Keywords

The philosophy of education faced challenges in the twentieth century that had derived from the challenges general philosophical thought had faced. The following sections introduce the first three main trends in the philosophy of education in the twentieth century (i.e., early pragmatism, “ism” movements, and analytic philosophy of education) along with the challenges these trends faced. Next, the new horizons for the twenty-first century are explained under the titles of new pragmatism, post-structuralism, post-modernism, and constructivism. In the meantime, new conceptions of knowledge and education along with the weaknesses associated with them are introduced and discussed.

Main Trends in the Twentieth Century

This section introduces the three main trends in the philosophy of education: early pragmatism, “ism” movements, and the analytic philosophy of education revolution.

Early Pragmatism

The philosophical view on education has occurred under different names such as philosophy of faith and philosophy of duty in different places around the world (Burbules, 2000). However, the philosophy of education arose as a particular discipline in 1935 with the formation of the John Dewey Society (Kaminsky, 1985). Thus, John Dewey can be claimed to be the father of the philosophy of education. This is why Dewey’s early pragmatism was the first source of this discipline.

According to Dewey’s pragmatism, which was inspired by Hegel and Darwin, dichotomies such as individual vs. society, mind vs. body, and theory vs. practice should be removed and ideas should be evaluated in terms of their practical consequences during the process of adjustment. Dewey held that the aim of education should be connected to the problematic situation in which students exist. As the aim of education, growth indicates that pupils need to have their end results in view in terms of the problems that should be solved. In this endeavor, methods of problem solving are much more important than absorbing cultural content for the sake of subject matters. This endeavor also needs to be conducted democratically, namely by providing all students with the opportunity to participate in the process of problem solving.

Even though Dewey attempted to eliminate the dichotomies in philosophical as well as educational thought, his emphasis on method of thinking in contrast to the cultural content of thoughts became the Achilles’ heel of his philosophy of education. Inspired by the scientific method, Dewey’s (1933) book How We Think suggested the best way to think in education to be the experimental method; Dewey formulated this as the method of problem solving being applicable to all realms of education. As the next section will show, post-modern thinkers have undermined the supremacy of the scientific method in thought as well as education. In particular, Richard Rorty (1991), a new pragmatist who once temporarily described himself as post-modern, attacked Dewey’s view on the supremacy of the scientific method.

Another challenge to Dewey’s reliance on science came from the new pragmatist Willard Quine (1981). He held an even stronger holistic view on knowledge than Dewey’s. As explained below, Quine’s holistic view undermined the supremacy of evidence on theory; instead holding a two-way road in which evidence has as much power to restrain or reject theory as theory does to restrain or reject evidence.

The “Ism” Movements

New movements appeared during the 1950s and 1960s. These movements are usually referred to as “isms” based on various philosophical schools being taken as a foundation in order to provide educational implications for dealing with educational problems. Thus, educational philosophies were introduced under titles such as idealism, realism, existentialism, and more. Based on these schools’ philosophical assumptions, certain aims, subject matters, and methods were suggested for education. For example, Harry Broudy is one important figure who used realism as the basis for inferring educational implications. He referred to the derivative method as the main method for drawing such implications (Broudy, 1969, p. 118). William Frankena (1966) also suggested that Aristotle’s practical syllogism could be used for analyzing educational affairs in terms of their philosophical underpinnings. According to him, one can start the analysis regressively from educational methods, subject matters, and aims toward their underlying philosophical assumptions. In this way, how educational questions are answered is made clear by drawing philosophical implications (Bagheri Noaparast, 2016).

Taking philosophical schools as the basis for inferring implications also resulted in some difficulties being encountered in dealing with educational issues. The strong version of this inferential view providing a merely speculative attempt at dealing with educational problems undermined education’s empirical aspect. This weakness was the main problem for the “ism” movements. For instance, Sidney Hook (1969) attacked this view, accusing it of saying irrelevant things about education. He claimed that nobody would be able to infer new knowledge about learning from the epistemologies of the philosophical schools.

