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EVOLUTION OF
PHILOSOPHICAL
DISCOURSES ON
EDUCATION: A
CLARIFICATION
CAJETAN K. MAGANGA
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EVOLUTION OF PHILOSOPHICAL
DISCOURSES ON EDUCATION: A
CLARIFICATION
CAJETAN K. MAGANGA
B.A. (Ed. Hons.) East Africa, M.A. (Ed.) Dar es Salaam, Doctor of Arts
in Education, Belford.
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Preface
Education as a human undertaking has always been underpinned by some
philosophical considerations. There is always a raison d’être for every
human deliberate engagement. All practices are pursued to meet some
deliberate ends. Aristotle expresses this as follows: “Every art and every
enquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some
good, and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to that at which
all things aim”. (Aristotle in Nichomachean Ethics).
Philosophical discourses on education have always been conceived in
pursuit of the most appropriate ends of education for any given community
during each period of that community’s existence. Many thinkers and
philosophers of education have advanced and have advocated varying aims
and raisons d’être of education to meet the needs of their communities.
This book is a review and a clarification of different selected philosophical
discourses that have been advanced during the existence of education as a
professional field among various communities in the world. The book is not
an exhaustive account of the evolution of philosophical discourses on
education. It merely high-lights some of the most of influential discourses
that have tended to prevail over the period of existence of education as
profession.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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Chapter One
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Wilfred Carr (2004) illustrated the kind of insights that are involved in
philosophical discourses while critiquing James Kaminsky’s historical
discourse on philosophy of education, (Kaminsky 1993). Wilfred Carr
remarked that Kaminsky’s history was not philosophical enough and it
underestimated the significance of two philosophical insights concerning the
peculiar relationship between philosophy and history. Carr pointed out that
the first one of these two philosophical insights was George Hegel’s
description of philosophy as ‘its own time apprehended in thought’. That is
to say, in any given age, philosophy is always influenced by, and intimately
related to, the presuppositions embedded in the culture of that era. The
second one is John Dewey’s insight that ‘while philosophy is always a
creature of its past, it is also, simultaneously, a creature of its future’ (Dewey
1913, pp 3-5). This insight means that although philosophy is always
influenced by the presuppositions contained in the culture of which it is a
part, philosophy is also the discipline that exposes inadequacies in its
cultural heritage, and critically revises these presuppositions and thus makes
a contribution to that culture’s future development. Both John Dewey and
George Hegel regarded ‘history’ and ‘philosophy’ as dialectically related.
Each of them changes and is changed by the other.
Thus, philosophical discourses are laden with great deals of insights forming
coherent communications of thought. The insights are products of exercises
of reason or intellectual pursuit. While formulating conceptions on issues,
philosophers and thinkers are engaged in exercises of reason or intellectual
pursuits.
1.2 Development of Philosophical Discourses
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The exercise of practical reason occurs when our capacities for reason are used in
the pursuit of justified actions in, for example in studies on politics,
medical treatment and indeed in education. The exercise theoretical
reason involves building up structures of justified propositions that
constitute the elements of the formulated theoretical discourse.
The exercise of practical reason, on the other hand, involves building up justified
structures of practical actions and activities that constitute the elements of the
formulated practical discourse. All philosophical discourses on education are
therefore practical discourses, involved in building up structures of practical
actions.
Thus the pursued outcome of the exercise
of theoretical reason is the formulation of
propositions on which we can agree in our
judgement of truth. This is then the
theoretical discourse.
The pursued outcome of the exercise of practical reason is the conduct of
actions or practices on which we can agree in achieving what constitutes
human good. This is then the practical discourse. The practical discourse is
value laden unlike the theoretical discourse, which is value free.
Both exercises of reason involve the creation of concepts and statements to
make up the resulting discourses. The concepts and statements in a
theoretical discourse are themselves the formulated propositional truths
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(Hirst 2005).
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entails the whole range of disciplines studied and taught in pursuit the
eudemonia the ultimate good for mankind.
According to Luciana Bellatalla, (The Paideia Project on-line; in the
twentieth Congress of Philosophy; 2009), ever since its inception,
philosophy has always been regarded as something that can build up reality,
educate men and disclose truth. Philosophizing is inquiring and learning.
On the role of philosophy in learning Bellatalla stated: “As far as its method
proclaims the spirit … of an intellectual adventure, philosophy defends men
from the danger of a life without questions … it awakes men from their
dogmatic sleep … leads them to put into discussion their historical
conditions.” Education cannot do without philosophy; it is part of
philosophy.
In its current historical development philosophy is not an instrument for
ethical and intellectual elitist education, but an intellectual disposition and a
methodological approach to the modern world open to all people. All men
should be allowed access to philosophical encounters through education.
Human life without questions is life without meaning.
Philosophical discourses on education encompass what Philips (2005) talks
about in respect of empirical educational research as a body of methods of
investigations in education. This method seeks to establish the truth by
reference to “real cases” from field observations. Philips defines empirical
educational research as “a broad domain of inquiry that covers not only the
work of teachers, but also covers inquiries into instructional materials, the
processes in learners, specific subject matter, the teachers’ decision making,
the study of gender and cultural differences and their impact on learning and
access to opportunities to learn, along with programme evaluation that is
intended to reveal both the positive and unintended harmful classroom
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Plato, in his Republic advanced the notion that the well-being of the
ideal state depended on the qualities of its people and their rulers,
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(Nyirenda and Ishumi 2002). The higher such qualities were the more
secure and the greater was the well-being of the ideal state. To raise the
qualities of people and their rulers one had to institute education, among
them, that enabled them acquire the proper knowledge, understanding, skills
and attitudes or values they needed for rendering services to the Republic
effectively.
References
Bellatalla, Luciana (2009) in “The Paideia Project on-line”; in The
Twentieth Congress of Philosophy.
Carr, Wilfred, (2004) “Philosophy and Education”, in Journal of Philosophy
of Education, Vol.38 Issue1 pp.55-96.
Dewey, John, (1931): Philosophy and Civilisation New York, Mouton.
Hirst, Paul and Carr, Wilfred (2005) “Philosophy and Education: A
Symposium” in Philosophy of Education Journal Vol.39 Issue 4 pp.415-
632.
Kaminsky, James S. (1993); A New History of Educational Philosophy.
Westport, Connecticut; Greenwood Press.
Klarung, Gerald (2008), in Runes, Dagabert,. Dictionary of Philosophy
(Runes 1942) (www.ditext.co/runes/)
Nyirenda, Suzgo D. and Ishumi, Abel, G. (2002) Philosophy of Education:
An Introduction to Concepts, Principles and Practice. Dar es Salaam; Dar es
Salaam University Press.
Peters, Richard, S. (1966); “Philosophy of Education”, in J.W. Tibble, (ed.),
The Study of Education. London; Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Philips, D.C. (2005) “The Contested Nature of Empirical Educational
Research, (and Why Philosophy of Education Offers Little Help)” in
Journal of Philosophy of Education. Vol. 39 Issue 4, pp 577ff.
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Chapter Two
Philosophical Discourses on Education in the Pre-
Socrates to Post-Socrates Era
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The first philosopher among the ancient Greeks to engage his mind on
philosophical issues was Thales (624-545 B.C.) (htt/www.friesian.com/his-
2htm#text-1). He looked at the world around him and asked: “What is the
fundamental substance that underlies everything we find in the world?” His
answer was “water”. This was a philosophical inquiry on what was
fundamental in the material world around us. What was the base of the
material world we live in? Thales’ question sought insights to inform us
about the nature of the world and to enable us to understand the core of the
entire world. It sought insights to enable us understand what the world is
made of and its essential qualities. Thales discerned “water” as the
foundation of our material world. He proposed that water was the origin and
mother-womb of all things. He thought that water was the original substance
upon which all other things were formed. “The earth rests on water,” he
maintained.
Even though Thales’ contemporaries did not think much about his insights,
Thales’ question became a starting point to set people thinking seriously
about the world around them. He was of course mistaken, but his question
led to further inquiries of that kind. He was one of the early Greek thinkers
to engage in serious and articulate discussions of philosophical issues. He
caused the emergency of a number of theories about the nature of the world.
Many of these theories were in conflicts with one another. Thinkers in
Greece especially in Athens began to debate about theoretical abstractions
that brought up philosophical insights to help people succeed in whatever
engagements they undertook.
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(1) Nothing is self-evident because any axiom we start with can be doubted.
(2) Nothing can be proved because we will either have an infinite regress
(going backwards) of reasons that support our previous reasons or we will
end up assuming as correct what we are supposed to prove.
Thus the sophists doubted both the sensory and rational sources of
knowledge and certainty because both of them cannot assure us on whether
the information they convey to us is true or not.
Generally inquiries into the truth should be based on some form of
scepticism, which enables us to avoid taking for granted any hypothetical
propositions that are not backed by sound evidence. Scepticism is a useful
tool for enabling us arrive at certainty in any inquiry.
2.31 Socrates
A great Ancient Greek philosopher called Socrates opposed the negative,
subjective and relativistic theory of knowledge advocated by the sophists.
Socrates was born in 469 B.C. We know him mainly through Plato’s
writings about him and through the historical writings of Xenophon who
was a Greek historian and a general. Under the assumption that Plato’s
writings about Socrates are accurate, Socrates’ figure has had the greatest
influence on the history of thought.
Socrates was a brilliant thinker. He sought to establish how people ought to
live ideally. He taught his disciples that the philosopher was one who was
imbued with truth, beauty and goodness, (Lawhead 2003 p. 14). These are
eternal and unchanging through all times. Socrates argued that our ability to
know such eternal truths indicates that we have in us some eternal quality,
i.e. the soul. The soul within us is eternal too; it is therefore immortal,
(Lawhead 2003). This seemed to be the reason why he did not run away
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from his executioners even when there was a good chance for him to escape.
His friends and followers were eager to help him escape. Socrates felt he had
a mission to fulfill in life.
In his conversations with the citizens of Athens Socrates would listen to the
people he talked with and would point out at what was erroneous in their
statements until he achieved a closer approximation to the truth. He always
attempted to draw out the truth from every human soul. He referred to
himself as the ‘midwife of ideas’, (Lawhead 2003 p. 15). He claimed that he
did not teach anybody anything. He merely asked them questions that made
them produce the truth that lay hidden within them. His basic contention was
that the mind of an individual possessed all knowledge at birth.
Socrates went around Athens posing questions on ideals in life to political
and military leaders, sophists, poets and other prominent members of
society. Each of them had an opinion upon which he based his every-day
conduct, but none of them actually thought critically about the veracity of
their opinions. They were all reluctant to justify or prove the validity of their
convictions.
concrete bits of information. We see a mango tree in our yard. We notice its
green foliage including its raw fruits hanging on stalks at tips of twigs. This
sensation does not however reveal to us what a mango tree is, i.e. its
essence. The general concept or idea behind the mango tree we see can be
revealed to us by other means rather than the sensory encounter we are
having in looking at the mango tree before us.
Plato contended that genuine knowledge consisted only in apprehension
of ideas. To gain knowledge is to acquire and possess ideas. The term
“man” is an idea entailing an unchanging essence commonly found in all
men throughout history and foreseeable future. Similarly the term “tree” is
an idea entailing an unchanging essence commonly found in all trees
throughout history and foreseeable future. All the terms we use are just
labels of ideas we have in mind. Thus ideas are expressed as objects, such as
stars, rocks, houses, motor vehicles etc. or living things i.e. organisms, such
as trees, insects, reptiles, human beings etc. Ideas are also expressed in form
of events such volcanic eruptions, raining, sunrise and sunset. These events
include animal and human activities, such as travelling, eating or sleeping
etc. They are also expressed as situations or states such as famine, draughts,
illnesses or epidemics, wet or dry seasons, nightfall, the state of one
becoming a husband, an engineer or a president, or of being awake or asleep,
young or old, for a human. They are also expressed as qualities or attributes
of entities, justice, tolerance, stinginess, happiness, gentleness and tyranny
etc. Ideas are in addition expressed as institutions such as religious
organizations, professional and social bodies such as society for prevention
of cruelty to animals, business corporations learning institutions etc. In a
nutshell what can be known are ideas, which comprise the essences of
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C D
Boy: I do.
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Socrates: And you know that a square figure has these four lines equal?
Boy: Certainly
Socrates: And these lines, which I have drawn through the middle of the
square, are also equal?
A B
C D
Boy: Yes.
Socrates: A square may be of any size?
Boy: Certainly.
Socrates: And if one side of the figure be of two feet and the other be two
feet, how much will the whole be? Let me explain if in one direction the
space was two feet, and in the other direction of one foot. The whole would
be of two feet taken once?
(The question can be interpreted and rephrased as: ‘Suppose we took the
length of two feet in one direction and one foot in the second direction what
would be the area then? Would it be two square feet?’)
Boy: Yes.
Socrates: But since this second direction is also two feet, there are twice
two feet? (The question can be interpreted and rephrased as: ‘But since
second direction is also two feet, the area of such a figure is therefore twice
that of two feet by one foot?)
Boy: There are.
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Socrates: Then the square is of twice two feet? (The question can be
interpreted and rephrased as: How many square feet would that figure have?
Would is be four square feet?).
Boy: Yes.
Socrates: And how many twice two feet? (The question can be interpreted
and rephrased as: “And how many squares of one by one foot are there?”
Count them and tell me.
Meno: Yes.
Socrates: And does he really know?
Meno: Certainly not.
Socrates: He only guesses that because the square is double, the line is also
double.
Meno: True.
Socrates; Observe him while he recalls the steps in regular order. (To the
boy) Tell me, boy, do you assert that a double space comes from a double
line? That is, does a double square come from a double line? Remember that
I am not speaking of an oblong, but a figure equal every way, and twice the
size of this – that is to say of eight feet; and I want to know whether you still
say that a double square comes from double line?
Boy: Yes
Socrates: But does not this line double if we add another such line here (add
BE to AB)
A B E
C D
Boy: Certainly.
Socrates: And four such lines of the same length as AE, you say, make eight
square feet?
Boy: Yes
Socrates: Let us describe such a figure. Would you not say that this is the
figure of eight feet?
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A 2 B 2 E
2 2 2
C 2 D 2 F
2 2 2
G 2 H 2 I
Boy: Yes
Socrates: And are there not four divisions in this figure, each of which
having an area of 2 by 2?
Boy: True.
Socrates: And is not that four times four feet? (The question can be
interpreted and rephrased as: “And is that not four feet by four feet?”).
Boy: Certainly.
Socrates: And four times is not double?
Boy: No, indeed.
Socrates: But how much?
Boy: Four times as much.
Socrates: Therefore the double line, boy, has produced an area not twice, but
four times as much.
Boy: True.
Socrates: Four times four sixteen – are they not it?
Boy: Yes.
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Socrates: What do you say of him, Meno? Were not all these answers given
out of his own head?
Meno: Yes they were all his own.
Socrates: And yet, as we were just now saying, he did not know?
Meno: True.
Socrates: But still he had in him those notions of his- had he not?
Meno: Yes.
Socrates: Then he who does not know may still have true notions of that
which he does not know?
Meno: Apparently.
Socrates: And at the present these notions have just been stirred up in him as
in a dream; but if he were frequently asked the same questions in different
forms, he would know as accurately as anyone at last?
Meno: I dare say.
Socrates: Without anyone teaching him he will recover his knowledge for
himself, if he is merely asked questions?
Meno: Yes
Socrates: And this spontaneous recovery of knowledge in him is
recollection?
Meno: True.
Socrates: And the knowledge which he now has, must he not either have
acquired at some time, or else possessed always?
Meno: Yes
Socrates: But if he always possessed this knowledge he would always have
known; or if he has acquired the knowledge he could not acquired it in his
life, unless he has been taught geometry. And he may be made to do the
same with all geometry and every other branch of knowledge; has anyone
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ever taught him all this? You must know about him, as you say, he was born
and bred in this house.
Meno: And I am certain that no one ever did teach him.
Socrates: And yet he has these notions?
Meno: the fact, Socrates, is undeniable.
Socrates: But if he did not acquire them in this life, then he must have had
and learned them at some other time?
Meno: Clearly he must.
Socrates: Which must have been the time when he was not a man?
Meno: Yes.
Socrates: And if these are always to be true notions in him, both while he is
and while he is not a man, which only need to be awaken into knowledge by
putting questions to him, his soul must remain always possessed of this
knowledge: for he must always be or not be a man.
Meno: Obviously.
(Nyirenda and Ishumi, 2002); Plato: Republic, Books V-VII, Plato 360BC
Translated by Benjamin Jowett; Online Classics Archives
<classic@classics.mit.edu.).
Plato 380 BC Translated by Benjamin Jowett; Online Classics Archives
<classic@classics.mit.edu.).
2.34 Plato and Socrates’ Perspective of Learning.
The citations above suggest firmly that the knowledge of geometry, which
the boy exhibited having, must have been in his possession even at his birth.
His soul had always had these notions or ideas even before his birth. They
only needed awakening into knowledge by putting questions to him.
Thus according to Plato we come to know the ideas or general concept
behind the concrete entities we experience through our senses, by means of
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can never be certain of the truth of judgements that we make on the basis of
our fluctuating and limited experiences. Therefore, Plato contended, we
cannot obtain knowledge through visible information alone.”
