Philosophy of Education

Educational Philosophy / Teaching Philosophy

Truth & Reality as the Foundations for Critical Thinking, Reason and Education
Quotes on Teaching Philosophy of Education from Famous Philosophers
Albert Einstein, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Michel de Montaigne, Plato, Aristotle &
Confucius

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without

accepting it. (Aristotle)

Since philosophy is the art which teaches us how to live, and since children need to
learn it as much as we do at other ages, why do we not instruct them in it? .. But in
truth I know nothing about the philosophy of education except this: that the
greatest and the most important difficulty known to human learning seems to lie in
that area which treats how to bring up children and how to educate them.
(de Montaigne, On teaching Philosophy of Education)

Plants are shaped by cultivation and men by education. .. We are born weak, we
need strength; we are born totally unprovided, we need aid; we are born stupid, we
need judgment. Everything we do not have at our birth and which we need when we
are grown is given us by education.
(Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emile, On Philosophy of Education)

This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our

whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive
attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive
success as a preparation for his future career. I am convinced there is only one
way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist
economy, accompanied by a educational system which would be oriented toward
social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society
itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts
 production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done
among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman
and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate
abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow-
men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.
(Albert Einstein, 1949, On Education)

There is nothing more necessary than truth, and in comparison with it everything
else has only secondary value.
This absolute will to truth: what is it? Is it the will to not allow ourselves to be
deceived? Is it the will not to deceive?
One does not want to be deceived, under the supposition that it is injurious,
dangerous, or fatal to be deceived. (Nietzsche, 1890)

My dear children: I rejoice to see you before me today, happy youth of a sunny and
fortunate land. Bear in mind that the wonderful things that you learn in your
schools are the work of many generations, produced by enthusiastic effort and
infinite labour in every country of the world. All this is put into your hands as your
inheritance in order that you may receive it, honour it, and add to it, and one day
faithfully hand it on to your children. Thus do we mortals achieve immortality in
the permanent things which we create in common. If you always keep that in mind
you will find meaning in life and work and acquire the right attitude towards other
nations and ages. (Albert Einstein talking to a group of school children. 1934)

"All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that
the fate of empires depends on the education of youth." (Aristotle)

The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education. (Albert Einstein)

Knowledge of the history and evolution of our ideas is absolutely

vital for wise understanding. It is also important to read the original
source (not a later interpretation which often leads to
misrepresentation and error) and that these original quotes should
give confidence to the truth of what we say. As Albert
Einstein astutely remarks;

Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors
looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is
completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never
gets to see or hear anything else. And what a person thinks on his own without
being stimulated by the thoughts and experiences of other people is even in the
best case rather paltry and monotonous.
There are only a few enlightened people with a lucid mind and style and with good
taste within a century. What has been preserved of their work belongs among the
most precious possessions of mankind. We owe it to a few writers of antiquity
(Plato, Aristotle, etc.) that the people in the Middle Ages could slowly extricate
themselves from the superstitions and ignorance that had darkened life for more
than half a millennium. Nothing is more needed to overcome the modernist's
snobbishness. (Einstein, 1954)

... knowledge must continually be renewed by ceaseless effort, if it is not to be

lost. It resembles a statue of marble which stands in the desert and is continually
threatened with burial by the shifting sand. The hands of service must ever be at
work, in order that the marble continue to lastingly shine in the sun. To these
serving hands mine shall also belong. (Einstein, On Education, 1950)

When, after several hours reading, I came to myself again, I asked myself what it
was that had so fascinated me. The answer is simple. The results were not
presented as ready-made, but scientific curiosity was first aroused by presenting
contrasting possibilities of conceiving matter. Only then the attempt was made to
clarify the issue by thorough argument. The intellectual honesty of the author
makes us share the inner struggle in his mind. It is this which is the mark of the
born teacher. Knowledge exists in two forms - lifeless, stored in books, and alive,
in the consciousness of men. The second form of existence is after all the
essential one; the first, indispensable as it may be, occupies only an inferior
position. (Einstein, 1954)

