Philosophy of Education in the Undergraduate Curriculum

Philosophy of Education in the Undergraduate Curriculum*

BY LASZLO J. HETENYl

IN T H E VARIOIJ9 PRE SERVICE I’ROGR \ \ I $ FOR TEACHERS, T H E COURSES ASD COURSE SEQUENCE4 COMMONLY CLUS T t R \ROUND A ShfALL SUMBER OF QUESTIONS - E.ZCH DECEPTIVbLY SIMPLE, EACH THE CENTER OF HEATED ARGUMENT.

The first great controversy springs from the question: “what do teachers teach?”. Do they teach subject matter, or do they teach children? In any meaningful sense I feel this to be a false dilemma. Every teacher teaches something - be this something a skill, a constellation of concepts, a set of attitudes, a body of facts, or what have you. Likewise, every teacher teaches somebody. One may lecture into a vacuum, one does not teach without somebody doing the learning. A teacher teaches something to somebody and to ignore either element makes the concept of teaching meaningless. If one accepts this contention, the “what?” question is appropriately answered by the identification of subject matter (conventional or otherwise) while the con- sideration of pupils and their concerns is included in the question “whom do we teach?”. The answer to the first question is reflected in the curriculum by courses in a whole host of studies usually identified by state certification authorities as majors and minors; the answer to the second is seen in equally significant work in psychology, sociology, educational psychology, and so on.

If anything, arguments become even more heated when we ask “how do we teach?”. In response to this question, teacher education programs offer methodology, field observation, supervised teaching, internship, and the like. This is not the place to argue with Mr. Conant, Mr. Koerner, nor yet with Mr. Bestor and his cohorts. Suffice it to say, that even critics of pedagogy agree that some means must be found to make the teacher skillful in specific behavior aimed at instruction. The combatants in this old war wage their battles about the best ways by which this phase of pre-service preparation should be brought about, but even the extremists agree that the outcome must yield instructional skills.

In this brief summary of the questions asked in a good pre-service program, I am struck not by the inclusions but by a curious omission. It is not often that students are invited to investigate systematically or extensively why one should teach. Why should there be schooling; why should we select those subjects we do select; why should we encourage school attendance and dis- courage dropping out, etc., etc.? When we do ask such questions we almost always provide simplistic or purely operational answers - such as, “by reducing dropouts we increase the percentage of those gainfully employable,” or “only

LASZLO J. HEI’ENYI as ProfeAsor of Educutaon alld Dean of the School of Education at Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan.

*This article is an updated version of a paper presented to the Midwest Philosophy of Education Society, November, 1966.

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PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 53

thus can we produce effective voters,” - and thereby reinforce the prevalent habit of answering fundamental questions with superficialities or clich6s. AS a result, when students become teachers they participate in staff meetings, make curricular decisions, instruct pupils, and formulate objectives for their schools without ever becoming aware of the presuppositions from which they operate, without perceiving alternatives, without subjecting to rational analysis the processes which led to their conclusions. ’Unless we assume that every teacher will engage in graduate work to remedy these shortcomings (a dangerous assumption indeed), we have left the most significant p a t of a teacher’s education to chance, to the idols of the den and the theatre, to that dubious commodity we call common-sense. I suggest, therefore, that no teacher should be graduated until he has had to wrestle with some of the underlying human questions as these pertain to education. If this belief has warrant, then Philosophy of Education should be a necessary part of all undergraduate programs in teacher education.

I am well aware that the mere mention of “Philosophy of Education” places one in a thicket of controversy. Setting aside the feasibility of such study by purportedly immature undergraduates, there remains the fighting term “Philosophy of Education” itself. The literature is replete with disagree- ment concerning the nature of the discipline we call Philosophy of Education. Perhaps I will not be charged with over-simplification when I say that the essence of this division boils down to two contrasting views.

There are those who maintain that Philosophy of Education is an autonomous discipline, related to, but not part of, general philosophy and, likewise, related to, but not identical with, the practical analysis of educational problems. Foster McMurray,l almost a dozen years ago, chose this stance. Albert J. Taylor2 in 1963 took a similarly dim view of what academic philosophy has to offer to education and, as f a r as education is concerned, banished epistemologists and metaphysicians from the State. William 0. Stanley, one of the most respected voices in education, adds his considerable support to this position:

I am saying that Philosophy of Education is a distinct discipline . . . . but I am saying more than that. I am asserting that most of the really pressing issues in educational theory and practice . . . may be adjudicated apart from a general agreement on ultimate metaphysical, epistemological and theological questions.3

C. D. Hardie,4 and many others take similarly separatists approaches.

On the other hand, Charles F. S. Virtue, asserts “the inseparability of general philosophy and the Philosophy of Education”5 and goes on to say

1Foster McMurray, “Preface to an 4utonomous Discipline of Education,” Educational

2Albert J. Taylor, “What Is Philosophy of Education?,” Educational Theory, VIII, 2

3William 0. Stanley, “Current Tasks in Educational Philosophy,” Phi Delta Kappan

4C. D. Hardie, “The Philosophy of Education in a New Key,” Educational Theory, X,

Xharles F. S. Virtue, “General Philosophy and Philosophy of Education: A Word froin

Theory, V, 3 (July, 1955), pp. 129-131.