Intelligible information
This is information that deals with ideas, what Popkin and Stroll call
‘Platonic ideas’. Intelligible information involves direct acquaintance with
ideas. It is in two categories low and high intelligible information. Low
intelligible information employs ideas without really understanding their
nature. The properties of circles in mathematics are not really grasped but
only assumed and taken for granted as true. The property that in a circle, all
distances from the centre, in every direction, to the edge of the circle, are
identical is merely assumed as correct. Although one attains this information
only hypothetically, notwithstanding, one accepts it as true. The theorems of
Euclidean geometry are merely assumed to be true, without bothering to
prove them so. Assumed knowledge is conditional knowledge and not pure
knowledge. Thus in low intelligible information the individual attains mere
axioms (or assumed truths). These form conditional knowledge.
The high intelligible information is the purest form of intelligible
information; it is based on acquaintance with ideas (Platonic ideas) rather
than assumptions about them. When one is directly aware of the concept of a
circle then one has reached the clearest understanding and ultimate
knowledge of such a concept. Plato showed the nature of such ultimate
knowledge, and what is entailed in acquiring it, in his “Allegory of the
Cave”. An allegory is a story, in which the characters and events depict
either ideas or teachings of moral lessons.
In Plato’s allegory, the normal condition of human life is considered
analogous to that of someone living in a cave all the time. In that cave, one’s
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head is turned fixedly on a wall he faces. His whole body is chained rigidly
in just one position so that he is not able to turn around or from side to side.
He is able to see only shadows of objects that pass by behind him. The
shadows are cast on the wall in front of him. His sensory experience consists
only of the images he sees on the wall, which are mere moving silhouettes of
the real objects passing by behind him that he can’t see. In this way he ends
up assuming that the real world comprises the shadows he sees on the wall
in front of him. It would be impossible for him to think of any other objects
in the world. He would therefore know or be acquainted only with visible
information, the category we alluded to earlier above, rather than with
intelligible information, which constitutes genuine knowledge.
Assuming that there are several human beings in Plato’s cave who since
birth have lived there all the time, such cave people would all be acquainted
with mere visible information about objects and events found in the world
and would be devoid of any intelligible information concerning the world.
Suppose that one of them were released from this cave imprisonment, let out
of the cave, and came to the surface, what would he experience? According
to Plato the released individual would at first be faced with glares of
unpleasantly shining objects from all directions around him, which would
hurt his eyes. He would fail to focus the shapes of such shining objects in the
manner he was used to, in respect of the shadows on the wall of the cave.
These real objects would dazzle him. He would attempt to retreat and get
back to his earlier living condition. It would be necessary to force him to
stay and keep looking until he got accustomed to the glare of real objects
rather than the sight of their shadows. After getting accustomed to looking at
these real objects found above the cave, he would be acquainted with such
real objects, and thus attain or become aware of knowledge. In Plato’s
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allegory, the objects and events in the tale represent ideas. Becoming aware
of them directly entails comprehending them. Knowing entails awareness of,
and understanding concepts, which exist as genuine independent entities
called forms or ideas that are referred to as “Platonic ideas” by Popkin and
Stroll. The process involves escaping from one’s personal cave. In doing
that, one sees the general concepts, or ideas, which are already within one.
One then contemplates these ideas and reaches the state of complete
comprehension.
To accomplish this, a training system must be started. Plato explains the
training system in the Republic as part of an educational process for the
future philosopher kings. It involves making the trainees conscious of what
in fact is in them already. The training system is actually a method for
achieving complete recollection of the dormant knowledge existing within
the trainee. Teaching is merely a form of memory training.
Starting with visible information, the student is made to realise the imperfect
nature of the blurred and nebulous images about the world conveyed to him
through such visual information. The objects observed through sensory
experiences are in a flux all the time, showing different properties at
different times.
Plato illustrated this by an observation of the property of the third finger of
one’s hand. Apart from the thumb a hand has four fingers arrayed after the
thumb. The third finger is longer than the fourth and last finger, but is also
shorter than the second finger. Thus the third finger is at the same time
‘long’ and ‘short’. The student is then bewildered by this visible information
about the property of one’s fourth finger as being both long and short. The
paradox makes the student realise the apparent inconsistencies in sensory
experiences. The meanings of the terms ‘long’ and ‘short’ as conveyed
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through visible information do not remain constant. They change from one
incident to another.
This realisation will make the student begin the journey of seeking deeper
explanations through intelligible information, which will lead him to the
Platonic ideas or general concepts that do not change their meanings from
one incident to another. In this process of seeking deeper explanations
through intelligible information the student uses reason rather sensory
experiences in his search for knowledge and understanding.
At this stage, when reason is deployed to reach the truth, the student learns
to deal with ideas and concepts. To accustom him in dealing with ideas and
concepts the student should undergo training in mathematics for several
years. The prospective philosopher-king is to be trained first of all in
arithmetic to accustom him in working with ideas alone rather than with the
shadows of sensory experiences he has hither to been familiar with in his
visible cave. He will then gradually become proficient in understanding
concepts and meanings through his employing general terms and stop
relying on what he sees, feels, hears, tastes, and smells. He then becomes
competent in doing calculations ‘in his head’, and less dependent on sensory
experiences.
From the training in arithmetic, the student proceeds to a training in
geometry. In this subsequent training the student is engaged in dealing with
concepts as well as discovering i.e. remembering, the necessary truths about
the ideas of lines, triangles, rectangles and circles. The remembered
necessary truths in this regard will be very much different from the opinions
and beliefs he is acquired with through visible information as conveyed by
sensory experiences. The necessary truths are unchanging pure knowledge,
and can be demonstrated so. For example, all the diagrams of circles,
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triangles and rectangles that one might draw, might be of different sizes. But
the necessary truths about them, i.e. essential properties, will be eternal and
unchanging.
The prospective philosopher king, having received a lengthy training in
geometry will eventually become capable of recollecting the entire system of
necessary unchanging truths. He will then have reached the first level of
genuine knowledge, (Popkin and Stroll 1969 p.32).
The final stage in training completely frees the student from the cave of
visible information as conveyed to him through his sensory experiences. In
this stage the student studies ‘the dialectic’, which according to Lawhead
(2000 p.537) is a repetitive cycle of events in history. Dialectic differs from
mathematics mainly because it goes beyond merely accepting for granted the
assumptions behind mathematical theoretical concepts, seeking to show why
such concepts are true. It is a learning process, which attempts to establish
rational proofs of theoretical assumptions.
For example, in Euclidean geometry the sum of the three angles in a triangle
is 180 degrees. Proof of this comes from theorems on parallel lines and from
the theorem that a straight angle has 180 degrees.
C
c D
A a b c2 a2
B
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In the above triangle ABC, a line BD is drawn parallel to line AC. Line AB
traverses the two parallel lines AC and BD resulting in angle ‘a’ and angle
‘a2’ as equal due to the theorem that corresponding angles on two parallel
lines are equal. Similarly, line BC traverses the two parallel lines AC and
BD creating alternative angles c and c2. These too are equal according to the
theorem that alternative angles on parallel lines are equal.
Since the straight angle on point B along the line AB is composed of angles
b+c2+a2 = 1800; and a2 = a, c2 = c; then, a+b+c = 1800: that is the same as
saying that sum of the angles in the triangle ABC is equal to 1800.
Thus the student attains the level of not only mastering and understanding
the subject matter he is engaged in studying, but he also masters the pinnacle
of that understanding in which he gains ability to justify rationally the
presuppositions embedded in subject matter under consideration. Such a
student is considered to have attained the highest level of learning
achievement on the subject matter under consideration.
2.36 Plato’s Allegory of the Cave as a Perspective of Education
Plato’s story is an allegory in which the events and characters narrated
symbolize meanings in the process of education. The relationship between
the shadow world in the cave and the upper sunlit world represent two levels
of knowledge or truth, values or what is right as well as reality or what
exists and how we acquire, or are made to recollect them. Plato believed the
world revealed to us in sensory experience is like the cave world of
shadows. It presents imperfect information, posing it as the truth, the right
thing or the real entity whereas in fact, it is merely a silhouette of such truth,
value or reality. These three genuine fundamental entities only emerge after
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our coming into the sunlit world above the cave where, through reason, we
are presented with intelligible information. Plato believed that it is through
intelligible information that the truth is revealed. He also believed that we
come to be aware of what is the right thing to do through intelligible
information. Moreover, he maintained that the world revealed to us through
sensory experiences is like the cave world of shadows. It presents mere
silhouettes of real objects. The shadows seen by the prisoners in the cave are
lesser realities representing and derived from the figures passing by behind
the prisoners. They are imperfect replicas of real objects found in the upper
sunlit world. This symbolizes Plato’s view that there are levels of reality
that transcend the world of our sensory experience. The physical world is
like the cave; it presents us only imperfect degree of reality, which is
transcended by and should be understood in terms of the most perfect level
of reality that is in the nonphysical world.
In reference to education, it is because we can rise above the concrete realm
of physical reality that we are able to understand the higher nonphysical
realities. Justice for example does not have any shape, weight, colour, sound,
taste or smell. It is nonmaterial and something we cannot encounter with our
senses. It is something we can only reason about and use to judge the moral
quality of human conduct. Even though justice is not a physical entity, it
nevertheless exists or is real. According to Plato the word ‘justice’ is a
nonphysical reality, it is neither a mere mark on a page of a book, nor a mere
sound we make with our mouth while pronouncing it. Justice is something
we use in condemning and approving human actions and conduct as bad or
as good objectively.
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this view as he points out the fact that the process of education entails
acquaintance and understanding of ideas, which are the principles
underlying the concrete entities that are conveyed to the individual through
sensory experience, or visible information. Through his ability to reason, the
individual transcends the mere sensations he is involved in, and gets
acquainted with the ideas behind concrete entities in a process of getting
acquainted with intelligible information. The ideas are of three kinds truths,
values and realities all of which are abstract or nonmaterial entities forming
the basic or most fundamental foundations of what is conveyed to the
individual through visible information or as conveyed to him through his
sense organs, i.e. sensory experiences.
In Plato’s allegory of the cave, the events and characters in the cave prison
symbolise visible information as conveyed to us through sense organs. Such
visible information is like the scene of moving silhouettes that the cave
prisoners see. It is an imperfect representation of pure knowledge. The
events and characters in the sunlit world above the cave symbolise
intelligible information as acquainted to us through the use of our reasoning
capacities. Through intelligible information we are acquainted with ideas,
which are abstract constant or unchanging entities underpinning the concrete
objects and events presented us through our sense organs. Our acquaintance
with these ideas results in our acquiring pure knowledge i.e. the truths, a
well as fundamental realities and values behind the material objects and
events we encounter through visible information.
In respect of realities, the silhouettes the prisoners see on the wall are
imperfect representatives of the actual realities found in the world above the
cave. Thus according to Plato the physical world, like the shadows has some
degree of reality, but it is transcended by and should be understood in terms
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of the nonmaterial world which has the fundamental and ultimate degree of
reality. Through intelligible information we are able to rise above the world
of concrete physical objects and events and understand the higher
nonmaterial realities behind such concrete objects and event conveyed to us
via our sense organs.
Learning or the process of education involves being acquainted with pure
ideas, which are nonphysical or nonmaterial. For example ‘justice’ has no
weight, shape, colour, sound, smell or taste. Sense organs cannot detect its
presence. It can only be detected, through observations of human
interactions, by our reasoning capacity. It is only through intelligible
information that we area acquainted with justice as a quality of human
conduct. As we detect that quality amidst human interactions we able to
reach decisions or judgements about which human conduct is just and which
is not just.
The process of educating the prospective philosopher king, for example,
involves enlightening him through training and guiding him to advance from
acquaintance with visible information to encounters with intelligible
information where he is enlightened about pure truths or knowledge, pure
realities or nonmaterial entities and pure values or what is actually right or
proper to do, (Lawhead 2000 p.32-33).
Education as a process is defined as the individual’s acquisition knowledge
competences and attitudes or values. It involves a change or innovation in
the level of his accumulated content materials or subject matter including his
retaining or memorizing such new contents along with his understanding or
comprehending them. Moreover he simultaneously gains the capacity to
apply such content materials to novel situations he encounters in life.
Besides, he gains a synthesis of the essential nature of such subject matter,
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as well as the ability to judge the value or worthiness of such subject matter
in respect of his day-to-day needs, (Bloom 1956). The acquisition of content
materials is spontaneously accompanied by a change of attitude or value the
learner has on the new content matter. He gains appreciation or an informed
positive attitude towards the new knowledge he has acquired. Besides, the
student gains new practices that apply the precepts prescribed by the new
knowledge. The process of education involves adoption of innovative
knowledge, as well as simultaneous and spontaneous adoption of new values
or appreciations and practices in respect of the newly gained knowledge.
Course contents and their mastery become conveyors of innovative attitudes
and practices and facilitate the acceptance and adoption of such novel
attitudes and practices among learners, (Maganga 2007).
Thus Plato’s philosophical discourse on education discerns insights on the
process of education as a means of improving the qualities of people and
their rulers for the better deployment of such qualities in the service of the
ideal state. The qualities are discerned as gains in knowledge or truth, reality
or what exists and value, or what is right or proper. Education as a process is
a means to enable the individual attain the discernment and understanding
of, as well as appreciating and putting such gains into practices, (Plato 360
BC Republic, Books V-VII, Translated by Benjamin Jowett; Online Classics
Archives <classic@classics.mit.edu.).
2.4 Aristotle’s Views on Educational Philosophical Concepts
Aristotle (384-322 BC) was a student of Plato at the academy that Plato
founded in Athens. Aristotle wrote many treatises. His work on formal logic
has with stood the test of time and was incorporated into modern formal
logic in nineteenth century. His work on ethics, especially the Nicomachean
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Ethics has received the most scholarly attention. It comprises ten books
based on his lectures at the Lyceum, an academy he founded.
Ethics is a sub-branch of axiology, the other and complementary sub-branch
of axiology is aesthetics. Writing directly on education, Aristotle considered
nature, habit and reason to be three equally important forces that an
individual needs to cultivate through education. He considered repetition to
be a key tool for developing habits. The teacher was to lead the student
systematically in developing such good habits. Aristotle placed emphasis on
balancing theoretical and practical aspects of subjects taught. The subjects
he specifically mentioned included reading and writing, mathematics, music,
physical education, literature, history and a wide range of sciences. To
Aristotle, education was to aim at producing good and virtuous citizens for
the city-state (polis). “All who have meditated on the art of governing
mankind” Aristotle wrote, “have been convinced that the fate of empires
depends on the education of youth”. The expected outcomes in education
were the city-state’s thoroughly educated youth. (Wikipedia Encyclopedia,
2005). This is in agreement with Plato’s view that the process of education is
a means of improving the qualities of people and their rulers in the service of
the ideal state, (Plato cited above). Aristotle therefore supported his mentor
and teacher in respect of the fundamental aims of education as far as the
good of society, or the ideal state (Plato’s Republic) is concerned. Education
in any society is instituted to pursue the wellbeing and survival of the state
by improving the quality of its people and its rulers. “The fate of empires
depends on the education of youth.” According to Aristotle and to Plato
education is concerned with the quality of the young people in society. It
prepares such young people for deploying in future, their well developed
talents.
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Chapter Three
Post-Ancient Greek Era to Seventeenth Century
Discourses on Education
3.1 Developments of Discourses in Education during the Medieval to
Post Renaissance Period.
After Socrates, Plato and Aristotle the next serious thinkers that have come
up with important insights on knowledge and therefore education, were
Plotinus (205-270 AD), Thomas Aquinas 1224-1274, Nicholaus Copernicus
(1473-15430) Galilei Galileo (1564-1642), Johannes Kepler, Francis Bacon
(1561-1626), Rene Descartes (1596 -1650) and John Locke (1632-1704).
Plotinus (205-270)
Plotinus (205-270 AD) was the founder of Neo-Platonism. He revived the
influence of both Plato and Aristotle. His main contribution in philosophical
discourses on education was in the subject-content matter of Theology as a
sub-branch of metaphysics, also as an aspect of epistemology in terms of
sources of knowledge.
In his discernment of metaphysics, Plotinus transcended the pagan gods as a
variety of beings above human beings by introducing the One, an impersonal
and Absolute Being similar to Plato’s good.
To Plotinus the One was the source of all being. Matter and the body were
essentially ‘not being’; and they were also evil, not good, (in Plato’s sense of
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good). In between, were Plato’s forms, the gods, and soul. All existence was
analogous to light radiating from the sun as in the simile of Plato’s Republic.
Plotinus called this a “Declension of Being”, that is a variation of being as
depicted in the diagram her below.
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deprivation of some essential moral quality in one and thus one becomes
evil.
Plotinus thus provided a more elaborate paradigm of existence and
knowledge, which expanded Plato’s allegory of the cave. Education was the
cultivation of habits of pursuing the good, thus avoiding nothingness which
is evil, devoid of even the smallest amount good.
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas’ philosophical contributions on educational insights,
similar to those of Plotinus, are mainly in the branch of metaphysics,
especially theology. He addressed the question of how do we know that
there is a supernatural being as the fundamental and ultimate cause of all
existence? His concern was on reality and its primary cause. As we saw
earlier in chapter two, according to Plato through intelligible knowledge the
individual learner, the philosopher king of the ideal state i.e. Plato’s
Republic, is acquainted with three types of ideas: i.e. pure knowledge, pure
reality and pure values. The process of educating the prospective
philosopher king, for example, involves enlightening him through training
and guiding him to advance from acquaintance with visible information to
encounters with intelligible information where he is enlightened about pure
truths or knowledge, pure realities or material and nonmaterial entities and
pure values or what is actually right or proper to do. (Lawhead 2000 p.32-
33).