My dear children: I rejoice to see you before me today, happy youth of a sunny and
fortunate land. Bear in mind that the wonderful things that you learn in your
schools are the work of many generations, produced by enthusiastic effort and
infinite labour in every country of the world. All this is put into your hands as your
inheritance in order that you may receive it, honour it, and add to it, and one day
faithfully hand it on to your children. Thus do we mortals achieve immortality in
the permanent things which we create in common. If you always keep that in mind
you will find meaning in life and work and acquire the right attitude towards other
nations and ages. (Albert Einstein talking to a group of school children. 1934)
I believe, indeed, that overemphasis on the purely intellectual attitude, often
directed solely to the practical and factual, in our education, has led directly to
the impairment of ethical values. I am not thinking so much of the dangers with
which technical progress has directly confronted mankind, as of the stifling of
mutual human considerations by a 'matter-of-fact' habit of thought which has
come to lie like a killing frost upon human relations. Without 'ethical culture' there
is no salvation for humanity. (Einstein, 1953)

Albert Einstein On Academic Freedom

Numerous are the academic chairs, but rare are wise and noble teachers.
Numerous and large are the lecture halls, but far from numerous the young people
who genuinely thirst for truth and justice. Numerous are the wares that nature
produces by the dozen, but her choice products are few.
We all know that, so why complain? Was it not always thus and will it not always
thus remain? Certainly, and one must take what nature gives as one finds it. But
there is also such a thing as a spirit of the times, an attitude of mind
characteristic of a particular generation, which is passed on from individual to
individual and gives its distinctive mark to a society. Each of us has to his little bit
toward transforming this spirit of the times. (Einstein, 1954)

Albert Einstein On Freedom of Thought

The development of science and of the creative activities of the spirit in general
requires still another kind of freedom, which may be characterised as inward
freedom. It is this freedom of spirit which consists in the independence of
thought from the restrictions of authoritarian and social prejudices as well as
from unphilosophical routinizing and habit in general. This inward freedom is an
infrequent gift of nature and a worthy objective for the individual.
..schools may favor such freedom by encouraging independent thought. Only if
outward and inner freedom are constantly and consciously pursued is there a
possibility of spiritual development and perfection and thus of improving man's
outward and inner life. (Einstein, 1954)

Albert Einstein on Philosophy of Education in Schools

The school has always been the most important means of transferring the wealth
of tradition from one generation to the next. This applies today in an even higher
degree than in former times, for through modern development of the economic
life, the family as bearer of tradition and education has been weakened. The
continuance and health of human society is therefore in a still higher degree
dependent on the school than formerly.
Sometimes one sees in the school simply the instrument for transferring a certain
maximum quantity of knowledge to the growing generation. But that is not right.
Knowledge is dead; the school however, serves the living. It should develop in the
young individuals those qualities and capabilities which are of value for the welfare
of the commonwealth. But that does not mean that individuality should be
destroyed and the individual become a mere tool of the community, like a bee or an
ant. For a community of standardised individuals without personal originality and
personal aims would be a poor community without possibilities for development. On
the contrary, the aim must be the training of independently acting and thinking
individuals, who, however, see in the service of the community their highest life
problem.
To me the worst thing seems to be for a school principally to work with methods of
fear, force and artificial authority. Such treatment destroys the sound
sentiments, the sincerity, and the self-confidence of the pupil. It produces the
submissive subject. it is no wonder that such schools are the rule in Germany and
Russia.
..the desire for the approval of one's fellow-man certainly is one of the most
important binding powers of society. In this complex of feelings, constructive and
destructive forces lie closely together. Desire for approval and recognition is a
healthy motive; but the desire to be acknowledged as better, stronger, or more
intelligent than a fellow being or scholar easily leads to an excessively egoistic
psychological adjustment, which may become injurious for the individual and for
the community. Therefore the school and the teacher must guard against
employing the easy method of creating individual ambition, in order to induce the
pupils to diligent work. (Einstein)

