Free essays about Philosophy Proficient writing team Best quality of every paper Largest database of essay examples on blogger.com! Teaching Philosophy for Elementary Teachers. For elementary school teachers, a teaching philosophy should be at least three paragraphs long and include your vision for your role as a teacher, your methods and assessments, and your goals for your interactions with your students. In this example, the teacher prioritizes the learning environment and relationship younger students have to school Free A Reflection on Philosophy Essay Sample. Even though it is considered as one of the oldest sciences or fields of human knowledge and practices, philosophy just like many other areas of disciplines still torments its believers as to what really it means. The fact that this field of human knowledge has existed for over two thousand years
Philosophy in Life Essay | Cram
Philosophy of education is the branch of applied or practical philosophy concerned with the nature and aims of education and the philosophical problems arising from educational theory and practice.
Its subject matter includes both basic philosophical issues e. and problems concerning specific educational policies and practices e. In all this the philosopher of education prizes conceptual clarity, philosophy essay examples, argumentative rigor, the fair-minded consideration of the interests of all involved in or affected by educational efforts and arrangements, philosophy essay examples, and informed and well-reasoned valuation of educational aims and interventions.
Many of the most distinguished figures in that tradition incorporated educational concerns into their broader philosophical agendas Curren; Rorty While that history is not the focus here, it is worth noting that the ideals of reasoned inquiry championed by Socrates and his descendants have long informed the view that education should foster in all students, to the extent possible, the disposition to seek reasons and the ability to evaluate them cogently, and to be guided by their evaluations in matters of belief, action and judgment.
This view, that education centrally involves the fostering of reason or rationality, has with varying articulations and qualifications been embraced by most of those historical figures; it continues to be defended by contemporary philosophers of education as well Scheffler []; Siegel, As with any philosophical thesis it is controversial; some dimensions of the controversy are explored below.
This entry is a selective survey of important contemporary work in Anglophone philosophy of education; it does not treat in detail recent scholarship outside that context. Suffice it to say that some philosophers, as well as focusing inward on the abstract philosophical issues that concern them, are drawn outwards to discuss or comment on issues that are more commonly regarded as falling within the purview of professional educators, philosophy essay examples, educational researchers, policy-makers and the like.
An example is Michael Scriven, who in his early career was a prominent philosopher of science; later he became a central figure in the development of the field philosophy essay examples evaluation of educational and social programs. See Scriven a, b. At the same time, there are professionals in the educational or closely related spheres who are drawn to discuss one or another of the philosophical issues that they encounter in the course of their work.
An example here is the behaviorist psychologist B. Skinner, the central figure in the development philosophy essay examples operant conditioning and programmed learning, who in works such as Walden Two and Beyond Freedom and Dignity grappled—albeit controversially—with major philosophical issues that were related to his work.
What makes the field even more amorphous is the existence of works on educational topics, written by well-regarded philosophers who have made major contributions to their discipline; these educational reflections have little or no philosophical content, illustrating philosophy essay examples truth that philosophers do not always write philosophy. However, despite this, works in this genre have often been treated as contributions to philosophy of education.
See Park Finally, as indicated earlier, the domain of education is vast, the issues it raises are almost overwhelmingly numerous and are of great complexity, philosophy essay examples, and the social significance of the field is second to none. These features make the phenomena and problems of education of great interest to a wide range of socially-concerned intellectuals, who bring with them their philosophy essay examples favored conceptual frameworks—concepts, theories and ideologies, methods of analysis and argumentation, metaphysical and other assumptions, and the like, philosophy essay examples.
It is not surprising that scholars who work in this philosophy essay examples genre also find a home in the field of philosophy of education.
As a result of these various factors, the significant intellectual and social trends of the past few centuries, together with the significant developments in philosophy, all have had an impact on the content of arguments and methods of argumentation in philosophy of education—Marxism, psycho-analysis, existentialism, phenomenology, positivism, post-modernism, pragmatism, neo-liberalism, the several waves of feminism, analytic philosophy in both its ordinary language and more formal guises, are merely the tip of the iceberg.
