Divergent Roads: Philosophy of Education and the Reality of Modern Schools

Abstract

This publication is an introduction to the philosophy of education. It contains critical discussions of common assumptions about schools and school education. Chief among these are notions to the effect that: Those who design school curricula have to choose between emphasising traditional subjects and focusing on the interests of children and the good of society; Schools ought to serve the interest of their students or the economy; Educational aims or learning outcomes can successfully guide teaching and learning; Political authorities can improve schools by mandates from above or implementation of economic incentives; Increased schooling makes society more prosperous.

Each of the twelve chapters delineates a conceptual quandary or arguments that pull in different directions and ends with questions for the reader. Most of these questions have to do with the purposes of school education, educational policy and school administration. It is argued that however difficult these questions are, they need to be discussed seriously. Disregarding them leads to improper and blundering administration of educational affairs.

A short description of the twelve chapters follows:

The title of the first chapter is “What are schools for”. It draws upon work by several curriculum theorists who distinguish between different curriculum perspectives and asks to what extent they are opposed. This same chapter also poses questions about educational individualism that conceives of teaching and learning as serving the needs of the student rather than the community.

Chapters two and three, entitled “Liberty and subjects” and “Equality and subjects” are also about school curricula. These two chapters introduce several historic thinkers including Locke, Schiller, Tolstoy, Dewey and Bernstein. Some of the questions raised concern the ideals of the enlightenment, on the one hand, and humanism, on the other and some highlight what people need to learn in order to gain control over their lives and to what extent schools reproduce inequality.

Chapter four – “What the economy needs” – discusses claims to the effect that increased schooling makes society more prosperous. It draws upon recent work by Caplan, the US economist, to question such claims.

The fifth chapter “Schooling, education and morality” is a critical investigation of claims commonly made by people who maintain that more schooling makes students better persons. Some of the key ideas discussed in this chapter derive from the works of Rousseau, Tolstoy, Melville and Illich.

Chapters six, seven and eight, entitled “Registering education“, “Problems of data driven administration” and “Bureaucracy and privatisation”, deal with issues relating to use of standardised data in school administration. In the first of these three chapters, concepts and theories from the works of the US anthropologist James C. Scott are used to explain how centralised collection of data about students and schools simplifies social reality. The second chapter focuses on Goodhart’s Law and how it applies to modern schools. The third deals with arguments for and against marketisation, privatisation and increased competition between schools. It is closely related to the other two chapters because when governments contrive to make schools compete, they rely on standardised data about educational outcomes and school efficiency. These three chapters raise questions as to what extent modern bureaucracy and economic incentives are helpful to school practices/programmes and to what extent they are destructive.

Chapters nine and ten – “Educational aims“ and “Different relations between ends and means” – are both about trends in curriculum design, drawn from the work of Bobbitt in the beginning of last century through seminal publications by Tyler, Bloom and Taba to modern notions of outcomes-based education and competence- -based curricula. A critical appraisal of these trends draws upon the works of Stenhouse and his reasons to doubt that the whole of school education can be successfully organised as working towards predefined educational outcomes.

The caption of the eleventh chapter is “School reform or school development” presenting a discussion on how government-led attempts to reform schools can hamper their advancement. Drawing upon works by Tyack, Cuban and other scholars who have written about the history of educational reform and Sahlberg’s recent criticism of what he calls the Global Education Reform Movement this chapter poses similar questions as chapters six through ten but views them from a different perspective.

The twelfth and final chapter is labelled “Teacher professionalism” and is largely based on arguments that Dewey published a century ago, but also on insights from Carr and others who have studied the ethical dimensions of teaching. This chapter picks up several threads from previous chapters and queries regarding the meaning of top down curriculum design, data driven administration and other ideas about school education and school management to teachers and their work.