It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction
have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little
planet, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it
goes to wreck and ruin without fail. It is a grave mistake to think that the
enjoyment of seeing and searching can be prompted by means of coercion and a
sense of duty. On the contrary, I believe that it would be possible to rob even a
healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness, if it were possible, with the aid of a
whip, to force the beast to devour continuously, even when not hungry, especially if
the food handed out under such coercion were to be selected accordingly. (Albert
Einstein on Education)

Plato, Quotations on Education

..for the object of education is to teach us to love beauty. (Plato)

'And once we have given our community a good start,' I pointed out, ' the process
will be cumulative. By maintaining a sound system of education you produce citizens
of good character, and citizens of sound character, with the advantage of a good
education, produce in turn children better than themselves and better able to
produce still better children in their turn, as can be seen with animals.'(Plato)

'... It is in education that bad discipline can most easily creep in unobserved,' he
replied.

'Yes,' I agreed, ' because people don't treat it seriously there, and think no harm
can come of it.'

'It only does harm,' he said, 'because it makes itself at home and gradually
undermines morals and manners; from them it invades business dealings generally,
and then spreads into the laws and constitution without any restraint, until it has
made complete havoc of private and public life.'

'And when men who aren't fit to be educated get an education they don't deserve,
are not the thoughts and opinions they produce fairly called sophistry, without a
legitimate idea or any trace of true wisdom among them?'

'Certainly'.

'The first thing our artist must do,' I replied, ' - and it's not easy - is to take
human society and human habits and wipe them clean out, to give himself a clean
canvas. For our philosophic artist differs from all others in being unwilling to start
work on an individual or a city, or draw out laws, until he is given, or has made
himself, a clean canvas.'
'Because a free man ought not to learn anything under duress. Compulsory physical
exercise does no harm to the body, but compulsory learning never sticks to the
mind.'

'True'

'Then don't use compulsion,' I said to him, ' but let your children's lessons take
the form of play. You will learn more about their natural abilities that way.' (Plato)

Jean Jacques Rousseau, On the Philosophy of

Education
Plants are shaped by cultivation and men by education. .. We are born weak, we
need strength; we are born totally unprovided, we need aid; we are born stupid, we
need judgement. Everything we do not have at our birth and which we need when
we are grown is given us by education. (Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emile)

I will say little of the importance of a good education; nor will I stop to prove that
the current one is bad. Countless others have done so before me, and I do not like
to fill a book with things everybody knows. I will note that for the longest time
there has been nothing but a cry against the established practice without anyone
taking it upon himself to propose a better one. The literature and the learning of
our age tend much more to destruction than to edification. (Jean Jacques
Rousseau, Emile)

Michel de Montaigne, Philosophy

Quotes on Education
I would like to suggest that our minds are swamped by too much study and by too
much matter just as plants are swamped by too much water or lamps by too much
oil; that our minds, held fast and encumbered by so many diverse preoccupations,
may well lose the means of struggling free, remaining bowed and bent under the
load; except that it is quite otherwise: the more our souls are filled, the more they
expand; examples drawn from far-off times show, on the contrary, that great
soldiers ad statesmen were also great scholars. (de Montaigne)

I think it better to say that the evil arises from their tackling the sciences in the
wrong manner and that, from the way we have been taught, it is no wonder that
neither master nor pupils become more able, even though they do know more. In
truth the care and fees of our parents aim only at furnishing our heads with
knowledge: nobody talks about judgement or virtue. When someone passes by, try
exclaiming, Oh, what a learned man! Then, when another does, Oh, what a good
man! Our people will not fail to turn their gaze respectfully towards the first.
There ought to be a third man crying, Oh, what blockheads!' (de Montaigne)