Conceptual analysis, careful assessment of arguments, the rooting out of ambiguity, the drawing of clarifying distinctions—all of which are at least part of the philosophical toolkit—have been respected activities within philosophy from the dawn of the field. No doubt it somewhat over-simplifies the complex path of intellectual history to suggest that what happened in the twentieth century—early on, in the home discipline itself, and with a lag of a decade or more in philosophy of education—is that philosophical analysis came to be viewed by some scholars as being the major philosophical activity or set of activitiesor even as being the only viable or reputable activity.
The pioneering work in the modern period entirely in an analytic mode was the short monograph by C. Hardie, Truth and Fallacy philosophy essay examples Educational Theory ; reissued in In his Introduction, Hardie who had studied with C. Broad and I. Richards made it clear that he was putting all his eggs into the ordinary-language-analysis basket:. The Cambridge analytical school, philosophy essay examples, led by Moore, Broad philosophy essay examples Wittgenstein, has attempted so to analyse propositions that it will always be apparent whether the disagreement between philosophers is one concerning matters of fact, or is one concerning the use of words, or is, philosophy essay examples, as philosophy essay examples frequently the case, a purely emotive one.
It is time, I think, that a similar attitude became common in the field of educational theory. Hardie xix. About a decade after the end of the Second World War the floodgates opened and a stream of work in the analytic mode appeared; the following is merely a sample. Siegel Smith and R. Ennis edited the volume Language and Concepts in Education ; and R. Archambault edited Philosophical Analysis and Educationconsisting of essays by a number of prominent British writers, most notably R.
Peters whose status in Britain paralleled that of Scheffler in the United StatesPaul Hirst, philosophy essay examples, and John Wilson. Among the most influential products of APE was the analysis developed by Hirst and Peters and Peters of the concept of education itself. A criminal who has been reformed has changed for the better, and has developed a commitment to the new mode of life if one or other of these conditions does not hold, a speaker of standard English would not say the criminal has been reformed.
Clearly the analogy with reform breaks down with respect to the knowledge and understanding conditions. The concept of indoctrination was also of great interest to analytic philosophers of education, for, it was argued, getting clear about precisely what constitutes indoctrination also would serve to clarify the border that demarcates it from acceptable educational processes.
Thus, whether or not an instructional episode was a case of indoctrination was determined by the content taught, the intention of the instructor, the methods of instruction used, the outcomes of the instruction, or by some combination of these. Adherents of the philosophy essay examples analyses used the same general type of argument to make their case, namely, appeal philosophy essay examples normal and aberrant usage, philosophy essay examples.
Unfortunately, ordinary language analysis did not lead to unanimity of opinion about where this border was located, and rival analyses of the concept were put forward Snook first, its greater sophistication as regards language, and the interpenetration of language and inquiry, second, philosophy essay examples, its attempt to follow the modern example of the sciences in empirical spirit, philosophy essay examples, in rigor, in attention to detail, in respect for alternatives, and in objectivity of method, and third, its use of techniques of symbolic logic brought to full development only in the last fifty years… It is…this union of scientific spirit and logical method applied toward the clarification of basic ideas that characterizes current analytic philosophy [and that ought to characterize analytic philosophy of education], philosophy essay examples.
Scheffler [ 9—10]. After a period of dominance, for a number of important reasons the influence of APE went into decline. First, there were growing criticisms that the work of analytic philosophers of education had become focused upon minutiae and in the main was bereft of practical import. It is worth noting that a article in Timephilosophy essay examples, reprinted in Lucashad put forward the same criticism of mainstream philosophy.
See Mehta Fourth, philosophy essay examples, during the decade of the seventies when these various critiques of analytic philosophy were in the philosophy essay examples of eroding its luster, a spate of translations from the Continent stimulated some philosophers of education in Britain and North America to set out in new directions, and to adopt a new style of writing and argumentation, philosophy essay examples.
In more recent years all these trends have continued. APE was and is no longer the center of interest, although, as indicated below, it still retains its voice.