As mentioned above, the analytic philosophy of education was another source of the attack on the “ism” movements. According to the analytic view, the general task of philosophy, in particular the philosophy of education, was not to take the position of science, especially not the science of education.

The Revolution of the Analytic Philosophy of Education

The 1970s witnessed the climax of a so-called revolution in the philosophy of education brought about by the analytic philosophers of education. The analytic philosophy of education relied upon a general revolution in philosophy that, according to Gilbert Ryle (1956), had been in process since the beginning of the twentieth century. The transformation of analytic philosophy was called the second revolution in philosophy, the first being the one that had advanced with the rise of modern philosophy, particularly by Descartes.

Analytic philosophers of education take the philosophical inquiry as a second-order inquiry dealing with the language of education rather than educational activities per se. Thus, this trend in the philosophy of education looked to clarify educational concepts in order to help educationists understand and use educational terms properly and thereby avoid pitfalls in educational endeavors. Given the misuse of concepts such as teaching, punishment, and evaluation in educational settings, the analytic philosophy of education provided educationists with a therapeutic attempt by appealing to the educational damage they can prevent.

As Burbules (2000) pointed out, the analytic philosophy of education has had three important contributions. Firstly, it provided education with credibility and legitimacy. Credibility was due to the significant position that the analytic method had generally taken in philosophy and been transmitted to the educational sphere. Legitimacy was due to showing the analytic method’s usefulness in education for analyzing educational concepts. As an example, Richard Peters (1967) analyzed the concept of authority to show the times when a teacher can have a justified/unjustified authority. By differentiating between having authority and being an authority, he showed justified authority to be internal in teachers in terms of their knowledge and character whereas unjustified authority is external to teachers in terms of their title and position.

According to Burbules (2000), the analytic philosophy of education secondly broke the dominance Dewey and progressivism had in the philosophy of education by introducing a new view to education in terms of concept analysis.

Thirdly, the analytic philosophy of education was successful in defeating the deductive view associated with the “ism” movements. While teachers had been urged to choose their own philosophy among the philosophical schools in these movements, the analytic view stated that what teachers need is not to choose a philosophical school for drawing implications but rather to be able to think philosophically (i.e., analytically) on educational issues.

Two sources of challenges are found in the analytic philosophy of education: one from the inside and the other from the outside of the analytic tradition. The attack from the inside came from the towering figure of analytic philosophy, Ludwig Wittgenstein, who in his later period of thought rejected analytic philosophy’s claim of having a particular method of analysis. Unlike the early analytic philosophers who took mathematical logic as the criterion for analysis, Wittgenstein (1953) gave supremacy to ordinary language and denied logic’s dominance over ordinary language.

The outer source of the challenges to analytic philosophy came from its rival: continental philosophy. This source, which is referred to as a post-analytic philosophy, involves the different trends in Continental philosophy (e.g., post-structural and post-modern philosophy). Even though an attempt was made to have a conversation between the two traditions of European philosophy in 1958 in the Royaumont Colloquium in France, this attempt is mostly considered to have been fruitless. Michael Dummett (1993, p. 26) stated that analytical philosophy and phenomenology are like the two European rivers, the Rhine and the Danube, that “rise quite close to one another and for a time pursue roughly parallel courses, only to diverge in utterly different directions and flow into different seas.” This rivalry led to continental philosophy’s revenge over analytic philosophy at the end of the twentieth century due to the arrogance the latter had shown in relation to the former because of having a noble philosophical method. Thus, the end of the twentieth century witnessed the rise of rival philosophies of education in terms of the continental philosophies’ concerns.

New Horizons in the Twenty-First Century

This section explains the responses to the above-mentioned challenges under the rubrics of new pragmatism, post-structuralism, and post-modernism.

