What Is Education

For?
By:
1. Anis Ariyanti (A320200084)
2. Ghefira Dwi Cahya H.
(A320200091)
3. Luluk Lutifiyah (A320200092)
 Introduction
Every year the British government spends tens of billions of pounds on education. The
revised National Curriculum begins with a set of clearly specifiable aims. It was written
subsequently to the actual content of that curriculum, with little or no consideration
as to the relationship between them. The Victorians were convinced of the desirability
of two radically different kinds of schooling. The working classes spent most of their
time learning how to read, write and sort things into dozens. The middle class
counterparts were provided with a diet of almost unrelieved Latin and Greek.
What is ‘education’ and must an educator have an aim?
Richard Peters who, in a hugely influential book (Peters, 1966) argues that education is
logically (or conceptually) connected to what is deemed to be ‘worthwhile’, the
corollary of which, he believes, is that its value is intinsic in the sense that it is not
derivative from something else, such as a meal ticket towards getting a job. According
to Peters, ‘being educated’ entails that:
1. One has a body of knowledge and a degree of understanding involving a
conceptual scheme by reference to which what one knows is more than a
collection of disjointed facts;
2. Such knowledge cannot be ‘inert’ in the sense that it can be hived off as it were;
3. One has what he calls a ‘cognitive perspective’ whereby one does not have an
impossibly limited conception of what one is enganged in;
4. Unlike being trained, an educated person is not merely competent at performing a
particular task.
 Knowledge for its own sake

According to Hirst – or at least Hirst of the 1960s and 1970s – knowledge is

subsumable under seven different forms. These are: mathematics, physical sciences,
knowledge of persons, literature and the fine arts, morals, religion and philosophy.
What distinguishes one form from another, according to Hirst, is the fact that:
1. Each has its own unique set of concepts;
2. Each form has its unique logical structure;
3. Each form has its own tests for truth.
As we shall see, a strong case can be made for the importance of all kinds of
knowledge and understanding if one is to stand any chance of living a fulfilling life in a
society such as ours, but until we are clear as to what there is about such knowledge
that renders it significant, in the sense that it is indispensable to a person's long-term
interests, we cannot simply assume that it is the only thing of any value in a child's
education, or indeed thar it should be regarded as having supreme importance.

Some philosophers of education have expressed reservations not only about Hirst’s
analysis of knowledge, but have cast serious doubts on the extent to which we are
entitled to restrict the notion of liberal education to something as narrow and
restrictive. There is more to a person than her intellect. We therefore need to consider
other claims and to address some of the recent debates relating to the competing
merits of liberal versus vocational education before returning to the question of what
constitutes an appropriate education for a whole person. If, as will be argued, schools
should be concerned with the education of persons, we need a rather more generous
interpretation of ‘relevance’ than that provided so far.
 Education for work
Education For Work,"froms the common core of people's lives, which sets the pattern
for their general character it's their work above all that defines them in the eyes of
other... what you're is primarily what you do and what you do is primarily a matter of
what work you perform [such that] no one could now find satisfaction in a life which
didn't contain its component of meaningful work (1983, pp. 177-9)

I admit to once finding this immensely persuasive but I have been persuaded
otherwise as a result of reading John White's work on the role ofeducation in relation
to work (White, 1997), in which he not only makes some immensely important
distinctions including that between (i) autonomous work (where it is one of one's
major goals to produce something) and heter- onomous work (where it is not), (ii)
work in which one willingly engages from that done unwillingly, (iii) paid work and
voluntary work.
An altogether different approach would be to conceive of vocational education as part
of a genuinely liberal education, something which has engaged the attention of a
number of philosophers of education since John Dewey who questioned the
legitimacy of the distinction between the theoretical and the practical (Dewey, 1916).

Richard Pring has tried to show how the supposed dichotomy between preparing for
an intellectually rich life on the one hand and a life that includes vocations on the
other can be reconciled with what he calls vocational liberals' (Pring, 1995).
 Education for well-being
Well-being and happiness

For the early utilitarians such as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill the good life
amounted to a happy life whereby one may well be relatively easy to distinguish
happy people from those enjoyed 'an existence made up of few and transitory pains,
many and various pleasures (Mill, 1861). One might take issue with this particular
account of happiness but it does capture the subjective nature of the phenomenon;
what makes one person happy may leave others unhappy. To account for well-being in
terms of the quality of one's own subjective experiences is particularly problematic.
For example, as Robert Nozick has demonstrated (Nozick, 1974), we could envisage an
experience machine whereby one could experience anything one wanted that one has
friends, is in control of one's life, is virtuous and knowledgeable.
 Well-being and desire-satisfaction

To this extent it is compitable with the values associated with a liberal democracy
whereby individuals should be allowed to pursue their own version of the good life,
providing that in so doing they do not frustrate other people's attempts to pursue
theirs. The theory tend to emphasize the necessity of being able to structure one's
desires in some kind of hierarchical order; one has to press further than just asking
'what do I want?'; one has to ask questions such as 'do I really want it?- not just now,
but long-term?' concern for pupils'well-being therefore, means that we need to get
them to recognize what is involved in genuine choice.
White characterized well-being as the satisfaction of those desires one would have,
were one in possession of information enabling one to appreciate the implications of
satisfying a particular desires (White, 1990)

The underlying assumption that I always reflect in order to find out what I most want,
is simply false. Sometimes I reflect in order to discover what it is that I need- what is in
my long-term interests. And it is that provides the clue to what is an altogether richer
account of personal well-being.
 Education and well-being : beyond desire-
satisfaction

Relating to the aims of education stresses the importance of things like personal
autonomy and the caring citizen, the implication being that such character traits are
desirable and necessary in order to flourish in our society.
First, what is to live autonomously-to be in the driving seat of one's own life where is
one's beliefe and actions are self-determined? The following would seem to be
necessary requirements :
1. A reasonable degree of self-knowledge whereby one is able to recognize the
forces of socialization by reference to which one's beliefs and desires are formed
and, if necessary, the courage and strenght of will to resist them and thus act in
accordance with one's own evaluations;
2. The ability to relate one's present choices to one's past and future in order to
provide some kind of shape to one's life thereby distinguishing it from the life of
the infant which is largely episodic;
3. The ability and opportunity to choose between a significant array of options
The implications for what schools are for are considerable. At the vert least it requires
a determination to help children acquire some understanding pf where their well-
being might lie, together with the respects in which it is bound up with the well-being
of others, all of which necessiaties their possessing a very great deal of knowledge
and understanding.