We readily inquire, Does he know Greek or Latin? Can he write poetry and prose?
But what matters most is what we put last: Has he become better and wiser? We
ought to find out not who understands most but who understands best. We work
merely to fill the memory, leaving the understanding and the sense of right and
wrong empty. Just as birds sometimes go in search of grain, carrying it in their
beaks without tasting it to stuff it down the beaks of their young, so too do our
schoolmasters go foraging for learning in their books and merely lodge it on the tip
of their lips, only to spew it out and scatter it on the wind. (de Montaigne)

Their pupils and their little charges are not nourished and fed by what they learn:
the learning is passed from hand to hand with only one end in view: to show it off,
to put into our accounts to entertain others with it, as though it were merely
counters, useful for totting up and producing statements, but having no other use
or currency. Apud alios loqui didicerunt, non ipsi secum [They have learned how to
talk with others, not with themselves] (de Montaigne)

Whenever I ask a certain acquaintance of mine to tell me what he knows about

anything, he wants to show me a book: he would not venture to tell me that he has
scabs on his arse without studying his lexicon to find out the meaning of scab and
arse.
All we do is to look after the opinions and learning of others: we ought to make
them our own. We closely resemble a man who, needing a fire, goes next door to
get a light, finds a great big blaze there and stays to warm himself, forgetting to
take a brand back home. What use is it to us to have a belly full of meat if we do
not digest it, if we do not transmute it into ourselves, if it does not make us grow
in size and strength? (de Montaigne)
If our souls do not move with a better motion and if we do not have a healthier
judgement, then I would just as soon that our pupil should spend his time playing
tennis: at least his body would become more agile. But just look at him after he has
spent some fifteen or sixteen years studying: nothing could be more unsuited for
employment. The only improvement you can see is that his Latin and Greek have
made him more conceited and more arrogant than when he left home. He ought to
have brought back a fuller soul: he brings back a swollen one; instead of making it
weightier he has merely blown wind into it. (de Montaigne)

And I loathe people who find it harder to put up with a gown askew than with a soul
askew and who judge a man by his bow, his bearing and his boots. (de Montaigne)

Learning is a good medicine: but no medicine is powerful enough to preserve itself

from taint and corruption independently of defects in the jar that it is kept in.
One man sees clearly but does not see straight: consequently he sees what is good
but fails to follow it; he sees knowledge and does not use it. (de Montaigne)

.. since it was true that study, even when done properly, can only teach us what
wisdom, right conduct and determination consist in, they wanted to put their
children directly in touch with actual cases, teaching them not by hearsay but by
actively assaying them, vigorously molding and forming them not merely by word
and precept but chiefly by deeds and examples, so that wisdom should not be
something which the soul knows but the souls very essence and temperament, not
something acquired but a natural property. (de Montaigne)

But in truth I know nothing about education except this: that the greatest and the
most important difficulty known to human learning seems to lie in that area which
treats how to bring up children and how to educate them. (de Montaigne)

Socrates and then Archesilaus used to make their pupils speak first; they spoke
afterwards. Obest plerumque iss discere volunt authoritas eorum qui docent. [For
those who want to learn, the obstacle can often be the authority of those who
teach] (de Montaigne)

Those who follow our French practice and undertake to act as schoolmaster for
several minds diverse in kind and capacity, using the same teaching and the same
degree of guidance for them all, not surprisingly can scarcely find in a whole tribe
of children more than one or two who bear fruit from their education.
Let the tutor not merely require a verbal account of what the boy has been taught
but the meaning and substance of it: let him judge how the boy has profited from
it not from the evidence of his memory but from that of his life. Let him take
what the boy has just learned and make him show him dozens of different aspects
of it and then apply it to just as many different subjects, in order to find out
whether he has really grasped it and made it part of himself, judging the boys
progress by what Plato taught about education. Spewing food up exactly as you
have swallows it is evidence of a failure to digest and assimilate it; the stomach
has not done its job if, during concoction, it fails to change the substance and the
form of what it is given. (de Montaigne)

The profit we possess after study is to have become better and wiser. (de
Montaigne)