New Pragmatism

The two most important figures in new pragmatism are Ricard Rorty and Willard Quine. Both of them challenged Dewey’s pragmatism in terms of its conception of science. However, while Rorty undermined Dewey’s reliance on scientific method altogether, Quine provided early pragmatism with an elaborated conception of science.

As for Rorty, the main weakness of early pragmatism was its reliance on the scientific method. In his essay titled “Pragmatism Without Method,” Rorty (1991) held that pragmatism would be more promising if it put aside its obsession with method. Instead of a rigorous scientific method, Rorty suggested that communication and looking for some better ways for conversation is what is needed in philosophy as well as education.

Inspired by Hans Gadamer’s conception of Bildung [self-formation], Rorty looked for a desirable conception of education. Referring to his preferred conception as “edification,” he stated, “Since ‘education’ sounds a bit too flat, and Bildung a bit too foreign, I shall use ‘edification’ to stand for this project of finding new, better, more interesting, more fruitful ways of speaking” (Rorty, 1979, p. 360). Rory clearly saw a new way to speak about the lost element in education and gave edification two dimensions. One dimension indicates the edification of others and their cultures, which he referred to as hermeneutical activity. In this activity, what is needed is the ability to make the unfamiliar familiar. In other words, an educated person should have the ability to understand unfamiliar cultures instead of being closed minded in their own cultural conceptions.

The second dimension of edification consists of edifying oneself. Rorty referred to this dimension as poetic activity, by which he means the ability to make the familiar unfamiliar. In other words, a person with a university-level education should be able to question the basics of one’s own cultural concepts and criticize them more profoundly. The desirable person at this level of education is called the “liberal ironist.”

As far as the pre-university education is concerned, Rorty (1989) criticized Dewey’s extreme emphasis on teaching and learning the problem-solving method. According to Rorty, however, learning cultural content is crucial in this period of education so that one might call the education of this period enculturation. Rorty puts himself on the side of E. D. Hirsch in his controversy with Dewey on supporting content vs. method. In a conversation with Olson in response to the question, “Do you share E. D. Hirsch’s desire for increased ‘cultural literacy,’ a sharing of a common vocabulary and a common body of knowledge?” Rorty responded, “Yes, I think he’s perfectly right about that. The effect of the present system is to keep education for kids from relatively well-educated, middle-class families who pick up the common knowledge of society as a whole” (Olson, 1989, p. 7).

Quine’s (1981) version of the new pragmatism centers its attention on the negligence of a whole-hearted holism. According to Quine, neither Dewey nor the other founders of early pragmatism (i.e., Charles Peirce and William James) took the holistic characteristic of knowledge seriously. In line with his rejection of the foundational theory of epistemology, Quine believed a tendency of strong coherence to exist in our knowledge and so talked about the theory of coherence of evidence. According to this view, no supremacy exists for the scientific method, rather a strong interaction is found between theory and experimental evidence so that they compromise with each other in order to keep the coherence of knowledge intact.

In looking for the consequences of Quine’s view on education, Walker and Evers (1982) suggested that any form of compartmentalization of knowledge, such as Paul Hirst’s (1974) forms of knowledge, is unacceptable, accordingly rejecting the distinction among disciplines and the search for a pluralistic methodology for different disciplines. Instead, knowledge should be taken to be in Quine’s (1966, p. 56) words a “single sprawling system, loosely connected in some portions but no disconnected nowhere.” This requires a very strong problem-based education in which the distinction among subjects is taken to be artificial. Instead of holding serious epistemological gaps among disciplines, any division among subjects is only acceptable when looking for practical utility. Such a practical utility can be seen in how libraries separate books for finding them more easily. Thus, curriculum design in terms of subject matter is allowed only if doing so has a practical utility.

