Teacher's Question of the Week
Q. What are the aims of education? Or - what should be the aims of education?
A. Amelie O. Rorty asked this question in her book, Philosophers on Education:
What are the proper aims of education?
Preserving the harmony of civic life?
Individual salvation, freedom or enlightenment of all?
Artistic creativity?
Scientific progress?
Empowering individuals to choose wisely?
Preparing citizens to enter a productive labor force?
"How should the intellectual, spiritual, civic and moral, artistic, physical and technical dimensions of education be related to one another?" (Rorty 3)
What are your ideas about the aim(s) of education? How should the different dimensions of human experience be related to one another in education?
Please submit your idea by email. We can return to this question in a future Q of the Week, and integrate your responses.
To read more on the aims of education, go to Chapter 8 in Democracy and Education, an online text by John Dewey. (Institute of Learning Technologies; Columbia University)
Alfred Lord Whitehead's The Aims of Education and Other Essays is also available online.
To go to "Materials on the Philosophy of Education" page, click here. This is an extensive collection of primary source readings. (Metropolitan Community College, Omaha, Nebraska)
Source: Rorty, Amelie Oksenberg. Philosophers on Education. London: Routledge, 1998.