Nor is it enough to toughen up his soul; you must also toughen up his muscles. (de
Montaigne)

Teach him a certain refinement in sorting out and selecting his arguments, with an
affection for relevance and so for brevity. Above all let him be taught to throw
down his arms and surrender to truth as soon as he perceives it, whether the truth
is born at his rivals doing or within himself from some change in his ideas. (de
Montaigne)

As for our pupils talk, let his virtue and his sense of right and wrong shine through
it and have no guide but reason. Make him understand that confessing an error
which he discovers in his own argument even when he alone has noticed it is an act
of justice and integrity, which are the main qualities he pursues; stubbornness and
rancour are vulgar qualities, visible in common souls whereas to think again, to
change ones mind and to give up a bad case on the heat of the argument are rare
qualities showing strength and wisdom. (de Montaigne)

In his commerce with men I mean him to include- and that principally- those who
live only in the memory of books. By means of history he will frequent those great
souls of former years. If you want it to be so, history can be a waste of time; it
can also be, if you want it to be so, a study bearing fruit beyond price. (de
Montaigne)

The first lessons with which we should irrigate his mind should be those which
teach him to know himself, and to know how to die and to live. (de Montaigne)
Since philosophy is the art which teaches us how to live, and since children need to
learn it as much as we do at other ages, why do we not instruct them in it? (de
Montaigne)

Any time and any place can be used to study: his room, a garden, is table, his bed;
when alone or in company; morning and evening. His chief study will be Philosophy,
that Former of good judgement and character who is privileged to be concerned
with everything.
(de Montaigne)

For among other things he had been counseled to bring me to love knowledge and
duty by my own choice, without forcing my will, and to educate my soul entirely
through gentleness and freedom. (de Montaigne)

Learning must not only lodge with us: we must marry her. (de Montaigne)

Educational Quotes by Famous

Philosophers
Quotations from Confucius, Aristotle, Euripides, Seneca, Cicero, Horace, William
James, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, John Fowles, George Bernard Shaw

Study the past if you would define the future.

I am not one who was born in the possession of knowledge; I am one who is fond of
antiquity, and earnest in seeking it there.
Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.
(Confucius, Analects)

Those who educate children well are more to be honored than parents, for these
gave only life, those the art of living well. (Aristotle, In Education)

The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.
(Aristotle, In Education)

All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that
the fate of empires depends on the education of youth. (Aristotle)
Learned we may be with another mans learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of
our own:
[I hate a sage who is not wise for himself] (Euripides)

What use is knowledge if there is no understanding? (Stobaeus)

non vitae sed scholae discimus. [We are taught for the schoolroom not for life]
(Seneca)

Now we are not merely to stick knowledge on to the soul: we must incorporate it
into her; the soul should not be sprinkled with knowledge but steeped in it.
(Seneca)

And if knowledge does not change her and make her imperfect state better then it
is preferable just to leave it alone. Knowledge is a dangerous sword; in a weak hand
which does not know how to wield it it gets in its masters way and wounds him, ut
fuerit melius non didicisse [so that it would have been better not to have studied
at all] (de Montaigne quoting Cicero)

She (philosophy) is equally helpful to the rich and poor: neglect her, and she equally
harms the young and old. (Horace)

As a man who knows how to make his education into a rule of life not a means of
showing off; who can control himself and obey his own principles. The true mirror
of our discourse is the course of our lives. (de Montaignequoting Cicero)

THE TEACHER AS A NECESSARY EVIL. Let us have as few people as possible

between the productive minds and the hungry and recipient minds! The middlemen
almost unconsciously adulterate the food which they supply. It is because of
teachers that so little is learned, and that so badly. (Nietzsche, 1880)

What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child
and the feeble mentality of the average adult. (Sigmund Freud)

To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralysed by
hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those
who study it. (Bertrand Russell, The History of Western Philosophy)

