Philosophy, Enlightenment and Education - Essay Example

Philosophy, Enlightenment and Education Philosophy, Enlightenment and Education Part One This part is a commentary on the national curriculum’s aims as applicable to public schools and show to what extent they are compatible. One aim of the national curriculum is to give rise to successful learners who enjoy learning, making progress and achieving. It also aims at creating confident individuals able to live safe, healthy and fulfilling lives. Finally, the curriculum prepares the students to be responsible citizens that will make positive contributions to the society. In its bid to develop successful learners and enjoyment of learning, the curriculum is designed and committed to use learning as a tool to stimulate and encourage the best attainable academic progress and results for all students. However, as Aristotle argues, attaining high grades is not the only measure of successful learning. Students at the early learning stages should not be subjected to tests because moral values and character states cannot be assessed through exams. They should, rather, be encouraged to achieve character by practice before intellectual skills are taught. For every subject in each key stage, the study programmes lay out what the students must be taught while the achievement targets lay out the performance standards expected of the students. However, the performance standards do not give any provisions for students with their own views. It would not be right for students to score low marks, denoting a failure, simply because they gave their own views on their understanding of what they have been taught. The curriculum should give room for finding a relationship between the learners’ ideas and what is stipulated in the standards. Conversely, its rigidity may only succeed in creating a block of stereotyped knowledge, not considering the flexibility of the learners’ minds. It is only through training mental skills and giving ways of discovery that the aim of making achieving and progressive learners can be achieved. Otherwise, the curriculum is biased towards handing over instruction and thus, presupposed knowledge. It is then up to the teachers to organise their individual curricula and available technology to target individual students’ experience, interests and strengths. The aim of creating confident students, as per the curriculum, assesses confidence by the students’ ability to meet standards. However, confidence cannot be correctly judged by meeting preset standards. A display of confidence would be more accurate if students knowingly followed what they understood from the instructions given, rather than mirroring the hinted results of the curriculum. The curriculum lays emphasis on skills in literacy, information and communication technology as well as numeracy. On top of that, as Plato states, virtues should be introduced to students indirectly through artistic or visual means. Such are the values that make responsible citizens with positive societal contributions. Positive contribution is not just a continuation of old habits in the society, even if they are meant to be beneficial. A responsible and confident achiever will be able to challenge and criticise generation-old societal habits for the sake of making them better. An educated mind should be as dynamic as the times, and responsibility is using the education to confidently contribute what one knows to be right for the society. Although the three aims target at producing students who can make their own practical decisions and choices on life plans, priorities and time management, it should also give them the opportunity to pick on activities that develop their own discovering abilities from their own understanding of the curriculum. Part Two This part will respond to the question on the overriding end of education and the core subjects best suited to achieving that end. The values of a society are influenced and reflected by education. The purpose of education should not be mere provision of intellectual skills. To this end, therefore, the ultimate purpose of education should be empowering individuals to suit and participate in their society. Rather than being driven by the conventional right opinions, education should allow people to use wisdom that is not necessarily provided in a curriculum. Education should enable people for individual improvement first, and then others, and build on their possibility to do so. As stated by Socrates, education should produce moderate, well mannered and cultivated people and committed patriots. Essentially, education plays a key role in equipping people with sets of skills and knowledge that prepare them to get into careers that may not have been possible without education. However, the career landscape and the nature of society are ever dynamic, but an individual’s ability to adapt and participate in different circumstances will remain fairly the same. This is also emphasised by Socrates when he says that the value of objects changes with time. But education cannot achieve the desired end o the ultimate measuring standard is the GCSE. Geographical and cultural awareness, critical thinking skills, language semantics and social skills are critical tools students should leave school with. But that is not the overriding end of education. The students should be able to use the learned skills to align themselves with society. Students are leaving learning institutions with the relevant qualifications for their professional careers but are unable to display social qualities. For example, a good, qualified doctor will be able to communicate with patients, run tests and diagnoses and deliver safe and effective treatment. The same applies to an electrical engineer. Conversely, the results of errors are equally grave in the two professions. Yet, it is not in doubt that many doctors and electrical engineers in practice lack the necessary social skills to execute their jobs or handle their clients in a humane way. Many patients, and indeed other clients in other fields, suffer because the professionals will not take time to listen. It is essential for the education system to ensure that students