(April, 1963), pp. 95-109; 118.

(Ootober, 1958), p. 12.

4 (October, 1960), pp. 255-261.

an Academic Philosopher,” Educational Theory, VIII, 4 (October, 1958), p. 203.

54 EDUCATIONAL THEORY

that “General Philosophy is the matrix of educational philosophy, and that responsible evaluation of philosophies of education requires at least a modest exposure to metaphysics, epistemology and axiology.”6 Kingsley Price,’ likewise stresses the necessity of relating the Philosophy of Education to metaphysics, ethics, and epistemology. Harry Broudy is not satisfied vaguely to relate Philosophy of Education to formal philosophy, he sees the connection as inexorable :

In this book the Philosophy of Education is regarded as the systematic discussion of educational problems on the philosophical level, i.e., the probing into an educational question until it is reduced to an issue in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, logic, or esthetics, or to a combination of these.8

George Knellm agrees and offers the following definition of Philosophy of Education :

Philosophy of Education I consider to be the attempt to work out a systematic framework of concepts and values which will assist in the selection and judgment of educational goals and policies. But these goals can be considered realistically only to the extent that they are related to other more general questions, such as, the nature of the reality to which we belong, the meaning of life, of man himself, of the society he lives in, and of the political responsibilities he must assume. Since these are among the questions of philosophy itself, I maintain that the ultimate issues of education are expressed inevitably in philosophic terms.9

Faced with such sharp differences represented by such persuasive spokesmen, I am tempted to take no clear stand, to equivocate, and so to chart a safe course twixt Scylla and Charybdis. This, alas, is not a live option. If one would speak of Philosophy of Education as a necessary part of teacher preparation, one must be explicit about what one will do and what one hopes to accomplish. Once these points are spelled out, there is no safe middle ground in the controversy.

I have indicated earlier that the reason for including Philosophy of Education in undergraduate programs is to provide an occasion for students to grapple with the “why?” questions posed by education. But if the “why?” is to be discussed in anything approximating depth it must be discussed on a level that goes beyond education. If, for example, a particular method of instruction is championed on the basis of empirical findings, one should ask something about the grounds for accepting empirical evidence - or why one disagrees with those who do not accept such evidence. Or take the issue of religious instruction in the public schools. This is often discussed practically, or legally, but one would have to go beyond practicality, even beyond law, if one would come to grips with the “why?” questions on a fundamental level. Since this is the very kind of activity which I presume to advocate,

6Ibid. 7Kingsley Price, “Is a Philosophy of Education Necessary,” Journal of Philosophy, LII,

22, pp. 625-626. _ . 8Harry S. Broudy, Building a Philosophy of Education, Second Edition (Englewood

9George F. Kneller, “Philosophy, Education, and Separatism,” Educational Theory, XII, Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1961), p. 14.

1 (January, 1962), p. 35.


I necessarily must cast my lot with George Kneller and Harry Broudy and be prepared to duck brick-bats from those who disagree. For that matter, there may be some ducking to do for having put these two distinguished gentlemen into the same camp!

Having opted for a view of educational philosophy which is essentially antiseparatist (certainly in an undergraduate course), I hasten to add that I do not advocate presenting a series of philosophic systems from which by simple deduction the rabbit of educational prescription is made to appear. Nothing could be less useful than to imbue the student with the comforting delusion that once you have settled on a few axiomatic beliefs you can, by a series of syllogisms, arrive at curriculum, methodology, school organization. and the like. Likewise, it is of no profit to select a number of classics in educational philosophy - contemporary or ancient - and have students catalogue the answers they propose to problems of education. If these are pointless undertakings, what are some of the alternatives?

One task of such a course is to make students aware of their own hidden assumptions, their emotionally held, well-nigh unconscious premises and to make them similarly aware of such premises in the thinking of others. It is an enlightening experience, for example, to raise questions about the doctrine of Transubstantiation (and find, by the way, that few Catholics in the class know what you are talking about), gradually have students who accept this doctrine discover that they are operating on different epistemological bases when they claim to know the nature of the Host before and after the moment of transubstantiation - and then to demonstrate to the materialists in the crowd that they too employ unexamined premises when they accept the results of laboratory experiments as ultimates of reliable cognition. One also finds considerable consternation in the class when a discussion of social and political systems does not end by invoking the laudatory term “Democracy” or the epithet “Totalitarianism.” Students are surprised to discover that in classing one system above the other they tacitly assume many logically antecedent propositions.

