Philosophy and Education – serie

For two reasons, we are particularly proud to include Wolfgang Brezinka's Philosophy of Educational Knowledge in this series of books on Philosophy of Education. Thefirst is the philosophicalinterestoftheworkitself-its remarkablescholarship and the importance ofthe philosophical positionswill beobvious to allreaders. The secondisthat it brings to the English-speaking world a wonderful example ofeducational philosophy as now being practiced in the German-speaking world. All too often philosophers in the Anglo-American tradition have not seen the sort of perspective on educational thinking that infuses this work. And since this book has been widely read in its original version, it has had a considerable impactupon philosophy ofeducational research and science in the German-speaking countries. An understanding of this may help in the development of evenmore cooperativerelations amongstudentsofeducationin all countries. C. 1. B. Macmillan D. C. Phillips PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDmON '1 am not unmindful how little can be done... in a mere treatise on Logic, or howvague and unsatisfactory all precepts of Method must necessarily appear, when not practically exemplified in the establishment of a body of doctrine. Doubtless, the most effectual mode of showing how the sciences... maybe constructed,would be to construct them". JOHNSTUARTMILL (1843)1 Parents have a duty to educate their children, teachers to educate their pupils. For this reason there is widespread interest in education. Knowledge of education has long beenoffered under names like"pedagogics", "pedagogy"or"educational theory". Originally this meant practical knowledge based on common sense. Since the Enlightenment, however, attempts have been made to acquire scientific knowledge of education.

This text consists mainly of portraits of the author's early teachers, most of whom belonged to a transitional generation of immigrant Hebrew scholars - unsung heroes of Jewish education on the American scene. Through the medium of such portraits of teaching personalities and styles, as well as firsthand descriptions of various educational settings in the New York City of the 30s and 40s, he comments on aspects of immigrant life, the tensions between religious and secular worlds, the psychology of learning and teaching the relations between universalism and particularism, the contrasts between intensive education and instrumental schooling, and related themes. These themes, although exemplified in the details of his own experience, are of quite general significance. This text should be of special interest for those concerned with Jewish life, with religious education, with the immigrant experience and with the recent American past.

Having spent forty years teaching education and philosophy at Harvard, and publishing widely on these topics during this period, Israel Scheffler has now written a more personal book, looking at education through the prism of his own early experience, primarily of religious learning. The book consists mainly of portraits of his early teachers, most of whom belonged to a transitional generation of immigrant Hebrew scholars -- unsung heroes of Jewish education on the American scene. Through the medium of such portraits of teaching personalities and styles, as well as firsthand descriptions of various educational settings in the New York City of the 30s and 40s, he comments on aspects of immigrant life, the tensions between religious and secular worlds, the psychology of learning and teaching, the relations between universalism and particularism, the contrasts between intensive education and instrumental schooling, and related themes. These themes, although exemplified in the details of his own experience, are of quite general significance. The book will be of special interest for those concerned with Jewish life, with religious education, with the immigrant experience and with the recent American past.

Many books have been written about Wittgenstein's philosophy, but this collection of articles on Wittgenstein and education is the first study in book form in this area. There have been several articles in scholarly education journals, but the special cachet of this collection is that the contributors come from six countries. The collection has been edited by Paul Smeyers and Jim Marshall, philosophers of education who live in Belgium and New Zealand, respectively. Each of the chapters represents an original study of Wittgenstein, commissioned by the editors from colleagues they know to have written well on Wittgenstein and the implications of his ideas for education. Audience: Teachers, students and academics in the field of philosophy and education. Especially interesting to advanced students in these areas.

This book is designed to serve two purposes. First it provides an introduction to the ideas and works of Michel Foucault. It should be particularly appropriate for education students for whom, in general, Foucault is a shadowy presence. Second, it provides a Foucault based critique of a central plank of Western liberal education, the notion of the autonomous individual or personal autonomy. There are several introductions to Foucault but they tend to be written from a particular theoretical position, or with a particular interest in Foucault's ideas and works. For example Smart (1986) and Poster (1984) exemplify the former, and Dreyfus and Rabinow (1983) the latter. There is no substantial work in education on Foucault, apart from Ball (1990), which is an edited collection of papers by educationalists. The writer started reading Foucault from a position in education which was in the liberal framework, somewhere between Dewey, Freire and Habermas, but with an interest in punishment, authority and power. The book is the outcome of several years of trying to introduce students in education to his ideas and works in an educationally relevant manner. But an introduction, on its own, cannot show this relevance to education. Unless his ideas are put to work, unless they are used as opposed to mentioned in some sphere or area of education, then they may be of little relevance.

