Presentism and sensationalism: Challenges to educational foundations

Abstract

I teach philosophy of education in large college of education. As you may know, philosophers of education, if involved in undergraduate teaching, flip-flop uncertainly between the demands of the discipline of philosophy and the evident need to influence preparation of teachers. Perhaps that is the cause of the trouble. The field, certainly as practiced today, is inherently ambiguous. Sometimes I envy my colleagues in the philosophy department. There is something elegant and extremely attractive about commitment to discipline. I imagine (maybe fondly) that it would be comfortable to retreat into the concerns of philosophy (or history, or to one of the other academic disciplines that impinge on education) and still feel that I am making a contribution. In the main, however, preparation of teachers permits no such retreat. If tempted in that direction, we are accused of irrelevance (or worse), and the field of education, which we prize as having value, falls further into disrepute; teacher education programs allow practically no place these days to philosophical speculation. Eight years ago (how easy it is to fall into the habit-a habit symptomatic of the passage of time-of reminiscing) we offered at my institution, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, or more sections each quarter of the undergraduate course in philosophy of education. I do not need to add that the course was mandatory. No longer required, we recently had to cancel the only section as it enticed but three students. Such is the temper of our times. You might say that this is well deserved, but I do not think so. Student evaluations of my teaching have always been good. I say this simply to answer the charge that poor teaching begets small classes-it ain't necessarily so. Do not suppose I believe that philosophy of education contributes nothing to teacher preparation. We could address ourselves, as Silberman would have us do, to issues of what teachers should do and why they should do it. But that is small change in the minds of the mindless. We are told constantly that the real world is jungle and that such address to purpose is idealistic. More typically, we could outline the tenets of the schools of educational philosophy, but students, recognizing at least this much clearly-that we are all inconsistent, assert that most educators are eclectic, and dismiss our neat categories. We might perhaps dig into the work of selected philosophers (here Plato and Dewey are favorites), but the consequences are that students are intimidated by the tremendous intellectual accomplishments of these men, and revere rather than react, or worse, accuse them of obscurity because they use words not included in the basic vocabulary-anything not understandable by the typical TV audience