PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION: PERSPECTIVE FROM PHILOSOPHY

By Armando F. Bonifacio

Dr. Bonifacio is Professor of Philosophy and Chairman of the Department

of Philosophy and the PhD Philippine Studies Program of the College of Arts and
Sciences, University of the Philippines.
He earned the AB (Philosophy) at the University of the Philippines and the MA
(Philosophy) degrees at the University of California at Berkeley.
A prolific writer and researcher, he is a member of various university committees.
He is currently editor of the Philosophy research bulletin, president of the Philippine
Council for Policy Science, and executive vice president of Unladlahi Foundation.
He is member of several organizations such as the International Society for
Metaphysics, Phi Beta Kappa, National Research council of the Philippines, UP
Philosophical Society, Writers Union of the Philippines, and the UP Writers’ Club.

I
I suppose if a philosopher were to be asked whether he believes that a philosophy of
education is important to the educational enterprise, he could reply: that depends upon what you
mean, first of all, by “philosophy”. For my part, I would say yes without hesitation, a philosophy
of education is important, even as I admit that a uniform conception of what philosophy is all
about is essential to our coming to agree that a philosophy of education is important to an
educational enterprise.

But here we immediately encounter a problem, for we are all familiar with the fact that
even among the philosophers themselves one is hard put to discern some form of consensus as
to the nature and scope of philosophy itself.

If my talk, therefore is to view philosophy of education from the perspective of

philosophy, I cannot but deal preliminarily with the question concerning philosophy itself. In
fact this could very well be the whole point of my assignment this morning. To view ‘philosophy’
of education from the perspective of philosophy as it relates to the educational enterprise.
II

Perhaps the best way to characterize philosophy is to begin by noticing some very
commonsensical notions, or better still, uses, of the term 'philosophy'.

Let me then draw attention to the general belief that each man has a philosophy of his
own. I must say I agree with the view that each man (the jeepney driver, the farmer, the factory
hand, the student, the vendor, the teacher, the politician and so on) has a personal philosophy of
his own. And this personal philosophy significantly affects his mode of relating or dealing with
his environment.

However if I were to ask a jeepney driver or a farmer what his personal philosophy is, he
would most likely regard me in puzzlement for he would not know what it is I am asking. There
is obviously some oddity here, for we are claiming that this man has something -- a personal
philosophy -- but he does not know what it is we think he has.

So long as we do not, at this stage, try to sublime philosophy in the way most academic
philosophers often do, we should not really get into deep trouble drawing from a person his
personal philosophy, for in truth each one of us has internalized through time, some
fundamental values, some rules of life, some basic assumptions about things, persons,
institutions, etc., and all of these form, as it were, an entire set of presuppositions that influence
our decisions, beliefs, actions or what not.*
 Consider values, or more specifically, our ideas of good and bad, right and wrong,
including our concept of the good life. These ethical notions (most if, not all of them, anyway)
have come to us through training and exposure through our physical, social and intellectual
environment: our parents, our teachers, peer group, the books we have read, the movies we have
seen and so on. These values have become part of our intellectual repertoire, lodged as they are,
so to speak, at the back of our minds, serving as the reference point of our ethical judgment.

What we usually refer to as 'conscience' may in fact have some distinct connections with
these underlying values. To be sure, others believe that conscience is something intrinsically in
man, some kind of divine gift. But be that as it may, it would seem to me that some of the values
we have learned and internalized, e.g., such virtues as honesty, fairness, love of country and so
on, do come into play in our judgments, evaluations and decisions. In fact, in becoming
conscious of a latent dishonesty that we may have displayed, we may react in genuine discomfort,
a case in which we are inclined to say: our conscience is bothering us. But it could very well be
that at the bottom, what is really at work here, are certain values we have acquired now surfacing
and, as it were, asserting themselves.

Apart from values, we also have some very basic metaphysical and epistemological
notions. We know that the difference between shadows and rainbows, between what we call
physical / material, objects and ideas, thoughts or images. We are able to separate the true from
the false, or the true from merely probable, the real from the unreal.

As some philosophers have noticed, some of our conceptual difficulties are rooted on
some wooly metaphysical notions, e.g., some may think that when we talk about something,
there must be something in reality, in the external world, we are talking about. A more
sophisticated formulation of this, in the form of theory of language, is that, our statements divide
neatly into subject and predicate. And if the statement is true, then, we get into some difficulties
working our way through the statement that "Square circles do not exist", for then, if this is true,
there ought to be in reality, in the external world, such things as square circles, which are non-
existent.

Concerning epistemological notions, when a farmer teaches his son how to use the plow,
the farmer has certain ideas on how to best transmit knowledge. He also has certain beliefs about
the value of his knowledge. If someone were to give him a piece of information, he may on
occasion, doubt its veracity and thus raise questions leading to its verification or confirmation
relying on his criteria of epistemological validity.