Philosophy of development is an area of research at the intersection of philosophy, psychology, and education. This text combines a broad sketch of contemporary developmental theory with detailed discussions of its central issues, in order to construct a general framework for understanding and analyzing theories of individual and collective development in various domains ranging from cognitive and moral development to developments in art. Atten tion is also given to the relations between conceptual development and education. The approach taken in this volume is located in the landscape of current philosophical debate. This text is not about just one type of development, such as moral development or scientific development, but focuses on the central philosophical and metatheoretical problems underlying almost all theories of conceptual development.

In Jean PaulSartre's Nausea, Roquentin feels bound to listen to the sentimental ramblings about humanism and humanity by the Self Taught Man. "Is it my fault," muses Roquentin, "in all he tells me, I recognize the lack of the genuine article? Is it my fault if, as he speaks, I see all the humanists I have known rise up? I have known so many ofthem!" And then he lists the radical humanist, the so called"left" humanist, and Communist Humanist, the Catholic humanist, all claiming a passion for their fellow men. "But there are others, a swarm of others: the humanist philosopher who bends over his brothers like a wise older brother with a sense of his responsibility; the humanist who loves men as they are, the humanist who loves men as they ought to be, the one who wants to save them with their consent, and the one who will save them in spite of themselves. . . . " Quite naturally, the skeptical Roquentin ends by saying how "they all hate each other: as individuals, not as men. " Fully aware of the misuse and false comfort in the use of the term, Professor Aloni proceeds to restore meaning to the word as well as appropriate its educational significance. There is a freshness in this book, a restoration of a lost clarity, a regaining of authentic commitment.

These essays bring a familiarity with the educational research community to contemporary debates about educational research, as well as a grasp of the ways in which philosophical sources and analysis can inform them. They are both measured and passionate - sparked by a personal curiosity, which takes the author into unexpected resources and territory (such as the insights of museology into debates on educational research as narrative fiction) as well as more familiar material relating to, for example, issues about the assessment of quality of educational research and the concern for its relevance. The book makes a case, by its own example as well as in its argument, for the continuing contribution of philosophical thinking to the development and critique of educational research.

The issues I treat in this book—qualitative versus quantitative methods, facts versus values, science versus politics, subjectivity versus objectivity, postm- ernism versus pragmatism, to name a few—are at the core of a lively, sometimes divisive, conversation that has been unfolding in the theory and practice of e- cational research for some time. These issues fall squarely within the province of philosophy, and thus philosophical investigation has an especially useful contribution to make. But these issues are by no means the exclusive province of philosophy; they are ones in which a diverse group of educational theorists have had a keen interest and about which they have had important things to say. The conversation I hope to join—and to move forward—is this broad and inclusive one. Philosophy of education is at its best when it dives headlong into the fray. The book borrows liberally from my previously published work, but is far from a simple compilation. The ideas developed in Chapter 7, “On the Threat of Epistemological Bias,” are new. The ideas developed in Chapter 9, “Toward Democratic Educational Research,” are a significant extension of the application of similar ideas to evaluation research. The ideas developed in Chapter 4, “The Persistence of the Fact/Value Dogma,” are in a form and at a level of detail not published before. Finally, Chapter 1, “Introduction and Overview,” weaves together my thinking on a large array of issues on educational research methodology that had only been loosely connected before.

The issues I treat in this book—qualitative versus quantitative methods, facts versus values, science versus politics, subjectivity versus objectivity, postm- ernism versus pragmatism, to name a few—are at the core of a lively, sometimes divisive, conversation that has been unfolding in the theory and practice of e- cational research for some time. These issues fall squarely within the province of philosophy, and thus philosophical investigation has an especially useful contribution to make. But these issues are by no means the exclusive province of philosophy; they are ones in which a diverse group of educational theorists have had a keen interest and about which they have had important things to say. The conversation I hope to join—and to move forward—is this broad and inclusive one. Philosophy of education is at its best when it dives headlong into the fray. The book borrows liberally from my previously published work, but is far from a simple compilation. The ideas developed in Chapter 7, “On the Threat of Epistemological Bias,” are new. The ideas developed in Chapter 9, “Toward Democratic Educational Research,” are a significant extension of the application of similar ideas to evaluation research. The ideas developed in Chapter 4, “The Persistence of the Fact/Value Dogma,” are in a form and at a level of detail not published before. Finally, Chapter 1, “Introduction and Overview,” weaves together my thinking on a large array of issues on educational research methodology that had only been loosely connected before.