It is the ideas on fundamental reality or metaphysics that Thomas Aquinas
pursued. Thomas Aquinas’ insights are discerned in search of the ultimate
and most profound reality; this is the first cause of all that has been caused
to exist; that is God. Aquinas provided five arguments supporting the
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existence of God as the source and cause of all reality. Three of these are
versions of the cosmological argument. The universe as a material reality,
and in its infinite enormity and extremely complex structure of the heavenly
bodies it comprises, and their continuous movements at very high speed,
reflects the extremely huge capacity, or omnipotence and might behind the
cause of such a universe’s existence or creation.
Thomas Aquinas’ first argument points out the fact that there is motion in
the world. To Aquinas ‘motion’ is any kind of change in the state of affairs
including change in temperatures of objects. Everything in motion is caused
to change or to move by a force. “Whatever is moved is moved by another.”
There must be a first mover ultimately that is the original cause of all
motions.
The second argument points out the fact that the world consists of causes
and effects, “there is an order of efficient causes” as Aquinas expressed it.
The argument suggests: Every entity including events and objects exist after
having been caused to exist. This cannot however have been going on
indefinitely. Somewhere at the beginning, there must have been the first
cause, from where other and subsequent causers emerged.
The third argument points out the fact that the world consists of contingent
and dependent beings. These naturally depend on some independent being
that supports and maintains their existence.
In the fourth argument Aquinas points out the fact that things are in grades
of quality and perfection; some are more and some are less good, true, and
noble or so forth in other qualities. All things of the same kind bear
resemblance in their qualities, the hot and the hotter between two of the
same nature resemble the hottest of the three things in that category.
Ultimately, a supremely perfect being must exist as the source and origin of
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The five arguments are based on empirical observations of the world and
occurrences in it. Thus Thomas Aquinas was drawing from sensory
experiences in the form of observations to reach reasoned knowledge about
the material reality around or the universe and the ultimate ontological
explanations accounting for phenomena in it. Aquinas applied reason to
explain and provide the meaning of fundamental reality behind natural
phenomena in the universe.
To Thomas Aquinas therefore, human existence is rational; it entails seeking
and learning the meanings and the ultimate or the most fundamental cause
behind the universe as a complex material reality and the phenomena in it. It
is part of the answer to “what can we know?” which is an educational
insight.
Thomas Aquinas’ specific contribution to education lies in the curriculum
contents of Theology as a discipline, and in its methods of arriving at the
truth through reasoning. Although a great deal the curriculum contents in
theology as a discipline consist of revealed knowledge as its main area of
study, the discipline also contains rational knowledge as part of its
curriculum contents.
medieval prevailing theory of motion within the universe, which stated that
motion was caused by an impetus. Things were naturally at rest most of the
time. It was an impetus that moved and propelled them into motion, and they
kept moving until the impetus run out of steam, leaving the objects to slow
down and eventually come to a stand still.
Copernicus observed that the earth was not motionless, it moved along an
orbit of its own, and it span or revolved on its axis. The entire of Mercury’s
orbit and that of Venus around the sun were inside the earth’s orbit around
the sun. Copernicus also noticed that it was the earth’s spinning on its axis
which made the sun look as if it were moving around the earth. In 1546
Copernicus published the then controversial idea that the earth revolved
around the sun, not sun around the earth. This came to be known as the
Copernican astronomy, a revolution which contended that the sun, not the
earth was the centre of the universe. He suggested that it was the sun rather
the earth which was the centre of the universe. According to this
Copernicus’ view point, the earth and the rest of planets moved around the
sun. The apparent motion we observe as the sun travelling from the horizon
in the east to our overheads at noon and onwards to the horizon in the west,
was caused by the rotation of the earth on its axis.
It was Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) who eventually replaced the concept of
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Kepler's Platonic (regular) solid model of the Solar System: From Mysterium
Cosmographicum (1596):
Close up Inner Section of the Platonic Solid Model of the Solar System.
From Cosmographicum Mysterium (The Cosmographic Mystery): Source:
Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, 2009).
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Johannes Kepler’s laws of planetary motion are formulated and stated in his works.
They also provided one of the foundations for Isaac Newton's theory of gravitation. The
laws of planetary motion were formulated between 1609 to b16l9, and they are stated
as follows: -
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1. Planets move around the Sun in ellipses, with the Sun at one focus.
2. The line connecting the Sun to a planet sweeps equal areas in equal times.
3. The square of the orbital period of a planet is proportional to the cube (3rd
power) of the mean distance from the Sun or in other words--of the “semi-major
axis" of the ellipse, half the sum of smallest and greatest distance from the Sun)
The first law upholds the Copernican astronomy. It endorses the notion that
the earth along with other planets revolve around the sun. The planets
revolve around the sun not along circular orbits, but rather along elliptic
orbits called ellipses.
The second law is more technical. It proposes that the line which links a
planet to the sun, in other words the radius of the planet’s orbit, goes through
equal areas in equal units of time. This means that one can calculate, in
number of days, the duration the planet takes to complete its revolution, or
sweep around the sun.
The third law states a mathematical formula, where by, the orbital period,
i.e. the period during which a planet completes a revolution around the sun,
is squared and proportionally related to the cube of the mean distance from
the sun to the planet, i.e. the mean radius of the planet’s orbit.
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the centre of the universe was given empirical support by Galilei Galileo in
his studies on motion. Galileo made three important discoveries in the study
of motion as follows:
(i) He began applying mathematics to obtain precise information while
studying physics especially motion through experiments. Aristotle had
written an exposition on physics which was based on reason alone. He,
Aristotle, had stated that ‘if one object is heavier than another, it will fall
faster’. Galileo experimented that out and discovered that Aristotle was
wrong. Ignoring aerodynamics, everything, whether heavy or light, falls at
the same rate. Galileo found that rate of falling by rolling balls of unequal
weights down an inclined plane, (not by dropping the balls off the Leaning
Tower of Pisa, which is a legend – although that could have happened too).
(ii) Galileo distinguished between the velocity of the falling balls, in metres
per second, and the acceleration i.e. change of velocity, in metres per second
per second. This implies that Galileo obtained precise measures of the speed
of falling, and the rate at which that speed of falling increased per second
during the fall. He then discovered that it was gravity that produced
acceleration. That acceleration of the speed of falling was in fact 9.8 metres
per second per second. As the falling object approached the surface of the
earth gravitational pull on it tended to increase with decreases in the height
of the falling object above the earth’s surface.
Thus Galileo discovered that the simple speed or velocity of motions of
bodies in the universe is not felt. It is the acceleration or changes of the
speed of their motion that is felt. The earth can be moving without our
feeling its motion. It often occurs that when one is on a plane flying at a
constant speed high up in the sky, one does not feel that the plane is moving
at all; it seems to one as though it is still parked on the ground, especially
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when plane is well above the clouds. Velocity does not change until a force
changes it. When the speed of the plane one is travelling on is changed
during its approach to landing, one feels that change in velocity.
(iii) Moreover through experiments Galileo discovered the principle of
inertia that an object at rest tends to remain so, or resist movement; and an
object in motion tends to go on moving or resist a discontinuation of its
motion. Both objects will remain in their rest or motion, until they are
moved, or stopped by another force. Galileo substituted this concept of
inertia with the concept of impetus, in the Ptolemaic system.
It is these physics laws that Galileo was discovering from experiments and
observation that made him a pioneer in the scientific revolution. This was a
new source of knowledge, different from the traditional source of reaching
the truth by speculating and reasoning. All these theories on motion were
eventually perfected by Isaac Newton (1642-1727).
In 1633, Galileo was tried by the inquisition in Rome and found guilty of
heresy. The court ordered him to renounce his beliefs and to stop, forth with,
writing or speaking about such matters again. He was also placed under
house arrest for life.
Galileo had however set up the beginning of the scientific revolution on
knowledge. Earlier systems of thought right up to Aristotle and Thomas
Aquinas had attempted to explain the world and natural phenomena in terms
‘final causes”. A final cause was the end towards which things moved.
Aristotle had stated earlier: “Every art and every inquiry, and every action
and pursuit is thought to aim at some good and for this reason the good has
been declared to be that at which all things aim.”(Nichomachean Ethics;
translated by W.D. Ross in: The Oxford Translation of Aristotle. Volume 9
1925, Oxford: Oxford University Press.)
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World (1632) that compared the Ptolemaic system with that of Copernicus,
which provided an empirical justification of Copernicus’ contentions.
Unfortunately the character that represented the Ptolemaic system in the
book seemed foolish and unhappily the Pope interpreted that as a caricature
of himself. The Pope ordered an arrest and a trial of Galileo. In spite of this
turn of events, the scientific revolution had began and was here to stay, One
of the chief architects in its wake was Francis Bacon through his writings on
modern philosophy and prescriptions of the Baconian method.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626),
Francis Bacon was one of the Renaissance philosophers who influenced
educational thought through his advocating the scientific revolution. He was
essentially one of the earliest modern empiricists, like Galileo who adopted
the new method of inquiring into phenomena through observation and
experimentation. Francis Bacon popularised the inductive methodology for
scientific investigation. He advanced a method of scientific investigation
that has come to be called the ‘Baconian method’. This is an investigative
method that Bacon developed and wrote in his book ‘Novum Organum’ i.e.
New Instrument. It is a forerunner of the modern scientific methods. He
wrote it to replace Aristotle’s ‘Organon’ which was based on merely
reasoning ways of investigation.
“Those who have taken upon themselves to lay down the law of nature as
some thing that has already been discovered and understood have done a
great harm to philosophy and science,” Bacon stated. “… they have
produced beliefs in people, … and squashed as well as stopped inquiry…,
putting an end to other men’s efforts”. “Some others have asserted that
absolutely nothing can be known. …” “The earlier of the ancient Greeks had
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protect themselves against such poor choices of expressions, but these don’t
always help for words force and overrule the intellect, throwing everything
into confusion and leading men astray into empty disputes and idle fancies.
(iv) Idols of the theatre (idola theatric); these are tendencies to misinterpret
and use certain philosophical schools of thought that may be inappropriate to
the given phenomena. They tend to abuse authoritative knowledge. People in
organisations or systems tend to act as if they were on a stage in a play,
making fictitious staged worlds of their own. Such staged acts mislead us
into false beliefs.
In his search for the truth through the Baconian method the investigator
should be aware of all these idols and strive to prevent their influence in his
interpreting the results of his investigation. He should prevent them from
‘obstructing the path of correct scientific reasoning.’ This is an exercise and
disposition of the investigator during an investigation. It is characterised by
three features:- (i) Avoiding the influence of preconceived notions and
prejudices on the issue under investigation; (ii) Being thorough in collecting
adequate corroborating evidence on the issue under investigation; (iii) Being
open minded in respect of, and ready to accept the results that come up
through our investigations - however disagreeable they are, or may happen
to be, with our expectations. Francis Bacon’s discourses formally
established the scientific revolution that was earlier initiated by Galileo and
Copernicus in terms of epistemological inquiry. Scientific discoveries of
new knowledge were to be carried out through the use of the Baconian
method involving objective observation and drawing inferences based on
adequate corroborations supplied by field observations.
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false… I should withhold my assent from opinions that are not completely
certain and indubitable.”
The opinions on which Descartes withheld his assent were those that he
derived from concrete information whose sources were sensory experiences.
Thus he wrote: “Surely whatever I had admitted until now as most true I
received from either the senses or through the senses. However I have
noticed that the senses are sometimes deceitful…It is prudent “never to place
our complete trust on those who have deceived us even once.”
“It is from the components of true colours that false images of things are
fashioned in our thoughts. This class of things appears to include corporeal
nature in general, together with their extensions, shapes, quantities and sizes
as well as places where they exist including the time through which they
endure.
“Thus it is not improper to conclude from this that physics, astronomy,
medicine and all other disciplines that are dependent upon consideration of
composite things are doubtful, and that, on the one hand, arithmetic,
geometry and other such disciplines, which treat of nothing but the simplest
and the most general things and which are indifferent as to whether these
things do or do not, in fact exist, contain something certain and indubitable.”
To Descartes, the disciplines that provided information which was
indifferent to, or not dependent on, sensory information were more certain
and indubitable than those others that are dependant on sensory
information. Opinions based on the former category of disciplines were
indubitable. This shows Descartes’ commitment to rationalism and the
idealist theory of innate ideas in line with Plato’s and Socrates contentions.
Idealism contends that reality is derived from ideas of the intellect, not
senses. Learning is acquisition of ideas through intelligible information, as
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we saw in Chapter two while dealing with Plato’s process of educating the
philosopher king of the ideal state. Learning in fact is merely remembering
what we already have in our minds.
In Meditation V (7:64) Descartes remarked: “I am not so much learning
something new as remembering what I knew before… “We come to know
them by the power of our own native intelligence” In Meditation II
Descartes describes a thought experiment, whereby he” dug out” what is
innate. Thought experiments help the learners to achieve pure mental
scrutiny and to easily apprehend innate ideas, (Meditation II 7:30). Our
minds come stocked with a variety of intellectual concepts i.e. ideas whose
contents are derived from the mature mind.
(i) Descartes’ method is foundationalist. “My method is that of an
architect. I began taking everything that was doubtful and throwing it out
like sand.” In Mediation I, Descartes asserts the need “to demolish
everything completely and started again from foundations”. Sceptical
doubts are the ground-clearing tools of epistemic demolition. Doubts
undermine epistemic grounds like bull dozers undermine sites for new
buildings.
Descartes does not doubt for the sake of doubting. He uses scepticism as a
tool for reconstructing knowledge that is indubitable, (Metaphysics
Research Lab. 2008; Stanford University Encyclopedia).
To Descartes, therefore education is a process of searching for knowledge
that is certain and indubitable, which constitutes indefeasible convictions
that the individual acquires, accepts and adopts. The main contribution that
Descartes’ insights made in promoting the course systematic inquiry on the
truth is scepticism as a tool to use in pursuing certainty. The scientific
revolution in its investigations of phenomena uses scepticism by
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Idealism
Rene Descartes was idealist like Plato and Socrates.
Philosophical thinking on education has often dealt with the question of
knowledge or the truth. Plato as we saw earlier addressed the question of
‘what can be known?’ It was necessarily followed by the question ‘how do
we know?’ Both of these questions are central concerns in education.
Education as a process of acquiring knowledge including meaning or
understanding along with competences and values is an epistemological
concern. There have been two opposing schools of thought in philosophy,
namely empiricism and rationalism or idealism, which have addressed
questions on knowledge and sources of knowledge. The contention of
idealism is that ultimate reality is found in the upper sunlit chamber world
above the cave in Plato’s ‘Allegory of the Cave’.
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which conveys to us the ideas behind the concrete objects. Reason conveys
to us ideas that are the fundamental realities behind the particular incidents
which we observe as external manifestations of such ideas.
Idealism maintains three major contentions as follows:-
(1) Reason is the primary and most superior source of knowledge
about reality.
Idealists argue that fundamental truths about reality can only be understood
adequately through reason. For example in logic, the law that if argument
‘A’ is true, then argument ‘not-A’ cannot be true and vice versa. This is law
of no contradiction.
In mathematics the area of a triangle will always be one half of the length of
the base times its height.
A
1
h /2 b
B C
Area of triangle ABC = 1/2 b x h, where b is the base and h is the height of
the triangle. This is a mathematical truth obtained through reason based on
calculation of the area of a rectangle.
In metaphysics, the assertion that “Every event has a cause” is a fundamental
truth about reality. An entity with contradictory properties cannot exist; no
matter how long we search for a round square, we shall never find it because
it cannot exist.
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into complex ideas, which are combinations of simple ideas that are treated
as unified objects such as books, trees, elephants and human beings.
To produce complex ideas, John Locke discerned three activities of the
mind: (i) compounding or uniting together several simple ideas; (ii)
relating one idea with another, which produces complex ideas concerning
relationships such as husband and wife, father and son, cause and effect, all
of which are complex ideas; (iii) abstracting from a series of particular
experiences that provide us with general ideas. Individual books can have
specific colours; some are blue, black, red; or paper or hardbound covers.
All books are rectangular objects containing pages with writings in them.
So, this is John Locke’s answer to the question “is knowledge possible?”
“Yes it is”. Knowledge is gained by the individual through sensation that is
direct sensory experience or through reflection. Sensation produces merely
simple ideas which John Locke referred to as ‘concrete’. Reflection
produces complex ideas by compounding or relating simple ideas and by
abstracting the complex ideas from a series of particular incidents of
experience.
(b) John Locke’s answer to the question of the role of reason i.e. does
reason provides us with knowledge of the world? John Locke answered it
with a “No”. Without sensory experience man has no way of gaining
knowledge of the world around him. According to John Locke, there are
no innate ideas in the mind. “All knowledge is founded from, that is, it
ultimately derived from experience.”(Jon Locke (1689) Chapter One Book
II). He said that we first arrive at the concept of, say, ‘imperfection’ from
the things we experience and then we imaginatively remove these
imperfections until we form the concept of perfection.
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objects with properties that are subjectively perceived by our sense organs
making them appear different from the objects that produce them.
