Philosophy of Education (EDU-601)

Assignment 1
Bc220413906
AIZA ARSHED
(Fall 2022)
Define Philosophy in your own words. Enlist different educational
philosophers. Write a detail note on your favorite educational philosopher.
This detail note may include the other proponents of same philosophy,
nature of curriculum, teacher, learner, methodology and assessment
recommended by that educational philosopher.
DEFINITION:
Philosophy can be defined as the study of basic and fundamental questions
and ideas about knowledge, existence, reasons, values, language, truth, right and wrong,
religion, and the nature and meaning of life. It has also been claimed that the term was coined
by Pythagoras. Philosophical methods include:
 Questioning
 Critical discussion
 Rational argument
 Systematic presentation.
DIFFERENT EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHERS:
These top philosophers of education have explored much rougher to shape modern
learning.
 Immanuel kant-He was a German thinkers and an advocate of public education and
learning by doing.
 Freidrich Froebel- A German philosopher, He invented kindergarten and he believed
that playing was an essential expression of human development in early age. These
thoughts of children learning through nature and the importance of playing have been
acknowledged across the world. Freidrich Froebel influenced other people such as
Horace Mann and Maria Montessori.
 Charlotte Mason- Charlotte was an English philosopher. She gave the idea of liberal
arts education for all young scholars. Charlotte Mason emphasized the importance of
children enjoying themselves through learning.
 Margaret Bancroft- She was the pioneer of special education. She was very
dedicated to her students and also she was an extraordinary educator. People who
admired her work became leaders in the special education department.
 Jerome Bruner- He was an American philosopher. He invented theories on
"learning", "memory", and "perception" in young children. His belief was, that
 children learn and remember things/knowledge/information better when they find it
for themselves and if they connect to something they already know.
 John Dewey- An American philosopher and educational reformer. He had reformed
numerous educational reforms through his experimental schools. John Dewey
believed that children ought to be encouraged to develop their free personalities and
how to think critically and make judgments.
FAVORITE EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHER
Immanuel Kant, was born on April 22, 1724. He was a German philosopher
whose diverse and structured work in epistemology which is known as the theory of
"knowledge", "ethics", and "aesthetics" greatly affected all the upcoming philosophies,
especially the various schools of "Kantianism" and "idealism".
He was believed to be one of the prime thinkers of the education and arguably one of the
"greatest philosophers of all time". He started new trends
like "rationalism" (stressing reason) of "René Descartes" and the "empiricism" (stressing
experience) of "Francis Bacon". He thus inaugurated a new era in the development of
philosophical ideas.
BACKGROUND AND EARLY YEARS:
Kant was a German thinkers and an advocate of public education and learning, he used to
live in the remote province of Germany. His father was a saddler, a Scottish immigrant,
although there was no basis for this claim; his mother was remarkably intelligent. Both of
his parents were devoted followers of the "Pietist" branch of the "Lutheran cathederal",
which taught that:
"Religion belongs to the inner life expressed in simplicity and obedience to moral law".
The impact of their bishop made it possible for Kant to obtain education.
At the age of eight Kant entered the Pietist school (a Latin school) that his priest directed.
Probably at the age of eight and a half years Kant acquired his lifelong love for the Latin
classics, especially for the naturalistic poet "Lucretius".
In the mid of 18th century he enrolled in the University of "Königsberg " in Germany as a
theological student. He attended courses in "theology". He was principally attracted
to mathematics and physics. Aided by a young professor who had studied "Christian
Wolff", a "systematizer of rationalist philosophy", and who was also an "enthusiast" for
the science of "Sir Isaac Newton".
Kant began reading the work of the English physicist in 1744. He started writing his first
book, "Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte" (1746; Thoughts on
the True Estimation of Living Forces), dealing with a problem concerning kinetic forces.
Though by that time he had decided to pursue an academic career, the death of his father
in 1746 and he failed to obtain the post of under-tutor in one of the schools attached to the
university which compelled him to withdraw and seek a means of supporting himself.
He found employment as a family tutor. At that time he was introduced to the influential
society of the city which acquired a social grace, and then he travelled farthest from his
native city to the town of "Arnsdorf". In 1755, aided by the help of a friend, he was able
to complete his degree at the university and take up the position of "Privatdozent", or
lecturer.
He presented 3 thesis and indicated the interest his thoughts at this time. In
one, Meditationum Quarundam de Igne Succincta Delineation (1755; “A Brief Outline of
Some Meditations on Fire”), he argued
"That bodies operate on one another through the medium of a uniformly diffused elastic
and subtle matter that is the underlying substance of both heat and light".
His first teaching was in "mathematics" and "physics", and he was also interested in
scientific developments. His publication within the next few years of several scientific
works included different human races, the nature of winds, the causes of earthquakes, and
the general theory of the heavens. In the latter work, "Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und
Theorie des Himmels" (1755; Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens),
Kant put forward the theory of the formation of the solar system, according to which
"the Sun and the planets condensed from a single gaseous cloud". Later known as the
Kant-Laplace hypothesis.
At that time Kant was very interested in Newtonian physics and aslo in hisa
philosophical implications. A second essay, the "Metaphysicae cum Geometria Iunctae
Usus in Philosophia Naturali, Cuius Specimen I. Continet Monadologiam
Physicam" (1756; The Employment in Natural Philosophy of Metaphysics Combined with
Geometry, of Which Sample I Contains the Physical Monadology)—also known as
the "Monodologia Physica"—contrasted the Newtonian methods of thinking. This was
the philosophy of "Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz", a universalscholar, as systematized and
popularized by Wolff and by "Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten", author of a widely used
text, the "Metaphysica" (1739)..
In a third thesis, "Principiorum Primorum Cognitionis Metaphysicae Nova Dilucidato"
(1755; “New Elucidation of the First Principles of Metaphysical Cognition”), Kant
examined the" principle of sufficient reason", which according to Wolff’s formulation
says, "that for everything there is a sufficient reason why it should be rather than not be".
He spent 15 years as a Privatdozent, a renown teacher and writer. He became a lecture of
many subjects other than physics and mathematics—including logic, metaphysics,
and moral philosophy. He even lectured on "fireworks" and "fortifications" and on
"physical geography". He enjoyed great success as a lecturer. Although he twice failed to
obtain a professorship at Königsberg, he refused to accept offers that would have taken
him elsewhere.
Kant became increasingly critical of "Leibnizianism" during the 1760. According to one
of his students, Kant was then attacking Leibniz, Wolff, and Baumgarten, was declared a
true follower of Newton, and he was a great dmirer of the  moral philosophy of the
Romanticist philosopher "Jean-Jacques Rousseau".
His principal work of this period was "Untersuchung über die Deutlichkeit der
Grundsätze der natürlichen Theologie und der Moral" (1764; “An Inquiry into the
Distinctness of the Fundamental Principles of Natural Theology and Morals”). In this
work he attacked the claim of Leibnizian philosophy that philosophy should model itself
on mathematics and aim at constructing a chain of demonstrated truths based on self-
evident premises.
There are many points of similarity between Kant’s ethics and his epistemology, or theory
of knowledge. Kant is often described as an ethical rationalist, and the description is not
wholly inappropriate. The critical philosophy was soon being taught in every important
German-speaking university, and young men flocked to Königsberg as a shrine
of philosophy.
After a gradual decline that was painful to his friends as well as to himself, Kant died in
Königsberg on February 12, 1804. His last words were “Es ist gut” (“It is good”).
His tomb in the cathedral was inscribed with the words (in German) “The starry heavens
above me and the moral law within me,” the two things that he declared in the conclusion
of the second Critique “fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe,
the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on them.”