This book has been quite long in the making. In its original format, but with some different chapters, and with the then publisher, it foundered (as did other volumes in the planned series). At the in press stage, when we obviously thought it was going ahead, it was suddenly canned. Quite distraught I closed it away in a desk drawer for a year or so. But then Joy Carp of Kluwer Academic Publishers expressed an interest in it, and we were in business again. Most of the contributors to the original volume have stayed with it, only to be delayed by myself, for a variety of reasons (but see the dedication). I had been writing on Michel Foucault for a number of years but had become concerned about mis-appropriations of his ideas and works in educational literature. I was also concerned about the increasingly intemperate babble in that literature of the notion of postmodernism. Indeed at one major educational conference in North America I listened to a person expounding postmodernism in terms of ‘Destroy, Destroy, Destroy’. Like Michel Foucault I am not quite sure what postmodernism is, but following Mark Poster’s account of poststructuralism - as merely a collective term to catch a number of French thinkers – I thought that what we had to do in education was to look at what particular thinkers had said, and not become involved in vapid discussion at an abstract level on ‘-isms’. Thus the book was conceived.

This book offers a personal account of scholars in philosophy and education with whom I have had the good fortune to interact during the course of my half century at Harvard University and elsewhere. My aim in writing this account is threefold: ?rst, to recapture for myself the pleasure of their memorable company for its own sake, secondly, to have occasion to re?ect on the educational impact of their teaching, and, ?nally, to counteract the prevalent amnesia of universities by recalling the conduct of scholars of past generations who still have things to teach us. Iowe thanks to many people who have helped me in this endeavor. Professor Harvey Siegel, Dr. Stefania Jha, and Dr. Rosalind Schef?er read initial versions of the manuscript and gave me the bene?t of their criticisms, as did the publisher's anonymous readers. JoAnne Sorabella and Stefania Jha listened to my readings of a number of these chapters, and JoAnne Sorabella produced several typescripts of the whole with her usual matchless pro?ciency. I presented some portions of the manuscript to the Philosophy of Education Research Center at Harvard and pro?ted from these occasions.After I joined the Mandel Center at Brandeis University in the Fall of 2003, Avital Feuer assisted me ably in readying the ?nal version of the book. And I am grateful to Laurie Schef?er for her meticulous help with proofreading.

This book offers a personal account of scholars in philosophy and education with whom I have had the good fortune to interact during the course of my half century at Harvard University and elsewhere. My aim in writing this account is threefold: ?rst, to recapture for myself the pleasure of their memorable company for its own sake, secondly, to have occasion to re?ect on the educational impact of their teaching, and, ?nally, to counteract the prevalent amnesia of universities by recalling the conduct of scholars of past generations who still have things to teach us. Iowe thanks to many people who have helped me in this endeavor. Professor Harvey Siegel, Dr. Stefania Jha, and Dr. Rosalind Schef?er read initial versions of the manuscript and gave me the bene?t of their criticisms, as did the publisher's anonymous readers. JoAnne Sorabella and Stefania Jha listened to my readings of a number of these chapters, and JoAnne Sorabella produced several typescripts of the whole with her usual matchless pro?ciency. I presented some portions of the manuscript to the Philosophy of Education Research Center at Harvard and pro?ted from these occasions.After I joined the Mandel Center at Brandeis University in the Fall of 2003, Avital Feuer assisted me ably in readying the ?nal version of the book. And I am grateful to Laurie Schef?er for her meticulous help with proofreading.

Casual reference to moral education or the manner in which young people should be brought up to behave may provoke a range of responses depending on the context and the personalities and ideological perspectives of those present. In the past, these responses sometimes included a Rousseauesque assertion of the inherent goodness of all human beings, which only needed to be left to emerge uncorrupted and undistorted, with the help of infinite loving-kindness on the part of teachers, all with the patience of saints. More extreme versions of this view may have comprised vehement protest at the very idea of the state, through its educational institutions, concerning itself at all with such matters, which were felt to be properly the province of the family or religious organisations, if not a matter of individual choice for young people themselves when they were grown up. Explicit proposals for moral education were invariably at risk of being perceived as indoctrination or an abuse of children’s rights of freedom and autonomous development. More frequently these days, the response may be a succinct list of the speaker’s own choice moral prescriptions, an assertion that these need to be inculcated in a clear and unequivocal way to all young people of whatever age, inclination or social experience and, often enough, a statement of the sanctions to be applied to those who do not or will not conform.