So, John Locke’s answer on the question “Does our knowledge represent
reality as it really is?” is that it does except only when reporting about
objects’ primary qualities, which are objectively perceived.
Thus both meaning and credibility of our beliefs must be subjected to
reality-based empirical tests. Empiricism seeks verity of propositions and
concepts in reference to objective reality.
Empiricist insights are of benefit in the exercise of formulating educational
policies and in the exercise of conducting educational practices. The
teaching of concepts during instructions for example must refer to their
meanings in this way.
Moreover there is a research method in education called ‘empirical
educational research’, Philips (2005). This method seeks to establish the
truth by reference to “real cases” from field observations. Philips defines
empirical educational research as “a broad domain of inquiry that covers
not only the work of teachers, but also covers inquiries into materials, the
processes in learners, specific subject matter, the teachers’ decision
making, the study of gender and cultural differences and their impact on
learning and access to opportunities to learn, programme evaluation that is
intended to reveal both the positive and unintended harmful classroom
interventions, the design experiments that are becoming more common as
researchers teachers and curriculum developers cooperate, and the broader
interests of those who monitor or plan at a regional or national level the
operation and organisation and funding the educational system”. Thus
empirical educational research does not deal merely with the activities of
teachers in classrooms. Nor does it deal with merely curriculum
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Apart from the direct contribution on educational thought John Locke also
made contributions in the political and moral philosophical foundations of
education. These have a bearing on the ends or fundamental purposes of
education. They address the question of whether education should be
established for achieving the common (collective) human good, in stead or
negligence, of achieving the individual person’s good without at the same
time violating his natural rights. John Locke’s thesis is that government is
justified to exist only in order to protect the natural rights of its citizens.
John Locke was the founder of the social contract theory and contributed a
lot to political and moral philosophy. He is the key source of government
by consent, rule through majority will, natural human rights, and
separation of power. He together with others influenced the move to
circumscribe or restrict the powers of the British monarchy. He stated that
although we delegate our powers and freedom to the government through
the social contract, we do not surrender them. We retain the ultimate
control of our lives. The government is always our creation and servant.
The individual citizen has ultimate control over his own life. The
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John Locke was a believer of the theory of natural law which contends that
the conduct of individuals and that of society was governed by a universal,
objective natural moral law, which is not based on human conventions.
Thus he wrote: “To understand political power right and derive it from its
origin, we must consider what state all men are naturally in, and that is a
state of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their
possessions as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature,
without asking leave or depending upon the will of any man.”
This means that all human beings possess the natural right to freedom or
liberty to control their own lives. Thus education, as a way of instilling
control on the individual’s liberty and right to choose what to do in life,
can only be legitimated by the individual person’s consent to be educated.
Or else it is an infringement on the individual’s right to liberty.
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Thus it is the will of the majority which dictates the limits of government
authority. The government exists only because it is a creation and servant
of the governed. It is there to pursue the collective good of the governed.
John Locke’s discourses on government had far reaching repercussions in
regards education. They inspired respect for natural human rights to life,
liberty and property including the right to education as a means of attaining
human good.
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This fact was recognised by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948
when it passed and proclaimed the resolution that every human being has a
right to education. (United Nations: Universal Declamation on Human
Rights, article No. 26; 1948). The article reads as follows:
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References
Yolton, John (1971) John Locke and Education; New York, Random,
House
Chapter Four
Philosophical Discourses on Education in the
Period from Seventeenth Century to the
Twentieth Century
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4.0 Introduction
Philosophical discourses on education during the period after the sixteenth
century can be grouped into two categories, namely those whose inception
occurred during the earlier period and continued to be upheld in the
subsequent era, and those that were discerned during the period after the
sixteenth century. The first category includes the philosophical movements
of idealism, empiricism, constructivism and modernism along with the
scientific revolution. These were discerned prior and during the era of
enlightenment and the wake of the scientific revolution. The second
category includes the philosophical movements of analytic philosophy,
behaviorisms, pragmatism, existentialism and post-modernism. These
tended to be reactions against earlier or antecedent advocacies and
contentions. The discourses in the first category are covered in this chapter
while those in the second category are covered in chapter five.
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George Berkeley
George Berkeley 1685-1753 is one of the staunch advocates of idealism.
He believed that sensory experiences are reducible to ideas. Ideas are such
things as the redness of a rose, the coldness of ice, the smell of freshly
mown grass, the taste of honey and the sound of a flute. Ideas are products
of the mind manifested as vivid sensory perceptions, images, memories,
feelings, thoughts and decisions or volitions. To Berkeley the idea of an
apple is the experience, image or memory of the combined mental attributes
of roundness, redness, hardness and sweetness commonly found in all
apples. Thus all that a person knows is the result of his or her own mind’s
act of perceiving, i.e. working on, sensory materials reaching the mind from
outside. Ultimate reality, in Berkeley’s view, is what each individual’s mind
produces, which in essence is not physical or material, but actually, spiritual
or immaterial.
Thus Berkeley’s type of idealism has been labelled as “subjective idealism”,
(Lawhead 2003). Every thing that exists is either in the category of minds
i.e. spirits, or in the category of ideas that such minds perceive or produce.
According to Berkeley, to exist is to be perceived. What we designate as real
is in actual fact a collection of experiences produced within our minds.
Education as a process where by the individual gains new knowledge
including understanding, constitutes essentially acts of his mind working on
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new sensory materials his senses present to his mind. In education the mind
of an individual produces new ideas or perspectives of the world that have
hither to been obscure to the individual. In terms of George Berkeley’s
subjective idealism, education is a means of raising the individual’s powers
of his mind to their fullest potentiality.
4.2 Empiricism
Empiricism is an epistemological position which contends that genuine
knowledge is what comes to us through our sensory experiences.
Empiricism contends that the only sources of genuine knowledge are our
senses of sight, hearing, touching, smelling and tasting. Thus the Baconian
method of inquiry, through observation is the only certain way of ensuring
our discovering genuine knowledge. The mind is like a blank sheet of paper
upon which experience makes its marks. John Locke stated that the child’s
mind is like ‘a white sheet of paper’ on which experiences are recorded.
(Axell, James L. (1968) Introduction to the Educational Writings of John
Locke); (Lawhead, 2003).
David Hume
After John Locke the next philosopher who advocated empiricism is David
Hume (1711-1776). He believed that all knowledge about the world comes
to us through experience. He however contended that most of our knowledge
depends on our understanding of causes and effects. Our ability to infer
causal connections among events is based on an assumed principle of
induction that “the future will be like the past”. This assumption is based
on the general thesis that the laws of nature that have been true so far will
continue to be true in future. Hume questioned this general thesis, (Lawhead
2003).
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(i) In the first instance Hume identified two types of perceptions, namely
sensations and ideas. Sensations are feelings such the pain one feels on
being burnt by intensive heat from a flame of fire; and the pleasure one feels
when one warms oneself at a fire place in a cold weather. Thus excessive
heat produces painful sensations, while moderate heat in a cold weather
produces pleasurable sensations. Ideas are images and memories of
sensations whereby one’s feelings “mimic or copy the perceptions of the
senses, but they never entirely reach the force and vivacity of the original
sentiments”; (Hume cited in Lawhead 2000 p.194). The two types of
perception differ in intensity. The sensations are more intensive than the
imaginations and memories of such feelings. Hume expressed this difference
by stating: “The most lively thought is still inferior to the dullest sensations
… When we reflect on our past sentiments and affections, our thought is a
faithful mirror and copies its objects truly; but the colours of which it
employs are faint and dull in comparison with which our original
perceptions.” (Ibid. page 195). Thus Hume views the internal processes of
perception as acts by which the mind produces feelings or sentiments in two
levels of intensity. The initial level entails acts of the mind as sensations.
The second level entails acts of the mind as ideas involving imagination,
memory, thought and acts of the will or volition, which mirror the
sensations. The second level entailing perception of ideas is less vivid than
the first one. David Hume refers to sensations, i.e. the lively perceptions of
the mind as ‘impressions’. “By the term impressions, then, I mean all our
more lively perceptions when we hear or see, or feel, or love, or hate, or
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desire or will. And impressions are distinguished from ideas which are the
less lively perceptions, of which we are conscious when we reflect on any of
those sensations or movements…” (Hume, Ibid p.195). Hume, moreover,
believed that the creative powers of the mind are not boundless. They are in
fact limited or confined to just the processes of’ ’compounding,
transposing, augmenting or diminishing the materials afforded to us by the
senses and experience’. Thus Hume did not discern the more complex
intellectual acts of the mind such as comprehension including discernment
of meaning and implicit information from explicit facts.
(ii) In the second instance, David Hume shared the empiricist insight that the
meanings of terms or ideas employed a discourse are rooted in original
sensory experiences or sensations. As we saw in Chapter Three, according to
John Locke the building blocks of knowledge are ideas. An idea is anything
that is “the immediate object of perception, thought or understanding”.
Ideas are expressed in words, such as whiteness, hardness, sweetness
thinking, motion, man, elephant, army etc. These are basic units of
knowledge or atoms of thought. The mind can’t invent a brand new idea that
it has not experienced. “Whence has it (i.e. the mind) all the materials of
reason and knowledge?” Locke posed the question. “To this I answer in one
word: From Experience” he replied. “…all our knowledge is founded and
from that it…” John Locke (1689) An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding an Edition with Introduction by Peter H. Nodditch (1975)
Oxford, Charendon Press p.105).
In a dictionary, the word ‘yellow’ is defined as the colour of a ripe lemon.
The dictionary refers one, to elements of one’s experience during one’s first
encounter with that colour to make the idea of yellow clear; that is to give it
meaning. Thus the meanings of words or terms expressing propositions or
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we need evidence of the existence of causes and effects that constitute the
facts under consideration.
(iv) In the fourth instance Hume declared that “knowledge of this relation
(i.e. the existence of causes and effects) is not attained by reasoning a
priori (i.e. before experience) but arises entirely from experience,” (Hume
cited in Lawhead p. 197). A man encountering an object that is totally new
and strange to him cannot be acquainted with its qualities and will not be
able to discover its causes and effects. Adam would not have inferred that
water could suffocate him nor that fire could burn him. Adam was unable to
infer the causes and effects of water and fire when he came to be acquainted
with these for the first time. “Our reason cannot draw any inferences
concerning real existence and matter of fact”, (Hume in Lawhead Ibid. p.
197). Causes and effects are discoverable not by reason, but by experience.
The quality of gun power to explode could not be discovered by a priori
arguments. It was discovered in practice through experience. “All of nature
and all operations of bodies are known only by experience”, (Hume in
Lawhead 2000 ibid. p.197).
This is the general thesis of empiricism that all knowledge about the world
around us reaches us through sensory experiences, The teaching and learning
activities in education and all enquiries including systematic investigations
to enable us gain new knowledge cannot be undertaken without the use of
sensory experiences. The Baconian method of modern scientific enquiry
gives support to this empiricist perspective of searching for the truth. The
entire episode of the scientific revolution came about through application of
empiricist thinking.
4.3 Constructivism
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Bruner (1966) stated that a theory of instruction should address four major
aspects: (1) predisposition towards learning, (2) the ways in which a body of
knowledge can be structured so that it can be most readily grasped by the
learner, (3) the most effective sequences in which to present material, and
(4) the nature and pacing of rewards and punishments. Good methods for
structuring knowledge should result in simplifying, generating new
propositions, and increasing the manipulation of information. In his more
recent work, Bruner (1986, 1990, and 1996) has expanded his theoretical
framework to encompass the social and cultural aspects of learning. Thus
according to Bruner’s theoretical framework, learning is an active process in
which learners construct new ideas or concepts based upon their existing
knowledge. They select and transform information, construct hypotheses,
and make decisions while deploying their abilities to reason as well as
existing cognitive structures within the minds.
References
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4.4 Modernism
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Burke 2000). Many philosophers through out time maintained that society
moved according to immutable and unchanging laws. There was a driving
force behind society’s constant changes that propelled society forwards.
In modern times the evolutions of society has been regarded as a progressive
movement rather than a retrogressive movement. Retrogression is a return to
an earlier and worse situation. Progression is an advance to a better situation.
Through the development of rational and scientific thinking human kind has
been able to conquer the world and has started looking to the stars in outer
space. Thus modernism is the progressive movement of society associated
with modernity an era whose inception was during the Enlightenment in the
18th century.
According to Barry Burke, (2000) the age of Enlightenment was
characterised by three features as follows: (i) Intellectually, there was power
of reason over ignorance. (ii) There was power of science over superstition.
(iii) There was power of order over disorder.
These were regarded as universal values that modernist culture adopted.
Modernity was revolutionary whereby the old ruling classes were replaced,
such as what happened to King Louis XVI in the 1789 French revolution.
These three features heralded the advent of capitalism as a new mode of
production and a transformation of the social order. The three features
provided the bases on which humanity was able to achieve progress.
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also the fastest and strongest. He sold them in millions. Henry Ford placed
the workers and their tools and equipment on an assembly line, so that they
built the motor vehicle in stages along a moving production line called the
‘conveyer belt’. Thus there was division of labour and specialisation among
the craftsmen placed at each stage along the assembly line. Some fixed the
engine on the chases others fixed gearboxes as the motor vehicle moved
from one stage to the next. This system of production saved factory owners
both time and costs in production. Because many cars were produced with a
short time this system became known as “mass production”. The assembling
of a car was accomplished in two days instead of 30 days. All the cars Ford
was producing were identical or standardised products.
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Thus the purpose of holistic education is to foster, guide and assist the
individual in raising his total personality, including the entire range of
capacities and endowments in him to their highest level of excellence.
References
Berman, Marshall, All that is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of
Modernity. London, Penguin, 1988.
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Montessori, Maria (1949): The Absorbent Mind, New York Dell. P. 206).
Montessori, Maria (1949): The Absorbent Mind; New York Dell. McGraw
Hill Book Company, New York.
Smith, M. K. (1994) Local Education: Community, conversation, praxis,
Buckingham: Open University Press.
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The first law upholds the Copernican astronomy. It endorses the notion that
the earth along with other planets revolve around the sun. The planets
revolve around the sun not along circular orbits, but rather along elliptic
orbits called ellipses.
The second law is more technical. It proposes that the line which links a
planet to the sun, in other words the radius of the planet’s orbit, goes through
equal areas in equal units of time. This means that one can calculate, in
number of days, the duration the planet takes to complete its revolution, or
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sweep around the sun. The earth for example, takes 365.25 days to complete
its revolution around the sun.
The third law states a mathematical formula, where by, the orbital period,
i.e. the period during which a planet completes a revolution around the sun,
is squared and proportionally related to the cube of the mean distance of the
sun to the planet, i.e. the mean radius of the planet’s orbit.
According Kuhn, Galileo’s and Kepler’s work on cosmology facilitated
greatly the prevailing perceptions of the scientific community. Later Newton
showed that Kepler’s three laws could from a single theory of motion and
planetary motion. Newton solidified and unified the paradigm shift initiated
by Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler. Keplerian cosmology represented a
coherent framework that was capable of rivalling the Aristotelian and
Ptolemic framework.
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References
Chapter Five
Philosophical Discourses on Education in the
Twentieth to Twentieth-twenty-first
Centuries
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Logical positivism grew just before World War I from discussions held by a
group of philosophers called the Vienna Circle. The group included Hans
Hahn and Moritz Schlick along with Otto Neurath who made the movement
popular in the 1910s. Otto Neurath and Rudolf Camp wrote a summary of
the logical positivist doctrine in 1929.
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The major claims it advocated included an assertion that any thing that was
not empirically verifiable was meaningless. Statements about God, ethics,
art and metaphysics, especially ontology and synthetic a priori knowledge
arrived at through synthesising were meaningless.
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An expression such as “the average woman in the world has 2.6 children” is
not an atomic fact. It is a statement of a world average figure made to relate
the number of women and to the number of children they give birth to. The
expression is thus devoid of any atomic facts or concrete objects - since
there can never be 0.6 of a child. Atomic facts cannot be broken down any
further than one. The number of atomic facts in the world is a whole number
or integer.
Towards the end of the 19th century, the advances in discovering new
knowledge through the scientific methods introduced earlier by Copernicus,
Galileo, Bacon and others caused some philosophers to think of doing
philosophy in the same ways as modern science was doing. One of these was
George Moore who published his ‘Principia Ethica,’ which argued that
analysis was vital in understanding moral problems. The method of analytic
philosophy is a generalised approach to philosophy, which involves logical
analysis. Logical analysis emphasises clear and precise approach in the
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By early 1960s the introduction of logical analysis had laid down ground for
logical atomism, which was a doctrine that Russell and Wittgenstein
propounded in dealing with meanings of expressions. Logical analysis as
described in Principia Mathematica is entirely truth- functional that allows
only for molecular propositions whose truth-values are determined by their
atomic constituent.
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References
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5.20 Pragmatism
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References
Dewey, John, (1859-1952) (1929) Experience and Nature. LaSalle Open
Court.
Dewey, John (1850-1952) (1948) Reconstruction in Philosophy Beacon
Press, Boston.
Dewy John, (1938), Democracy and Education. In \Encyclopaedia of
Philosophy of Education\.htm
Encyclopaedia Britannica (2007) “Different Conception of Education:
Model Theories of the Educated Person- Pragmatist View”. Encyclopaedia
Britannica Online Nov. 2007.