Through a series of exploratory sessions, designed primarily to bring to awareness that which hitherto has been unexamined and taken for granted, the instructor can establish a classroom climate in which a discussion of educational theory and practice leaves the realm of pooled prejudices and in which disagreements are turned into occasions for analysis. In relatively short order most students learn to spot and to articulate deliberately hidden premises or inadvertantly suppressed assumptions by instructor and fellow students.

A second, related, objective of the course aims to sharpen the student’s ability in the rational examination of arguments. It is here that the rigor and precision of linguistic analysis can come into play. The instructor must delicately balance pushing students to the limits of their capacity against the bewilderment and eventual boredom which would ensue were he to proceed too formalistically. It is not too much to ask of undergraduates that they define their terms and identify referents for them, that they recognize vagueness or ambiguity, and that they develop some sensitivity in spotting


deliberate or accidental equivocation. Needless to say, the language of education should be the focus of such study.

Some specific attention to inferential processes is also of value. Once again the instructor would be grossly mistaken were he to immerse students in the works of Quine and Cooley or, for that matter, into the writings 01 more traditional logicians. The class would almost certainly respond with naked hostility or escape into peaceful slumber. Yet, it is possible for students to develop considerable skill in following the logical threads of an argument. What is more, the enterprise needs to be neither dull nor repulsive to undergraduates. Many students thoroughly enjoy sharpening their own ability to argue logically and many more can become fiendishly clever in detecting logical flaws - especially in the instructor’s presentation. When imaginatively led, classes become adept at, and inclined to, test the cogency of educational writers. At first, the group shows numerous and glaring, not to say ludicrous, shortcomings. On the inductive side, students frequently confuse inference with evidence and when pressed, become disturbed by their ensuing inability to evaluate the reliability of inferences. In the context of controversial educational issues, the identification and organization of evidence, convergence hypotheses, generalizations, and reliability statements become meaningful intellectual tools, instead of exercises in the esoteric. One can even try to include elementary statistical concepts and explore their use in the processes of induction. With due care and by curbing one’s appetite for detail, statistics (at least on this level) can lose the power to frighten even the attractive future kindergarten teacher in the front row who “just can’t cope with figures.” Much the same can be said about the perennial problems of deductive analysis. A formalized treatment of syllogisms turns the class to stone, but developing such arguments in context of live issues, letting students discover their own fallacies, but stopping short of introducing a complicated technical vocabulary, yield rich rewards.

Alan Montefiore of BalIiol College, Oxford, speaking at a recent meeting, described a somewhat similar approach and stressed its applicability to the education of teachers.lO He identified nine topic areas and indicated how out of their discussion fledgling teachers gained insights into many central concerns of education. He proposed the issue of individual responsibility in a world of causality, the morals - politics - law complex in its relation to education, connections between factual and valuative statements as productive starting points for class discussion. Once students grapple not only with the concepts themselves, but with their use in social, political, and educational theories, a modicum of skill replaces the primitive attempts at rational argument which characterized the early sessions of the course.

The process primarily undertaken to increase analytical sophistication provides opportunities to introduce quite a few classical formulations

IOAlan Montefiore, “The Place of Philmophy in the Education o f Teachers,” published in the Proceedings of the 31st Educational Conference of the Educational Bureau, 1966),

of the

(To lie Records


problems under discussion. Montefiore cited one of his own more successful experiences to illustrate his point.ll He started by raising some concrete problems in the schools and posed the apparent impossibility of reconciling individual responsibility with causality. Eventually he guided class discussion to Hume’s demonstration that causality, far from contradicting, was a necessary condition of individual responsibility. Treating the instance paradigmatically, he made a telling point concerning the effective use of historical philosophic materials. No one would pretend that learning the name of Hume, or memorizing passages from his work has any significant value for prospective teachers! But familiarity with selected documents in proper context helps a teacher perceive that the questions which agitate him have exercised man throughout history and that answers provided by the great minds of the past do not close a subject for all eternity. As Montefiore used Hume’s Treatise, so one can use Plato’s Republic, the Dewey-Tufts’ Ethics, or, for that matter, St. Augustine’s De Magistro. Let me emphasize that I see no special virtue in introducing such works for their own sake, but let me also express my conviction that when a discussion of concrete educational problems leads students to a meaningful reading of a major piece of writing in philosophy or education, then the inclusion of a classic is certainly no pedagogical sin.

In some ways a climax in the course can be built by selecting a series of case studies or a particularly controversial work (such as, Goodman’s Grotcing U p Absurd) and analyzing its central problem( s ) with the techniques perfected throughout the course. Students usually find this not only an exciting undertaking, but also acquire a healthy respect for the difficulty of tracing an argument, especially a polemically presented argument, to its philosophic underpinnings. Once a class has been through this experience, there are not many among them willing to make sweeping pronunciamentos about education. The few who persist in the habit reap a harvest of jeers from their fellows.