The essays bring to contemporary debates about educational research both a first hand familiarity with the practices and arguments of the educational research community and a clear grasp of the ways in which philosophical sources and analysis can inform them. They are both measured and passionate - sparked by an intense personal curiosity, which takes Bridges into unexpected resources and territory (such as the insights of museology into debates on educational research as narrative fiction) as well as more familiar material relating to, for example, issues about the assessment of quality of educational research and the concern for its relevance. The book makes an articulate case, by its own example as well as in its argument, for the continuing contribution of philosophical thinking to the development and critique of educational research. It will be essential reading for researchers already engaged in this development and for masters and doctoral students who are coming to terms with educational research, and it offers a contribution to the literature in philosophy of education which is richly grounded in the wider field of educational research.

Discursive accounts of the body have been prominent recently. While acknowledging the usefulness of these, the author, drawing upon specific philosophers of the body and a wide range of other theorists, focuses attention on the experiencing body - which she refers to as 'creatural existence’. Thinking in terms of the creatural, she argues, can better situate human beings in their environment, thus emphasizing a kind of 'ecological notion of subjectivity’, in which place-based existence is understood anew. The educational implications of focusing on what bodies 'do' and not so much in terms of how they are socially inscribed, presents them as practico-sensory totalities which should perhaps be seen as systems rather than an as a mere organism or entity. Such an articulation of creatural existence emphasizes animality, and in so doing reminds us of the centrality of the senses in all knowing and doing, including crucially, in relation to those practices which we have understood as 'work'. Multi-sensorial education is a major sub-theme of the book and the author argues persuasively for this by means of a critical analysis of the ocular centrism that is characteristic of contemporary culture.With its strong philosophical anchoring and its judicial use of interdisciplinary sources this book will appeal to both undergraduate and graduate students and their teachers not only in the field of philosophy of education but those from many others disciplines. It will also interest primary and secondary school teachers, curriculum designers and education policy makers.‘Marjorie O'Loughlin shows in this book that embodiment ought to be central to human hopes to be whole persons, who are not merely productive but who are also expressive of our potentiality. Her 'creatural existence' grounds this in our fleshly selves, and she explores it through the emotions, through work, and throughcitizenship.                                                                                                                     Her achievement here is profound: in one book, we find an interdisciplinary account of the evidence for creatural existence, presented accessibly in first-person philosophical narrative, based mainly on Merleau-Ponty.                                              If bodies matter more than ever in everyday life, educators should start with our fleshly selves and move creatively forward. O'Loughlin points out the direction...and pushes us persuasively: you can feel the nudge!' David Beckett, Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne

Education seems to have lost its orientation in Western culture and is in disarray all over the globe in time of global transitions. Globalizing capitalism is the general headline for some of the most profound, deep and dramatic developments in our era that education must address. The response of educationalists is only in its beginning and there is an urgent need to address the dramatic changes inflicted on/promised to our era philosophically, sociologically, culturally, ecologically, physically, aesthetically and politically. In the proposed book we try to address the challenge of globalization to education in the broadest sense of the concept of education, by treating this challenge in various perspectives through different disciplines and topics within which the challenge of globalization is conceived as the most profound dynamic of this historical moment, a development that is realized in many diverse and different levels, fields and spaces of human and natural existence. The various texts in this collection, written by some of the famous and interesting scholars in the field of philosophy of education and the sociology of education, try to address the richness and diversity of the challenge of globalization. It tries to reconstruct historically, sociologically and philosophically the roots, the practices and the fruits of globalization as a threat and as a gateway for new possibilities for today's education. The collection is a meeting point for research that is not only analytical and critical but also offers new roads and possibilities for education in the 21st century in face of globalization. As such, this collection is unique in this field and opens the door for further research and public discussion on the future role of education.

