Philosophy of Education

Philosophy 115 (Spring 2020)

Philosophy of Education

Class Meets: Olin 241, Tuesday and Thursday 11:30-12:50

Prof. Patrick Frierson

Office Hours: Tuesday 9-10 am and 1-2 pm and Wednesday 1-2:30, and by appointment.

Course GOALS: This course will introduce you to a broad range of issues and positions in the philosophy of education. You will develop skills at reading, interpreting, and analyzing difficult philosophical texts. You will learn to express philosophical insights orally and in writing. And you will learn to think about education philosophically, with attention to conceptual, moral, and political implications of different approaches to education.

ACCOMMODATIONS: If you are a student with a disability who will need accommodations in this course, please meet with Antonia Keithahn, Assistant Director of Academic Resources: Disability Support (Memorial 326, 509.527.5767, keithaam@whitman.edu) for assistance in developing a plan to address your academic needs. All information about disabilities is considered private; if I receive notification from Ms. Keithahn that you are eligible to receive an accommodation due to a verified disability, I will provide it in as discreet a manner as possible.

REQUIRED TEXTS:

Philosophy of Education: An Anthology (ed. R. Curren), abbreviated PE below.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Paolo Friere).

ASSIGNMENTS:

NOTE: All written work, including journals, should be submitted to me electronically. When submitting work, you need to save it as a Microsoft Word document (.doc or .docx) and email it frierspr@whitman.edu. The filename should begin with your name and then an indication of what assignment it is, and what the date is. Thus Kristin Lavransdattar’s first journal submission would be entitled “Kristin Lavransdattar Journal 1-28-2020.docx”. DO NOT send me links to googledocs. I know you all love these, but they make it very difficult for me to properly inventory the papers I receive and grade. EXCEPTION: If you handwrite your journals, which I encourage, then you can copy the handwritten pages to a .pdf and email that to me. The special short assignments will probably be easier to type up, but you may handwrite these if you would like (and if your handwriting is easily legible).

LATE WORK: All assignments will have a 1-hour grace period without penalty. After that grace period, work that is submitted late will suffer a reduction of one grade point for every 24-hour period it is late. Work more than 4 days late should still be submitted for comments, but cannot receive a passing grade.

1. Journal and short assignments: Throughout this semester, you should keep a journal. For each reading that we complete, you should include an entry in your journal that gives the title of the reading with its author, a 2-4 sentence summary of the key claims of the reading, a 1-3 paragraph summary of the main overall arguments for those claims, and at least one important question about the reading(s). You should also include personal engagement with the reading, such as talking about how it relates to your own education or your own ideas about education, offering objections to the arguments in favor the key claims, or suggesting further implications of those claims. Periodically, I will give journaling suggestions in the syllabus, which you should use as opportunities for further work in your journals. Each week, you should also include at least one entry that just steps back and reflects on your own learning and, if appropriate, your own teaching. The goal of this personal engagement through writing is to help you develop your own insights. It should be exploratory and growth-oriented, not performative. I won’t grade or assess your journal as a whole, though your overall grade will suffer if there is clear evidence that you are not journaling in a serious way. The journal is there for you to learn, engage, and process.

About once every two weeks, as listed on the syllabus, you should submit your entire journal to me, including a special short assignment that will be included as part of that journal. I will assess and comment on the special short assignments. These short assignments will give me a sense for how you are processing the material, and they will also give you a chance to work on specific skills of philosophical writing. In addition to the short assignments, if there are sections from your journal on which you would like comments, please indicate that when you turn in the journal and I will comment on those sections. Journals are due by the beginning of class on the days listed as “Journals Due” days on the syllabus.

2. Presentation: After Spring Break, I will devote some of our class time to presentations on topics in the philosophy of education that are not central foci of our class. Before break, you will have the opportunity to form a group of 3-4 students who will research and prepare that presentation. For your presentation, you should read at least three articles on that topic. (These can be chapters from our textbook or other peer-reviewed or canonical texts on the topic. Wikipedia and the Huffington Post do not count as part of these three sources. Articles in journals at Penrose library do.) You should prepare and present a balanced but opinionated overview of the topic to the class. Presentations will be limited to 18 minutes.

3. Final paper: On the last day of class, you must turn in a final paper of at least 1500 words. This paper can be on the topic of your choice. Before turning in this final paper, it will go through several distinct stages. I will not grade each distinct stage, but if there is clear evidence of lack of effort on early stages (including turning them in late or not at all), this will have an effect on the grade of your final paper.

· From the start of the semester, you should, in your journal, write about issues in the philosophy of education that you come to find interesting. These can be provoked by readings, class discussions, or your own reflections. Periodically, you should flag for yourself issues that you’d like to think and write more about, and come back to these as later readings speak to them. At least once prior to Spring Break, you should flag a portion of your journal in which you do some of these reflections and inquire of me whether it would be a good final paper topic.