As far as Rorty’s new pragmatism is concerned, his suggested dichotomies appear indefensible. Rorty placed solidarity against the objectivity of science, supporting the former and undermining the latter. The question is why did he consider these two poles to be incompatible? In addition, he drew a clear-cut relation between pre-university enculturation and the edification of university education. The question here is how can a university student all of a sudden become a hard critic or liberal ironist without a background on critique during their pre-university education? I have dealt with these questions elsewhere and shown that they refer to some weaknesses in Rorty’s view (Bagheri Noaparast, 2014).

Post-Structuralism

One of continental philosophy’s reactions to the analytic philosophy of education is post-structuralism. The two important proponents of this view are Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. Foucault’s views on archeology and genealogy have led to numerous studies on knowledge and power relations in education as well as the problematization of normalization in education (e.g., Gale, 2001; Macfarlane & Lewis, 2004). In what follows, I am going to mention Derrida’s influence in more detail.

Derrida (1983) critiqued the Enlightenment on the grounds of its severe distinction between reason and tradition. He talked about a New Enlightenment that removed the hard contrast between reason and tradition. According to Derrida, if the old Enlightenment assumed reason to be faith, this was because of its hard rejection of faith alongside tradition and a compensation for the void due to this rejection. In fact, Derrida (1995, p. 130) combined fidelity and infidelity within tradition, stating, “We have gotten more than we think we know from ‘tradition,’ but the scene of the gift also obligates us to a kind of filial lack of piety, at once serious and not so serious, as regards the thinking to which we have the greatest debt.”

This point refers to Derrida’s key concept of deconstruction. Even though giving a clear definition of this term is too difficult, it indicates that structures are usually built upon a rejection of one element in favor of another one. However, justice that is somehow equal to deconstruction requires the rejected element being revived in a new guise. Thus, justice cannot be deconstructed; rather justice is the criterion for deconstruction, or in Derrida’s words, “Deconstruction is justice” (Derrida, 1992, p. 15).

The basic concept of deconstruction has inspired educational studies. Accordingly, a suppressed element is always found in educational systems and their elements such as curriculum. This suppression develops during the process of deconstructing the foundational change in the educational system, mostly as an inevitable event.

The other important point in Derrida’s view is the centrality of text, as he stated that nothing exists outside of the text (Il n'y a pas de hors-text; Derrida, 1976, p. 159). Accordingly, the reference is not outside the text but inside and undecidable. Plato regarded the art as a second mimesis because the artist imitates nature, which itself is an imitation of ideas. Along this line, Derrida talked about the simulacrum, a copy of copy but one for which there is no original reference (i.e., a double invagination). Accordingly, knowledge does not refer to the bare facts beyond it. Thus, Derrida (1981, pp. 193–194) in a play with words stated knowledge to be not an “insight” but an “in citation.” This conception of knowledge provides teachers as well as pupils with a cautious treatment of texts instead of a certainty with regard to knowledge that is considered written.

Derrida’s influence on the philosophy of education can also be investigated, particularly in the realm of values (Trifonas, 2004). This is because, as mentioned above, deconstruction is more tightly related to justice. As an example, a study was advanced by Biesta (2001) with regard to children’s rights that analyzed official international documents about children’s rights in terms of their natural rights. However, Biesta showed that children have no natural rights; what is taken as natural is only the situation of children with a high quality of life. In the meantime, what is suppressed and hidden is the rights of street children in third world countries. Having done this deconstruction, Biesta concluded with a new concept of children’s rights in a local meaning that would include both first world as well as third world countries’ children. This is in accordance with what is called a quasi-transcendental analysis in which street children’s rights are both the possibility and impossibility of talking about children’s world rights.

Another example of a deconstructive study was performed on religious education (Bagheri Noaparast & Khosravi, 2011). This study argued the dominant sphere of exclusivity in most religions and religious education to be due to other religions being suppressed. However, the proclaimed truth for any religion was made clear to be at the expense of the rejection of other religions through the deconstruction. Again in another quasi-transcendental analysis, a conception of religion and religious education is suggested that emphasizes the commonalities of religions.

