism, the currently
reigning example of a unified theory of education, which grew out of psychological theories
of learning and instruction, but is rich in philosophical content and inferences. It also brings
this work together in a way that is both retrospective and forward looking. Some of the topics
addressed here have been widely discussed for years, but others, though ripe for
philosophical investigation, have received relatively little attention. A synthesis of this kind
will have fulfilled its function if it not only provides a serviceable resource and handbook of
its field, but also serves as a stimulus to further work."Randall Curren has put together an
extraordinarily comprehensive collection of essays on the philosophy of education. It should
be of value to anyone interested in contemporary issues or historic" The philosophy of
education encompasses problems from many areas of philosophy –epistemology, philosophy
of mind, professional ethics, and the theory of distributive justice, to name just a few – and
the essays in this useful volume accurately reflect the field's breadth.

Summary

How should we impart wisdom and knowledge to the young? Such questions are as
old as philosophy and have been the concern of philosophers since ancient times. Do the
forty-five articles in this book provide a comprehensive guide to philosophical thinking about
education, as the dust jacket claims?

The book is broken into four parts: Historical and Contemporary Movements
(Stoicism, Humanism, Romanticism etc); Teaching and Learning (Teaching Science,
Teaching Elementary Arithmetic through Application, Teaching Literature etc); The Politics
and Ethics of Schooling (Multicultural Education, Children’s Rights, Sex Education etc) and
Higher Education (Academic Freedom, The Ethics of Research, Affirmative Action in Higher
Education etc). The book forms part of the Blackwell Companion series, which also features
such books as A Companion to Ethics, A Companion to Aesthetics, and A Companion to
Epistemology.

The book might be seen as rather expensive: its six hundred and fifty six pages cost
around £85, which works out at 12p per page or the equivalent of £24 for a two hundred page
book. This isn’t excessive for an academic book but could be rather highly priced for the
general reader.

The book has three important strengths. Firstly, the fact that there are so many essays
creates a great diversity of material. Even given a few reservations which I’ll come to in a
moment, having such a variety of educational subjects in one book means that as you read
through it; it is fascinating to look at education from so many different angles. Secondly,
there are a number of very good essays in this book. Those by Yael Tamir and Gabriel Moran
are discussed below, but I should also mention Mark Steiner’s ‘Teaching Elementary
Arithmetic through Applications’; Robert F. Ladenson’s ‘Inclusion and Justice in Special
Education’ and Michael R. Matthews’ ‘Teaching Science’ and these are not the only ones.
Even if I would like to see more educational content and less philosophical context this is not
to say that the philosophical context is at all an unappealing read. Lastly, there are rich and
detailed accounts of educational experiences from the United States. As a UK resident, I
found that learning about education in another country was absorbing, although the book
would have gained from including more experiences from other countries as well.

As a teacher responsible for the multicultural curriculum was eager to read Robert
Fullinwider’s essay on ‘Multicultural Education’, but felt disappointed when discovered that
the article was written from a US perspective with only a few passing references to Britain.
This is frequently true of the book, where, of the fifty-two contributors (some articles have
more than one author), thirty-six are American. James Dwyer’s article on ‘Children’s Rights’
focuses almost entirely on the situation in the USA, where parents challenge the right of the
state to determine what their children are taught. In these cases Fundamentalist Christians
may insist their children are not taught evolution or Amish parents may insist that their
children not attend school beyond the eighth grade (i.e. do not attend high school). Not all of
the essays have this exclusive US focus – Gabriel Moran is Professor in the Philosophy of
Education Program at New York University, yet his essay on ‘Religious Education’ covers
the situation in the United States, England, Canada and Australia and also gives a fascinating
overview of the role of the United Nations in religious education. Having an emphasis on
education in the USA isn’t of course a criticism of the book per se, but potential readers may
want to be aware of it.

One difficulty had with some of the content mirrors my reaction to Fifty Modern
Thinkers on Education (edited by Joy Palmer, Routledge: 2001) where a philosopher’s
inclusion appeared to be as much because they were well known as because they had
anything worthwhile to say on education. Too often in A Companion to the Philosophy of
Education too much time is spent explaining philosophical ideas in general before covering
the philosophy of education. The fact that Descartes has fourteen pages referencing him in
the index compared to just five for Jean Piaget, the father of developmental psychology,
makes this point clearly.

Douglas Kellner’s essay ‘Critical Theory’ is a good example of how difficult it is to

get the balance right between covering the background to a theory and explaining the specific
educational aspects of it. This is an essay I enjoyed and it does give a good explanation of
Critical Theory, but this is how the twelve and a half pages break down:

• The first three pages give a brief summary of the thought of Karl Marx.

• The next page and a half explains that Marx didn’t have anything particularly detailed to
say about education, but that later Marxists such as those influenced by Gramsci and
Althusser did analyze curriculum and schooling in capitalist societies (and some references
for further reading are given).

• The next two pages explain the Frankfurt School theorists and how their ideas were the
beginning of cultural studies.
• The next four pages show how the Frankfurt School influenced British cultural studies and
the likes of Raymond Williams and E.P. Thompson, and how this tradition was developed
from the 1960s to the 1980s by theorists such as Stuart Hall. These studies showed how
schooling integrates youth into capitalist societies and identified the ways in which working-
class youths resist and rebel. Towards the end of the 1980s and into the 1990s, cultural
studies adopted a more postmodern approach, emphasizing pleasure and consumption.

• It is only when we get to the last two pages that we are given short summaries of the more
specifically educational ideas of Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux, Peter McLaren and Carlos
Torres. Even then these are cut short by some concluding comments about the importance of
neo-Marxism in providing a critical perspective on capitalism and globalization.

