An Interview with Harvey Siegel: An Essential Resource in Philosophy of Education

12.31.09 - Michael F. Shaughnessy - Philosophy of education has been an important area of philosophy in the West for millennia. Beginning with Plato and Aristotle in Ancient Greece, philosophers have wrestled with questions concerning education, including the most fundamental: What are the proper aims and guiding ideals of education?

An Interview with Harvey Siegel: An Essential Resource in Philosophy of Education

Michael F. Shaughnessy

Eastern New Mexico University

Portales, New Mexico 88130

1)      Dr. Siegel, you have just edited The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Education. What led up to this?

Philosophy of education has been an important area of philosophy in the West for millennia.  Beginning with Plato and Aristotle in Ancient Greece, philosophers have wrestled with questions concerning education, including the most fundamental: What are the proper aims and guiding ideals of education? 

In recent decades, philosophy of education has largely fallen off the philosophical radar screen, to the extent that most philosophy departments do not have specialists in the subject on their faculty, or offer classes in the subject to their students.  Many, perhaps most, philosophy graduate students do not recognize the subject as part of philosophy’s ‘turf’.  The Handbook is intended, among other things, to bring philosophy of education to the attention of the broad philosophical community once again. 

2)      Why do you think philosophy of education is important in this current zeitgeist?

Education is central to cultural transmission and transformation in every culture.  Wherever there is education, there are philosophical questions about it that demand the attention of philosophers, educators, students, policy makers and citizens.  In that sense, philosophy of education is important not just in our present context, but in any age, or cultural context.

3)      Your text is supposed to be an introduction to the key issues in the field- what do you see as the key issues and why are they important?

As already mentioned, the most fundamental is that concerning the aims and ideals of education.  Others concern (1) evaluation: what are the appropriate criteria for evaluating educational efforts, institutions, practices and products?; (2) what renders legitimate the authority exercised by states and teachers?; (3) what are the corresponding rights of students and their parents?; (4) how should we understand purported ideals such as critical thinking, and purported undesirable phenomena such as indoctrination?; (5) how should we conceive and conduct moral education?; (6) how should curriculum content be determined?; etc.

4)      Your book is broken up into 6 main areas. Could you briefly describe each of these areas and why they were chosen? For instance, a) aims of education b) thinking, reasoning, teaching and learning c) moral, value and character education d) Knowledge, curriculum and educational research, e) social/political issues and f) approaches to philosophy  of education

The six areas are arbitrary in the sense that the subject can be divided up in several different ways.  That said, they do seem to me to be sensible divisions.

The first concerns the aims of education, and includes separate discussions of epistemic aims (true belief? knowledge? justified belief? understanding? epistemic virtues? something else?); moral and political aims (autonomy? human flourishing? economic self-sufficiency? democratic competence? something else?), including questions concerning society’s obligation to fund public education, the distribution of educational opportunities, etc.; and the character and desirability of liberal education.  The chapters in the second section discuss a wide range of questions, including the place of thinking and reasoning in education; the character and educational role of fallibilism; the character and (un)desirability of both indoctrination and authenticity; the psychological development of rationality in students, and the potential of developmental psychology to guide educational efforts; the nature and desirability of ‘Socratic’ teaching; and the education of the imagination.  The third section focuses on moral education, and contains essays on the place in moral education of the cultivation of caring and empathy; the prospects of a Kantian approach to moral education; moral skepticism and the limits of moral education; and the nature of values and value education.  The fourth features chapters on the general relation between knowledge and curriculum; specific curriculum areas including art and science; and educational research.  The fifth treats issues concerning multiculturalism, prejudice, and authority.  The final, fifth section treats pragmatist, feminist, and postmodern approaches to philosophy of education.  Together the essays offer up-to-date, original of at least many, if not most, of the main issues of philosophy of education under discussion by philosophers today.

5)      Are the schools of education across America neglecting the history and philosophy of education?

Yes, I do think that schools of education generally pay short shrift to the history and philosophy of education.  It is hard to see how a teacher can succeed without having a solid understanding of many of the central philosophical questions concerning education that the subject (and the Handbook) addresses.  That said, while I would be delighted for the Handbook to be used widely in schools of education, its intended target is rather students and instructors in philosophy departments.  It is important that educators educate in ways that are substantially informed by philosophical reflection.  It is also important that philosophers take up once again the deep questions concerning education that they have grappled with for thousands of years but have ignored or forgotten about in recent decades.