Position Paper (Education) on Philosophy Essay

The word education is defined as the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life, it is also an art of teaching; pedagogics. Education signify the activity, process, or enterprise of educating or being educated and sometimes to signify the discipline or field of study taught in different schools of education that concerns itself with this activity, process and training. Education has many roots, and since the beginning of man, it has been started and knowledge developed and had been passed from one generation to another. Every generation, it is somehow passed on its stock of values, traditions, methods and skill. The passing on of culture is also known as enculturation and the learning of social values and behaviors is socialization. The history of the curricula of such education reflects history itself, the history of knowledge, beliefs, skills and cultures of man. It is somehow complex because it started with survival and then man paints his own ideas as he travels in life and explore what could be done. He then finds himself being curious and begins finding answers to his questions. One example are the findings of archaeologist who studied the past and came to know different kinds of human activities and cultures, in the caves, based on artifacts, they come to know that people start to draw, write symbols which later was translated and was believed that somehow, man came to learn by himself and knowledge is passed on, their practices somehow gave contribution in our life today, in reading, writing, speaking which is related to education. In pre-literate societies, education was carried out orally and through observation. The young first learned informally from their parents, extended family and grandparents as simple as first steps in reading and writing. At later stages they received instruction of a more structured and formal nature, like the school, imparted by people not necessarily related, in the context of initiation, religion or ritual. There are many forms of education, and it has only one goal: to develop knowledge. Let’s take Philosophical education; it is the process of education or the philosophy of the discipline of education. It is part of the discipline in the sense of being concerned with the articulation, desideratum, arrangement, or results of the process of educating or being educated; or it may be metadisciplinary in the sense of being concerned with the concepts of the discipline, it also aims to investigate the educational significance of philosophy. It all started with the birth of philosophy, in the place of Greece and was spread worldwide. All cultures in all forms; prehistoric, medieval, or modern; Eastern, Western, religious or secular have their own unique schools of philosophy, arrived through both inheritance and through independent discovery. Such theories have flourished from different premises and approaches, examples of which include rationalism (any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification), empiricism (theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experience.) and even through leaps of faith, hope and inheritance. There may be different kinds of philosophical school, but the goal is to understand the development of philosophical ideas through time. Philosophy of education as such does not describe, compare, or explain any enterprises to systems of education, past or present; except it is concerned with the tracing of its own history, it leaves such delving to the history and sociology of education. Analytical philosophy of education is the logical positivist principle that there are no any specifically philosophical truths and that the basis of philosophy is the logical resolution of thoughts. This may be contrasted with the traditional foundationalism, which considers philosophy as a special, elite science that investigates the fundamental reasons and principles of everything. As an outcome, many analytic philosophers have considered their exploration as continuous with, or subordinate to, those of the natural sciences. It is meta to the discipline of education–to all the inquiries and thinking about education. It comprehends of its task as that of analysis: the definition of educational concepts like teaching, indoctri nation, trait, and ability, and including the concept of education itself. * BODY Philosophical education was traditionally developed by philosophers for example, Aristotle, Augustine, and John Locke Jean Jacques Rousseau, as part of their philosophical systems, in the context of their ethical theories. * Plato Plato’s allegory of the cave in his most important work, the Republic wherein he conceives the following vision: prisoners are chained in such a way that they face the dark and back part of the cave. They have been there for a long time and are like doomed and had nothing to do and has no perception in life. They can see nothing but themselves. They see only shadows of some certain stuff cast by a fire that burnt in a ledge above and behind them which they had no care about, between the fire and the prisoners is a wall line path alon g which people walk carrying vases alongside, they hear echoes of voices. Socrates then supposes that a prisoner is freed and permitted to stand up and explore the cave. Now, he is forced up the â€Å"steep and rugged ascent† (Plato’s allegory of education) and brought outside the sunlit exterior world. But the light blinds him. He must first look at the shadows of the trees, then at the mountains. Finally, he is able to see the sun itself. We are like the prisoners in the cave, still in the darkness not educated and are not yet philosophers. It’s like the cave is our confined world and we are still on our own selves and not merely had explored the outside bright world for our development, and inside the cave we see shadows, hear voices like there is a chaos going on we only implement fear, fear of exploring our own world and its vast approach to us. We are like prisoners in our own life which has no particular benefit to us, we can never attain real knowledge if we do not explore. The journey out the cave is said to be the philosophical education and the prisoner who was unchained is the kind of person who ought to be educated because he explored and find out what is behind the light, he has attained warmth and truth. Through this, one can conclude that most of the human beings would rather live a comfortable, happy and familiar life, than a life full of obstacles and pain, which would ultimately lead them to the â€Å"larger truths of life†. Man is contended with the â€Å"consensus reality†, i.e. the reality agreed by all, even if it is as imaginary and as unreal as the shadows on the walls of the cave man is also contended that they have the security of a family, of a society, of religion around them. However, according to Plato, there will come one questioner, one philosopher, from time to time, who will critically look at himself and the world around him, who will wonder why things are the way they are and then will make his own decisions regarding how things should be and that is being open-minded and being curious. * Jean Jacques Rousseau Jean Jacques Rousseau’s view on education differ to those with Plato, The focus of Émile is upon the individual tuition of a boy/young man in line with the principles of ‘natural education’. This focus tends to be what is taken up by later commentators, yet Rousseau’s concern with the in dividual is balanced in some of his other writing with the need for public or national education. Rousseau believed it was possible to preserve the original nature of the child by careful control of his education and environment based on an analysis of the different physical and psychological stages through which he passed from birth to maturity. He also believed we can make good citizens out of training. From the first moment of life, men ought to begin learning to deserve to live; he finds himself reasons why he is living. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762) Émile (1911 edn.), London: Dent, pp.6. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762) Émile (1911 edn.), London: Dent, pp.6. Now each of these factors in education is wholly beyond our control, things are only partly in our power; the education of men is the only one controlled by us; and even here our power is largely illusory, for who can hope to direct every word and deed of all with whom the child has to do. Viewed as an art, the success of education is almost impossible since the essential conditions of success are beyond our control. Our efforts may bring us within sight of the goal, but fortune must favor us if we are to reach it. What is this goal? As we have just shown, it is the goal of nature. Since all three modes of education must work together, the two that we can control must follow the lead of that which is beyond our control. * CONCLUSION Education is really vast. I can say that I agree with both philosophers, all of us should be educated for education is the grounds for gaining knowledge and wisdom. It is an important tool that can be used for the success of your future. The more you are educated while you are young, the better chance you’ll have at gaining a successful career. Being educated is being well-informed. Once you have made the decision to attain an education, certain virtues must be possessed. You must be motivated by something, whether it is money, power, or just the desire to learn. It is motivation that drives you to learn new things and to expand your horizons. You must prepare for an education. For everything that you want to know, there is something else you need to know first. It’s like before you can be proficient on a piano you must know music, and before you can be proficient on a computer you must learn to use a keyboard and a mouse before you can dance you should have training grounds. Education is the key to success. * BIBLIOGRAPHY * Phaedo, 82c; and The Republic, book VII, 518d, both in Plato, Complete Works, ed. JohnM.Cooper * Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762) Émile (1911 edn.), London: Dent, pp.6.