Theme
Education
18 philosophers, 4 traditions
How should the young be brought up, and what is learning for? Chinese, Greek and modern European thinkers made education central to the good life and the good society.
How should the young be brought up, and what is learning for? In China, Confucius was remembered above all as a teacher who trained disciples in ritual and the classics, and the tradition he founded made learning the road to good character. Many centuries later Zhu Xi’s edition of the Four Books became the basis of the imperial examinations. In Greece, Plato wanted children raised among stories and surroundings that would draw them, without their noticing, towards virtue, and Aristotle held that education should prepare citizens to live well together.
The humanist Erasmus blamed failures in learning on neglect and poor teaching, not on pupils. Locke treated children as reasoners in the making, to be taught through play instead of rote learning and punishment, and Rousseau’s Emile set out an education that follows the child’s own development. Mary Wollstonecraft argued that the education given to girls left them dependent and unable to meet what was expected of them.
In the twentieth century John Dewey described learning as active inquiry and schools as places where children learn democracy. Philosophers still ask whom education is for: the individual student, the society, or both at once.
Through time
6th century BCE
Confucius
After leaving office, Confucius turned to teaching. According to the historian Sima Qian he trained 77 disciples, and some 3,000 students in all, in ritual practice and in the classic books of poetry, documents, ritual and music.
4th century BCE
Plato
Children should learn stories that truly link virtue with happiness, and grow up surrounded by beautiful works that lead them unawares, from childhood on, towards harmony with the beauty of reason. Education works through habituation as well as teaching, instilling true beliefs about what is good.
Aristotle
Education should prepare a society’s members to live together as partners in a flourishing life, cultivating the intellectual virtues that such a life calls for. He favoured a general education that lets a person judge whether almost any subject is being properly explained.
Studied with and argued against Plato
About 1500 years later
12th century
Zhu Xi
Self-cultivation proceeds by investigating things to extend knowledge. This included reading and the study of the classics, but also a practical, personally felt grasp of nature, society and human relations. His edition of the Four Books later became the basis of the imperial examinations.
Drew on Confucius
13th century
Sakya Paṇḍita
Education is a disciplined path of scholarship, open to anyone diligent enough to master the Indian sources and so able to defend the teaching against error.
16th century
Desiderius Erasmus
Excellence needs natural talent, instruction and practice, but when education fails the fault usually lies in neglect and poor teaching, not in the pupil. Teachers should make their material instructive and entertaining, holding the pupil’s interest, instead of relying on punishment.
Drew on Plato
17th century
Jacqueline Pascal
Education is spiritual direction: the teacher guides each pupil’s moral growth, and girls as much as boys have a right to theological learning.
John Locke
Children are reasoners in the making. Parents should spend time with them, fit their education to each child’s character, build a sound body and a sound character, and make play the chief way of learning, instead of rote learning or punishment. The aim is people who think for themselves.
Madame de Maintenon
Schooling should form character first; for the girls of Saint-Cyr that meant temperance and the civil virtues, rather than learning for its own sake.
Anne Dacier
Classical literature, Homer above all, forms moral character and even piety; censoring the classics for obscenity robs education of its best teachers.
Drew on Aristotle
Damaris Masham
Virtue is learned by understanding the principles of morality, not by memorising precepts. Since mothers give children their first moral education, women must themselves be properly educated.
Drew on John Locke
18th century
Mary Astell
Women are taught to be idle and frivolous, and even when they want to improve they lack a method. Education should show them how to examine their own minds, form clear and distinct ideas and govern their passions, preparing them for virtue and for salvation.
Argued against John Locke
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Education should follow the growth of the child’s natural capacities. In Emile’s “negative education” the tutor does not command or lecture but arranges situations from which the child draws its own conclusions, protecting its natural goodness and learning through practical experience instead of books.
Drew on Plato and John Locke
Mary Wollstonecraft
The education girls were given left them unable to meet what society expected of them. Girls and young women need inner resources that make them as independent as possible, and ideally girls and boys would be taught together at school, among children their own age.
Drew on and argued against John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau
19th century
Anna Julia Cooper
A liberal education gives people the tools to live an examined life, not merely to earn a living. Women’s higher education was long overdue, and educated women would bring into the world the sympathy and moral influence that centuries of male domination had shut out.
John Dewey
Learning is an active, cumulative process of inquiry, moving from doubt to the solving of problems. Children are not blank slates but curious, experimenting agents, close to the scientific attitude. Schools are places to learn and practise democracy, so education should be society’s highest priority.
20th century
Maria Montessori
Children learn best in freedom, in an environment prepared for them; and education, rightly done, is the way to build a peaceful world.
Paulo Freire
Teaching should be a dialogue between equals, not the deposit of knowledge into passive students. Its aim is critical awareness, through which learners see the forces shaping their lives and their own power to change them.
Drew on John Dewey
Sources
- Randall Curren, Philosophy of Education, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy