The History and Philosophy of Education - Essay Example

? Introduction: Teaching and learning process holds a significant position in the history of mankind since the earliest times. Various skills, traitsand languages were learnt from one another. As the population grew the need for learning and inventing grew as well. Numerous resources all around; urged humans to discover and learn. The process of learning and acquiring knowledge from one generation to the other became a custom. The term education holds a wide variety of meaning; depending upon the context it is used in. Spreading the awareness of a specific subject matter, in an explicit style is understood as education. Thus the philosophy of education can be either the process of educating others or the wide fields of education and its understanding. The inborn curiosity provoked the earliest man to seek and learn more; of what is around and how to bring betterment and produce comfort from it. This includes the major aim of producing well rounded people and to inculcate the love of learning. The process of learning and teaching is discussed and described by many philosophers. However, all of them hold their view point according to the cultures and times they lived in but some, few elaborated the education purpose and laid the foundation for upcoming generations to understand and explore the horizons of it. Philosophy of Education: Through history one can see that, how the great philosophers of all times learned from one another and left the theories for the upcoming youth to explore and gain. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle; three pioneers of philosophy of education explained their philosophies, which helped others to understand the aim of learning. Socrates taught Plato and is known for his explicit work on ethics and methods. From there onwards Plato followed the footsteps of his teacher and laid the foundation stone of doctrine for education, and called it Academy. Elaboration: Plato advocated the idea of integrity, not only for the state but for the individuals who are learners. The learners are dependent upon teachers who are fairly in a position to deliver the right kind of knowledge in an appropriate manner. Through his theory, one can understand better the significance of the responsibility on a teacher’s shoulder for educating. He also described the various types of learner and their learning styles and how their learning can be supported, like scaffolding; to enhance the capability of each individual. The core of his ideology was to handle an individual in such a manner that the support (scaffolding) is there, but he acquires the skill of learning himself; that he stated can only be achieved in certain environment and through following the knowledgeable. The reasons behind law and rules cannot be understood by all; therefore he promoted the idea of children to learn specific skills under the supervision of knowledgeable personalities. They are the people, who can nourish the positive aspects of a subject, as any subject of knowledge contains; the negative factor which pessimistically impacts the personality of a child; leaving him as a destructive member of the society rather than constructive. Plato strongly believed that arts and literature did not help the learning process; on the other hand they are acting like slow poison, addicting the victims and throwing them in a state of unreality. The general idea is that young children are unable to distinguish between reality and fiction. Thus telling them false stories which are far from reality; is a disorder one develops readily which later on encourages doubts and imbalanced thinking. He was against poetry, music because they produced uncontrollable passion which later becomes a cause of many ethical issues. Moreover, it doesn’t provide with any knowledge and has no practical meaning to it. His theories revolved around the moral values and thus sustaining and inculcating them in the offspring too. He discouraged the concept of myths and stories to young children, as they are far from reality and eventually there is no moral learning in them. However his own work in Republic is in a dialogue form, which also shows that meaningless stories or dramas are discouraged by him. Therefore he supports the idea of stories which revolve around truth and reality and can deliver a moral lesson or ethical value. Stories which promote the heroic aspect but according to the natural God provided abilities can be inspirations, thus historical personalities can be taken as role models. His theory seems right, when one observes the negative impacts of fiction characters like Superman, Spiderman, Werewolves, Magicians and Vampires have, on youth and thus leading them to believe in something; which isn’t true. One can clearly see the destructive effects of music, movies and other areas of fiction, which has made children more distracted and disorientated now. Plato’s view was to maintain a control on access of literature which is not sufficed for young children. His aim was to safe children from viewing the violence and ambiguity of the art. Plato stated in Republic, that although men and women are different in height, strength but this doesn’t justify that their opinion can be of less relevance, as the difference in height is also not universal, some men are even shorter than women. He believed in the fact that men and women should receive equal quality of education as to generate productive members of a society. He also stated that the responsibility of bringing up children should be equally divided. He also proposed that to bring up well rounded citizens, society has to take the responsibility as a whole and not just the biological parents. He assumed that the guardian class should nurture and breed them so they can be ready for the future. He specifically suggested children and not just the male gender, which needs to be properly educated. His theories promoted the need of educating women as the tyrannical system depends upon one man thinking for all, however his idea was to produce maximum educated members and thus finding the gifted ones among them. He believed that talent did not belong to a certain class or to a specific gender. He insisted that physical education is equally important for women as they are other half of the society. Aristotle’s work suggests that he believed that right education can lead to a contended and prosperous life. The success of a person mainly depends upon the kind of education he received, which influences his judgments and virtues. His philosophical theory of education suggests that man is not good by nature as he is a slave of impulse and desires and the only way to control these incontrollable instinctive wishes is to learn the art of dealing with them. The right knowledge can correct the mistakes which a person make in life due to impulsive desires. He suggested that both physical and intellectual bodies need to be groomed as one cannot survive without the other. He further insisted that education should act as a path of life and man should learn and utilize his learning to a full extent. He proposed that the education should develop decision making skills which would enable the future rulers to use logic and sense. It should also encourage the idea of obedience and responsibility. He presented the idea of learning through habit he convinced his readers that a human learns through practical implication not merely by studying it. He stated that without education man is closer to animals, acting rationally rather than logically. However Richard Rorty had a different proposition about the education and its link to the life and learners. Richard Rorty talks about the view point of different people who believe in diverse theories of education but entirely forget to see their position and the reason to believe in those theories. His depended upon the two main factors, socialization and individualization. Socialization is a way to learn naturally and one can understand the norms and customs through it and individualization enables a person to understand better of his potentials and capabilities. His theory’s essence was that, the capability to reflect and explore is in an individual’s hand but the knowledge can be given to him through education. The skill to discover them self, is the right platform for individuals to know their potential better. Only this can lead to a successful life and a meaningful purpose of education can be attained. Analysis: These theories are seen from a wide horizon and accepted to be true universally. However, the environment of a society impacts a lot on the system of education, thus this does not mean that it should be prioritize for any gender. Therefore the educational philosophies are all acceptable with minor alterations according to need basis. However Aristotle suggestion is completely out of context, as to remove children from their natural learning environment and to place them in an educational institute for the sake of education. In this way only their intellectual skills would be developed otherwise they would be emotionally unstable citizens. Bibliography: Gutek, G. L. (2001). Historical and philosophical foundations of education: A biographical introduction. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Merrill. Johnson, T. W., & Reed, R. F. (2008). Philosophical documents in education. 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