2. Possible Exam Question
• Explain you philosophy of education in the light of one? author you
have studied
– You might like to introduce by stating what you presumed education
to be about before you thought about it or studied it
– You might incorporate what you have learned since about teaching
and learning
– You might contrast the ideal with the real in your experience
– You might explain what you found attractive about the author you
are presenting and what ideas in particular you would like to agree
with and follow
– You might summarise by charting the some elements of your own
philosophy in the light of your reflections on your experience and your
reading
– You should ideally use the established thinker as a mirror and a model
against whom you measure your own thinking.
3. A philosophy of education?
See p. 17
Constituted by a plan
for deciding upon
•Subject-matter (p. – Traditional
28)
•Methods of
instruction and
discipline
•Social organisation – Progressive
of the school
4. Subject-matter
• ‘The subject-matter of education consists of
bodies of information and of skills that have
been worked out in the past; therefore the
chief business of the school is to transmit
them to a new generation’ (p.17)
• The place of subject-matter in experience...’Is
there anything in inherent in experience
which tends towards progressive organisation
of its contents’ (p. 20)
5. Methods of discipline and instruction
• ‘Since the subject-matter as well as standards of
proper conduct are handed down from the past,
the attitude of pupils must, upon the whole, be
one of docility, receptivity, and obedience’ (p.18)
• ‘To imposition from above is opposed expression
and cultivation of individuality; to external
discipline is opposed free activity; to learning
from texts and teachers, learning through
experience’ (p. 19)
6. School Organisation
• ‘Let us say that the kind of external
imposition which was so common in the
traditional school limited rather than
promoted the intellectual and moral
development of the young’ (p.22)
• ‘It is not too much to say that an educational
philosophy which professes to be based on
the idea of freedom may become as dogmatic
as ever was ...traditional education’ (p.22)
7. what is my philosophy of education?
• Key ideas:
• Society: what is my vision for society?
• How do I understand ‘for the good of the child’?
• How do I understand knowledge: where it comes from?
What is its texture? How is it kept alive? What is it for?
Why do we need it?
