What is Education?

Group BUF100

Spring 2013

Menand’s Three Theories

• Theory one:– “it doesn’t matter which

courses students take, or even what is taught in them, as long as they’re rigorous enough for the sorting mechanism to do its work. All that matters is the grades.”

Menand’s Three Theories

• Theory two:– “you might consider

grades a useful instrument of positive or negative reinforcement, but the only thing that matters is what students actually learn.”

• Theory three:– “advanced economies

demand specialized knowledge and skills, and, since high school is aimed at the general learner, college is where people can be taught what they need in order to enter a vocation. A college degree in a non-liberal field signifies competence in a specific line of work.”

What is education?

• Throughout our reading this semester we have covered many different views on what the purpose of education is. We have also encountered multiple views on how and what should be taught to these young learners. I would like to cover the main points of each of our readings.

Plato's Meno

• In Meno, Socrates argues that if an individual wants to be good at a profession they should go to the experts of that field. Socrates states,“If we wanted him to be a good cobbler, should we not send him to the cobblers?” He continues on to suggest that there are no experts on virtue and therefore Socrates and Meno decide that virtue is of divine nature.

Plato’s Protagoras

• In this excerpt Protagoras claims to be a teacher of virtue and Socrates challenges him to prove that he truly can teach virtue. Socrates is skeptical at first, but Protagoras makes a point that virtue can be taught and is made evident in the fact that good parents can have children lacking virtue and bad parents can have virtuous children. In the end Socrates believes that Protagoras is indeed a teacher of virtue.

Plato’s Republic• In Plato’s Republic the main concept of the passage is to elaborate on

and describe what skills a leader should possess to be capable of leading.

“Then this is knowledge of the kind for which we are seeking, having a double use, military and philosophical; for the man of war must learn the art of number or he will not know how to array his troops, and the philosopher also, because he has to rise out of the sea of change and lay hold of true being, and therefore he must be an arithmetician.”

An example of how this is still important today is, with the fairly recent addition of chemistry as a science, proper use and knowledge of arithmetic and numbers are essential to a safe working environment. Miscalculated formulas can result in explosions and many other harmful results. So arithmetic has a double use both in mathematics and in chemistry. I'm sure you can think of many different examples where one subject has multiple uses in our daily lives.

Renaissance Writers

Baldassare Castiglione• Believed that men and

women should posses a lot of the same qualities and be educated in the same way. There are some exceptions, she should learn to dance and be beautiful and should not claim to know that in which she does not.

Giovanni Michele Bruto• Believed that men should

be the superior sex and that women should not be educated. – “It not mete nor convenient

for a Maiden to be taught or trained up in the learning of humane arts, in whom a virtuous demeanor and honest behavior, would be a sightlier ornament…”

Renaissance WritersChristine de Pisan• Believed that women and

men are equals in their ability to learn. – “… just as women have more

delicate bodies than men, weaker and less able to perform many tasks, so do they have minds that are freer and sharper whenever they apply themselves.”

–She argues that women were never given the chance to learn and that is why they were considered unable to learn, not because they actually could not learn

John Locke: Some Thoughts Concerning Education

• Locke believed that there were four goals of education and these were:– Virtue– Wisdom– Breeding – Learning

Locke did not believe in physical punishments and that they commonly have the opposite affects than those intended.

• “Every one’s natural genius should be carried as far as it could…” – Every child should study

at the pace of nature and not be forced to practice other areas.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• In Emile, Rousseau describes the proper upbringing of a child without exposing them to the conventional classroom and letting them learn by experience.

• Rousseau argues that there is an enormous benefit in natural education. Not imposing habits and forcing them to learn material too early in life. He believes that a child should be a child and not forced into a man before his time.