Abu Salem Hussain :
A person who provides education is an educator. Education involves knowledge, learning, and experience. Thus students can acquire knowledge, experience, and skills in educational organisations through teachers. Thus Philosophy includes reasoning about reason, and improving one’s reasoning to make it clear, relevant, broad, deep, accurate, and consistent. What is right and wrong and how we can tell,reasoning about what knowledge is and how we know what we know and whether we really know this or that thing. Philosophy is an essential component of education in any subject, and you don’t have to be a philosopher to have a philosophy. Philosophy uses logic and reasoning to find out things like how do we know what we know? Or a question like what makes something moral or immoral. From this perspective, philosophy is something that all people do. Education, is an intentional activity the planning and implementation of education isn’t arbitrary. It is purposeful and forward looking. We know the good life as the ultimate aim of education. When the person chooses in accordance with the principles of self- determination, self-realisation, and self- integration, he or she has the best chances of realising the maximum of value. One of the principles of moral education is the formation of the tendency or disposition in the individual to guide his choices by a desire to do what is right, and to choose what he does choose because he Judges it to be right. Philosophy serves best in the area of education when it helps provide not only an analysis of the problems and issues involved but in addition provides a definite sense of direction. We want our children to develop reliable tendencies to tell the truth, to respect the codes of right and wrong of the community, to be courageous, to be persevering in the face of obstacles, for withstand the temptations of disapproved pleasures, to be able to sacrifice present pleasures in favour of more remote one’s, to have a sense of justice and fair play. Here, educational aims are therefore both highly theoretical and extremely practical determiners of educational policy and practice. The pursuit of fundamental questions in more or less all the core areas of philosophy often leads naturally to and is sometimes enhanced by sustained attention to questions about education e.g. epistemologists disagree about the identity of the highest or most fundamental epistemic value, with some plumping for truth or true belief and others for justified or rational belief; this dispute is clarified by its consideration in the context of education. In both moral and intellectual training one should appeal to the interests of the child, bring him to learn for himself, and give public approbation to his success. The moral and intellectual training of the gentleman will cause him to find his pleasure in doing his duty; the exercise of this duty through government as well as through more informal social controls will spread a simillar happiness throughout all levels of society. Value is typically a philosophical subject since it is more abstract, integral and universal. Philosophy of education not only critically evaluates the values but also systematises them in a hierarchy. Educational values are determined by philosophical values. Educational values propagated by different philosophers have been derived from their own world, view and their outlook on the purpose of human life. Therefore,a scrutiny of the world views, outlooks, beliefs is the specific function of philosophy and it is necessary for the philosophical treatment of the values.
2.
The facts of human nature and of society – every particular falls into some class, and the class is made what it is by virtue of the Form copied by all the members of that class. If we ask, then, why every human being should possess the three abilities – reason, appetite and spirit. And why every state should perform three functions – legislation, economic production, distribution, and law enforcement, the answer is that they can not fail to possess and perform them since exactly that is required by their forms. So education would be holistic, including facts, skills, physical discipline, and music and art, which he considered the highest form of endeavor. There is a reason to believe that education has distinct and inherent limitations as an enterprise in a society such ours. In essence, this was an implicit suggestion of plato in his ideal description of the ideal Republic, in which the educational enterprise at the level of rational thought and mystical insight would become so important that philosophers would become the actual civil rulers of the country. Because a man is responsible only if he is free; moral appraisal presupposes freedom. An important aim of education is the full and balanced development of persons, equipping them with the wisdom to live well. philosophical questions concerning education were high on the philosophical agenda. From Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle to twentieth -century figures such as Bertrand Russell, John Dewey addressed questions in philosophy of education along with their treatments of issues in epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind and language, and moral and social and political philosophy. We know that educational philosophy questions involve such issues as a teacher’s vision of her role as a teacher, her view of how students learn best, and her basic goals for her students. An educational philosophy should guide a teacher’s discussions in job interviews, and it should be communicated to students and their parents. A teacher can leave a profound impact on students and help them make independent decisions in the near future. The core values that your students learn from you today are going to be applied and used in the society as they grow up. A solid philosophical background will help ensure that these values are all positive. If you believe in breaking stereotypes, there are high chances your students will follow