In the case of Derrida’s post-structuralism, a question occurs as to what deconstruction amounts to. The dominant conception in Derrida’s writings is that deconstruction is an event. I have argued his writing to have some indications to the effect that deconstruction may be taken as an action in addition to being an event. In fact, if one wants to combine these two aspects, deconstruction can be referred to as a timely action with time indicating an aspect of the event (Bagheri Noaparast & Khosravi, 2012).

Post-Modernism

Post-modernism is not actually a coherent system of thought compared to pragmatism; it is instead a coalition in which having a common enemy is pivotal. In other words, this term is mainly negative in tone, which entails a negation of modernity. For this reason, post-modern thinkers can include Marxists, feminists, new pragmatists, and post-structuralists.

The most important characteristics of modernity are as follows:

  1. (1)

    Centrality of the subject, as derived from the Cogito of Descartes;

  2. (2)

    An absolute and universal conception of rationality and, in consequence, looking for grand narratives of human affairs; this is associated with the idea of progress in human history, as these ideas can be seen in the thoughts of Kant, Hegel, and Marx.

  3. (3)

    A strong reliance on science as the most important instrument of progress;

  4. (4)

    Rejecting tradition and old things and embracing new/modern things.

Thus, roughly speaking, a post-modern thought indicates the following characteristics:

  1. (1)

    Decentering the subject as it can be viewed in structuralism and post-structuralism;

  2. (2)

    Rejecting any grand narrative, which Jean-Francois Lyotard (1979) who coined the concept of post-modernism took it as the main mark of post-modernism. As a consequence of this rejection, post-modern thinkers embrace the local rationality that is associated with reasonability. While rationality indicates a universal characteristic, reasonability has contextual connotations.

  3. (3)

    An almost negative attitude toward the supremacy of science as elaborated upon by Rorty.

  4. (4)

    Embracing traditions along with edifying them as seen in Derrida’s remarks on what he called the new Enlightenment.

Post-modern thinkers have critiqued modern education on various grounds. Henry Giroux (1988), a left-wing thinker, rejected the idea of teaching in terms of techniques and instead talked about teachers as intellectuals who need to have a political position in undermining the ideology (i.e., false consciousness) derived from late capitalism and to retain its dominance in educational matters.

Along this line of critique, Robert Scholes (1987) differentiated three kinds of book reading in schools: reading within, in which the information within a book is received; reading upon, which indicates going beyond the text and looking for an inter-textual relationship that provides pupils with an interpretation of the text concerned; and lastly reading against, in which a critical position is taken about the text by looking for its presuppositions and deconstructing it.

Another important element in post-modern thinking about education concerns the “other.” The dominance of a higher culture is undermined alongside the rejection of universal rationality. Associating this culture with white men has become mainstream (male-stream) and is the means by which local cultures are marginalized. Putting emphasis on local and minor cultures, post-modern thinkers have talked about voice and border pedagogies, in which the “other” comes from the margin to the center of attention (Aronowitz & Giroux, 1991, Ch. 5).

Aronowitz (2004) also emphasized edifying tradition instead of rejecting it altogether as the opposite of the modern. Citing Hannah Arendt, he stated, “I agree with Hannah Arendt that education ‘cannot forgo either authority or tradition.’ But authority must be earned rather than assumed, and the transmission of tradition needs to be critical rather than worshipful” (p. 32). This shows that the relation to tradition needs to be twofold, a simultaneous acceptance and critique.

Post-modernism generally seems to be too quick to reject the modern tendency toward objectivity. This has led post-modernism to a strong relativism associated with constructivism. I have argued elsewhere (Bagheri Noaparast, 2018) that post-modernism is self-defeating in its rejection of objectivity and realism related to modern thought. This is because one should accept humans as a constructive being. In other words, the very statement of human being as a constructive being is not itself a construct or subjective. To put it in Tarskian phrasing, one can say “‘The human is a constructive being' is true if and only if the humans is a constructive being.”

