Ethics and Education (Routledge Revivals)

R. S. Peters

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138890411
• eBook ISBN: 9781317494775
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

First published in 1966, this book was written to serve as an introductory textbook in the philosophy of education, focusing on ethics and social philosophy. It presents a distinctive point of view both about education and ethical theory and arrived at a time when education was a matter of great public concern. It looks at questions such as 'What do we actually mean by education?' and provides a proper ethical foundation for education in a democratic society. The book will appeal to both teachers and students of philosophy as well as education.

PART ONE

THE CONCEPT OF ‘EDUCATION’

CHAPTER I

CRITERIA OF ‘EDUCATION’

1. THE CONCEPT OF ‘EDUCATION’

It might be thought that the obvious way of beginning a study in the philosophy of education would be to formulate a definition of ‘education’ and to see whether this would fit all examples of it. After all, did not Socrates do just this when he tried to clarify concepts such as ‘justice’ or ‘courage’? Did not G. E. Moore proceed like this in his Principia Ethica when conducting what he called a ‘typically ethical inquiry’ into ‘good’? To proceed in this way, in the middle of the twentieth century, would reveal a certain insensitivity to one of the main contentions of the recent ‘revolution in philosophy’. For Wittgenstein, one of the leaders of this revolution, argued with great subtlety that philosophers from Socrates to Moore had been mistaken in thinking that a formula could be found which would encompass the different uses of words like ‘justice’ or ‘knowledge’ in which they were interested. The uses of a word are not always related by falling under a definition as in geometry where definitions are provided for terms such as ‘triangle’. Rather they often form a ‘family’ united ‘by a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing; sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail’.¹ This is particularly true of the sorts of terms in which philosophers are interested; for they are usually very general terms, which have developed a life of their own in a variety of contexts. They have seldom been consciously erected to perform a limited function in a confined system. The Greek words αιτια (cause) and λόγος (reason), for instance, developed a very rich and ubiquitous life of their own. It would be as difficult to give a precise definition of them as it would be to pin down the concept of ‘love’ with a formula.

‘Education’ is a concept of this sort, though it is not as difficult to get a grip on it as it is on more abstract concepts such as ‘cause’ or ‘truth’. Nevertheless there are usages of the term ‘education’ which it would be difficult to encompass in any precise definition. For instance, people often say things like ‘It was a real education to have to travel with my neighbour.’ This usage is an exception to the obvious criterion that education is something that we consciously contrive for ourselves or for others. This does not mean, however, that there are no criteria of ‘education’ which are co-extensive with most of its central usages. It only means that terms in a natural language develop a life of their own and send out shoots which take them far away from the central trunk of the concept. But this does not imply the abandonment of the criteria; rather it leads us to distinguish between central and peripheral usages of the term. The important thing is that we should recognize the differences in the uses as well as the similarities. The formulation of criteria, which started with Socrates, is an attempt to make explicit what binds the uses together. It is like a guide to the customs of a people rather than a definitive statement of their law.

Another widespread error about meaning to which Wittgenstein also drew attention was the assumption that all words have meaning on the model of names which are associated with some typical referent. This had led to the postulation, as in Plato’s theory of Forms, of abstract referents or essences for abstract terms such as ‘justice’, and of mysterious inner entities and processes to which words like ‘mind’ or ‘intuition’ might refer. Wittgenstein did not wish to deny that something is going on when people are thinking or having intuitions. He only wished to deny that there is any one special sort of thing which must be going on, and that reference to such a special process is essential for giving meaning to the concept in question. The term ‘intuition’ for instance calls attention not to a peculiar inner process but to a type of public claim that is made when people claim to know things ‘by intuition’ or to have intuitions about other people’s motives. For they are intimating that they are sure of what they say or think but that they can produce no grounds to back their convictions.

Many might claim that Wittgenstein was in fact mistaken in the application of this thesis to the analysis of particular mentalistic terms; but few would deny that his general thesis was a salutary if unoriginal one. Not all terms have meaning on the model of names by being associated with some typical referent. And surely ‘education’ is a term of this sort. ‘Education’ is not a term like ‘gardening’ which picks out a particular type of activity. Something, of course, must be going on if education is taking place and something must have been gone through for a person to emerge as an educated man. For education is associated with learning, not with a mysterious maturation. But no specific type of activity is required. A man can do it himself in solitary confinement, or acquire it by constant activity in a small group. He can be trained on his own by a tutor or be inspired by lectures given to 500. In this respect ‘education’ is rather like ‘reform’. It picks out no particular activity or process. Rather it lays down criteria to which activities or processes must conform.

