“Education” and Teacher Preparation

Abstract

Is an academic discipline? Does it con stitute a significant body of knowledge so organized that it can be taught and learned? Does in its own right belong in the catalog as a department, corege, or school? What significance, if any, do these questions for teacher programs? The question of the legitimacy of an academic discipline of appears to be closely related to these three usages. In understanding as an accomplished fact, we must appreciate the centrality of the concept of change. Persons who have an education are expected to be different from what they were prior to the phe nomenon of educated: it is presumed that they changed (hopefully for the better). Human change is so vital to the experience called that it likely would be found explicit or implicit in all defini tions of the term. Regarding what kinds of changes actuary occur in students, and which among these are most important, we must consult evidence from the ology, philosophy, psychology, history, sociology, etc. Secondly, frequently is taken to mean a social process, a transmission of a set of respected values (ideals, standards) from one generation to the next, the purpose of which is to preserve and enhance those values. This may occur informally or formally (in schoo's) ; in either case it is necessary for the con tinuation and development of a culture. Although the emphasis is apparently on stability rather than change in this signification, the latter is essential. However, change here must be taken more in the sense of deepen ing and re-app1ying what one already has or knows ( for example, democratic freedom) rather than as substi tuting one entity for another very different one. With out change in one of these two ways, our culture is not stable, but static, and therefore dying, if not dead. Thirdly, the term designates a process of self-actualization, which is understood in various ways. Depending upon your philosophy of man and of knowl edge, se'f-actualization might signify (a) manifestation, (b) acquisition, or (c) transaction. The manifestation is based on the presupposition that human persons possess in germ (potentially) everything that they can become; the process of self-actualization, then, is one of identifying these latent characteristics and attempting to make them manifest. Education as acquisition is founded on the principle that every human being has some innate capacities, but does not possess all that he needs for maturation; then the work becomes that of utilizing these inherent powers to acquire what one is lacking in order to achieve fulfillment. Self-actualiza tion as a process of transaction rests on some aspects of the above two viewpoints, but also on the tenet that man is inseparable from nature (that is, man and nature are comprised of the same kind of rea1ity); education, therefore, is a process of give and take between man and his environment. Although irreconcilable in some respects, these viewpoints also share some common ground, most important for us being the fact that they represent a process of human becoming, frequently termed education.