In Jean PaulSartre's Nausea, Roquentin feels bound to listen to the sentimental ramblings about humanism and humanity by the Self Taught Man. "Is it my fault," muses Roquentin, "in all he tells me, I recognize the lack of the genuine article? Is it my fault if, as he speaks, I see all the humanists I have known rise up? I have known so many ofthem!" And then he lists the radical humanist, the so called"left" humanist, and Communist Humanist, the Catholic humanist, all claiming a passion for their fellow men. "But there are others, a swarm of others: the humanist philosopher who bends over his brothers like a wise older brother with a sense of his responsibility; the humanist who loves men as they are, the humanist who loves men as they ought to be, the one who wants to save them with their consent, and the one who will save them in spite of themselves. . . . " Quite naturally, the skeptical Roquentin ends by saying how "they all hate each other: as individuals, not as men. " Fully aware of the misuse and false comfort in the use of the term, Professor Aloni proceeds to restore meaning to the word as well as appropriate its educational significance. There is a freshness in this book, a restoration of a lost clarity, a regaining of authentic commitment.

Casual reference to moral education or the manner in which young people should be brought up to behave may provoke a range of responses depending on the context and the personalities and ideological perspectives of those present. In the past, these responses sometimes included a Rousseauesque assertion of the inherent goodness of all human beings, which only needed to be left to emerge uncorrupted and undistorted, with the help of infinite loving-kindness on the part of teachers, all with the patience of saints. More extreme versions of this view may have comprised vehement protest at the very idea of the state, through its educational institutions, concerning itself at all with such matters, which were felt to be properly the province of the family or religious organisations, if not a matter of individual choice for young people themselves when they were grown up. Explicit proposals for moral education were invariably at risk of being perceived as indoctrination or an abuse of children’s rights of freedom and autonomous development. More frequently these days, the response may be a succinct list of the speaker’s own choice moral prescriptions, an assertion that these need to be inculcated in a clear and unequivocal way to all young people of whatever age, inclination or social experience and, often enough, a statement of the sanctions to be applied to those who do not or will not conform.

happens, how it happens, and why it happens. Our assumption ought to be that this is as true in education as it is in atomic physics. But this leaves many other questions to answer. The crucial ones: What kind of science is proper or appropriate to education? How does it differ from physics? What is wrong with the prevai1~ ing, virtually unopposed research tradition in education? What could or should be done to replace it with a more adequate tradi­ tion? What concepts are necessary to describe and explain what we find there? It is in this realm that we find ourselves. Where to start? One place - our place, needless to say - is with one limited but central concept in education, teaching. A long philosophical tradition concerned with the nature of teaching goes back (along with everything else) to Plato, divulging most recent­ ly in the work of such philosophers as B. O. Smith, Scheffler, Hirst, Komisar, Green, McClellan, Soltis, Kerr, Fenstermacher, et al. An empirical tradition runs parallelto the philosophers -it has its most notable modern proponents in Gage, the Soars, Berliner, Rosen­ shine, but its roots can be traced to the Sophists. These two tradi­ tions have been at loggerheads over the centuries.

Many books have been written about Wittgenstein's philosophy, but this collection of articles on Wittgenstein and education is the first study in book form in this area. There have been several articles in scholarly education journals, but the special cachet of this collection is that the contributors come from six countries. The collection has been edited by Paul Smeyers and Jim Marshall, philosophers of education who live in Belgium and New Zealand, respectively. Each of the chapters represents an original study of Wittgenstein, commissioned by the editors from colleagues they know to have written well on Wittgenstein and the implications of his ideas for education. Audience: Teachers, students and academics in the field of philosophy and education. Especially interesting to advanced students in these areas.

This book is designed to serve two purposes. First it provides an introduction to the ideas and works of Michel Foucault. It should be particularly appropriate for education students for whom, in general, Foucault is a shadowy presence. Second, it provides a Foucault based critique of a central plank of Western liberal education, the notion of the autonomous individual or personal autonomy. There are several introductions to Foucault but they tend to be written from a particular theoretical position, or with a particular interest in Foucault's ideas and works. For example Smart (1986) and Poster (1984) exemplify the former, and Dreyfus and Rabinow (1983) the latter. There is no substantial work in education on Foucault, apart from Ball (1990), which is an edited collection of papers by educationalists. The writer started reading Foucault from a position in education which was in the liberal framework, somewhere between Dewey, Freire and Habermas, but with an interest in punishment, authority and power. The book is the outcome of several years of trying to introduce students in education to his ideas and works in an educationally relevant manner. But an introduction, on its own, cannot show this relevance to education. Unless his ideas are put to work, unless they are used as opposed to mentioned in some sphere or area of education, then they may be of little relevance.

Philosophy of development is a fascinating area of research at the intersection of philosophy, psychology, and education. This book is unique in that it combines a broad sketch of contemporary developmental theory with detailed discussions of its central issues, in order to construct a general framework for understanding and analyzing theories of individual and collective development in various domains ranging from cognitive and moral development to developments in art. Special attention is also given to the rich relations between conceptual development and education.