2. THE NORMATIVE ASPECT OF ‘EDUCATION’

There is another respect in which ‘education’ is like ‘reform’. Both concepts have the criterion built into them that something worth while should be achieved. ‘Education’ does not imply, like ‘reform’, that a man should be brought back from a state of turpitude into which he has lapsed; but it does have normative implications, if along a slightly different dimension. It implies that something worth while is being or has been intentionally transmitted in a morally acceptable manner. It would be a logical contradiction to say that a man had been educated but that he had in no way changed for the better, or that in educating his son a man was attempting nothing that was worth while. This is a purely conceptual point. Such a connection between ‘education’ and what is valuable does not imply any particular commitment to content. It is a further question what the particular standards are in virtue of which activities are thought to be of value and what grounds there might be for claiming that these are the correct ones. All that is implied is a commitment to what is thought valuable.¹ This connection with commendation does not prevent us either from speaking of ‘poor’ education, when we think that a worth-while job is being botched, or of ‘bad’ education, when we think that much of what people are working at is not worth while, though it is a nice question to determine at what point we pass from saying that something is ‘bad’ education to saying that it is not education at all. There is, too, a more neutral way of using such a term. A sociologist or anthropologist might speak of the education system or moral code of a community without implying that he thought it desirable. But in such cases the implication is that those whose system or code it is consider that it involves what is desirable. The social scientist would be merely describing what others think worth while. But if he went on to say that he did not think that the educational system of a community had any educational value he would be passing a judgment himself which intimated what he thought worth while.

(a) The task-achievement analysis of ‘education’

It is this implication that something worth while is being passed on or promoted that makes ‘education’ a special case of what Ryle calls an ‘achievement word’.¹ Ryle distinguishes what he calls ‘task’ words from ‘achievement’ words. ‘Hunting’ denotes a task, ‘finding’ an achievement. His main point is that words like ‘finding’ and ‘winning’ and hence epistemological words like ‘concluding’ and ‘hearing’ do not pick out activities or processes in addition to ‘looking’, ‘running’, ‘reasoning’ and ‘listening’. Rather they are indicative of the successful outcome of the tasks in question. But there is no implication that the achievements in question are necessarily worth while or that the tasks are morally unobjectionable. There is nothing necessarily desirable about hearing or finding something. With ‘education’, however, there is such an implication. For to educate someone implies not only some sort of achievement, but also one that is worth while. It also implies that the manner of doing this should not be morally objectionable. Conditioning might be ruled out as a process of education on these, as well as on other grounds.²

There are other differences, too, between ‘education’ and Ryle’s achievement words. ‘Education’ covers a range of tasks as well as achievements. It is used to cover both trying and succeeding. ‘Teaching’ has a similar double aspect, as Scheffler has already indicated.³ Educational practices are those in which people try to pass on what is worth while as well as those in which they actually succeed in doing so. Success might be marked by general virtues such as a sense of relevance, precision, and the power to concentrate and by more specific virtues such as courage, sensitivity to others, and a sense of style.

This points to another difference between ‘education’ and other achievement words. It has already been shown that ‘education’ picks out no specific activities, though, as will be argued later, it does rule out some.⁴ Similarly a multitude of different achievements or valuable states of mind are gathered together under the aegis of being worth while. Most of Ryle’s achievement words pick out more specific states of mind and more specific activities which count as ‘tasks’ in relation to them. It is this multiplicity of worth-while states of mind which can be passed on in education which leads to so much dispute about its ‘aims’.

(b) Aims of education

I have argued elsewhere¹ that much of the confusion about ‘aims of education’ comes about through extracting the normative feature built into the concept of ‘education’ as an extrinsic end. Given that ‘education’ suggests the intentional bringing about of a desirable state of mind in a morally unobjectionable manner, it is only too easy to conceive of education as a neutral process that is instrumental to something that is worthwhile which is extrinsic to it. Just as gardens may be cultivated in order to aid the economy of the household, so children must be educated in order to provide them with jobs and to increase the productivity of the community as a whole.