James, William, (1842-1910) (1907) “Pragmatism’s Conception of Truth”
Lecture IV. in A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking; Longmans,
Green, New York.
Lawhead, William, F. (2003) The Philosophical Journey: An interactive
Approach; McGraw-Hill. New York.
Pierce, Charles, Sanders (1839-1914); “The Fixation of Belief” in Collected
Papers 5 (371)
Pierce, Charles Sanders, “How to make Our ideas Clear” in Collected
Papers 5 (407).
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5.30 Behaviorism
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they could make rebellious patients behave like civilized mentally healthy
human beings. Reinforcing the desired or correct behaviour increases the
frequency of the desired behaviour and reduces and extinguished the
undesired behaviour.
Later, Skinner developed his research on behaviour into philosophy in
addition to the psychological studies he had started with.
He believed that the science of behaviour could solve problems related to
human behaviour. This solution however required that we give up or
denounce our belief in the “illusions” of human freedom, responsibility and
dignity.
“The free inner man who is held responsible for the behaviour of the
external biological organism is only a pre-scientific substitute of the kinds of
causes which are discovered in the course of scientific analysis. All these
alternatives lie outside the individual,” (Skinner B.F. Science and Human
Behaviour; 1953. and Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, Hackett
Publishing Co. 1972)
Skinner’s philosophy on human nature took on a hard-line view; that was
determinism.
Determinism is the claim that all events are the necessary result of previous
causes. Determinism contends that every thing has a cause. Every event is
conditioned to be just as it is by what immediately preceded it, which in turn
was conditioned by another event that preceded it. What happens must
happen - there is no alternative.
The individual is a passive object manipulated by hidden forces that are
impossible to resist. We cannot alter the future, which is laid down at the
beginning of time.
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5.32 Creativity
It is commonly thought that creativity is based on free choice and free
actions - or on originality of thought. To Skinner creativity is a product of
environmental causes that act on the artist for which he is not responsible.
Every creative activity is under the banner of behaviour control. We
compose songs that society demands to hear. We sing to please society. We
paint picture that people want to see. Our social environment causes our
songs and our paintings. The poet does not create, originate or even initiate
the poem; his behaviour of making a poem is the product of his genetic and
environmental histories.
We say that a woman has a baby, where “has” means “possesses”. To have a
baby is to come into possession of a baby. The woman who does so is then a
mother. The child is her child. But what, is the nature of her contribution?
She is not responsible for its skin colour, eye colour, strength, intelligence,
talents and other features of the baby.
Thus the mother made no positive contribution to the existence of the baby
except through conveying it heredity. The mother did not design the baby
willfully. It was designed by heredity. She merely passed to the baby half of
its genes, which she herself had inherited from her own parents. As it grows
the baby’s personality will add environment influences to it. It is only
through environmental influence that the mother will mould the child’s
personality. She will do so as part and instrument of the environment herself.
Education and teachers are environmental causes of the child’s behaviour
and personality. Education is a means of controlling and shaping the human
being in accordance with the ideals of his society. Through education we
cultivate and acquire the characteristics in our personality that our social and
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They use action verbs like “describe”, “show”, “state”, “solve”, “define”,
“explain”, “distinguish” and so forth. It is only in that way that we can find
out about what went on in the minds of the learners during the lessons. It is
thus the only way of measuring the outcomes of learning or the process of
education.
The problem at issue, in connection with testing, is that most tests cannot
measure every item that was covered by the lessons. They cover mere
samples of what was taught, leaving out large junks of the materials covered
during the lessons. Such samples may not always accurately represent what
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was taught. When a learner fails a test, it does not necessarily mean that he
did not master the subject matter covered by the lessons.
(iii) Application
The learners manifest application by applying known abstractions to
particular and concrete situations. The abstractions can be general ideas,
rules, or procedures and generalised methods. They could also be technical
principles, ideas and theories, which must be remembered and applied in the
concrete or particular situations.
(iv) Analysis
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The learners manifest this level by breaking down the known -materials into
their constituent parts whereby revealing their relative hierarchy to clarify
them or determine their relationships. Analysis can be done on elements,
relationships or organised principles.
(v) Synthesis
The learners manifest synthesis by putting together elements or parts of the
known materials to form wholes or patterns and structures that were not
clearly discernable before.
(vi) Evaluation
The learners manifest evaluation by making judgements about the value of
ideas or known materials on the basis of evidence or criteria such as
comparison with prescribed standards.
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In 1964 several authors including D.R. Krathwoh, B.S. Bloom, and B.B.
Masia wrote the following domain of the taxonomy. The classifiers of the
affective domain realised that at the bottom of the classification the process
of “internalisation” was needed. Internalisation was defined as a process
whereby the new idea gradually dominated the learner’s thinking and
motives. He began acting in the new value orientation.
At this stage the learner becomes merely sensitive to the stimulus. He shows
willingness to pay attention to the communication. The stage starts with (a)
the individual’s becoming aware of the new idea and goes on to (b) his being
willing to receive the communication and (c) selecting some aspects of the
new communication.
(ii) Responding.
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This stage follows up the new idea by doing something with it. The stage
starts by (a) acquiescence in responding, followed by (b) willingness to
respond and finally by (c) satisfaction in response.
(iii) Valuing.
This stage involves receiving the new idea as worthwhile having; this is
shown by the learner’s behaviour that is consistent to or in harmony with the
new idea or the values contained in it. Valuing starts with (a) acceptance of
the value in the idea, followed by (b) preference for the value, and by (c)
commitment to the new idea.
(iv) Organisation
The new values are already placed in the individual’s value hierarchy. They
are organised into an internally consistent system. The individual in his
behaviour has adopted them whereby he acts according to their
prescriptions. He is characterised by these values. a or value system.
Characterisation by value starts with (a) establishing a generalised set of
behaviour that is in accordance with the new values, followed by (b)
characterisation or formation of habits that are in accordance with the new
values.
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Krathwoh’s taxonomy has been criticised, as too abstract, that is not specific
enough, for curriculum development purposes where particular objectives to
be attained by learners must be specified in behavioural expressions. The
taxonomy has not provided the methodological and theoretical framework
for evaluating and measuring the affective or emotional outcomes of
processes in education. This is unlike the case of the cognitive domain
where the educational objectives are converted easily into observable
expressions of the students’ cognitive states. A reform or refinement of the
taxonomy is needed. Such a reform should examine the possibilities of
reducing desires, aspirations and so forth, to externally observable
behaviour. Plays and drama including films tend to portray a great deal of
such sentiments and beliefs overtly. They include expressions of emotions
such as deep grief through acting.
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Hole
Target-ball
Estimated Angle
Cue-ball
Cue
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that also range from beginner, intermediate to advanced levels. (iii) Complex
adoptive skills that also range from beginner, intermediate and advanced
levels.
Reference:
Bloom, Benjamin S., et al.,(1956); Taxonomy of Educational Objectives
Book I, Cognitive Domain. Allyn and Bacon. Boston MA.
Harrow, Anna J. (1972); Taxonomy of the Psychomotor Domain: A Guide
for Developing Behavioural Objectives. McKay, New York.
Krathwoh, David, R., Bloom B.S., Masia B.B. (1964), Taxonomy of
Educational Objectives. Handbook II: The Affective Domain. Allyn and
Bacon. Boston MA.
Lawhead, William, F.: Philosophical Journey: An Interactive Approach.
McGraw- Hill Book Co. New York 2003
Lawhead, William; Philosophical Questions; McGraw-Hill Book Co
Skinner, B.F. (1972): Beyond Freedom and Dignity; Alfred Knopf; New
York.
Skinner, B.F. Science and Human Behaviour; Macmillan New York 1953
Skinner, B.F. About Behaviourism Alfred Knopf, New York, 19974
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5.40 Existentialism
5.41 Introduction: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life
The meaning of human existence and the threat of meaninglessness have
been the concern of existentialism. As a philosophical movement
existentialism offers insights in the meaning of human life. It is a
philosophical trend that arose in the 19th century through the writings of
Soren Kierkegaard (1813- 1855), who was a theist and Friedrich Nietzsche
(1844-1900), who was an atheist.
No body bothered about the writings of these two until the 20th century when
existentialism became a popular movement. The 20th century writers in
existentialism include Jean-Paul Sartre (1905- 1980) Gabriel Marcel and
others. Sartre was an outspoken atheist, while Gabriel Marcel was a
Catholic. Thus both the theists and atheists embrace the concern on the
meaning and raison d’être of human existence.
Existentialism is concerned with the individual person, as he subjectively
perceives himself and the meaning of his existence. Existentialists indicate
insights on the priority of subjective choosing over objective reasoning.
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Prize for literature, which he refused to accept. He did not want to become a
tool for the establishment.
Sartre claimed that we are always free. Man cannot be sometime a slave and
some time free. He is either wholly or forever free, or he is not free at all.
Each of us is thrust into existence without any one or anything determining
what our purpose shall be. For human beings: “their existence comes before
their essence”.
“What is meant here is that first of all man exists, turns up, appears on the
scene, and afterwards defined himself- at first he is nothing, only afterwards
will he be something. He himself will have to make what he will be. He
wills himself to be after he has been thrust into existence.”
Freedom is not something we have. It is something we are. “We are
condemned to be free.”
There are situations in which one finds one’s self incapable of choosing
freely what to do, and in which one has no power to choose what to be.
Sartre calls these situations as a person’s facticity. A facticity is Sartre’s
term for those features of our past or present that we were not free to choose
and yet they set limits on the course of our lives. In spite of our facticity,
freedom prevails in the end. We are continuously deciding how the facts of
our situation fit in our present self-conception and projects. One is not born a
singer. One becomes a singer by choosing to be so.
There is what Sartre calls transcendence, which is the root of our freedom
of ability to define ourselves by our possibilities and all the ways in which
each of us is continuously creating our own future in terms of our choices,
our plans or our dreams and ambitions. Because of our transcendence, what
we have been or done in the past does not dictate our future.
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Although my past seems to weigh on me and determine who I am; but this is
only because of the way they enter into my present engagements. I could
disengage my self from them if I choose. In each moment of our existence
we are creating our present selves out of the possibilities that define our
transcendence.
“To existentialists, a human being, unlike a rock, or a cat, carries a burden
that cannot be escaped short of death - the burden of freedom, Freedom
means making a dozen of choices every day, choices in which one shapes
one’s fundamental project or plan in life, including choices of one’s beliefs,
values, and goals.” (Thomas Shipka and Arthur Minton 1996 p.228). The
individual human being is free to choose what to be in every moment of his
life.
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References:
Kaufman, Walter. Existentialism from Destohimyngevsky to Sartre;
Meridian New York 1975.
Wikipedia Free Encyclopedia Article on Behaviourism, 2009,
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5.50 Postmodernism
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aristocratic class, where wealth was based on control over land, they believe
that the present system of capitalism will fall and the proletariat will take
over; and that this change will be driven by the unstable cyclic nature of
capitalism and the alienation of labourers’ feelings that keep the system
working.
The postmodern philosophers put all these grand narratives to question and
regarded them as perhaps mere illusions. Lyotard and other postmodern
philosophers have doubted the structuralist theories as being positive
developments because: (i) Attempts to construct grand theories tend to
dismiss the naturally exiting chaos and disorder in the universe. (ii)
Metanarratives are created and reinforced by power structuralism and are
therefore not to be trusted. Metanarratives ignore the heterogeneity or
variety of human existence. Besides, metanarratives are seen to embody
unacceptable views of historical development in terms of progress towards a
specific goal. The latent diverse passions of human beings will always make
it impossible for them to be marshalled or controlled under some theoretical
doctrine or ideology. This is one reason for the fall of the Soviet Union in
the 1990s.
Lyotard proposed that metanarratives should give way to “petit recits” or
more modest and localised small narratives. His vision of progressive
politics and social organisation is that which is grounded in cohabitation of a
whole range of diverse and always locally legitimated multiplicity of
theoretical standpoints, rather than all-embracing theories. Postmodernity is
characterised by eclecticism, which is by nature devoid of any single
disciplinary core, (Chambliss 1996).
While interpreting Francois Lyotard, Mary Klages’ (2003) Postmodernism
Online: Mary.Klages@colorado.edu) stated that the postmodernist
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essence to that text or artifact. It did not have a meaning or core to under pin
it anymore.
According to Derrida, deconstruction is not a method or tool; rather it is an
occurrence of contradictions within the text or artifact itself. Thus
deconstruction is a process of pointing out contradictions between the intent
of a text or artifact and its existing manifestations.. For example if some one
can pass as the opposite sex; if a young man passes as a young woman; he is
said to be deconstructing his gender identity because there is conflict
between his outward appearance and the reality of his gender. He appears
female although he is male. In election campaigns politicians express intents
and visions of conditions in human living that are rosy and bright or pleasant
to all. The campaigners promise to achieve all these once elected. Close
examination of past political campaigns easily reveal deconstructions
between what the campaigners had promised and what actually happened
after they were elected into the public offices they were campaigning for.
The grand social and political theories or metanarratives tend to deconstruct
the essence of human living conditions. Theorisers’ of such grand social
theories confuse the reality of human living conditions with imaginary and
illusionary desires they conjure in their minds.
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Paul Freire asserted that: “The process of men’s orientation in the world
involves not just the association of sense images as for animals. It involves
above all thought and language, which is the possibility of the act of
knowing through man’s praxis by which he transforms reality. Orientation in
the world, so understood, places the question of purpose of action at the
level of critical perception of reality” (A quotation from Paul Freire in
‘Cultural Action for Freedom’: Harvard Educational Review Monograph
Series No. 1, Cambridge Massachusetts; 1970).
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them worked under very poor and miserable conditions with hardly enough
income to meet most of their basic needs. Hunger and diseases were
rampant. (Darylos, L.K.T. “A Philosophical Sketch of Functional Literacy:
The Freirean Way”, in Adult Education and Development, 39, 1999. pp143-
149).
The main concern of conscientisation was transformation of the people from
a situation of being merely regarded as objects by their employers, the
plantation owners, to being subjects whose basic right are to be restored and
justice redressed. Such a situation can only occur through educational
experiences, where the teacher and the learners discuss together and uncover
the gravity of an oppressive plight and take actions to redress it.
Conscientisation is that kind of education. It is aimed at making the
individual to use the unfair situation to his advantages. He becomes an actor
to reform such an oppressive situation. As an educational process
conscientisation has a liberating potential. It can set the individual free of the
oppressive in which he has hither-to been. These were Paul Freire’s
presuppositions as he advanced his theory on education for liberation
through the raising of the aggrieved plantation labourers’ level
consciousness about the unjust working conditions under which they lived
and worked
As it turned out, Paul Freire’s suggested informal context of education
effected a change of attitudes in respect of the unjust working conditions of
plantation workers in Brazil and elsewhere. The change of attitudes however
did not occur among the aggrieved workers as Paul Freire had envisaged. It
is the plantation owners, i.e. the employers that changed their attitudes
towards their employees’ terms and conditions of work. Plantation owners in
Brazil and else where, dropped their excessively unfair dealings with
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over grows such a need. Education stops affecting the individual since he is
now beyond its sphere of influence.
According to John Field (2006) in his book ‘Lifelong Learning and the New
Educational Order’, (cited in Wikipedia) and G. Dohmen (1996), any school
system that strives to prepare the youth for future life or for making them
accomplished after going through an education programme is attempting to
accomplish a futile it task. At the end of their programme of study the
graduates will discover that they have merely been preparing to learn more
about life and the occupations they are now taking up. It has been realised
world wide that formal learning typically concentrated in the earlier stages
of life can no longer sustain an individual throughout their life.
around and to apply such insights in meeting emerging needs and adequately
confront new problems in their lives.
Lifelong learning has the following functions: - (i) It remedies the defects or
inadequacies of schooling; (ii) It also compensate those who have not had a
chance of or those who missed the opportunities of entering any schools and
those who dropped out of the school system prematurely. (iii) It integrates
the process of educating learners holistically and it thus complements the
formal education system. (iv) It also promotes the democratic principle of
according all members in society access to education.
Societies all over the world are facing rapid changes under the influence of
science and technology, quickening the pace of life in all social spheres
including most fields of human occupation. There is hardly a new innovation
that is not accompanied by a chain of other changes in the lives of people.
Every innovation tends to be accompanied by structural changes in
previously accumulated knowledge. What we learnt at school tends to
become obsolete in just a few years. We have to learn and accommodate
new innovations that keep on emerging from time to time.
Lifelong learning like the process of education, takes place in three contexts,
a formal context, an informal context and a nonformal context. In all these
three contexts the acquisition of knowledge, competences and attitudes or
values occurs among learners of all ages throughout their life spans.
(i) The formal context involves full time scholars who follow formally
prescribed programmes of study, which have clearly defined learning
objectives, contents, methods as well as intended learning outcomes. On
attaining the intended learning outcomes the scholars are granted formally
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(ii) The informal context involves incidental learning whereby the scholars
spontaneously acquire new knowledge, attitudes, and even competences in
incidental encounters with situations that present learning opportunities
during the course of other planned activities. This context is not deliberately
arranged as and organised learning endeavour; it has no learning objectives,
contents, methods and intended learning outcomes. It merely happens during
the course of the individual’s preoccupations with other engagements in life.
It is nonetheless an opportunity for the individual to learn. As he listens to
conversations of, for example fellow passengers in a bus he is traveling in,
or while exchanging greetings with an acquaintance, the individual learns
something he feels he needs to know.
