Q 4: Explain the Role of Contemporary Philosophies in Education?
Course: Philosophy of Education
Course Code 8609
Topics
- Role of Contemporary Philosophies in Education
- The concept of methods and knowledge of teaching
AIOU Solved Assignment |Semester: Autumn/Spring | B.Ed/Bachelors in Education /Masters in Education / PhD in Education | BEd / MEd / M Phil Education | ASSIGNMENT Course Code 8609| Course: Philosophy of Education
Answer:
Contemporary Philosophies and
Theories in Education signify new directions and possibilities outside of the
traditional field of philosophy and education. Around the globe, exciting
scholarship that breaks down and reformulates traditions in the humanities and
social sciences is being created in the field of education scholarship. This
series provides a venue for publication by education scholars whose work
reflects the dynamic and experimental qualities that characterize today’s
academy.
The series associates philosophy and
theory not exclusively with a cognitive interest (to know, to define, to order)
or an evaluative interest (to judge, to impose criteria of validity) but also
with an experimental and attentive attitude which is characteristic of thought exercises that try to find out how to move in the present and how to
deal with the actual spaces and times, the different languages and practices of
education and its transformations around the globe.
It addresses the need to draw on thought
across all sorts of borders and counts amongst its elements the following: The
valuing of diverse processes of inquiry; an openness to various forms of
communication, knowledge, and understanding; a willingness to always continue
experimentation that incorporates debate and critique; and an application of
this spirit, as implied above, to the institutions and issues of education.
Authors for the series come not only
from the philosophy of education but also from curriculum studies and critical
theory, social sciences theory, and humanities theory in education. The series
incorporates volumes that are trans- and
inner-disciplinary. For much of the
history of Western philosophy, philosophical questions concerning education
were high on the philosophical agenda. From Socrates, Plato, and (p. 4)
Aristotle to twentieth‐century figures such as Bertrand Russell, John Dewey, R.
S. Peters, and Israel Scheffler, general philosophers (i.e., contemporary philosophers working in departments of
philosophy and publishing in mainstream philosophy journals, and their
historical predecessors) addressed questions in philosophy of education along
with their treatments of issues in epistemology,
metaphysics, philosophy of mind and language, and moral and social/political
philosophy.
The same is true of most of the major
figures of the Western philosophical tradition, including Augustine, Aquinas,
Descartes, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Mill, and many others.
The concept of methods and knowledge of teaching
With the emergence of the new religion (Islam)
and the civilization that arose with it, a set of religious and linguistic
disciplines came into being, among which were those dealing with the Koran,
hadith, fiqh, linguistics, the biographies of the Prophet and his companions,
and the military campaigns of the Prophet, which were designated the ‘Arab
sciences'. With the growth of Arab and Islamic culture, and through contact and
interaction with and borrowing from foreign cultures, another set of
disciplines arose, such as medicine, astronomy, chemistry, mathematics,
philosophy, and logic, which were called the ‘non-Arab' sciences.
From these native and borrowed sciences, a flourishing scientific movement grew
rapidly, although a conflict soon arose between the religious sciences and the
disciplines of philosophy and the natural sciences, or between the fuqaha' and
the philosophers. Al-Ghazali and his Tahafut al-Falasifa were one of the
elements in this struggle, which ended with the victory of the fuqaha' (and
Sufis) over the philosophers and scientists. And yet the religious sciences
emerged from this battle weakened and lacking in vigor, especially after the
gate of independent inquiry was closed and the method of relying on earlier
authorities gained supremacy:
Arab civilization and science thus
went from an age of original production, creativity, and innovation to one of
derivation, imitation, and compilation. As a scholar and teacher, al-Ghazali was
interested in the problem of knowledge: its concepts, methods, categories and
aims. True knowledge, in al-Ghazali's view, is knowledge of God, His books, His
prophets, the kingdoms of earth and heaven, as well as knowledge of shari‘a as
revealed by His Prophet. Such knowledge is thus a religious science, even if it
includes the study of certain worldly phenomena. Disciplines relating to this
world, such as medicine, arithmetic, etc., are classed as techniques.