get to learn more than specialised knowledge in the post primary curricula. Having knowledge in medicine or engineering and being unable to apply them to society are a short sightedness of education. Education must not come to an end at acquiring academic degrees. Socrates reflected this in the right way when he said education should motivate new excellences and an individual’s desire for satisfaction in power, influence and wealth. An academic degree, on its own, does not grant that satisfaction. A person’s desire after being educated should reflect the true purpose of education to facilitate social growth, challenging conventional ideologies of knowing one’s place. People should be able to use their acquired education to advance not only themselves, but their community and society as well. Apart from specialized knowledge, education should instill in individuals a recognition of responsibility to enable them become better people, team workers, communicators and an inspiration to themselves and others to be happier. Education should go beyond the traditional aim of skills, degrees and money. It should mould a continuous desire for the discovery of truth. Part Three This part will write a critical comparison and evaluation of the civil society’s role in influencing and superintending education, and the aspect of having whole or the larger part of education in the hands of the state. It will look at the society’s rights over the preferences of parents, and the notion of state controlled education aiming at moulding people to be the same. In this context, the civil society may be viewed as the nonprofit and nongovernmental associations made up of research networks, religious organizations, campaign networks and teacher unions that have an involvement in education. Although the decisive authority and responsibility over education is vested in the state, civil society organizations also play their own significant roles. Education may be monitored by the state, but it should never be dictated in terms of a national curriculum. A state controlled education does not reflect the flexible nature of the students it is supposed to serve. It indirectly dictates which students get into the system. Civil society, although without express authority to demand the type of education or curriculum that should be given to students, is often closer to the local cultures and grassroots and is more flexible, hence can adjust their views and demands to suit the community. In developing countries, they are more efficient in accessing the marginalized by approaches customized to the life conditions and needs of the poor and informal educational programmes. Civil society might push for a deviation from state dictated rules, and they may not necessarily be wrong in their proposals because they are in more direct touch with the learning institutions than centralized state control. Although they may be propagating for static, traditional practices, in a democratic environment, the state needs to evaluate the demands of civil society in their narrowed down educational requirements. Civil society should also acknowledge the power of state and agree on applicable control measure. In countries that practice state control over education, it may be portrayed as standardizing levels and promoting democracy. The main problem with that argument is that it is used against the initiative of private and home schooling. If democracy were to take place, then both state controlled education and civil society initiated plans should work together. It is argued that if people have the liberty to teach children whatever they please, a generation of intolerant citizens will be raised by fundamentalists. Totalitarianism can arise by the state having full control and authority over education in a bid to maintain democracy. However, having such a grip and central control heightens the possibility for a shift into the reverse trend. For example, in Israel, the budget for the civic classes was cut several years back with the intention of redirecting the budget to teaching Jewish studies. By having total control over education and advocating for a religion that was later used by fundamentalists to support the vice of killing children, the state had defeated its own cause towards democracy. States should, instead, heed to calls by civil society and widen the dialogue policy between themselves and civil society to guarantee the involvement of civil society in preparing, implementing and supervising of curricula and educational development strategies. Civil society, with a degree of state regulation, should be regarded as a pool of innovators with new practices and thinking best suited cover the idea gaps for the community in which they belong. They are advocates and informed critics of a wide array of educational issues, capable of bringing to the surface what state mechanisms may not have realized soon enough. It may rightly be argued that a state controlled education system moulds people to be what pleases the government in power. This only produces people who will carry on the traditions that have always been practiced. A change from tradition is necessary. However, an analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of complete state control over education shows that education is equally detrimental if completely independent of the control. Both extremes are not desirable. Working hand in hand with the civil society, the state can exercise reasonable measures of control to ensure that proper quality of education is maintained and monitor the use of state funds. Unless suitable and relevant education is availed to the citizens, mere autonomy in it will not lead them in achieving their own well being. Proper balance needs to be in place between educational autonomy and control from the state. Civil society and the state can influence and support each other for the sake of realizing individual prosperity, freedom and targets as well as social objectives. References Aristotle, T. (1966). Nicomachean ethics. 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London and New York: Continuum  Winch, C. (1998). The philosophy of human learning. London: Routledge. Read More