Constructivism

Immanuel Kant laid down the basis of constructivism when he stated that sense data should be organized by the categories of human understanding; otherwise, sense without understanding would be blind. In the more recent times, a milestone in constructivism was Nelson Goodman’s Ways of Worldmaking in 1978. Goodman formulated his argument in this regard as the inevitability of frame of reference: “If I ask about the world, you can offer to tell me how it is under one or more frames of reference; but if I insist that you tell me how it is apart from all frames, what can you say?” (Goodman, 1978, pp. 2–3).

Goodman held that we are making our world in terms of our frames of reference, which always intervene between us and the world as it is. The world as it is (i.e., World 1) is not “our” world; the latter is what we make by means of our frames of reference, which can be referred to as World 2.

According to constructivism, knowledge is composed of the constructs that have shown themselves to be “viable” (von Glasersfeld, 1993, p. 26). Viability is the constructivist’s alternative to the truth of knowledge. In other words, constructs cannot be evaluated in terms of correspondence to reality; they can only be judged as viable or working in relation to answering one’s needs. In addition, Desautels and Larochelle (1990, p. 236) held that scientific knowledge is made to give meaning to our theory-laden observations, and no such thing as the Great Book of Nature exists that our theories can consult in order to provide correspondence to reality.

Based on the account that constructivism gives regarding human knowledge, education should be concerned about pupils constructing knowledge rather than transmitting the already discovered knowledge. This is because knowledge is invented rather than discovered. Thus, constructivism requires pupils to be active in suggesting new constructs or evaluating the viability of what is called knowledge. Jean Piaget (1972) was a pioneer in showing mathematics to be rooted first in children’s coordinated actions and to appear as concrete operations and then abstract operations. Accordingly, teaching and learning mathematics should not be conducted verbally; rather, the activity and manipulation of children is the right way in this regard.

As for constructivism, particularly its radical version, the most important weakness goes back to its subjectivism and affinity with idealism. By concentrating on Goodman’s position as the milestone of constructivism, one might say that Goodman did not escape the reality understood as World 1. However, he treated this world ambiguously and sometimes paradoxically; as such, he might be misunderstood. This can be seen in his argument “no perception without conception.” In giving this argument, Goodman was appealing to idealists. Even though his unrealism does not indicate him as an idealist, he did take idealism as an important background and support for his argument against realists:

The overwhelming case against perception without conception, the pure given, absolute immediacy, the innocent eye, substance as substratum, has been so fully and frequently set forth—by Berkeley, Kant, Cassirer, Gombrich, Bruner, and many others—as to need no restatement here. Talk of unstructured content or an unconceptualized given or a substratum without properties is self-defeating for the talk imposes structure, conceptualizes, ascribes properties. (Goodman, 1996, p. 65)

I have two comments on this passage. First, if any kind of talk about unstructured content is self-defeating, then Goodman himself gives the same self-defeating talk when he refers to World 1 as “the world well-lost.” (Goodman, 1978, p. 4). Anyway, this talk turns the lost world into a found world due to describing it with the label of the lost world. But if Goodman considers the use of such a phrase to be legitimate or takes it to be a non-descriptive description, then the same should be admitted for the talk about unstructured content.

Second, from among the idealists whom Goodman takes as his supports, Kant has shown that idealism itself needs to be supported by a kind of realism. As Philips pointed out, Kant (1929, pp. 345–348) differentiated between transcendental idealism and transcendental realism on one hand and empirical idealism and empirical realism on the other in his Critique of Pure Reason. Empirical realism indicates that an external world exists with material objects in space and time, while the empirical idealist denies the existence of such a world. The transcendental idealist denies that external objects have an existence independent of the senses. Kant holds that transcendental idealism is compatible with empirical realism but that transcendental realism leads to empirical idealism. This is because the transcendental realist holds that objects of the senses have an existence independent of the senses, whereas he cannot deny objects of the senses being dependent on us (Philips, 1978, p. 58).