To begin with our knowledge grows in spots. ..What you first gain, ... is probably a
small amount of new information, a few new definitions, or distinctions, or points
of view. But while these special ideas are being added, the rest of your knowledge
stands still, and only gradually will you line up your previous opinions with the
novelties I am trying to instill, and to modify to some slight degree their mass.
..Your mind in such processes is strained, and sometimes painfully so, between its
older beliefs and the novelties which experience brings along. (William James,
Pragmatism)

Chess permits freedom of permutations within a framework of set rules and

prescribed movements. Because a chess player cannot move absolutely as he likes,
either in terms of the rules or in terms of the exigencies of the particular game,
has he no freedom of move? The separate games of chess I play with existence
has different rules from your and every other game; the only similarity is that
each of our games always has rules. The gifts, inherited and acquired, that are
special to me are the rules of the game; and the situation I am in at any given
moment is the situation of the game. My freedom is the choice of action and the
power of enactment I have within the rules and situation of the game. (Fowles,
1964. The Aristos)

Our present educational systems are all paramilitary. Their aim is to produce
servants or soldiers who obey without question and who accepts their training as
the best possible training. Those who are most successful in the state are those
who have the most interest in prolonging the state as it is; they are also those who
have the most say in the educational system, and in particular by ensuring that the
educational product they want is the most highly rewarded. (Fowles, 1964. The
Aristos)

Every serious student of the subject knows that the stability of a civilisation
depends finally on the wisdom with which it distributes its wealth and allots its
burdens of labour, and on the veracity of the instruction it provides for its
children. We do not distribute the wealth at all: we throw it into the streets to be
scrambled for by the strongest and the greediest who will stoop to such
scrambling, after handing the lions share to the professional robbers politely
called owners. We cram our children with lies, and punish anyone who tries to
enlighten them. Our remedies for the consequences of our folly are tariffs,
inflation, wars, vivisections and inoculations vengeance, violences, black magic.
(George Bernard Shaw)

Epicurus Greek, Epkouros, "ally, comrade"; 341270 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher as
well as the founder of the school of philosophy called Epicureanism. Only a few fragments and
letters of Epicurus's 300 written works remain. Much of what is known about Epicurean philosophy
derives from later followers and commentators.

For Epicurus, the purpose of philosophy was to attain the happy, tranquil life, characterized
by ataraxiapeace and freedom from fearand aponiathe absence of painand by living a self-
sufficient life surrounded by friends. He taught that pleasure and pain are the measures of what is
good and evil; death is the end of both body and soul and should therefore not be feared; the gods
neither reward nor punish humans; the universe is infinite and eternal; and events in the world are
ultimately based on the motions and interactions of atoms moving in empty space.

Philosophy: What is man?

From Latin Humanitas, the concept of Man means human nature, general culture of the
mind. It is also men in general, the human race taken as a unit. Most philosophers
defined as any human being endowed with reason. What man is the ultimate
metaphysical question.

- Simone de Beauvoir

Humanity is a discontinuous series of free men permanently isolate their subjectivity.

- Husserl (phenomenology)

Each figure is spiritual in nature in the space of world history [...]. This trial shows
humanity as a single life kissing men and peoples and linked only by spiritual traits: it
envelops a multitude of types of humanity and culture, but by imperceptible transitions,
melt into each other .

- Nietzsche (see Nietzsche Philosophy Summary)

Mankind! He was never between all the old, old one more horrible (except perhaps the
truth is a problem with the use of philosophers?

Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman, a rope over an abyss

- Merleau-Ponty

Man is a historical idea and not a natural kind

- Sartre (Existentialism is a humanism)

Man is nothing else than his plan, it exists only insofar as it is realized, so it is nothing
but the whole

- Heidegger (Being and Time)

Man is a creature of the distant

- Pascal

Man is a reed, the weakest of nature, but it is a thinking reed. It is not necessary that the
entire universe arm itself to crush: a vapor, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But when
the universe to crush him, man would still be nobler than what kills him, because he
knows that he dies and the advantage that the universe has over him The universe knows
nothing