Philosophical Roots of

Education
Chapter 2
 Branches of Philosophy:
Metaphysics
• Metaphysics: What is the nature of reality, what
is real? What exists?
• Reality is permanent and unchanging (absolute)
or dynamic and evolving (relative)
• Reality…a priori, apart from human experience
or a posteriori, only existing after and because
we experience it
• Idealism versus Realism
• Basic human nature: good, bad, neutral
 Branches of Philosophy:
Epistemology
• How do we know what is real? What is
knowable?
• Arriving at truth: authority, sensory
experience, empiricism, logic, intuition,
revelation
• Knowledge by acquaintance…hands on
sensory experience
• Knowledge by description…through
books, lecture, internet
 Branches of Philosophy: Axiology
• What is of value?
• Ethics…concerned with right conduct
• Aesthetics…addresses standards of
beauty
• Are values absolute or relative?
 Branches of Philosophy: Politics
• Politics is concerned with justice, the
allocation of power in society, between
individuals and groups, the distribution of
resources
• Educational authority is either positional,
rule-bound or anthropological (Benne)
 Traditional Philosophies of
Education
• Idealism: the school as ivory tower, learning for
its own sake, divorced from the workaday world
• Reality lies in the mind. There is absolute truth.
Truth pursued through logic. Deductive
reasoning is best.
• “All inquiry and all learning is but recollection.”
(Plato)
• Born with wisdom…our own reasoning
• Hutchins and Adler: Great Books
 Realism
• Reality can be found in the world available
to the senses
• Through observation and orderly analysis
we find common features, generalizations,
rules
• Careful study inductively leads to valid and
better ideas
• Aristotle: truth lays in reason based on
systematic observation
 Realists
• Aristotle: The disorganized life is not worth living
• Thomas Aquinas: From concrete observation to
abstract conclusions
• John Locke: tabula rasa, reason and good
behavior develop from daily practice and good
habits
• Johann Pestalozzi: Nature is the best
teacher…the natural universe is a guide to truth
• Rousseau: Emile “Everything is good as it
leaves the hands of the Author of things;
everything degenerates in the hands of man.”