Session Information
Contribution
Description: Teaching, as well as learning, does have a content, we all know. You cannot teach nothing, and learning is always learning something. Though, the answers to the question if education has a content relate very closely to different philosophies of education, in the sense: Different concepts of Bildung.
In the British tradition of liberal education philosophy, Richard S. Peters and Paul H. Hirst among others have given one kind of answer. A different, though related, type of answer was given by Philip H. Phenix in USA.
Closer to the German philosopher of Bildung, Wolfgang Klafki, this paper will argue for another response linked to the educational philosophy of action competence and a Didaktik of challenge. The argument builds on ideas about democratic and political education, implying that democracy needs politically educated agents. It also presupposes an important distinction between action and behaviour, and another between competence and qualification.
In Germany a discussion has been running between two of the most prominent and influential philosophers ('didacticians') of political education, Wolfgang Klafki and Hermann Giesecke, about the ethical legitimacy of specifying a concept of democratic formation. Is it paternalistic to make a kind of declaration of content that goes beyond the knowledge and skills of the subjects?
In Denmark a former minister of education severely criticized a new one for asking the schools to make the content of education green. The argument was that education is not about such matters. The subjects have their own educational power build into them, and democratic or political education is not education at all.
The paper will argue that there is a third way between this classical, liberal view and a conception of education as behaviour modification that cannot distinguish education from indoctrination.
One philosophical implication is, however, that you accept that every decision about content will be open to discussion among the educators, teachers and learners. This kind of democratic reflexivity is a condition in late modernity.
Another philosophical implication is that the subject matter of teaching and learning cannot be understood in only one dimension. The question: "What did you learn in school today?" has to be followed by the next question: "And what did you learn by learning that?" In this way we approach the level of the content of education.
It is not possible to draw conclusions about the content or subject matter directly from a theory of Bildung, though the choices at this level make a lot of difference in, and will be part of the Didaktik of, e.g. environmental education, health education, and education for sustainable development.
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