As was stressed at the outset, the field of education philosophy essay examples huge and contains within it a virtually inexhaustible number of issues that are of philosophical interest. To attempt comprehensive coverage of how philosophers of education have been working within this thicket would be a quixotic task for a large single volume and is out of the question for a solitary encyclopedia entry, philosophy essay examples.
Nevertheless, a valiant attempt to give an overview was made in A Companion to the Philosophy of Education Currenphilosophy essay examples contains more than six-hundred pages divided into forty-five chapters each of which surveys a subfield of work. The following random selection of chapter topics gives a sense of the enormous scope of the field: Sex education, special education, science education, aesthetic education, theories of teaching and learning, religious education, knowledge, truth and learning, cultivating reason, the measurement of learning, multicultural education, education and the politics of identity, education and standards of living, motivation and classroom management, philosophy essay examples, feminism, critical theory, postmodernism, philosophy essay examples, romanticism, the purposes of universities, affirmative action in higher education, and professional education.
The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Education Siegel contains a similarly broad range of articles on among other things the epistemic and moral aims of education, liberal education and its imminent demise, thinking and reasoning, fallibilism and fallibility, indoctrination, authenticity, the development of rationality, Socratic teaching, educating the imagination, caring and empathy in moral education, philosophy essay examples, the limits of moral education, the cultivation of character, values education, curriculum and the value of knowledge, education and democracy, art philosophy essay examples education, science education and religious toleration, constructivism and scientific methods, multicultural education, prejudice, authority and the interests of children, and philosophy essay examples pragmatist, feminist, and postmodernist approaches to philosophy of education.
Given this enormous range, there is no non-arbitrary way to select a small number of topics for further discussion, nor can the topics that are chosen be pursued in great depth. The issue of what should be taught to students at all levels of education—the issue of curriculum content—obviously is a fundamental one, and it is an extraordinarily difficult one with which to grapple.
In tackling it, care needs to be taken to distinguish between education and schooling—for although education can occur in schools, so can mis-education, and many other things can take place there that are educationally orthogonal such as the provision of free or subsidized lunches and the development of social networks ; and it also must be recognized that education can occur in the home, in libraries and museums, in churches and clubs, in solitary interaction with the public media, and the like.
In developing a curriculum whether in philosophy essay examples specific subject area, or more broadly as the philosophy essay examples range of offerings in an educational institution or systema number of difficult decisions need to be made. Issues such as the proper ordering or sequencing of topics in the chosen subject, the time to be allocated to each topic, philosophy essay examples, the lab work or excursions or projects that are appropriate for particular topics, can all be regarded as technical issues best resolved either philosophy essay examples educationists who have a depth of experience with the target age group or by experts in the psychology of learning and the like.
Is the justification that is given for teaching Economics in some schools coherent and convincing? The justifications offered for all such aims have been controversial, and alternative justifications of a single proposed aim can provoke philosophical controversy. Consider the aim of autonomy. These two formulations are related, philosophy essay examples, for it is arguable that our educational institutions should aim to equip individuals to pursue this good life—although this is not obvious, both because it is not clear that there is one conception of the good or flourishing life that is the good or flourishing life for everyone, and it is not clear that this is a question that should be settled in advance rather than determined by philosophy essay examples for themselves.
Thus, for example, if our view of human flourishing includes the capacity to think and act autonomously, philosophy essay examples the case can be made that educational institutions—and their curricula—should aim to prepare, or help to prepare, autonomous individuals. A rival justification of the aim of autonomy, associated with Kant, champions the educational fostering of autonomy not on the basis of its contribution to human flourishing, but rather the obligation to treat students with respect as persons Scheffler []; Siegel It is also possible to reject the fostering of autonomy as an educational aim Hand Assuming that the aim can be justified, how students should be helped to become autonomous or develop a conception of the good life and pursue it is of philosophy essay examples not immediately obvious, and much philosophical ink has been spilled on the general question of how best to philosophy essay examples curriculum content.
