Luiz asked:

I am teaching a course on Education in a postgraduate program in Music.

My question is: would you please advise me on some texts (and authors) on the subject of
Philosophy of education?

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As this branch of philosophy overlaps other main branches of philosophy, especially ethics and
epistemology, but also logic and even metaphysics, the selection of suitable literature will depend on
what special aspects of philosophy of education you are interested. Here are some suggestions:

If A.N. Whitehead is right saying, Western Philosophy consists of a series of footnotes to Plato, then
Philosophy of Education maybe described as a special case of a series of footnotes to Plato's
dialogue Meno.There you will find all the fundamental issues such as whether virtue can be taught,
what virtue is, what knowledge is, what the relation between teaching and knowledge is and how and
whether teaching is possible.

Whitehead himself wrote The Aims of Education and Other Essays(originally published by
Macmillan, 1929). An e-text of the first chapter is available at:
http://www.realuofc.org/libed/white/aims.html.

Perhaps one of the most influential contributions to the development of educational thinking in the
twentieth century was made by John Dewey in his Democracy and Education. An introduction to the
philosophy of education.

A more visionary attempt was done by John Amos Comenius about 1630 in his Didactica Magna,
usually called The Great Didactic. Perhaps a more meaningful translation would be "The Whole Art of
Teaching." It explored how people learn and how they should be taught from infancy through the
university and beyond. Comenius addressed such topics as education for everyone, career
preparation and lifelong learning (not for nothing one of the educational programmes of the European
Union is called Comenius!).

One of the most popular books on Philosophy of Education probably is Jean Jacques Rousseau's
Emile.Rousseau's ideas about education have profoundly influenced modern educational theory. He
minimizes the importance of book learning, and recommends that a child's emotions should be
educated before his reason. He placed a special emphasis on learning by experience.

As a teacher in postgraduate programmes in music you might especially be interested in this one:
Music Matters: A New Philosophy of Music Educationby David J. Elliot (view details with excerpts at
http://www.amazon.com).

If you wish to dive deeper into this subject you might find some of the links at Research Guide:
Philosophy of education useful.

Simone Klein

http://www.sophiasworld.at

Begin by looking up Aristotle, Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Montessori, Dewey, Makarenko,
Tagore, A.S. Neill and Goodman for a start at the UNESCO link Thinkers on education (the texts are
in PDF requiring the Acrobat Reader).

And then there's lots of literature! But I think you should be acquainted with the names indicated
above before entering any "Philosophy of Education" book. Those books give the grand picture, but
you should have some hold on those great thinkers on education to get a feeling of what this
philosophy is all about. And then you have to connect it to your own past experience as a child having
a home and as a pupil going to school.

Think of what has been good and what has been not so good in your experience
— and why. What would yousuggest to improve — why? Then you are bringing in your part of
"philosophy of education".

What is philosophy of education about? It's like medicine and psychotherapy about coaching and
mentoring children and pupils to become "as good human beings as possible". But what does this
mean? If you have to coach a tennis player or a piano player, you have an idea what the outcome
should be. The utmost aim would be to make her/ him a star. But what is the aim when coaching
somebody to become "as good human being as possible"? That's a very deep question and the core
of all philosophy of education that already perplexed Socrates and Plato.

And once more: If you had to educate your mom and dad or your teachers or your friends — what
would you want to improve in them, why? And what would you want to improve in yourself — why?
This "why" is the starting point of all "philosophy of education".

Hubertus Fremerey

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