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‘‘petit recit’ or small narratives, which meet diverse needs of the human
race.”
Lyotard stated: “Metanarratives should give way to petit recit.” It involves
cohabitation of a whole range of diverse and always reflects postmodernist
eclecticism. Globalism was initially a locally legitimated multiplicity of
theoretical viewpoints rather than all embracing theories. Through a process
of informal education that deploys diffusion and adoption of such theoretical
view-points, globalisation spreads the multiplicity of theoretical view-points
throughout the world via modern mass communication technologies. It
causes convergence of divers ideas, beliefs and cultural values held by
communities galore all over the world to occur. People become aware of and
begin to understand and appreciate the beliefs, values and technologies of
others that are outside their own communities. Globalisation induces
tolerance and cooperation among various ethnic and religious groupings,
including groupings based on different political ideologies.
universal values that are inalienable and not circumscribed by any cultural or
legislative measures. The philosophy of human rights addresses the question
of the existence of human rights that are naturally inalienable, universal and
have justification and legal status. John Locke (1689) regarded human
beings’ rights to life, liberty and property as basic natural human
prerogatives.
The global policy of education for all is based on the human right to
education. It advocates that education is a fundamental right to every human
individual in the whole world as it was envisaged in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Thus the right to education for the
human race is an international norm covering all people living today. It is
universal, and it is especially concerned with groups of mankind that have in
the past been marginalised and denied of the prerogative to education.
Lyotard, Foucault and other prominent postmodernists attacked the
marginalisation and neglect, by those in authority, of the interests and needs
of diverse communities in every country world wide.
The basic presupposition the world community had in resolving to adopt
education for all, as a global policy of education was that too many of
mankind in the world are denied of their right to have access to education.
The global policy was proclaimed precisely in a document entitled “World
Declaration on Education for All” that was passed, accepted and adopted by
all United Nations member countries at the Jomtien conference of 1990.
It was argued in that document that whereas the nations of the world had, in
1948 proclaimed through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that
“every human being has a right to education” and in spite of great efforts
made by many countries in the world to provide education to all their
nationals, nonetheless, there were more than 100 million children, 60 percent
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of them were girls, who had no access to primary education. There were also
960 million adults who were illiterate, two thirds of whom were women. In
addition, there were more than 100 million and countless adults who had
failed to complete basic education programmes, and had acquired no
knowledge or skills at all.
The World Declaration of Education form All was therefore proclaimed to
match theses challenges to the right of all mankind to education. The
declaration contained ten articles. They presented an expanded vision in the
provision of education with increased resources and other supporting
facilities that would result in broadening and universalising access to basic
education throughout the world. The learning environment was to be
strengthened and enhanced through education policy reforms in every
member country, and through increased partnerships as well as mobilisations
of the necessary fiscal and human resources to support the provisions of
basic education, even and especially among the poorest countries, for
improvement of the lives of their citizens and for the transformation of their
societies.
key to, though not sufficient condition for, social improvement and the
world- wide attainment of individual and collective happiness.
(4) Traditional knowledge and indigenous cultural heritage have a value and
validity in their own right and capacity to both define and promote
development; they however need to be linked with modern educational
advances for their greater contribution to human welfare. (5) The current
provision of education is seriously deficient and it must be made more
relevant, quantitatively improved and made universally available. (6) Sound
basic education is fundamental to the strengthening of higher levels of
education and scientific and technological literacy as well as capacity, thus
self- reliant development in each country. (7) The present and coming
generations must be given an expanded vision of, and renewed commitment
to, basic education, to address the scale and complexity of the challenges
that such generations have to face in future.
Philosophers of education such as Paul Hirst (2000) interpret the World
Declaration of Education for All as a global proclamation of the social
practices of education which are values laden, the execution of which
achieve the eudaimonia or the ultimate human well being, (Maganga 2007).
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there is a fundamental identity between EFA and development, and that each
brings separate opportunities for securing the gains.
Governments of the world are challenged to recognise the validity of this
triumvirate of arguments. Each of the world governments is also challenged
to define its own policy priorities and design its own routes for achieving the
EFA six goals.
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References
Aspin, David, N. and Chapman, Judith (2007), “Lifelong Learning Concepts
and Conceptions”, in David N. Aspin (ed.); Philosophical Perspectives on
Lifelong Learning; Springer, ISBN 1482061827.
Baltes, Paul (2000); “Wisdom”. In A. Kazdin (ed.) Encyclopedia of
Psychology; Washington D.C. & New York American Psychological
Association and Oxford University Press.
Bellatalla, Luciana,(2009) “Philosophy of Education: From Elitism to
Democracy.” In 20 World Conference of Philosophy Logo; Paideia
Online.
Burke, Barry (2000) “Modernism” in Encyclopedia of Informal Education:
post—modernism@innformal education page.
Darylos, L.K.T. “A Philosophical Sketch of Functional Literacy: The
Freirean Way”, in Adult Education and Development, 39, 1999. Pp143-149).
Field, John (2006): Lifelong Learning and the New Educational Order;
Trentham Books, cited in Wikipedia.
Freire, Paulo ‘Cultural Action for Freedom’: in Harvard Educational
Review Monograph Series No. 1, Cambridge Massachusetts; 1970).
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Freire, Paulo (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed New York, Herder &
Herder.
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APPENDIX I
PRINCIPLES OF EDUCATION:
LECTURES:
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Lecture One
Conceptualising Education
1.1Purposes of Education as Philosophical Bases and Guiding Principles
Education as a process is a deliberate conscious undertaking organised by
human beings. As such, it is goal-directed. It has purposes or goals it is
designed to attain. Such purposes form the principles to guide the process of
education. A study of the purposes behind human engagements is a
philosophical study. Philosophy poses questions on the meanings of human
activities and engagements. A question such as “What is the purpose of crop
production?” is a philosophical question demanding the fundamental or
ultimate “raison d’être”, that is, reason for existing. The question is on why
people engage in growing crops. Similarly, the question “What is the
purpose of education?” seeks an answer that tell us why education exists, or
what education attempts to achieve, or what education was instituted to
achieve.
Education in all societies is instituted to pursue predetermined ends in
society. Plato who is renowned Ancient Greek philosopher set up an
academy in Athens. One of Plato’s major concerns, at that academy, was
how to bring up a generation that was sensitive to the service of society;
-which he called “The Republic”. In that society every one was supposed to
be usefully deployed according to their abilities. Plato believed that the
character and survival of any state depended on the quality of its people and
their rulers. It was education that was to raise the quality of the people in the
state. Each individual was to cultivate excellence in his abilities to render
service to the Republic. The end or purpose of education in Plato’s Republic
was a well-ordered and highly capable state to ensure its survival. Thus in
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Principles have three major functions. (i) Principles cause the existence of
entities. In the case of rainfall, the condensation of water vapour from a
gaseous state to a liquid state causes the occurrence of rainfall. (ii) Principles
explain or give meaning to the entities they underlie. People grow crops to
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procure food to eat and thus sustain life. (iii) Principles guide or orientate the
entities they under lie. Rain falls towards the ground due to the force of the
earth’s gravity on the droplets of water after their losing the capacity to float
during the change from water vapour to liquid water.
Level Four
Level Three
Level Two
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Level One
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At the individual level, the purpose is the individual’s good, such the
attainment of educational high qualifications. In Plato’s Republic, this
principle was excellent abilities of people and their rulers in their services to
the Republic. This entailed individual excellence.
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Lecture Two
The Concepts of Philosophy and Philosophy
of Education
2.1 The Concept of Philosophy
Philosophy
It was stated in lecture one that principles of education in a society are
generalisations or universals, which serve as bases or foundations of the
process of education. They give a meaning and an orientation to, and even
cause the existence of, educational policies and practices. When they cause
the existence of such educational policies and practices, they form the
purpose or raison d’être of education. It was also stated that a study of the
purposes behind human engagements and institutions is a philosophical
study.
Philosophy poses questions on the meaning of human activities. It tries to
find out the fundamental “raison d’être” or reason for an entity to exist, or
what it was instituted for.
Etymologically the term “philosophy” is derived from the Greek words
“philas” and “philia”, which mean love or search for or pursuit of. The other
word forming part of philosophy is “sophia” which means wisdom. Thus
philosophy is defined as the love of wisdom, or the pursuit of wisdom. In
other words philosophy is an ardent pursuit for the truth, the real and the
right.
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Plato stated that the ultimate reality, which comprises the fundamental
principle of existence, is that which transcends knowledge gained by mere
use of sensory experience. This ultimate knowledge is achieved through the
use of pure reason alone.
Philosophy involves constant search for answers to philosophical questions.
Philosophical questions seek knowledge and understanding of the nature and
meaning of phenomena in the universe and in human life. It also deals with
ultimate principles on which human engagements are based.
2.2 Facets of philosophy
Facets of Philosophy
Facets of philosophy are points of view in which philosophy can be defined.
They are supplementary rather than competitive alternatives. There are five
of them. They are part of the whole essential conception of philosophy. They
are like a palm with four fingers and thumb.
METHOD ATTITUDE
SYNTHESIS
LOGICAL LANGUAGE
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Lecture Three
The main Branches of Philosophy Relevant in
Education
3.1Metaphysics
Metaphysics
The term “metaphysics” originates from the Greek word “meta” which
means above or beyond, and the Greek word “physica” which means
material reality. So, “metaphysics” literally means reality that is beyond or
above material reality. Most Greek writings were concerned with physics or
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3.3 Axiology
Axiology
Axiology comes from the Greek word “axios”, which means of like value,
and the Greek word logos, which means theory on. Thus axiology means
“theory on value”. Value is the desired or perfect good. Axiology is
concerned with questions and theories on value, what is good, right, proper,
of the ideal or perfect appearance, taste artistic impression, just or fair and
morally perfect.
Axiology has two branches, namely (i) aesthetics or aesthetic values or
beauty and artistic, pleasant to listen to, touch, smell, see, or taste; or
arousing fine feelings or sentiments; (ii) ethics or moral values including
proper, or correct, conduct, upright behaviour and just dealings with fellow
human beings.
3.4 Logic
Logic
This is a branch of philosophy that involves the study of the structures and
justifications of sound arguments. It uses two patterns of reasoning i.e.
deductive and inductive reasoning.
Deductive reasoning begins with generalisations and proceeds to specifics.
Inductive reasoning begins with specifics and proceeds to probable general
rules or theory.
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being transferred to the mind through external means. The role of the teacher
is to help the learner in conceiving ideas, which are already present in the
learner’s mind.
Lecture Four
The Concept of Education and the Contexts
in which it Operates
4.1: The Concept of Education
The Concept of Education
Etymologically education is derived from three Latin expressions, namely
educatum, which means the act of teaching or training, educere, which
means to lead out or draw out, educare, which means to bring up or to raise.
The three terms have the root educa, which means to draw from within. This
implies that each child is born with some innate or in-born tendencies,
capacities, talents or powers and other such qualities or attributes. Education
has to draw out these capabilities and talents so as to develop them‘.
Educare and educere also mean bring up or lead out and develop. In this
sense, education means developing the innate qualities of the child to the
full.
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The first one denote education as the extent, measure or level of cumulative
attainment of distinctive knowledge and understanding that an individual
accomplishes that places him clearly above the average person in his
community. In short education is an attainment of targeted knowledge and
competences to merit desired and recognised qualifications. The individual
with such an attainment is referred to as “a learned man”. He is recognised
as a scholar with educational qualifications. This is what parents send their
children to schools and colleges to fetch.
The second meaning of education, which is related to the first one, denotes
education as a dynamic on-going process in which an individual is involved.
It is a process where by the individual acquires and assimilates information
and understanding, processes and applies it in different situations to meet his
needs and those of others he is concerned with.
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There are three contexts in which the process of education occurs: - That is
(i) Formal Education (ii) formal Education and (iii) Nonformal Education.
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(c) Formal education provides awards to individuals who attain the set
standards in learning achievement through officially accredited and legally
recognised certification institutions that confer such awards. These awards
signify the learners’ attainment of officially recognised educational
qualifications.
(d) Formal education normally uses face-to-face instructions, rather than,
distance instructions and machine-based individualised instruction.
Formal education is conducted in schools and other formal education
institutions, which are registered as legitimate providers of education.
(e) Formal education is conducted in schools and other formal education
institutions, which are registered as legitimate providers of education.
Formal education normally uses face-to-face
instructions, rather than, distance instructions and machine-
based individualised instruction.
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Lecture Five
Measuring the Outcomes of the Process of
Education
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They use action verbs like “describe”, “show”, “state”, “solve”, “define”,
“explain”, “distinguish” and so forth. It is only in that way that we can find out
about what went on in the minds of the learners during the lessons. It is thus the
only way of measuring the outcomes of learning or the process of education.
The problem at issue, in connection with testing, is that most tests cannot
measure every item that was covered by the lessons. They cover mere samples
of what was taught, leaving out large junks of the materials covered during the
lessons. Such samples may not always accurately represent what was taught.
When a learner fails a test, it does not necessarily mean that he did not master
the subject matter covered by the lessons.
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(iii) Application
The learners manifest application by applying known abstractions to particular
and concrete situations. The abstractions can be general ideas, rules, or
procedures and generalised methods. They could also be technical principles,
ideas and theories, which must be accurately remembered in the first place and
then applied faithfully in the concrete or particular situations.
(iv) Analysis
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The learners manifest this level of the cognitive domain by breaking down the
known materials into their constituent parts whereby revealing their relative
hierarchy to clarify them or determine their relationships. Analysis can be done
on elements, or on their relationships or on their underlying principles. The
outcome of analysis is a clear conception of the known materials.
(v) Synthesis
The learners manifest synthesis by putting together elements or parts of the
known materials to form wholes or patterns and structures that were not clearly
discernable before. Synthesis eliminates blurring details while depicting the
most important parts of the known materials to obtain holistic perspectives of
knowledge.
(vi) Evaluation
The learners manifest evaluation by making judgements about the value of the
ideas or known materials on the basis of evidence or criteria such as comparison
with prescribed standards. In evaluating the known materials the learners seek to
determine the value or usefulness of the knowledge they are engaged in
acquiring in respect of such learners’ needs.
At this stage the learner becomes merely sensitive to the stimulus. He shows
willingness to pay attention to the communication. The stage starts with (a)
the individual’s becoming aware of the new idea and goes on to (b) his being
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willing to receive the communication and (c) selecting some aspects of the
new communication.
(ii) Responding.
This stage follows up the new idea by doing something with it. The stage
starts by (a) acquiescence in responding, followed by (b) willingness to
respond and finally by (c) satisfaction in response.
(iii) Valuing.
This stage involves receiving the new idea as worthwhile having; this is
shown by the learner’s behaviour that is consistent to or in harmony with the
new idea or the values contained in it. Valuing starts with (a) acceptance of
the value in the idea, followed by (b) preference for the value, and by (c)
commitment to the new idea.
(iv) Organisation
The new values are already placed in the individual’s value hierarchy. They
are organised into an internally consistent system. The individual in his
behaviour has adopted them whereby he acts according to their prescriptions.
He is characterised by these values. a or value system. Characterisation by
value starts with (a) establishing a generalised set of behaviour that is in
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Krathwoh’s taxonomy has been criticised, as too abstract, that is not specific
enough, for curriculum development purposes where particular objectives to
be attained by learners must be specified in behavioural expressions. The
taxonomy has not provided the methodological and theoretical framework for
evaluating and measuring the affective or emotional outcomes of processes in
education. This is unlike the case of the cognitive domain where the
educational objectives are converted easily into observable expressions of the
students’ cognitive states. A reform or refinement of the taxonomy is needed.
Such a reform should examine the possibilities of reducing desires,
aspirations and so forth, to externally observable behaviour. Plays and drama
including films tend to portray a great deal of such sentiments and beliefs
overtly. They include expressions of emotions such as deep grief through
acting.
acuity to estimate the angle between two lines. That is the line from the cue-
ball to target-ball line, and the line from target-ball to the hole.
Hole
Target-ball
Estimated Angle
Cue-ball
Cue
-
(1) Reflex Movements.
These are involuntary actions of the body made instinctively in response to
stimulus. They are subdivided into (i) Segmental reflexes, or movements of
merely certain parts of the body. (ii) Inter-segmental reflexes or movements
certain interconnected part of the body. (iii) Supra-segmental reflexes. These are
movements of the whole body.
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Lecture Five
Lecture Six
Thoughts on the Purposes of Education
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6.0 Introduction
Introduction
Different philosophers and thinkers have written on the purposes of
education. They have generally proposed three kinds of purposes of
education (i) education for attaining the good or survival of the society, (ii)
education for attaining the good of the individual and (iii) education for the
pursuit of excellence in the subject or matter of education.
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The state needed to have a sound political system, which was only possible
if it had a sound education system. Education was therefore instituted to
promote the welfare and survival of the state. In the Republic the young
generation was categorised according to their mental abilities into golden
boys, silver boys and iron boys. The brightest golden boys were to be
educated to occupy the highest offices as philosopher kings in the Republic.
The silver boys who were second in mental capacities were to be trained as
defenders of the Republic. The lowest level in mental capacities the iron
boys were to be prepared for physical work and to produce food and other
commodities for the Republic.
