In this fifteen-part video course, we cover key philosophical issues that bear directly upon education. We discuss the works of several philosophers — Plato, Locke, Kant, Dewey, and others — who have influenced education greatly, and we compare several systems of educational philosophy and their implications for education in practice.
Here are videos of the course lectures, including links to the readings, excerpts from primary sources, and other supplemental materials.
This introductory course presupposes no formal knowledge of philosophy or education. The lectures were recorded during the 2009-2010 year.
“Philosophy” of “Education”
What education is
Some philosophical questions about education
What philosophy is
The relevance of philosophy to education
Motivation for the course
Introducing metaphysics: our hybrid civilization
Two philosophical stories:
The Big Bang story
The Creation story
Comparing the two stories
The argument from design
The argument from evil
Metaphysics and method
Introduction: What epistemology is
Reason — a developmental story:
The Semmelweis case
The “Juliet is the sun” metaphor
Education’s epistemological mission
Asch’s conformity experiments
Milgram’s obedience experiments
Two more virtues: independence and courage
The value of reason
From reason to faith:
Phase One: Copernicus, Bruno, and Galileo
Phase Two: the rise of natural theology
Phase Three: “I found it necessary to deny reason…”
Faith:
Kierkegaard, Luther, and Tertullian
The story of Abraham
Kierkegaard’s lesson: Abraham as model of faith
Educational implications:
Choose your hero — Semmelweis or Abraham?
Five issues in human nature
The physical and the psychological
Dualism of mind and body
Reductive materialism
Integrationism
Mottos and graphics
Reasons for and against dualism
Implications for education
The “problem child”
Physical education?
Cognition: theory and/or practice?
Sex education?
Six questions in ethics
Preamble: What is the meaning of life?
Nature or Supernature [Where?]
Reason or Non-reason (faith, tradition, feeling) [How?]
Universal or Relative [When]
Teleology or Deontology [Why?]
Egoism or Altruism [Who?]
Values and virtues: health, wealth, pleasure, friendship … [What?]
Our hybrid civilization
Two ethical traditions: Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christianity
Declaration of Independence and a priest’s vows
Egoism
What is the meaning of life?
Egoism: end in oneself, self-responsibility, investment, achievement
Egoism’s educational mission
The Myth of Gyges
Predation’s solution: power, aggression, win/lose
Altruism’s solution: selflessness, sacrifice, lose/win service to others
The Three Options chart
Role models
Cases: money, sports, sex
From issues to “isms”
Philosophy “horizontally”: metaphysics, epistemology, human nature, ethics
Philosophy “vertically”: integrating positions into systems
Placing our seven “isms”
Why those seven: influence on contemporary education and philosophical diversity
Six primary educational values
Knowledge, Method, Skills, Individuality, Socialization, Morality
Implications: hiring teachers, curriculum, assessment
Quotations on the six educational values
Idealist philosophy
Plato on education
The Allegory of the Cave
Immanuel Kant on education
Obedience, imposed discipline, disobedience, punishment
Idealist education
Contrasting Realist to Idealist philosophy
John Locke on education
Realist curriculum
3 R’s, foundational knowledge and methods
Example: Science, math, and technology
Example: Physical education
Example: Art
Theory and practice integrated
Example: Younger kids and baseball math
Example: Middle-school kids and bike-jumping
Example: High school kids, auto mechanics and theater
Tracking issues
Character, discipline, and liberty
Pragmatic philosophy
Evolution, skepticism, and democracy
John Dewey on education
Pragmatic education
Groups and socialization
Teacher as facilitator
Historical “truth”
Behaviorist philosophy
Psychology and the progression of the sciences
20th century psychology: Freud, Behaviorism, Cognitivism
Two preconditions for a science of psychology
On scientific observation
On correlating cause and effect: The “standard model” in psychology
The problem with the standard model
The behaviorist solution
Black box methodology
The assumption of environmental determinism
Behaviorist education, with quotations from John Watson and B. F. Skinner
Behaviorism as a how of education, not a what
2 x 2 chart of techniques
Applying what we’ve learned from psychology
Overcoming the resistance to conditioning:
Resistance 1: Behaviorism sounds so authoritarian
Resistance 2: Behaviorism makes teachers too accountable
Existentialist philosophy
God is dead
Albert Camus and “The Myth of Sisyphus”
Jean-Paul Sartre and “Existence precedes essence”
Religion and science as dehumanizing
Authentic humanism
Existentialism’s educational implications
General themes: choice, commitment, responsibility
Curriculum
Assessment
Individualism?
Contra the good-news-sunny-skies approach to life
Objectivist philosophy
A is A: Taking reality seriously
Reason and the senses
Individualism
Romanticism
The free life
Ayn Rand on education
Objectivism and education
Montessori and Rand
Developmentalism
Individualism
Motivation
Liberty and responsibility
Self-esteem
[View Part 12 at YouTube.]
Marxist philosophy
The science in “scientific socialism”
Materialism
Environmental determinism
Economic forces as fundamental
Philosophy, art, politics, and religion as superstructure
Religion as an example
The socialism in “scientific socialism”
Necessary economic developmental stages
Capitalism’s dynamic: “The rich get richer …”
Revolution, not evolution
Religion as the opium of the masses
The role of teachers in developing revolutionaries
Marxist education
Marxist teachers in a capitalist system
Education during the dictatorship of the proletariat
Education under socialism
Postmodern philosophy
Introduction
What modernism is
The Enlightenment vision
Post-modernism’s themes
Quotations from Foucault, Lyotard, Derrida
Problems from Marxism
Pomo: skeptical relativistic rhetoric against modern society
Henry Giroux on education
Postmodern education
Teacher training
Literature
History
Science
The Importance of the Philosophy of Education
What is the value of Philosophy of Education?
Personal growth
One’s professional mission as a teacher
Understanding the contemporary school system
Progress and reform
Our students
Course flyer and table of contents for the lecture series
Course readings
Supplemental readings booklet: Philosophical Foundations of Education
Other recommended sources
All of the above videos can be viewed at CEE’s channel at YouTube.
Related posts:
Locke versus Kant on motivation and discipline
Adam Smith on accountability in education
Fichte on education as socialization
Dewey on education as socialization
Education and the National Socialists
Video interview with Jerry Kirkpatrick on Montessori and Dewey
How great artists become great
Sidney Hook on public education in New York in the early 1900s
A complete listing of Professor Hicks’s education-related posts.
For more information about Dr. Stephen Hicks, click here.
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