This book provides an historical and a conceptual background to post-structuralism, and in part to post-modernism, for readers entering the discussions on post-structuralism. It does not attempt to be at the cutting edge of these debates nor to be advancing research in these areas. It does however look at the educational implications of the ideas discussed. The intention behind this collection was to provide a sound introduction to the key positions of a number of French poststructuralist thinkers who are being increasingly referred to, used as support, and even embraced by theorists in educational discourse. The editor and contributors to this volume are concerned that these thinkers have been misappropriated on occasions. That is why this volume concentrates on the historical and intellectual background of these philosophers. Each of the authors of the chapters in this collection deals with 'their' philosopher in the areas of: brief biographical details; key philosophical ideas; and the applications in, or implications of their work for education.

Education seems to have lost its orientation in Western culture and is in disarray all over the globe in time of global transitions. Globalizing capitalism is the general headline for some of the most profound, deep and dramatic developments in our era that education must address. The response of educationalists is only in its beginning and there is an urgent need to address the dramatic changes inflicted on/promised to our era philosophically, sociologically, culturally, ecologically, physically, aesthetically and politically. In the proposed book we try to address the challenge of globalization to education in the broadest sense of the concept of education, by treating this challenge in various perspectives through different disciplines and topics within which the challenge of globalization is conceived as the most profound dynamic of this historical moment, a development that is realized in many diverse and different levels, fields and spaces of human and natural existence. The various texts in this collection, written by some of the famous and interesting scholars in the field of philosophy of education and the sociology of education, try to address the richness and diversity of the challenge of globalization. It tries to reconstruct historically, sociologically and philosophically the roots, the practices and the fruits of globalization as a threat and as a gateway for new possibilities for today's education. The collection is a meeting point for research that is not only analytical and critical but also offers new roads and possibilities for education in the 21st century in face of globalization. As such, this collection is unique in this field and opens the door for further research and public discussion on the future role of education.

For two reasons, we are particularly proud to include Wolfgang Brezinka's Philosophy of Educational Knowledge in this series of books on Philosophy of Education. Thefirst is the philosophicalinterestoftheworkitself-its remarkablescholarship and the importance ofthe philosophical positionswill beobvious to allreaders. The secondisthat it brings to the English-speaking world a wonderful example ofeducational philosophy as now being practiced in the German-speaking world. All too often philosophers in the Anglo-American tradition have not seen the sort of perspective on educational thinking that infuses this work. And since this book has been widely read in its original version, it has had a considerable impactupon philosophy ofeducational research and science in the German-speaking countries. An understanding of this may help in the development of evenmore cooperativerelations amongstudentsofeducationin all countries. C. 1. B. Macmillan D. C. Phillips PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDmON '1 am not unmindful how little can be done... in a mere treatise on Logic, or howvague and unsatisfactory all precepts of Method must necessarily appear, when not practically exemplified in the establishment of a body of doctrine. Doubtless, the most effectual mode of showing how the sciences... maybe constructed,would be to construct them". JOHNSTUARTMILL (1843)1 Parents have a duty to educate their children, teachers to educate their pupils. For this reason there is widespread interest in education. Knowledge of education has long beenoffered under names like"pedagogics", "pedagogy"or"educational theory". Originally this meant practical knowledge based on common sense. Since the Enlightenment, however, attempts have been made to acquire scientific knowledge of education.

happens, how it happens, and why it happens. Our assumption ought to be that this is as true in education as it is in atomic physics. But this leaves many other questions to answer. The crucial ones: What kind of science is proper or appropriate to education? How does it differ from physics? What is wrong with the prevai1~ ing, virtually unopposed research tradition in education? What could or should be done to replace it with a more adequate tradi­ tion? What concepts are necessary to describe and explain what we find there? It is in this realm that we find ourselves. Where to start? One place - our place, needless to say - is with one limited but central concept in education, teaching. A long philosophical tradition concerned with the nature of teaching goes back (along with everything else) to Plato, divulging most recent­ ly in the work of such philosophers as B. O. Smith, Scheffler, Hirst, Komisar, Green, McClellan, Soltis, Kerr, Fenstermacher, et al. An empirical tradition runs parallelto the philosophers -it has its most notable modern proponents in Gage, the Soars, Berliner, Rosen­ shine, but its roots can be traced to the Sophists. These two tradi­ tions have been at loggerheads over the centuries.