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John Locke (1632- 1704), the founder of the social contract theory
contributed a lot to political thought. He is the key source of government by
consent, majority rule, natural rights, separation of power. He together with
others influenced the move to circumscribe or restrict the powers of the
British monarchy. He stated that although we delegate our powers and
freedom to the government through the social contract, we do not surrender
them. We retain the ultimate control. The government is always our creation
and servant. The individual citizen has ultimate control over his life. Locke
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advocated liberal democracy by social contract and rule through the will of
the majority of individuals in the state.
John Stuart Mill was also the founder of what has come to be called
“classical liberalism” to distinguish it from the liberalism of left wing
politics of to day. John Stuart Mill followed through John Locke’s political
philosophy. Liberalism comes from the Latin word ‘libertas’, which means
liberty or freedom. Classical liberalism emphasises the freedom of the
individual. It includes the freedom of the individual from inappropriate
government control and individual freedom to pursue his individual
interests. Mill sought for principles that would limit the power of
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6.5 Marxism
Marxism
Marxism claimed that the fundamental principle of a just society is that the
goods of society be distributed equally. In the ideal society private
ownership of property would be abolished. The community would hold the
ownership of property. In that ideal society there would be no extreme
wealth and no extreme poverty. Society would be ruled by the maxim “from
each according to his ability and to each according to his needs.” This is
communism. It means that society should demand the best output from the
individual. In exchange, the community would give each individual a share
in accordance to his needs, rather than giving him a share in proportion to
level of his contribution.
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the state, not in the individual. Thus the individual has no say in determining
the purpose of education.
There are no absolute truths what have been discovered as true to day may
be found false in future because situations are bound to change. In our
everyday discovery of new knowledge and experimentations with ideas and
testing what we assume true, we may discover that the old truths are in fact
falsehoods. Truth is temporary.
The curriculum content should not be burdened with dead wood, i.e. subjects
that are unrelated to the pupils’ lives and every-day experiences.
Most of the above citations have been presented to show the extent to which
they support the pre-eminency of society at the expense of supporting the
pre-eminence of the individual in deciding on the purpose of education in a
given society. Education should serve as a tool with which to achieve the
good of society or the collective good, rather than serving as a tool with
which to achieve the good of the individual.
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the individual to decide on the purpose of education for him or his children,
not the government.
God made the child. God is good. The child is good by nature. Whatever we
find wrong in the child, he learnt it from his interactions with evil people.
The teacher should guide the child according to his nature. “ Let him know
nothing because you have told him, but because he has learnt it on his own.
Let him not be taught science, let him discovery it” The purpose of
education was to foster the good nature of the child and to protect him from
being contaminated with evil. The child was to learn naturally by following
his natural dispositions. “The child is not a miniature adult.” (Jean Jacques
Rousseau: Emile)
6.91Johann Pestalizzi
Johann Pestalozzi
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(i) All creation existed in a unit, therefore all the properties making up
the world are internally connected to one another. (ii) A constituent of any
thing reflects the structure and organisation of the whole. (Each entity in the
universe reflects the structure and organisation of the universe). (iii)
Whatever an entity is to become is generally present at the moment of its
birth. (iv) Latent characteristics of an entity including, powers, knowledge
and so forth, unfold with progressive exposure to physical materials and
experiences which make “the inner become the out”- i.e. realisation of
talents. (v) Mathematics is the language of the universal laws that stem
from the creator and govern all creation.
These five propositions formulated by Froebel came to known as “Froebel’s
first principles”. They were reflected in the nature of the child. They were
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“Man contains within himself the potential for perfection of body and mind
and spirit. Excises of the children’s emerging capacities could lead the
children to progressively higher levels of physical, intellectual and moral
development” (Down 1978).
6.93 Existentialism
Existentialism
Existentialism is a philosophy which contends that the individual person is
free and is not to be culturally marshalled or coerced by society. He has
basic rights, which should not be infringed upon by social machinations.
Society has no right to determine the essence of an individual person. That
is his prerogative. The individual has the basic right to choose what to
become. We are what we are because we chose to be so. Human beings are
not already predetermined personalities. For human beings existence
precedes essence. The essence of an individual is his personality. The
individual first exists, and then he becomes a personality, i.e. his essence. It
is he who chooses what to be or what his essence should be.
the authentic person. Schools are nothing but means of manipulating and
controlling the individual. They structure instructions to make the
individual attain learning objectives which they pre-determine and prescribe
or set for him to achieve. They choose what he should be like, without his
consent. He is never consulted on whether or not he wishes to achieve those
set objectives.
Lecture Seven
Education for Democratisation
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king, pharaoh, or emperor or who ever such leader, received their authority
to rule from God, or gods. The ruler was expected to follow moral codes and
standards of justice to make his rule pleasing to the divine powers to which
he owed his rule.
The most appropriate people to hold the highest political offices in Plato’s
Republic were philosopher kings because the best at philosophy were
considered best able to act justly and realise the common good. Aristotle
saw humans as political animals i.e. social animals living in organised
communities for the pursuit of the highest common good. The state or polis
was the highest form of an organised community. Political power was the
result of inequalities in skills and virtues. No individual member of the
community was self-sufficient in all qualities. To be complete a person
needed to live in an organised community where his inadequacies would
find qualities complementary to his own. Justice is a necessary virtue in
civic life. The ideal ruler embodies the moral virtue of justice, treating every
one fairly.
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political authority. They all were divine in the sense that they had within
them an image of God. A democracy was to give them all equal share of
political authority. Such a political authority would be a perfect application
of the justice theory require the government to serve the cause of justice.
Hobbes concluded that the state arises from common agreement to raise the
community out of its natural egoistic tendency. Establishing a government,
which is to be vested with complete control over the community and is in
position to control human interactions and administer justice, is the only way
of rescuing the community out of its natural egoistic tendency. Left to
follow their natural impulses people would act brutally, towards one another.
Without a government a situation of war of all against all would arise. A
government is a practical necessity.
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is a justified claim to something that others have certain duties with respect
to the possessor of the right. John Locke insisted that human rights are
natural prerogatives to human beings and that the government cannot take
them away. They are indefeasible or inalienable. (i.e. the cannot be made
void; they cannot be nullified). We possess these rights in the ‘state of
nature’. The state of nature is an image of a situation where human beings
live without any government. The original organised society under a
government was conceived as an original agreement, or social contract,
negotiated among people before government comes into power.
Among the natural moral rights are the preservation of our own life, health,
liberty and possessions. In other words natural rights to life, liberty and
property. The government can never justifiably violate these natural rights.
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7.1 Democracy
Democracy literary means rule by the people or majority rule. It was coined
from the Greek terms ‘demos’, which means people and ‘kratos’ which
means rule.
In the middle of the 5th century B.C. ‘democracy’ among the ancient Greek
city-states denoted a political system that was run and dictated to by the
whole population of citizens in the city.
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Direct democracy is a political system whereby the citizens vote on all major
political decisions. There are no intermediaries or representatives. Relatively
small communities such as the city-states in Ancient Greec have applied
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The first communities to use direct democracy were the Athenians during
the 5th century BC. During those early days democracy had two distinct
features.
(ii) It had an assembly of all the citizens. All the Athenian citizens were
eligible to contribute in discussions on public affairs and vote in the
assembly, which set law of the city-state. Women and slaves however were
denied of both of political rights of allotment and inclusion in the assembly.
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the government is our creation and servant. We retain the ultimate control
over our lives.
Indirect democracy rule is rule by majority will. Each and every individual
citizen in society has a share in political authority as well as in the economic
prosperity and well being of the state. This political system owes its
inception in Europe to the Era of Enlightenment, where new theories about
human nature and reality, along with scientific discoveries became
influential in society. It changed thought and orientations in favour of liberal
democracy, leading thinkers political thinkers like John Locke, Jean Jacques
Rousseau and Friedrich Froebel to new insights. These political theorists
were driven to two basic questions concerning a conceptual distinction
between state and government. “State referred to a set of lasting institutions
through which power is distributed and its use justified. These institutions
include an assembly to make laws, an executive to implement such laws and
a judiciary to supervise their just application. Government refers to specific
group of people who occupy positions in these institutions and exercise
political powers vested in such institutions.
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political power. Justice implies that all citizens in a democracy are treated
fairly or justly. Fraternity implies mutual respectful, friendly, harmonious
and tolerant relations among all citizens in the democracy, following their
equal political rights. Social democracy should guarantee equal
opportunities to all members in society regardless of the creed, ethnic
grouping or political allegiance. It should also provide maximum freedom to
every citizen letting him develop and exploit his capacities and talents in all
sphere of human occupation.
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education in all its three contexts, formal informal and nonformal education
contexts. At school the individual learns the theoretical aspects of
democracy. In his occupational engagement after completing school the
individual participates in creating the government of the people the practical
aspects of democracy. This is practical part. It is also a context of education,
enlightening the individual about the extent to which democracy actually
works in practice.
Lecture Eight
Education for Liberation and the Process of
Conscientisation
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Definitions
To liberate some one is to set him free from the control of someone else, so
that the liberated person is in control of his own life. It is a restoration of the
natural right of liberty. Thus liberation from colonial rule or foreign
occupation of political authority in a territory results in empowering people
in that territory to rule themselves- restoring their right to control their own
lives. It is then an act of restitution to redress grievances against natural
justice.
Education for Liberation
Paul Freire (1921-1997), an influential thinker about education in the late
twentieth century was the first philosopher to concern himself with
oppressed people whose natural rights to liberty and property were violated.
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Paul Freire asserted that: “The process of men’s orientation in the world
involves not just the association of sense images as for animals. It involves
above all thought and language, which is the possibility of the act of
knowing through man’s praxis by which he transforms reality. Orientation in
the world, so understood, places the question of purpose of action at the
level of critical perception of reality” (A quotation from Paul Freire article
on ‘Cultural Action for Freedom:’ Harvard Educational Review Monograph
Series No. 1, Cambridge Massachusetts; 1970).
estates, such coffee and sugar plantation. They grew commercial crops on
large scales and employed large numbers of labourers. It was a common
practice among plantation owners to pay meagre wages to their workers, and
provided little or no social amenities to their employees. The majority of
them worked under very poor and miserable conditions with hardly enough
income to meet most of their basic needs. Hunger and diseases were
rampant. (Darylos, L.K.T. “A Philosophical Sketch of Functional Literacy:
The Freirean Way”, in Adult Education and Development, 39, 1999. pp143-
149).
The main concern of conscientisation was transformation of the people from
status of being regarded merely as objects by their employers, the plantation
owners, to being subjects whose basic right are restored and justice
redressed. Such a situation can only occur through educational experiences,
where the teacher and the learners discuss together and uncover the gravity
of an oppressive plight and take actions to redress it. Conscientisation is that
kind of education. It is aimed at making the individual use the unjust
situation to his advantages. He becomes an actor to reform such an
oppressive situation. As an educational process conscientisation has a
liberating potential. It can set the individual free of the oppressive plight in
which he has hither-to been.
Lecture Nine
Principles behind Education for All
There were more than 100 million and countless adults who failed to
complete basic education programmes and several millions who merely
satisfied the attendance requirements in basic education programmes, but
acquired no knowledge or any skills at all.
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(UN1948), and the many human rights documents and treaties that followed
that UN declaration of 1948.
The philosophical basis of human rights is concerned with the existence,
nature and justification of human rights. Philosophical inquiries pose
questions such as: “Do human beings have rights?” “And what are they
rights to?” “Are such rights universal and independent of legal enactment?
Or they inalienable?”
what to think, what to say and in ways to act. (iv) Political Rights: These are
rights that protect the liberty of people to participate in politics through
actions such as communicating, assembling, protesting, voting and serving
public offices. They are based on the presuppositions entailed in democratic
principles of liberty, equality and justice in the sharing of political power
among citizens in a democratic state. (v) Equality Rights: These are rights,
which guarantee equal citizenship, equality before the law and
nondiscrimination. (vi) Social or Welfare Rights: These are rights that
require provision of services such as education to every citizen without any
discrimination. They also require the protection of all citizens from severe
poverty and starvation as well any other extreme hardships in life such as
contagious diseases and epidemics. Among these Social or Welfare right is
the human right to education/ It is expressed in the United Nations:
Universal Declamation on Human Rights, article No. 26; 1948). The article
reads as follows:
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• (3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall
be given to their children.”
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(v) Human rights have right holders. A person or agency having a particular
right is said to be a right holder. Human rights impose obligations on the
government of a country in which the right holder resides.
the criminal.
Citizens establish a government and delegate to it the authority to protect
their rights. Government must exercise political authority solely for the end
of protecting their citizens.
9.3 Political and Moral Philosophical Background to Human Rights
Human rights are based on John Locke’s theory of natural law. According
to him, there is ‘a law of nature’ which is a universally binding moral law
based on reason that obliges every human being to comply with in view of
preserving his life.
This ‘law of nature, confers upon every human being rights or entitlements
to life, liberty, and property. Life is most precious possession each of us has.
Life transcends all other possession of the individual. It enables him to
acquire and accumulate all other possessions. Liberty is the first defense we
have in preserving our lives. It places in our hands the power to control our
own lives. Properties are means of livelihood. The term property is derived
from the Latin word proprius, which means “one’s own”.
Should any one threaten your rights by seeking to murder you, to enslave
you, or to steal from you or forcefully appropriate your possessions i.e. what
ever means of livelihood you possess - you are authorised by this “law of
nature” to protect your rights by resisting, punishing and taking reparation or
restitution.
Human rights are also based John Stuart Mill’s utilitarian theory. The
legitimate government was the one that promoted the happiness of its
individual citizens. The most appropriate form of government to exercise
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political power in compliance with majority will is the one that seeks to
produce the greatest amount of happiness to the greatest number of people.
(2) Education can help in ensuring a safer, healthier, more prosperous and
environmentally sound world, while simultaneously contributing to global
social, economic and cultural progress, tolerance and international
cooperation. Education is a means to the ends of human well being and
prosperity. This principle is based on utilitarian philosophical contention that
what is morally proper to do for any society is to ensure the provision of the
greatest amount of happiness to the greatest number of people.
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(3) Education is an indispensable key to, though not sufficient condition for,
personal and social improvement. Education is a key factor in raising the
qualities of people and their achieving excellence in their capacities.
(4) Traditional knowledge and indigenous cultural heritage have a value and
validity in their own right. Moreover they have a capacity to both define and
promote development. They however need to be linked with modern
educational advances for their greater contribution to human welfare.
(5) The current provision of education is seriously deficient and it must be
made more relevant, qualitatively improved and made universally available.
The provision of education globally is deficient in terms of its coverage,
which is not universal; only a portion of the world population has full access
to formal education. The provision is, besides, of poor quality. Its quality
needs to be raised for it to be effective.
(6) Sound basic education is fundamental to the strengthening of higher
levels of education and scientific and technological literacy and capacity and
thus self-reliant development in each country.
(7) The present and coming generations must be given an expanded vision
of, and a renewed commitment to basic education, to address the scale and
complexity of the challenges that such generations have to face in future.
Philosophers of education such as Peter Hirst (2005) interpret the World
Declaration of Education for All as a global policy proclamation of the
social practices of education, which are value laden, the execution of which
achieves desired human good. Education is a means to an end, which
is the eudemonia or ultimate human well being.
During the decade 1990-2000 several ventures were launched in all member
countries all over the world. There were reports monitoring students’
achievements that enabled countries to share experiences and to encourage
one other in forging ahead with putting into actions the global policy they
had themselves proclaimed.
Many countries introduced educational reforms to accommodate the
dimensions agreed upon in Jomtien. Countries replaced their national
education policies with the global policy.
The monitoring reports on the implementation of the Jomtien declaration
were made available to all member states at a follow up world summit on
education. This follow up summit was called the World Education Forum . It
was held at Dakar, Senegal in April 2000. It was aimed at reviewing the
progress made in the implementing the global policy and to redesign and
streamline actions for achieving better results. The reports from every
member country were analysed and new resolutions on what to do were
passed. The Dakar summit summarised its 21 resolutions in a document
called Framework for Action on Education for All.
The resolutions reaffirmed the commitments made at Jomtien. The
framework also set targets for the complete achievement of education for all
by 2015. Among the clauses in the framework is clause number 5 which
deplored the fact that: “But it is unacceptable in the year 2000 that more than
113 million children have no access to primary education and 880 million
adults are illiterate, gender discrimination continues to permeate education
systems and the quality of learning and acquisition of human values and
skills fall short of aspirations and needs of individuals and society.”
The framework set up six goals to be achieved by 2015 as follows:
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(1) Early childhood care and education; (2) Universal access to complete,
free and compulsory primary education of good quality; (3) Meeting
learning needs for all young people and adults; (4) Reducing illiteracy by
50% ; (5) elimination of gender disparity in the provision of education; (6)
improving the quality of education and ensuring excellence of every one.
9.6 Theoretical Presuppositions of the Six EFA Goals
The first two goals are concerned with the provision of education to children
along with “child care” or up bringing during their early years in life. The
provision of basic education from pre-school education up to secondary
education is also envisaged. Goals 3 and 4 are on lifelong learning. This is
the provision of continuing and nonformal education context. Goal 5 is
concerned with lack of gender parity in access to education. The goal is
pitched against deep-rooted traditional beliefs and attitudes on gender parity.
For ages in the history of mankind, most traditional societies held the notion
that women were inferior to men. Goal 6 was concerned with the provision
high quality education. It aims at getting rid of mediocrity in the quality of
education provided to learners.
