The fact that philosophic problems arise because of widespread
and widely felt difficulties in social practice is disguised
because philosophers become a specialized class which uses a
technical language, unlike the vocabulary in which the direct
difficulties are stated
The fact that philosophic problems arise because of widespread
and widely felt difficulties in social practice is disguised
because philosophers become a specialized class which uses a
technical language, unlike the vocabulary in which the direct
difficulties are stated. But where a system becomes influential,
its connection with a conflict of interests calling for some
program of social adjustment may always be discovered. At this
point, the intimate connection between philosophy and education
appears. In fact, education offers a vantage ground from which
to penetrate to the human, as distinct from the technical,
significance of philosophic discussions. The student of
philosophy ‘in itself’ is always in danger of taking it as so
much nimble or severe intellectual exercise — as something said
by philosophers and concerning them alone. But when philosophic
issues are approached from the side of the kind of mental
disposition to which they correspond, or the differences in
educational practice they make when acted upon, the
life-situations which they formulate can never be far from view.
If a theory makes no difference in educational endeavor, it must
be artificial. The educational point of view enables one to
envisage the philosophic problems where they arise and thrive,
where they are at home, and where acceptance or rejection makes a
difference in practice. If we are willing to conceive education
as the process of forming fundamental dispositions, intellectual
and emotional, toward nature and fellow men, philosophy may even
be defined as the general theory of education. Unless a
philosophy is to remain symbolic — or verbal — or a sentimental
indulgence for a few, or else mere arbitrary dogma, its auditing
of past experience and its program of values must take effect in
conduct. Public agitation, propaganda, legislative and
administrative action are effective in producing the change of
disposition which a philosophy indicates as desirable, but only
in the degree in which they are educative — that is to say, in
the degree in which they modify mental and moral attitudes. And
at the best, such methods are compromised by the fact they are
used with those whose habits are already largely set, while
education of youth has a fairer and freer field of operation. On
the other side, the business of schooling tends to become a
routine empirical affair unless its aims and methods are
animated by such a broad and sympathetic survey of its place in
contemporary life as it is the business of philosophy to provide.
Positive science always implies practically the ends which the
community is concerned to achieve. Isolated from such ends, it
is matter of indifference whether its disclosures are used to
cure disease or to spread it; to increase the means of sustenance
of life or to manufacture war material to wipe life out. If
society is interested in one of these things rather than another,
science shows the way of attainment. Philosophy thus has a
double task: that of criticizing existing aims with respect to
the existing state of science, pointing out values which have
become obsolete with the command of new resources, showing what
values are merely sentimental because there are no means for
their realization; and also that of interpreting the results of
specialized science in their bearing on future social endeavor.
It is impossible that it should have any success in these tasks
without educational equivalents as to what to do and what not to
do. For philosophic theory has no Aladdin”s lamp to summon into
immediate existence the values which it intellectually
constructs. In the mechanical arts, the sciences become methods
of managing things so as to utilize their energies for recognized
aims. By the educative arts philosophy may generate methods of
utilizing the energies of human beings in accord with serious and
thoughtful conceptions of life. Education is the laboratory in
which philosophic distinctions become concrete and are tested.
10/16/2006 08:55 PM
Argentina: Unsafe Highways
Good Airs is shocked at the number of highway fatalities in Argentina. A recent accident claimed the lives of 12, including 10 school children.
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10/16/2006 08:54 PM
Stanford’s VanDerveer receives extension
… 18 straight NCAA tournaments, falling just short of reaching the Final Four the past three seasons. Stanford won its school-record sixth straight Pac-10 regular-season championship last season, then lost 62-59 to top-seeded Louisiana State in the …
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10/16/2006 08:53 PM
Plasticine Racing
… Students Win Solar Car Race - Student teams from Minnesota and Mississippi cruised to victory Saturday in a high school solar car race along a 1,600-mile route through the Southwest. Evolution Theory to ‘Breed’ Better F1 Racing Cars - Charles …
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10/16/2006 08:52 PM
Apprenticeship Scheme Signing, Ceremony
… Department of Technical Education and Q-Carriers (B) Sdn Bhd. The scheme was extended to Sultan Bolkiah Vocational School also in 2002,” he said. “The scheme is an important form of technical training provided the Department of Technical Education …
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