The question to be asked from Goodman is whether he can admit the combination of his constructivism with an empirical realism like that of Kant. If not, then he should embrace skepticism or solipsism.

Goodman, along with idealists and constructivists, has shown that the mind matters when taking human knowledge into account as he puts emphasis on the frame of reference in talking about reality. Accordingly, we cannot escape our frames of reference. In other words, we are bound up in the world (or worlds) of our frames of reference. However, admitting that we are in the prison of the Kantian world does not indicate that we are living in illusive worlds. What this indicates is only that World 1 cannot be experienced as it is without being modified by our frames of reference in the first place. Our World 2 (i.e., right versions of World 1) is made up not in a vacuum but in relation to World 1. Thus, the viability of our constructs or workability of our maps is dependent on the reality of World 1, as this viability is dependent on the construct or the map itself because, after all, the construct is what is viable and the map is what works.

Given that our right versions (i.e., World 2) are related to World 1, this relation is the one in which they are considered to be right, and we have different right versions, logic follows that the compatibility of our right versions implies that they are supported one way or another by World 1. This support might be what Rescher (1987) referred to as the error tolerance of nature, as is seen in the case of the flat Earth theory. To follow Rescher’s phrasing, the support may occur through what I term as the “difference tolerance” of nature, as is seen in how different ways exist for defining the points and lines mentioned above. Still, a third way of support is what may be termed as “impaired objectivity.” Take the example of a man with impaired vision who systematically sees one thing doubled. He truly cannot see things as they are, but given that he systematically sees one thing as two and two as four ad infinitum, then he holds an impaired objectivity in his perceptions. Living in a Kantian world, we might nevertheless be considered like this man with impaired objective perception and knowledge. On the whole, our right versions need not correspond straightforwardly to the reality of World 1 to be considered right, but they are not needless of its support in any way.

Our different right versions, having different languages and being irreducible of one another, can be in harmony with each other. This harmonious relationship can be grasped in terms of different aspects of one reality, with each being approached from a distinct perspective. Interdisciplinary research has made this kind of relationship reasonable.

As each right version in World 2 is a version of World 1 in the final analysis, the harmonious relationship among the right versions will also be a version of World 1. In other words, the mono-reality of our right versions is an indication of the mono-reality of World 1. At the same time, the mono-reality of our right versions is not a reduction as it does not force us to eradicate the language differences pertaining to the right versions; we are only forced to take a higher mono-realistic stance.

What we seem to need in our future philosophy of education is a complicated combination between the subjective and objective aspects of mind, education, and culture. Finding the optimum point of balance between these two aspects has been the target of many thinkers, but its time is still to come.

Conclusion

Although the new trends in philosophy of education have their own weaknesses, they have provided educational thought with new directions. Let's have a look at some examples from these new trends.

First is the new pragmatism. One important area from the pragmatist point of view that has influenced the idea of curriculum since Dewey has been the concept of democracy. Dewey (1916) in his important book, Democracy and Education, revealed the connection and proximity between democracy and education. Dewey’s basic concept in this regard, namely individuals’ shared experience in dealing with and solving problems, has paved the way for a specific approach in curricula. Accordingly, curricula should be centered on the common problems individuals have during their shared experiences; consequently, special emphasis should be placed on the common interests and problems individuals have and their contributions in solving them, not on matters such as disciplines, books, lessons, or the like.

From the point of view of new pragmatism, revisions have been made to Dewey’s concept of democracy and its implications for curricula. Jim Walker (1987) addressed these revisions, and his main point is that, from the point of view of new pragmatism, criticisms are found regarding Dewey’s classical pragmatist ideas.

Due to these criticisms, Walker assigned a different role to democracy in curriculum planning.