The six goals by the Dakar Framework for Action were underpinned by four
theoretical assumptions as follows:
(i) Education is a human right. Education has intrinsic value that is based on
moral and legal foundations. It is also an indispensable means of unlocking
and protecting other human rights. It provides scaffolding for human
requirements such as good health, liberty and political participation on equal
bases. Where citizen’s right to education is guaranteed, people‘s access to all
other human rights, such as equality in sharing political power are enhanced.
Promoting human-right based education is an obligation to governments for
their proper meeting the moral duties and responsibilities of securing the
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Lecture Ten
Education For All in Tanzania
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The ETP of 1995 encompasses the entire sector of education and training.
The policy was conceived and developed after a shift of emphases from the
socialist policies of the 1960s to the 1980s. During this period national
development plans placed firm reliance on government control of the
economy, which also shaped the direction of educational initiatives in the
country.
After the late 1980s saw the on set of political and economic changes which
removed of government control on the economy and brought the inception
of multi-party political system. These changes also brought competition in
the demand for and supply of good and services, which in turn influenced
the provision of formal education and training in the country.
The broad features of the 1995 Education and Training Policy are as
follows:
(1) Enhancement of partnership in the provision of education and
training through efforts to encourage private agencies to participate in the
provision of education and to establish and manage schools and other
educational institutions at all levels.
(2) Identification of critical priority areas to concentrate on. For the
purpose of creating an enabling environment for private agencies to
participate in the provision of education, such as the training of more and
better teachers.
(3) Broadening of the financial base for education and training
through more effective control of government spending, cost sharing and
liberalisation strategies.
(4) Streamlining the management structure of education by placing
more authority and responsibility on schools, local communities, districts
and regions.
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all the citizens in the country. This will have been achieved through the
attainment of universal education, eradication of illiteracy and an
accomplishment of a high level of tertiary education and training. Such a
high level of tertiary education and training will be commensurate with the
high-quality human resources required to effectively respond to the
developmental challenges at all levels in the county. In that vision of
Tanzania in 2025 education is visualised as a means for transforming and
creating of a well-educated nation that is sufficiently equipped with the
knowledge and skills needed to competitively solve the developmental
challenges facing the nation and to match the stiff regional and international
competition in supplying high quality products on the international markets.
The vision insists on qualitatively transforming the educational system with
focus on promoting a science and technology – based culture at its lowest
levels to raise the qualities of children and adults in the country to high
levels of educational and learning achievements. The vision emphasises on
the need to ensure that science and technology and their applications in
promoting and enhancing productivity as well as in reducing vulnerability to
poverty among the people across the country..
10.4 Tanzanian Government Commitment to International Targets
The Dakar Framework for Action passed 21 resolutions. Resolution number
7 set targets for the United Nations member countries to achieve by 2015.
The resolution reads as follows:
“We hereby collectively commit ourselves to the attainment of the following
goals:
(1) Expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and
education especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children.
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childcare factor as such. They compiled data, which merely measured lack
or deficiency in childcare. The index was on mortality rates in absolute
figure per 1000 children of the same age. These are actually number of
children who die in a population of 1000 children at the ages below 5 year.
In the period between 2000 and 2004 the mortality rate for under-five infants
in Tanzania stood at 164 deaths per 1000. During the same period, the
average under-five mortality rate for Sub-Saharan Africa stood at 176 deaths
per 1000, while the world average under-five mortality rate during the same
period stood at 86 deaths per 1000. This indicates that Tanzania was one of
the countries in the world that ranked highest in severity of under-five
mortality rate during the period 2000 to 2004.
In regards to early childhood education the UNESCO monitoring reports
showed data on the gross enrolment ratio in pre-primary education during
the period 1999 to 2004. The ratio was reported in percentages of the total
population of children of the given age that had enrolled in pre-primary
education institutions.
In Tanzania 29 percent of the children in the age range of 4 to 6 had enrolled
in pre-primary schools during the year 2004. In Sub-Saharan Africa that
gross enrolment ratio stood, on average, at 10 percent in 1999 and at 12
percent in 2004. The world averages of that ratio stood at 33 percent in 1999
and at 37 percent in 2004. Thus Tanzania’s progress in this respect was
below that of the world average, although it was greater than the average of
Su-Saharan Africa.
A recent local government regulation in the country has been introduced
which provides that every child who enrolls in Standard I must first pass
through a pre-school. Each primary schools in the country, whether privately
owned or state owned, must have a pre-school attached to it. The
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The figures show that there was only a small improvement in the literacy
rates form 62.9 to 76.5 during the whole period of 1990 to 2006. And there
was an actual a decline in improvement as far as the total number of
illiterates in the country, which rose from 5,128,000 to 6,154,000 illiterate
over the period of 16 years. On the whole therefore Tanzania is unlikely to
reduce illiteracy by 50 percent in 2015. There as been little progress made in
Tanzania towards the achievement of both EFA goals 3 and 4.
(4) In respect of EFA goal five on eliminating gender disparity in the
provision of primary and secondary education.
It is argued in the UNESCO monitoring report for 2005 that apart from
being an infringement of human rights, gender inequality in education
entails serious losses for society because removal of such an infringement
tends to increase farms outputs and incomes of the poorest, to give better
nourishment to the community and to enhance the well being of children.
The report stated that 53 out of 128 countries, which reported progress in
respect of this goal, achieved the gender goal for 2005, i.e. elimination of
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gender disparity in primary and secondary education. The goal was missed
by nearly half of these countries, two thirds of which are in Sub-Saharan
Africa, including sixteen countries out of the total number of 40 countries in
the region.
The UIS Table 4 gave data on access to primary education fro 1999 and
2004 in terms of total number of both male and females of new entrants into
primary schools. In addition, it showed the gender disparity indices (GPI
F/M) in those two respective years. These indices showed the magnitudes of
the gap there was between female and male enrolments into the primary
schools in each country.
In regards to Tanzania the new entrants into primary schools the absolute
figure stood at 714,000 children in 1999 with a GPI F/M of 0.99. In 2004,
the figure stood at 1,342,000 children, with a GPI F/M of 0.99. Thus
although there was no change in the gender parity index between that of
1999 and that of 2004, there were significantly many more girls who
accessed to primary education in 2004, when compared with those that
accessed primary education in 1999.
Any progress in achieving riddance of discriminatory traditions in respect of
gender is an enormously remarkable achievement. It manages to induce
changes of views and beliefs on values that are deep rooted in traditions of
most communities all over the world. Most communities worldwide regard
women as inferior to men and thus denying them access to education. Girls’
education is given a low priority in preference of boys’ education. Even
Plato talked only of golden boys, silver boys and iron boys being educated in
order to raise the quality of his ideal state.
(5) In respect of goal six was on providing good quality education to all. The
goal is seen as pursuing the desired and ideal standards in education.
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Generally one can state that the UNESCO monitoring reports are yet to find
a more suitable measure of the UN member countries’ progress towards
achieving quality education as envisaged in EFA goal six.
Lecture Ten
Lifelong Education
10.1 The Nature and Necessity of Lifelong Learning
We are living in a changing world. We need to go on learning in order to
keep abreast with the changes that keep on emerging around us. What we
learnt earlier tends to become obsolete. This is phenomenon that every one
of us encounters I life all the time.
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around and to apply such insights in meeting emerging needs and adequately
confront new problems in their lives.
Lifelong learning has the following functions: - (i) It remedies the defects or
inadequacies of schooling; (ii) It also compensate those who have not had a
chance of or those who missed the opportunities of entering any schools and
those who dropped out of the school system prematurely. (iii) It integrates
the process of educating learners holistically and it thus complements the
formal education system. (iv) It also promotes the democratic principle of
according all members in society access to education.
Societies all over the world are facing rapid changes under the influence of
science and technology quickening the pace of life in all social spheres
including most fields of human occupation. There is hardly a new innovation
that is not accompanied by a chain of other changes in the lives of people.
Every innovation tends to be accompanied by structural changes in
previously accumulated knowledge. What we learnt at school tends to
become obsolete in just a few years. We have to learn and accommodate
new innovations that keep on emerging from time to time.
There are three contexts in which the process of education occurs: - That is
(i) Formal Education (ii) Informal Education and Lifelong learning like the
process of education, takes place in three contexts, a formal context, an
informal context and a nonformal context. In all these three contexts the
acquisition of knowledge, competences and attitudes or values occur among
learners of all ages through out their lifespan.
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(i) The formal context involves full time scholars who follow formally
prescribed programmes of study, which have clearly defined learning
objectives, contents, methods as well as intended learning outcomes. On
attaining the intended learning outcomes the scholars are granted formally
recognised awards in the forms f certificates that society considers as
acceptable qualifications with which the scholar get tenure or appointment in
occupations demanding such academic qualifications. Thus the scholars who
participate in educational progammes under this context have clearly defined
aims for undertaking the learning endeavour. They aim at achieving
recognised academic qualifications that are demanded in occupational fields.
The knowledge, values and competences the scholars gain during the
learning events need not be closely related to the occupations in which they
seek employment. What matters is such knowledge, values and
competences’ being related to the demanded qualifications for securing the
jobs in question.
(ii) The informal context involves incidental learning whereby the scholars
spontaneously acquire new knowledge, attitudes, and even competences in
incidental encounters with situations that present learning opportunities
during the course of other planned activities. This context is not deliberately
arranged as and organised learning endeavour, It has no learning
objectives, contents, methods and intended learning outcomes. It merely
happens during the course of the individual’s preoccupations with other
engagements in life. It is nonetheless an opportunity for the individual to
learn. As he listens to conversations of, for example fellow passengers in a
bus he is traveling in, or while exchanging greetings with an acquaintance.
As a process education is a lifelong engagement. It is an endless acquisition
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APPENDIX II
PROCEEDINGS OF WORLD CONFERENCE ON EDUCATION FOR
ALL AT JOMTIEN.
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APPENDIX III
THE DAKAR FRAMEWORK OF ACTION ON EFA
This was a set of resolutions that were passed and adopted by the World
Education Forum held at Dakar in April 2000. The resolutions declared
commitments to meet the targets of Education for All. They stated as
follows:
“1. Meeting in Dakar, Senegal in April 2000, we the participants in the
World Education Forum, commit ourselves to the achievement of education
for all (EFA) goals and targets for every citizen and for every society.
2. The Dakar Framework is a collective commitment to action. Governments
have an obligation to ensure that EFA goals and targets are reached and
sustained. This is a responsibility that will be met through broad-based
partnerships within countries, supported by cooperation with regional and
international agencies and institutions.
3. We re-affirm the vision of the World Declaration on Education for All
(Jomtien 1990), supported by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
and the Convention on Rights of the Child, that all children, young people
and the adults have the human right to benefit from an education that will
meet their needs for learning in the best and fullest sense of the term, an
education that includes learning to know, to do, to live together and to be. It
is an education gear to tapping each individual’s talents and potential and
developing learners` personalities, so that they improve their lives and
transform their societies.
4. We welcome the commitments made by the international community to
basic education throughout the 1990s, notably the World Summit for
Children (1990), the Conference on Environment and Development (1992),
the World Conference on Human Rights, (1993), the World Conference on
Special Needs Education: Access and Quality, (1994), the World Summit on
Social Development, (1995) the International Conference on Women, (1995)
the Mid-term Meeting of the International Consultative Forum on Education
for All, (1996) the Fifth International Conference on Adult Education,
(1997) and the International Conference on Child Labour, (1997). The
challenge is now to deliver on these commitments.
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5. The EFA 2000 Assessment demonstrates that there has been significant
progress in many countries. But it is unacceptable in the year 2000 that more
than 113 million children have no access to primary education, 880 million
adults are illiterate, gender discrimination continues to permeate education
systems and the quality of learning and the acquisition of human values and
skills fall short of the aspirations and needs of individuals and society.
Youth and adults are denied access to skills and knowledge necessary for
gainful employment and full participation in their societies. Without
accelerated progress towards education for all and internationally agreed
targets for poverty reduction will be missed and inequalities between
countries and within societies will widen.
6. Education is a fundamental human right. It is the key to sustainable
development and peace and stability within and among countries, and thus
an indispensable for effective participation in the societies and economies of
the twenty-first century, which are affected by rapid globalisation.
Achieving EFA goals should be postponed no longer. The basic learning
needs for all can and must be met as a matter of urgency.
7. We hereby collectively commit ourselves to the attainment of the
following goals:
(i) expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and
education especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children,
(ii) ensuring that by 2015 all children, particularly girls, children in difficult
circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities have access to
complete, free and compulsory primary education of good quality,
(iii) ensuring that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met
through equitable access to appropriate learning and life skill programmes,
(iv) ensuring 50 percent improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015,
especially for women and equitable access to basic and continuing education
for all adults,
(v) eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by the
years 2005 and achieving gender equality by the year 2015 with a focus on
ensuring girls` full and equal access to achievement in basic education of
good quality,
(vi) improving all aspects of the quality of education and ensuring
excellence of all, so that recognised and measurable learning outcomes are
achieved by all especially in literacy numeracy and essential life skills.
8. To achieve these goals, we the governments, organisations, change
agencies and, groups of associations represented at the World Education
Forum pledge ourselves to:
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education and gender equality. The plans will give substance and form to the
goals and strategies set out in the Framework and to the commitments made
during a succession of international conferences in the 1990s. Regional
activities to support national strategies will be based on strengthened
regional and sub-regional organisations, networks and initiatives.
10. Political will and stronger leadership are needed for the effective and
successful implementation of national plans in each of the countries
concerned. However resources must underpin political will. The
international community acknowledges that many countries currently lack
the means to achieve education for all within an acceptable time frame. New
financial resources preferably in the form of grants and concessional
assistance must therefore be mobilised by bilateral and multilateral funding
agencies including the World Bank and regional development banks and the
private sector. We affirm that no countries seriously committed to education
for all will be thwarted in their achievement by lack of resources.
11. The international community will deliver on this collective commitment
by launching with immediate effect a global initiative aimed at developing
the strategies and mobilising the resources needed to provide effective
support to national efforts options to consider under this initiative will
include:
(i) Increasing external finance for education, in particular basic education,
(ii) ensuring greater predictability in the flow of external assistance,
(iii) facilitating more effective donor coordination,
(iv) strengthening sector-wide approaches,
(v) providing earlier, more extensive and broader debt relief and or debt
cancellation or poverty reduction, with a strong commitment to basic
education, and
(vi) undertaking more effective and regular monitoring of progress towards
EFA goals, targets including periodic assessment.
12. There is already evidence from many countries of what can be achieved
through strong regional strategies supported by effective development
cooperation. Progress under these could and must be accelerated through
increased international support. At the same time countries with less
development strategies, including countries, countries in transition, countries
affected by conflict and post-crisis countries - must be given the support
they need to achieve more rapid progress towards education for all.
13. We will strengthen accountable international and regional mechanism to
give clear expression of these commitments and ensure that the Dakar
Framework for Action is on the agenda of every international and regional,
every national legislature and every local decision-making forum.
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14. The EFA 2000 assessment highlights, that the challenges of education
for all is greatest in Sub-Sahara Africa, in South Asia and in the least
developed countries. Accordingly while no country in need should be denied
international assistance, priority should be given to these regions and
countries. Countries in conflict or undergoing reconstruction should also be
given special attention in building up their education systems to meet the
needs of all learners.
15. Implementation of the preceding goals and strategies will require
national regional and international mechanisms to be galvanised
immediately. To be effective these mechanisms will be participatory and
wherever possible built on what already exists. They include representatives
of all stakeholders and partners and they will operate in transparent and
accountable ways. They will respond comprehensively to the word and spirit
of the Jomtien Declaration and the Dakar Framework for Action. The
functions of these mechanisms will include, to varying degrees, advocacy
resources mobilisation, monitoring an EFA knowledge generation and
sharing.
16. The heart of EFA activity lies at the country level. National EFA Forums
will be strengthened or established to support the achievement of EFA. All
relevant ministries and national civil society organisations will be
systematically represented in these Forums. They should be transparent and
democratic and should constitute a framework for implementation at sub-
national levels. Countries will prepare comprehensive National EFA Plans
by 2002 at the latest. For those countries with significant challenges, such as
complex crises and national disasters, special technical support will be
provided by the international community. Each National EFA Plan will
(i) be developed by the government leadership in direct and systematic
consultation with national civil society,
(ii) attract coordinated support of all development partners,
(iii) specify reforms addressing the six EFA goals,
(iv) establish a sustainable financial framework,
(v) be time-bound and action oriented,
(vi) include mid-term performance indicators and
(vii) achieve a synergy of all human development efforts, through its
inclusion within the national development planning framework and
processes. (A synergy is the sharing of benefits across system parts,
resulting in a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, (Bateman and
Snell, 1999, pp-6)).
17. Where these processes and a credible plan are in place partner members
of the international community undertake to work in a consistent
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multilateral donors including the World Bank and the regional development
banks, by civil society and by foundations.”
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Baltes, Paul and Staudinger U.M. (2000) “Wisdom” in American
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Darylos, L.K.T. (1999): “A Philosophical Sketch of Functional Literacy:
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Freire, Paul (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed; New York; Herder and
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Freire, Paul (1974) ‘Cultural Action for Freedom:’ Harvard Educational
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Horn, John L. and Donaldson G. (1980), “Cognitive Development II
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