PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION COURSE

PHIL 2050.01: PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION: SPRING 2000

BOB CORBETT, INSTRUCTOR

• General description of the course
• Syllabus and grading procedure for the course    This is a 100% on-line credit course using e-mail and the world wide web. Non-credit visitors are welcome to sit in. It is possible to do the whole course after the fact by following the course below.
• Unit One: What is the purpose of education?   All the files for this first unit's work. This unit includes a very basic introduction to the course, especially what it is that makes this a philosophy course and not an education course. We will inquire into what are reasons we ourselves might give to defend a view of what formal education is all about. Lastly, Corbett will introduce the moral emphasis in the questions of philosophy of education.
• Unit Two: Ivan Illich   All the files for this second unit's work. We will read and discuss selections from his DESCHOOLING SOCIETY.
• Unit Three: Philippe Aries and the history of childhood    The readings and discussion for this week focus on the work of Philippe Aries and the discipline of the history of childhood which his book CENTURIES OF CHILDHOOD inspired.
• Unit Four: Ron Miller's WHAT ARE SCHOOLS FOR?    We will read and discuss this contemporary attempt to address, from a more or less radical perspective, the question of what education ought to be about.
• Unit Five: Paulo Freire and education for critical consciousness and non-formal education.   The work of Paulo Freire is mainly outside the formal classroom and with adults who are learning in order to change their own reality, not to be credentialed for economic purposes.
• Unit Six: Bowles and Gintis sociological/economic analysis of the American educational system from a Marxist standpoint.   We will look at three Bowles and Gintis positions: the nature of meritocarcy; the argument that meritocracy is not an accurate description of what happens; the argument that describes what the "actual" achievement of the school is.
• Unit Seven: Cyber Space and Education    Cyber space seems to be the technological advance which has the greatest potential to radically impact education, even formal education. We will explore some of those possibilities, especially in light of Ivan Illich's notions of "learning webs."