III

Some have said that the unexamined life is not worth living. I think so too. But what
constitutes an examination of one's life? I have just adverted to an individual's personal
philosophy. The fact is not all of us find the occasion to objectify and analyze our personal
philosophy. Some of us do every now and then, but mostly on piecemeal fashion. We may
reflect on a particular judgment we made, and ask ourselves why we judge something or
someone in such and such a way. Our judgment may in fact be challenged, and thus we take
pains to show validity. We may also reflect on our action and evaluate its motivation and
purposes which we think any man is morally bound to pursue.

This activity of reflection, i.e., of objectification and analysis is itself a kind of philosophy.
In fact some philosophers incline to this view that the activity of objectification and analysis is
what philosophy is all about. My own view is that, to objectify and analyze the foundations of
our values, including the roots of our metaphysical and epistemological beliefs, is to engage in
philosophy, but certainly it is something else to delimit philosophy to only this type of activity.

At any rate, we note that while the ordinary man, as a rule engages in this philosophical
reflection on a piecemeal fashion, others go at it in a more systematic and comprehensive
manner. The latter includes the professional and academic philosophers and those who
systematically reflected on human life. Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, Aquinas, Hume, Kant,
Russell, Ayn Rand, Lao Tzu, Radhakrishman, Newton, and others stand out.

IV

Analyzing is one thing; the effort to engage in reconstruction is another. Our activity of
reflection finds broader meaning not merely in showing the error of our ways, the implausibility
of our ordinary beliefs, but in putting things together in the proper perspective. Many of the
philosophers I have mentioned, and certainly there are others, did not exhaust themselves merely
on analysis. On their own, they looked for more viable foundations for our ethics, metaphysics
and epistemology. Russell's own work in the field of mathematical logic represents an
achievement in philosophy. So is Kant's Foundations of Metaphysics of Morals, or the famous Analects
of Confucius.

There is, I suppose, a stirring within every philosopher to come up with a systematic
treatise, a more comprehensive view of the universe; although perhaps, at this stage of our
knowledge, in particular our academic disciplinal orientation, the formulation of a truly
comprehensive philosophy shall remain no more than a dream. What our intellectual centers
turn out is specialist in specific areas: laws, medicine, engineering, including education, political
science, sociology and philosophy itself. The true philosophers are those who can go beyond the
confines of a particular discipline. Perhaps, it is not necessary that the philosophers (by this
term, I do not mean the professional academic philosopher, but the person, the intellectual or
the academic who seeks a more systematic and comprehensive view of the world) acquires a
detailed knowledge of every discipline, from anthropology to zoology. If we assume that all our
knowledge rest upon some common foundations, then a reflection on these and the related
effort as reconstruction would amount to some form of comprehensive philosophy, or at least a
reconstructed philosophy that would serve as the unifying frame of all knowledge, beliefs and
actions. But all these rest on 'ifs', on certain conditions which philosophy must itself validate.

In this foregoing, I have in effect separated three senses of the term philosophy. Clearly,
we may use philosophy to mean the whole range of our intellectual presuppositions, on which is
rooted our epistemological, metaphysical and ethical judgments, beliefs and actions. We may
also use the term to mean the reflective activities directed at these presuppositions. And finally,
we may use it to mean the reconstructed belief or value system, which, for some, should show a
universal and comprehensive character.

VI

Let me now relate these to philosophy of education. If I were to say that every man has
his or her philosophy of education, this I would, I think, still be generally true. Certainly, the
parents who work themselves to the bone to send their children to school would have certain
beliefs not only about the goals of education but also about how educators would conduct
themselves in the classroom. The students themselves, both the young and the mature, with the
exception perhaps of the preschoolers and those in the first steps of the grade school, have some
rudiments of a philosophy of education. As one moves along the spectrum, he meets with
educators themselves, from the nursery school teachers to the university presidents, who have at
the back of their minds some basic views about education and the educative process, which
views serve to provide unity and direction to their respective activities.

In a sense, all these people are like the ordinary man who has a philosophy but has not
had the opportunity to reflect systematically about their said philosophy.

If we were to draw out from a person his idea about education and the educative process,
in the manner of Socrates, we may be able to show that some of these ideas are valid, relevant
and viable, while some are largely incoherent, irrelevant and untenable. This exercise, which is
essentially Socratic, is itself a philosophical exercise. It is something we can do to the other
person or to ourselves, to our own beliefs.

Here we meet one of the truly important concerns of a philosophy of education, namely: the
effort to objectify and analyze one’s own beliefs about education. Put this way, a philosophy of
education may appear to be a deeply personal enterprise, an exercise in self-awareness, an effort
at self-criticism. What are my ideas about education? What do I consider the goals of the
educative process? What are the roots of these ideas? Do these ideas cohere with one another?
How about those ideas or principles others have imagined? Are these relevant to my own
peculiar situation? And so on.