Chosen Kellner’s essay almost at random out of the various essays in Part 1 of the
book simply to exemplify the problem faced by many of these authors. Educational thinkers
exist in a philosophical context; therefore there is a need to explain the context before
explaining the thinker. This caveat notwithstanding, I suspect most readers will feel that
many of these essays get the balance wrong in providing too much space to the context often
leaving only very terse summaries of the educational ideas.

Do we really need such long introductions to Socrates, Stoicism, Judaism, the

Enlightenment, Rousseau, Kant and Hegel in order to appreciate the implications of their
philosophy for education? The article ‘The Analytical Movement’ makes the interesting point
that “two people might accept the same philosophic positions and still reasonably disagree
about how best to teach or what the curriculum should be. Conversely, two people might
accept the same educational practices but justify these choices through different philosophical
theories.” (p.182). I am sure I’m not going to be the only reader of this book wishing that this
section gave less general explanations of philosophy and more discussion of how the ideas
specifically affected education.

Of course, it is important for this book to include a section specifically on historical

philosophy and education; it is important to understand the foundations and origins of our
present education system. Nevertheless, although it is important to learn the origins of current
ideas and theories, there is a thin line between explanation and justification, and a risk that
perhaps there might be too few essays that question and challenge the existing educational
system. One of the important roles of philosophy is to ask fundamental questions about our
existing values. Political philosophy isn’t just about justifying our existing system of
democracy; it is about questioning its assumptions and challenging its limitations and
omissions. The same applies to the philosophy of education.

Part 2 of the book deals with Teaching and Learning, where the more practical aspects
of education are discussed. In it, I would have liked to read more about philosophers who
actually worked in education. Dewey is the obvious example (although the chapter in Part 1
of the book that covers him is excellent), yet Wittgenstein was a primary school teacher and
Hegel a headmaster, and there are few attempts to make any links between their ideas and
their experience of education. One exception is Mart Steiner, who in his essay ‘Teaching
Elementary Arithmetic through Applications’ does argue that Wittgenstein’s experience as a
primary school teacher profoundly influenced his philosophical positions.

Similarly there is no mention of Derrida’s work for GREPH, the research group for
the teaching of philosophy. Derrida said “GREPH brings together teachers, high school and
university students who, precisely, want to analyze and change the educational system, and in
particular the philosophical institution, first of all through the extension of the teaching of
philosophy to all grades where the other so-called basic disciplines are taught” (Politics and
Derrida, 1995, Stanford University Press). Indeed, not only is there no mention of GREPH
there is no discussion of the teaching of philosophy in schools. This latter omission is
particularly disappointing as the movement for Philosophy for Children has been around for
many years and analysis of it could perhaps shed an interesting light on the foundations of
education.

Part 2 just doesn’t have enough discussions about educational ideas. This section
should be packed full of Vygotsky, Piaget, Max Stirner, Henry David Thoreau, Robert Owen,
Ivan Illich, Paulo Freire or, more recently, Professor Richard Pring and Dr David Cavallo.
Where are the discussions of educational experiments such as the Institute for Social Ecology
in Vermont or the Sudbury Valley School in Farmingham, Massachusetts? Instead of feeling
excited by brilliant and challenging ideas on education. Too few authors conveyed a passion
for changing education for the better. An example of one of the new ideas being discussed on
education is the website www.teachkind.org, which explores introducing compassion for
animals into education; another area is the use of IT and the internet in education; another the
influence of the mass media on children; unfortunately for all its strengths too few new ideas
make their way into this section of the book.

Parts 3 and 4, on ‘The Politics and Ethics of Schooling and Higher Education’ contain
insightful and powerful essays on rights, equality and justice, though still with
disproportionately frequent references to the experience of the USA. In the 1960s Urie
Bronfenbrenner published the extraordinary Two Worlds of Childhood: USA and USSR, a
record of his study showing the startling differences between children in those two countries.
Comparing global systems of education can throw some useful light on the dynamics of
ethics, rights and responsibilities. Instead of comparing what should be with what is within
one particular country, alternative global models of education can be included in the debate,
making for a more rounded and practical appreciation of what is possible. This section
doesn’t contain enough references to world education; it would feel more powerful if the
content included studies that challenged our existing educational assumptions from a global
perspective. Many readers will feel that for all its strengths this part of the book would have
been enhanced by ensuring discussions on different educational systems included
geographical, social and political examples.

One other misgiving I had about this section is that it occasionally misrepresents the
philosophy underlying an educational practice. The ‘Multicultural Education’ article by
Robert K. Fullinwider begins by reviewing the history of multiculturalism in the US with an
extended discussion as to how inclusive the term ‘culture’ can be. Is multiculturalism a
celebration of diversity, covering race, gender, age, disability, socioeconomic status, religion,
sexual orientation and ethnicity, or is it more particularly concerned with prejudice and
discrimination and promoting respect for victim-groups? Can mafia families, religious
evangelicals and mountain folk be included as ‘cultures’? Should multiculturalists prioritise
the issue of race and racism? Thus far the essay could be subject to the same concerns given
above as to how much time is spent giving us the context of the debate and how much on the
detail of educational ideas. However, towards the end the author argues against the use of
postmodernism and critical theory to support multiculturalism – he claims such views are
philosophically inconsistent in that they attempt to use both postmodern relativism and ‘old-
fashioned’ equality and social justice. Such a criticism is highly contentious given that much
of Derrida’s later work was concerned with justice and rights. Interestingly the essay
following ‘Multicultural Education’ is ‘Education and the Politics of Identity’ by Yael Tamir
(Professor of Philosophy and Education at Tel Aviv University) which offers a much more
positive reading of multiculturalism and is exemplary in its mix of educational content to
non-educational context.