According to Walker, Dewey believed that democracy depends on the shared experiences between individuals. In other words, he saw democracy as requiring individuals to have an active and dynamic relationship with each other in order to solve problems. Dewey, while skeptical of the need for a state, generally acknowledged that the modern nation-state framework was itself the basis for shared experiences between individuals. However, the critique on Dewey’s view in this regard is that the relationship between individuals’ shared experiences and the realities of government power in present-day societies is so complex that it does not necessarily allow for shared experiences between individuals. From the perspective of educational curricula, this has led to a kind of centralized government-run policy. According to Walker, shared experiences between individuals are impossible in today’s large and complex societies, especially because government and power relations can be other obstacles. However, despite democracy as a community of individuals being impossible, we are able to talk about a community of organizations.

Another point in Walker’s (1987) view regards educational planning. According to Walker, trusted groups evidently include parents and students’ representatives, and when students reach legal age or possibly after the stage of compulsory education, the majority of delegates should be students who determine the curriculum. The compulsory education stage has no need for a patriarchal curriculum, but the existence of optional units in a curriculum may prevent such a relationship. In addition, the general education curriculum should address common issues that stakeholders (parents and students) face; this can lead to a common curriculum, one that should not be considered the same as the core curriculum because in the former, special attention is given to stakeholders’ common issues while the latter is determined by experts and focuses on different topics in different sciences.

As for the influence post-structuralism has had on educational thought, one good example is Michel Foucault’s view. As Roger Deacon (2006) pointed out, Foucault’s studies have provided educational thought with new concepts (e.g., discipline and problematization), analytical techniques (e.g., archaeology and genealogy), and arguments (e.g., in terms of knowledge/power relations). Let’s consider a type of knowledge/power analysis. According to Foucault (1977), knowledge is intertwined with power, even though not necessarily always in a detrimental way. This idea leads to the notion of normalization, for which educational settings are the most appropriate. During normalization, individual differences are not so much tolerated, particularly those of individuals who might be in sharp contrast or critical to the existing settings. The destruction of existing norms is not necessarily always abnormal; rather it might exceed norms and formalities. However, the process of normalization regards geniuses and critical people in line with abnormal and anti-social persons. The important point that Foucault referred to is that power in combination with knowledge can punish students in elegant ways that are apparently non-violent. However, pushing students softly toward norms and formalities by means of things such as the laws of learning discovered by psychological knowledge can be as harmful to students’ psychology as violent methods are.

Post-modern thought has also provided education with change. As Usher and Edwards (1994, pp. 1–2) claimed, post-modernism provided a different way of seeing things and an ironical, self-referential state of mind. In terms of this new way of seeing things, clear-cut distinctions are blurred, and a relativistic viewpoint is advanced. Thus, the absolute supremacy of things like male over female, whites over blacks, self over “other” is rejected. Even though this relativism is a double-edged sword, the positive side of post-modern thinking in supporting the oppressed and justice is admirable. Thus, post-modern thought provides a manifesto that, as Parker (1997) identified, requires us to be reflective educationists in order to provide a space for other voices.

Constructivism has also provided educational thought with new ideas. For example, Von Glasersfeld (1989) emphasized the construction of knowledge in the human mind in the direction of his extreme constructivism. According to this view on education, the teacher should try to create unbalanced conditions to motivate students to build knowledge in order to regain balance rather than try to convey information to students. In the lessons of history, constructivists believe in replacing teacher lecturing with student inquiry. In addition, creating a sense of empathy in students with historical figures and people participating in each event appears necessary due to the importance of storytelling and the construction of new historical narratives consistent with sources. According to Orril and Shapiro (2005, p. 738), the lessons of history require sympathy, imagination, and emotion on the part of the student because of their special dependence on humanity. Constructivists’ emphasis on storytelling as a historian’s task highlights the need for strong imagination to process historical narratives.

All these new trends in the philosophy of education need to be examined over the processes of time, particularly in terms of their strengths and weaknesses as addressed above.