· In the week after Spring Break, you should submit a provisional topic for your final paper, along with a provisional question that your like to answer in that paper, and at least one reading that you have already done that is relevant to that topic (with a short description of how it’s relevant).

· On or before April 13^th (at noon), you should submit an exploratory draft of your paper. This draft should start with the question you hope to answer and should make use of at least three texts to explore possible answers to that question. It should be well organized into paragraphs, each with a clear topic sentence, but it should end, rather than begin, with a thesis. You might even work through several different theses in the course of the exploratory draft, proposing one, analyzing it in the light of arguments in various texts, rejecting or refining it, and moving on to a better one.

· On or before April 24^th (at noon), you should submit a rough draft of your paper. This should have a clear introductory paragraph that includes your thesis. Each paragraph should build towards an overall argument for your thesis. It should include at least one argument against your thesis with a response to that argument. It should make use of at least three texts. It should be at least 1500 words.

· On or before April 29^th (by noon), you should send me a short email outlining at least two goals for your revision of your paper. I will send you my own comments on your paper after receiving this email. (I will likely write these comments before receiving the email, so you should keep that in mind when you get my comments.)

· Your final papers are due at the start of the last day of class.

GRADES. Your grade for this class will be based on class participation (approximately 15%), your journals (approximately 30%), your presentation (approximately 20%), and your final paper (approximately 35%). The approximations take into account the role that improvement over the course of the semester, or particularly excellent or egregious performance in one or another part of the class, can play in my final assessment of your grade. The journal grade will be based on both the SSTs (about 5% of overall grade for each SST) and also on the journal as a whole. For all assignments that I return, I will assign a “score” rather than a letter grade, so that you have a sense for how you are doing without the emotional baggage of a letter grade. For an explanation of scores, see http://people.whitman.edu/~frierspr/gradingcriteria.htm. If you prefer letter grades, please ask and I will be perfectly happy to provide those. If you prefer not getting any quantitative assessment at all on individual assignments, let me know and I will give you only qualitative comments. (And if you don’t want quantitative assessment on the class as a whole, take it P-D-F.)

pROJECTED CLASS SCHEDULE:

Date	Reading	Topics for Discussion	Assignments (On days of Special Short Assignments (SSAs), you will turn in your journals.)
Jan 21
Jan 23	PE 20-25, 30 [271-273] Suggested: PE 16-33. NOTE: Philosophical writing is not easy to read. Do not be deceived by the small number of pages.	Nature of Education: Plato	Think about these questions: In what ways has your education resembled Plato’s description of emergence from the cave? In what ways has it been different? What are some benefits of Plato’s way of thinking about education? What are some dangers?
Jan 28	PE 35-46, 424-26	Nature of Education: Locke vs. Rousseau	SSA: Look back over your summaries of the first several readings. Choose one of your earlier journal entries and turn your informal comments into a polished paragraph in which you state the main claim of the reading and then either extend that claim, criticize it, or give an example to illustrate it. The paragraph should be 4-8 sentences and no more than 400 words. For this assignment, I will be a stickler about basic grammatical correctness at the level of sentences. Go to Whitman’s COWS website and download the “Six Basic Writing Errors” handout. You should all work on Sentence Fragments and Run-on sentences, and each of you should choose one of the other 6 errors to work on (and tell me which one it is). I will not accept any work that includes sentence fragments, run-on sentences (including comma splices), or errors of the other kind that you said you would work on. [Addendum: If you do not want me to be a grammar stickler for this assignment, please include, in your email with the assignment, a short statement to that effect.]
Jan 30	PE 47-54	Nature of Education: Dewey	What is the “superficial explanation” of the connection between democracy and education (p. 48a)? What is the “deeper explanation” (p. 48a and beyond)? What makes the deeper explanation deeper?
Feb 4	PE 55-67	Nature of Education: R. S. Peters	Outline the logical structure of Peters’s essay. Identify his thesis and at least six distinct steps in his argument for this thesis. Email just this part of your journal to me before class. (I won’t grade this, but I will lower your overall journal grade if it is not completed.)
Feb 6	PE 79. Also recommended, PE 77-88.	“Liberal” Education; Aristotle	SST: Write a short essay of 4 paragraphs that answers the question, “What ought to be the aims of education?” Your first paragraph should consist entirely of your thesis statement. (It’s all right if this is just one sentence. For tips on developing a good thesis statement, check out the “Thesis Statements” handout at the COWS.) Each succeeding paragraph should have a clear topic sentence and focus on a single step in your argument for your thesis. You should have at least two quotations and good textual support for any interpretive claims, but you should not argue from authority. (That is, the fact that Rousseau said that the aim of education is X does not in itself provide any evidence that the aim of education really is X. Rousseau is not the Bible/Quran/___.) I am interested in your view about education, not a summary of someone else’s. But I am not interested in your view simply because you hold it; you need to defend your view of education in a way that others should find convincing. For some general advice on writing philosophy papers, you might check out this handout from Harvard or this one from UNC.
Feb 11	PE 89-94 W. E. B. DuBois, “Education and Work”	“Liberal” Education: Dewey and DuBois	In what ways was/is your education an education for leisure/culture? In what ways an education for labor/vocation? Have any aspects of your education integrated these two concerns well? What role should ‘vocational training’ play in education?
Feb 13	Immanuel Kant, “What is Enlightenment?” and On Education (start with §1 of “Chapter 1, Introduction” and read at least until §19).	“Liberal” Education: Kant	In what ways are you “immature” in Kant’s sense? What role should education play in liberating us from immaturity?
Feb 18	PE 68-75 Montessori selection	Liberating Education: Friere	Critique at least one previous educational philosopher from the standpoint of Friere. (There are some really easy ones to critique. Try to find the one that you think it would be hardest to give a Frierean critique of and critique that one.)
Feb 20	Power and Privilege Symposium		Attend at least two sessions at the Power and Privilege Symposium.
Feb 25	Review readings from the semester so far, especially the Kant readings.	Education and Work, general discussion day and review.	SSA: Reflect on the Power and Privilege Symposium in the light of our readings on the nature of liberal education. This can involve showing how the readings helped you better understand the significance of a P&P presentation, or vice versa, or how one led you to challenge or extend the other. You should submit the best 300-500 words of this reflection. It should be exploratory in nature but should include at least one quotation from one of our readings with a careful analysis of the significance of that quotation for the topic you discuss. In your analysis, be sure to get at the logical/argumentative heart of the quotation (see p. 3 of the Harvard Brief Guide).
Feb 27	PE 221-253 (focus on 236-41)	Educational Equality	In what sense should educational opportunities be “equal”? Write (and email to me) a short defense of either maximization, equalization, meritocracy, or some 4^th alternative that is not the same as Gutmann’s. Be sure to defend your chosen view against Gutmann’s best objection to it (or if you choose a 4^th, against what you think the best objection would be).
March 3	PE 254-265 E.D. Hirsch “Cultural Literacy” (selection) Lisa Uddin, “What is Diversity”	Multicultural Education	How much “common culture” should be taught in schools? Why?
March 5	PE 290-313 & Frierson, Intellectual Agency (selection-start reading at bottom of page)	Education and Disability	SSA: Envision a school that integrates some particular form of diversity extremely well. (Or, if you prefer, envision an excellent school that rejects some form of diversity and does so well.) Creatively describe that school. Then offer at least a brief expository defense of the excellence of that school.
March 10	PE 283-289 Daniel Dennett, “Let’s Teach (all) Religion in Schools” (TED talk) MacIntyre, “The End of Education” and Goyette and Matthie, The Idea of a Catholic University	Education and Religion	What role, if any, should religion play in education?
March 12	PE 266-283 Gurin et.al., “Diversity in Higher Education” Whitman Wire, https://whitmanwire.com/news/2018/02/08/dialogue-and-difference-race-and-ethnic-studies-class-leans-into-discomfort/ And https://whitmanwire.com/opinion/2019/11/14/why-race-and-ethnicity-courses-should-be-required/	Race and Education	What value (if any) is there to racial diversity within education? What are the risks or dangers of racial diversity within education?
SPRING BREAK
March 31	EP 389-416	Constructivism	How “constructivist,” and in what ways, is your philosophy of education?
April 2	EP 417-422	Education, Knowledge, and Understanding
April 7	UNDERGRADUATE CONFERENCE		In the sessions you attend, think about whether the speakers are communicating knowledge, understanding, or something else. Think about how you would make sense of their work from a constructivist perspective.
April 9	EP 458-476	Punishment and Reward in Education	NOTE: Exploratory drafts of final papers are due at noon on April 13^th.
April 14	Montessori on Punishment and Reward	Punishment and Reward in Education	What role, if any, should punishment and reward (including grades, prizes, diplomas, and certificates) play in education?
April 16	Catch up, review, possible presentations.		SSA: Reflect on the course so far. Choose 600-1200 words of your journal and mark them for me to read and respond to, and write an additional 300 words or so that synthesize what you have gained from the course.
April 21	Friere, pp. 35-86.
April 23	Friere, pp. 87-124.		NOTE: Rough drafts of final papers are due at noon on April 24^th.
April 28	Friere, pp. 125-183.		NOTE: Emails regarding revisions to final papers are due at noon on April 27^th.
April 30	Catch up, review, presentations.
May 5	Catch up, review, presentations.
May 7	Last Class Day		FINAL PAPERS DUE. COMPLETE JOURNALS DUE. In your final journal, include an entry on what grade your journal should receive, and why.