But there is something inappropriate about this way of speaking; for we would normally use the word ‘train’ when we had such a specifiable extrinsic objective in mind.² If, however, we do specify an appropriate ‘aim’ such as the development of individual potentialities or the development of intellect and character, then the aim would be intrinsic to what we would consider education to be. For we would not call a person ‘educated’ who had not developed along such lines. It would be like saying that the aim of reform is to develop an individual’s sense of responsibility. This would give content to our understanding of making a man better, which is what it means to reform him, just as the development of intellect and character gives content to the notion of developing what is worth while, which is what it means to educate someone. If a dispute started about such ‘aims’—e.g. whether a sense of responsibility was more important than respect for others or whether the development of intellect was more important than the development of character—this would not be a dispute about ends which were extrinsic to reform or education; rather it would be a dispute about what was the most important characteristic of a reformed or educated man. Such aims mark out specific achievements and states of mind that give content to the formal notion of ‘the educated man’.

Another way of arriving at the same point is by an examination of the concept of ‘aim’. The term ‘aim’ has its natural home in the context of limited and circumscribed activities like shooting and throwing. ‘Aiming’ is associated with the concentration of attention within such an activity on some object which must be hit, or pierced. Its internal accusative ‘target’ covers anything conforming to this specification. When the term ‘aim’ is used more figuratively it has the same suggestion of the concentration of attention on something which is the focus of an activity. It is odd to use it like the term ‘purpose’ or ‘motive’ to suggest some explanatory end for the activity in question. We can reasonably ask a person what his purpose is in building a new house or his motive in visiting a sick friend when we want to know what he sees these activities as leading up to; but it would be odd to ask for the aim of these activities, if we wanted to remove our puzzlement about their explanation. To ask for an aim is to ask for a more precise specification of what an action or activity is. We ask people what they are aiming at when they seem rather confused about their purposes or when they are drawing up a plan of campaign and have to formulate what they intend to do in a coherent way. Asking a person about his aims is a method of getting him to concentrate or clear his mind about what he is trying to do. ‘Aim’ also carries the suggestion that we are trying to achieve something that we might fall short of because of the difficulty involved in the task. Targets are things which we have to concentrate on if we want to hit them; so too, when we talk figuratively about what we are aiming at, we intimate the possibility of missing or falling short. If we say to someone ‘What are you aiming at doing?’ instead of ‘What do you intend to do?’ this is a quaint colloquialism which carries the suggestion both of concentration and of the possibility of falling short.

It is obvious enough, therefore, why the term ‘aim’ is used so frequently in the context of education. For this is a sphere where people engage with great seriousness in activities without always being very clear about what they are trying to achieve, and where genuine achievements are difficult to come by. To ask questions about the aims of education is therefore a way of getting people to get clear about and focus their attention on what is worth while achieving. It is not to ask for the production of ends extrinsic to education which might explain their activities as educators. Aims can be high level or low level. A teacher can write down in his lesson notes that his aim in the coming lesson is to reach the end of Exercise 6, or to get his pupils to speak some Latin, or grasp something about ancient Rome. Or he may say his aim is to train their character a bit by making them cope with a difficult unseen. But, whatever he says he is aiming at, the formulation of his aim is an aid to making his activity more structured and coherent by isolating an aspect under which he is acting. It is not something which he does in order to explain what he is doing; it is, rather, a more precise specification of it.

The natural way of asking for an extrinsic end is to ask what a man’s purpose is in doing something or what his motive for it may be. These are strange questions to ask about education itself, for as ‘education’ implies the transmission of what is of ultimate value, it would be like asking about the purpose of the good life; but they are reasonable questions to ask about the activities that fall under education. For things like science and carpentry can be practised and passed on both for their own intrinsic value and because of the contribution which they make to extrinsic ends such as productivity, housing, and health. But in so far as they are regarded as part of someone’s education they are regarded ipso facto as having value, and therefore as having reasons for doing them built into them, which he comes to accept. Confusion about aims of education often derives from saying things about education itself which are appropriate when said about activities which can be and usually are regarded as having educational value.

Of course a person who grasps these conceptual points about ‘the aims of education’ can quite reasonable reply: ‘Well I am against education then. We have not time for such luxuries. We must equip people for suitable jobs and train enough scientists and technicians to maintain an expanding economy.’ This is an arguable position¹—provided that it does not masquerade as a view about the aims of education. To which the advocate of training might reply that the criteria for using the word ‘education’ have been unwarrantably tightened up; for the word is often used in contexts where some more limited exercise, such as vocational training, is envisaged. There are two points to make about such a reply. Firstly there...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Preface
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part One: The Concept of 'education'
• Part Two: Ethical Foundations of Education
• Part Three: Education and Social Control
• Index