the same philosophical path. If your philosophy is accepting the already existing theories, rather than questioning them, your students might follow your path. Understanding the philosophy of education will teach them the need to know the ways. Along with the intellectual development of the students, it will also improve the standards of our society and make us more rational. The philosophy of education thus overlaps with the field of education and applied philosophy. The philosophy of education is, looking both inward to the parent discipline of philosophy and outward to educational practice. In this respect it is like other areas of “applied” philosophy, such as the philosophy of law, the philosophy of science, and the philosophy of medicine, including bioethics. This dual focus requires it to work on both sides of the traditional divide between theory and practice, taking as its subject matter both basic philosophical issues e.g. the nature of knowledge and more specific issues arising from educational practice e.g., the desirability of standardised testing. However, a more important consideration has to do with the nature of philosophy itself. If one thinks of central elements in the mainstream of philosophy, such as ethics and epistemology, for example, it is reasonably clear that they are concerned not just with the nature of the good or the nature of knowledge but with how one comes to live a good life and how one comes to know. In other words, questions of education, of teaching and learning, are at the heart of philosophy, as great philosopher Wittgenstein’s work amply testifies, and as is testified also at the start of philosophy, in the work of Plato himself. Given the reach and intensity of philosophy’s concern with what it is to be a human being, how could this not involve questions about how we become what we are, which is to say questions about our education? In the light of this the puzzlement that is sometimes expressed by those in the mainstream of the discipline about the very idea of the philosophy of education is difficult to fathom.
3.
Plato said that philosophy of education means anybody of thought that includes a theory of education, an ethics that justifies the goal that the theory adopts, a metaphysics that explains the psychological and sociological parts of the theory of education, and an epistemology that explains why certain methods of teaching and learning are effective and demonstrates our ability to know the truth of any thought whatsoever. It is quite often said that philosophy and education are two sides of the same coin. Education is the dynamic side of philosophy. Philosophy is a way of life. It is a way of looking at life, nature and truth. It sets up the ideals for an individual to achieve them in his life time. Education is the active aspect and the practical means of realising the ideals of life. Your educational philosophy is your beliefs about why, what and how you teach, whom you teach, and about the nature of learning. It is a set of principles that guides professional action through the events and issues teachers face daily. Sources for your educational philosophy are your life experiences, your values, the environment in which you live, interactions with others and awareness of philosophical approaches. Learning about the branches of philosophy, philosophical world views, and different educational philosophies and theories will help you to determine and shape your own educational philosophy, combined with these other aspects. So education is a part of philosophy. If I give my own philosophy to whom who haven’t their own it become education. Philosophy develops many different skills which are important in education; communication, argumentation, logical thinking, approaches etc. Mill in his ‘Utilitarianism’ told that the best society is one in which there is the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people. He understands happiness as constituted by pleasure properly proportioned between higher and lower activities, individual self- realisation, and fulfillment of duty. So the chief purpose of education is to bring men closer to this social ideal. we may assume that education, discipline that is concerned with methods of teaching and learning in schools or school-like environments as opposed to various non-formal and informal means of socialisation e.g. rural development projects and education through parent-child relationships. Education can be thought of as the transmission of the values and accumulated knowledge of a society. In this sense, it is equivalent to what social scientist term socialisation or enculturation. “All things are good as they come from the hands of their Creator, but everything degenerates in the hands of man”. From this premise, which introduces Emile, Rousseau argues that teachers will be able to devise effective means to ensure that children do what they ought to do, and teachers will have a basis sounder than mere social Convention for determining what children ought to do. It is said that educational philosophy gives different views, but this situation is not harmful, rather it helps in providing education according to the need of society. The difference in view of philosophy of education reflects the multiplicity and diversities of human life. Philosophy of education guides the process of education by suggesting suitable aims from the diversities of life and selecting the means accordingly. In the context, I think, education critically evaluates the different aims and ideals. They are character building, man making, harmonious human development, preparation for adult life, development of citizenship, utilisation of leisure, training of civic life, training for international living, achieving social and National integration, scientific and technological development, education for all, equalising educational opportunities, strengthening democratic political order and human source development.
(Abu Salem Hussain, Lecturer, University of Barishal, E- mail: [email protected])