The purpose of knowledge is to help a man achieve plenitude and attain true happiness—the happiness of the hereafter—by drawing close to God and gazing upon His countenance. The value of learning lies in its usefulness and veracity. Hence, the religious sciences are superior to the secular sciences because they concern salvation in the eternal hereafter rather than this transient world, and because they contain greater truth than the secular sciences. This is not to say that the secular sciences should be completely ignored; they have their uses, and are needed by society. Examples of such disciplines are medicine and linguistics.
The Muslim philosophers and scholars
(al-Kindi, al-Farabi, Ibn an-Nadim, Ibn Sina, and others) had a passion for
classifying the sciences and were
influenced in this respect by the Greek philosophers, in particular Aristotle.
Al-Ghazali has several classifications of the sciences: he first classifies
them according to their ‘nature' into theoretical (theological and religious
sciences) and practical (ethics, home economics, and politics), and then
according to their ‘origin' into revealed sciences, taken from the prophets
(unity of God, exegesis, rites, customs, morality) and rational sciences,
produced by human reason and thinking (mathematics, natural sciences, theology,
etc.)
There is no contradiction, in
al-Ghazali's opinion, between the revealed sciences and the rational sciences.
Any apparent conflict between the prescriptions of revelation and the
requirements of reason stems from the incapacity of the seeker to attain the
truth and from his faulty understanding of the reality of revealed law or the judgment
of reason. In fact, the revealed and the rational sciences complement—and
indeed are indispensable to—one another. The problem is that it is difficult,
if not impossible, to study and understand them together. They constitute two
separate paths, and whoever takes an interest in the one will be deficient in
the other.
Finally, al-Ghazali classifies the
sciences according to their purpose or aim, dividing them into the science of
transaction (governing the behavior and actions of human beings—the sciences of
rites and customs) and the science of unveiling (of the apprehension
of the reality and essence of things), an abstract science which can only be
attained through unveiling a light which illuminates the heart when the heart
is purified, a light which is ineffable and cannot be contained in books. It is
the supreme science and the truest form of knowledge.
The 11th century (5th century H)
witnessed the triumph of the religious sciences over philosophy and the natural
sciences. al-Ghazali's violent attack on philosophy was one of the factors that
contributed to its weakening in the Islamic East. Al-Ghazali divides the
philosophical sciences into six categories: mathematics, logic, natural
sciences, metaphysics, politics, and ethics. Mathematics, logic, and the natural
sciences do not contradict religion and may be studied. The problem is that
whoever studies them may go on to metaphysics and other disciplines which
should be avoided.
Metaphysics is the science which is
most dangerous and at variance with religion. Politics and ethics are not
incompatible with the sciences and principles of religion, but here again,
whoever studies them may slide into the study of other, reprehensible sciences.
Curiously, although al-Ghazali attacked philosophy and the natural sciences,
and was influential in persecuting and weakening them, he also helped to
restore them to the curriculum at al-Azhar at the end of the 19th century,
where the head of that university, Muhammad al-Anbabi 1878 CE (1305 H) adduced
al-Ghazali's writings on the natural sciences to demonstrate that they
were not contradictory to religion and to authorize their teaching.
The Islamic educational system was
divided into two distinct levels: elementary schooling was dispensed in the books for the common people, and by men of letters in private houses for the
children of the élite; higher education took place in various Islamic
educational institutions such as mosques, madras as, ‘houses of science and
wisdom', Sufi hermitages, brotherhoods, hospices, etc. The elementary
curriculum had a pronounced religious character and consisted mainly of learning
the Koran and the fundamentals of religion, reading, and writing, and
occasionally the rudiments of poetry, grammar, narration, and arithmetic, with
some attention being devoted to moral instruction.
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Imam Ghazali's Philosophy of Education
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