Every man, most particularly the educators themselves, must raise and seek answers to
these and other related questions about education and the educative process. Some of these
questions bear on educational programs and strategies. I realize that some prefer to regard the
latter as falling within the province of educational theory rather than philosophy, but I am not at
this point too much concerned with conceptual fine tuning. Suffice to say that when we all
come down to it, one cannot do philosophy of education, in the sense I am now highlighting,
i.e., as an occasion for objectifying and analyzing our educational values or beliefs without
touching on practical questions, or better still the realities in the educational encounter.

Some philosophers are so impressed with the value of the analytical enterprise that they
now propose to give no more meaning to philosophy than the analysis of educational concepts.
This restriction of philosophy to the analysis of educational concepts can really be unduly
constricting even as analysis, as I am trying to show, is natural to philosophy. Actually, the view
that philosophy of education should be analysis of concepts in education, drew from an anti-
metaphysical movement in philosophy which traces the roots of our philosophical difficulties to
our failure to observe the workings of our language. Without going too deeply into this matter,
one can safely say that language is indeed essential considering this language, so far, is the only
means by which we can and do communicate our ideas. If language fails us, our ideas, fail too.
Certainly through time, certain concepts in education have acquired currency. But unlike
currency itself, we do not often agree on the cash or exchange value of the common educational
concepts, i.e., knowledge, learning, teaching, etc. No doubt, an exercise leading to the
clarification of their concepts, i.e., marking their respective logical geographies, as the favored
phrase goes, is important, but I would like to suggest that philosophy cannot exhaust itself in just
analysis. There is also the reconstructive part, the next stage after analysis. This itself, is
philosophy, namely: the formulation, in a more systematic and comprehensive fashion of all our
educational ideas, beginning with the most basic, commonsensical notions to the abstract all-
embracing system that would integrate and lend validity to our educational enterprise.

Of course, we may not anymore meet the system builder, the philosophers’ philosopher
like Plato, Aristotle, Decartes, Locke, Hume, Kant, and so on. Nothing in principle really
militates against system building, bur certainly we can so define the activities of philosophy of
education that individual efforts may contribute towards a more systematic enterprise. This is
particularly applicable to the academic setting where philosophy of education is identified as a
special concern. For in the academic setting, we have a core of people bound together by a
common interest for matters philosophical.

VII

The field now called philosophy of education may engage in reflective studies, e.g., the
attempt to draw out prevailing ideas about education. This should include not only studies of
major educational philosophies which are competing for universal acceptance, e.g., the various
educational isms, but also, and more importantly, I think, the educational philosophies of our
thought leaders. The study should include criticism and evaluation in the light of our historical
and contemporary experiences.

Certainly too, some can devote themselves to the study of educational concepts. Some
conceptual analysis should be very useful. For instance, it would be interesting to consider the
conceptual difference between knowledge and education, for certainly, a man may know so
much but he may not, for all his knowledge, be called an educated man. We may also look into
the difference between knowledge and wisdom on the one hand, and wisdom and education on
the other. We may also, as other philosophers have done, look into the appropriateness of
talking about aims of education, about liberal education, about the concept of teaching and
learning, about public interest and ideology. Actually, in focusing on these conceptual issues, we
cannot but be led to larger issues, in fact, to systems.

Maybe someday, after we have exercised ourselves in specific issues, a system builder
would come along and integrate all our efforts, give broader meaning to what we have done.

I think of philosophy of education as a welcome enterprise, a continuing engagement

that cannot but lead to our thinking clearly about the educational enterprise to which we all have
committed ourselves.

I want to think that we have finally gone beyond mere implementing borrowed ideas, and
various philosophical isms fashioned in another culture, another milieu. We have gone beyond
the anxiety over whether we have properly understood Pragmatism, Positivism, Realism,
Thomism, Marxism, or what not.

It is time for us to look into ourselves, the socio-economic and political conditions of
our society, the values of our people, and do philosophy of education to integrate, unify, and
lend direction to our efforts to provide our people the human right to education.
______________
*The term “presupposition” seems to me to best characterize the personal philosophy to which I am referring,
precisely because it does not share the character of assumptions or suppositions that we consciously make or
postulate as grounding for certain judgments or arguments. Of course, in some context, the presupposition
suggests necessity, and thus is implied by some judgment or behavior. But the personal philosophy, namely:
the fundamental values, the epistemological and metaphysical groundings of our judgment and behavior are in
some way necessary if we are to think of man’s beliefs and actions as rationale.

SOURCE: Philippine Philosophy of Education (1980). Celeste O. Botor (Editor). Quezon City:
Philosophy of Education Philippine Society of the Philippines. Pp.30-47.