Without prolonging the discussion unduly, let me now raise some questions about the success of such a course in an undergraduate program for teachers. It is, of course, hard to say what one means by success. I certainly have no conclusive evidence that those who have taken such a course are better teachers than those who have not. Reliable measurement of teacher effective- ness is, after all, hardly a readily available commodity! There are, however, a few straws in the wind and these point in a positive direction.

At Oakland University, we have tried to ascertain the graduates’ percep- tions of their education in light of their experiences in the first years of teaching. Results of a five-year follow-up study are as yet fragmentary, with returns from only the first three years analyzed. At the end of the first year of teaching each alumnus was sent a questionnaire asking him to evaluate his undergraduate preparation for teaching. Those of us in Philosophy of Education approached the returns with some trepidation, knowing full-well how Philosophy of Education usually fares in such studies. On a five-point scale, ranging from “no value” to “great value” (with the mid-point of three


described as “some significant value” and four as “substantial value”) I am happy to say that Philosophy of Education came out with an average score of 3.38. In other words, our initial respondents felt that their background in Philosophy of Education was somewhere half-way between having had “some significant value” and having had “substantial value” in their first year as professionals. The second and third classes of graduates responded in almost identical terms (3.49 and 3.39 respectively).

Even more interesting to us was an analysis of responses from graduates who completed questionnaires in two consecutive years. There were thirty-nine such instances in the Charter class and fifteen respondents increased their evaluation of the course while only eight decreased it in their second year of teaching. The second graduating group after two years showed increases in six instances, decreases in only four, with the bulk remaining constant. My statistician friends tell me not to become too sanguine when the “N” is relatively small. But they also tell me that, when the original scores cluster on the high side, to find that increases outnumber decreases in two consecutive groups is, to say the least, suggestive. It remains to be seen whether this happy state of affairs will continue as the study progresses through the remaining years. For the moment, our indicators tend to support the two hypotheses which prompted us to include Philosophy of Education in the undergraduate program:

a ) that philosophic analysis of educational problems can be of value to beginning teachers and that they can and do become aware of this value in relation to their professional roles.

b ) that, as the new teacher’s insecurity and the accompanying preoccupa- tion with limited practicalities decreases with experience, his concern for some of the basic issues in education (the ones I called the “why?” questions) assumes a more central position in his thinking. At this time he is likely to look back on his studies in Philosophy of Education with increased appreciation.

The results of our follow-up studies provide enough support for us to continue experimentation with a Philosophy of Education course in the pre-service professional sequence for teachers.

So far I have spoken only of professional growth, but Philosophy of Education, I feel, has much to contribute to the personal, human development of students. Once again, the evidence is less than conclusive (how could it be otherwise?! ) but suggestive. Here our information contains several strands from a variety of sources. The first piece of evidence comes from the follow-up study mentioned previously. In addition to questions about professional values, the graduates were asked to comment on personal values they felt their academic training contributed. Here they rated Philosophy of Education at 3.41, 3.33, 3.37 in successive years. These figures again are well in the positive range, What is more, respondents rated this area above several courses which the university prescribed in the fond hope of providing a good general education for all students. Nor can one attribute the differences to the customary preference for electives, since Philosophy of Education is strictly required of all prospective teachers.


A second indicator came from those few Liberal Arts students who freely elected this course. In the early years of the university, tight programming provided few electives and those that were chosen had to prove themselves in the student culture. It is especially interesting to note that Philosophy of Education held its small beachhead among electives in spite of the common complaint that it dernznded hard work, included a subsbantial reading list, and built a reputation as a course in which high grades were not handed out with any liberality. Still, a small but continuous trickle of students who did not plan to teach chose the course as an elective.

A third hint comes from the faculty community. In reorganizing the undergraduate curriculum, the university’s Committee on Academic Affairs unanimously recommended, and the Academic Senate with very little dissent voted, that the course in Philosophy of Education be one way by which students in any and all divisions of the university might fulfill the Western Civilization requirement in general education. This was the first, and thus far only, introductory course in a professional sequence so designated. Since the faculty acted neither out of caprice nor through lobbying by the School of Education and since both the Committee and Senate stated that they based their judgment on the six-year record of the course, the conclusion seems inescapable that in at least one institution, at least one approach to the Philosophy of Education is accepted as a significant contribution to general education. Should this happy state of affairs continue and should it develop that what one young, rather flexible institution can do is also viable elsewhere, then the bridge between general and professional education, perhaps the vital link between academician and educationist may yet turn out to be that much maligned, controversial discipline : Philosophy of Education,

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Philosophy of Education in the Undergraduate Curriculum