One influential line of argument was philosophy essay examples by Paul Hirst, who argued that knowledge is essential for developing and then pursuing a conception of the good life, and because logical analysis shows, he argued, that there are seven basic forms of knowledge, the case can be made that the function of the curriculum is to introduce students to each of these forms Hirst ; see Phillips ch. Scheffler [ —5]. In the closing decades of the twentieth century there were numerous discussions of curriculum theory, philosophy essay examples, particularly from Marxist and postmodern perspectives, that offered the sobering analysis that in many educational systems, including those in Western democracies, philosophy essay examples, the curriculum did philosophy essay examples reflect and serve the interests of powerful cultural elites.
A closely related question is this: ought educational institutions be designed to further pre-determined social ends, philosophy essay examples, or rather to enable students to competently evaluate all such ends? Scheffler argued that we should opt for the latter: we must. surrender the idea of shaping or molding the mind of the pupil.
The function of education…is rather to liberate the mind, strengthen its critical powers, [and] inform philosophy essay examples with knowledge and the capacity for independent inquiry. Scheffler [ ]. Third, should educational programs at the elementary and secondary levels be made up of a number of philosophy essay examples offerings, so that individuals with different interests and abilities and affinities for learning can pursue curricula that are suitable?
Or should every student pursue the same curriculum as far as each is able? The thinking here can be explicated in terms of the analogy of an out-of-control virulent disease, for which there is only one type of medicine available; taking a large dose of this medicine is extremely beneficial, and the hope is that taking only philosophy essay examples little—while less effective—is better than taking none at all, philosophy essay examples.
Medically, this is dubious, while the educational version—forcing students to work, until they exit the system, on topics that do not interest them and for which they have no facility or motivation—has even less merit.
For a critique of Adler and his Paideia Proposalsee Noddings Over time, as they moved up the educational ladder it would become obvious that some had reached the limit imposed upon them by nature, and they would be directed off into appropriate social roles in which they would find fulfillment, philosophy essay examples, for their abilities would match the demands of these roles, philosophy essay examples.
Those who continued on with their education would eventually become members of the ruling class of Guardians, philosophy essay examples. The book spurred a period of ferment in political philosophy that included, philosophy essay examples, among other things, philosophy essay examples, new research on educationally fundamental themes.
Fair equality of opportunity entailed that the distribution of education would not put the children of those who currently occupied coveted social positions at any competitive advantage over other, equally talented and motivated children seeking the qualifications for those positions Rawls 72— Its purpose was to prevent socio-economic differences from hardening into social castes that were perpetuated across generations.
One obvious criticism of fair equality of opportunity is that it does not prohibit an educational distribution that lavished resources on the most talented children while offering minimal opportunities to others. So long as untalented students from wealthy families were assigned opportunities no better than those available to their untalented peers among the poor, no breach of the principle would occur. Even the most moderate egalitarians might find such a distributive regime to be intuitively repugnant.
All citizens must enjoy the same basic liberties, and equal liberty always has moral priority over equal opportunity: the former can never be compromised to advance the latter.
Further, inequality in the distribution of income and wealth are permitted only to the degree that it serves the interests of the philosophy essay examples advantaged group in society. But even with these qualifications, fair equality of opportunity is arguably less than really fair to anyone. But surely it is relevant, given that a principle of educational justice must be responsive to the full range of educationally important goods.
Suppose we revise our account of the goods included in educational distribution so that aesthetic appreciation, say, and the necessary understanding and virtue for conscientious citizenship count for just as much as job-related skills.
An interesting implication of doing so is that the rationale for requiring equality under any just distribution becomes decreasingly clear.
How to write a philosophy essay Jonathan Wolff, Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford
, time: 33:42≡Essays on Teaching Philosophy. Free Examples of Research Paper Topics, Titles GradesFixer
Jan 21, · A philosophy of education statement is an opportunity to define what teaching means to you, and to describe how and why you teach as you do. Articulating this statement in the first person and using a traditional essay format (introduction, body, conclusion) will help you craft an enduring and inspiring personal statement Free essays about Philosophy Proficient writing team Best quality of every paper Largest database of essay examples on blogger.com! Free A Reflection on Philosophy Essay Sample. Even though it is considered as one of the oldest sciences or fields of human knowledge and practices, philosophy just like many other areas of disciplines still torments its believers as to what really it means. The fact that this field of human knowledge has existed for over two thousand years
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