Foundations, intentions, expressions

I've been reading some of Steven M. Cahn's The philosophical foundations of education, a collection of essays from philosophers ranging from Plato to Locke, Dewey to Russell. I won't have time to finish it before I have to return it to the College of Education (I got up to p.146 - part way through Locke - out of 424), but it has prompted my thinking and hence this post!

In his introducton to his extract from Locke's 'Some thoughts concerning education', Cahn remarks as follows:

"As was pointed out earlier, philosophy of education involves discussion of the aims of education within the context of metaphysical, epistemological, moral, and political considerations. If an author treats these considerations sketchily or not at all, it is misleading to refer to his [sic] work as a philosophy of education." (1970:133).

This statement, supplemented with my foray into Locke's work, prompted the title of this post. Knight (1998), in his Philosophy and education 3rd ed., likewise establishes metaphysics and epistemology as two elements of a highly comprehensive treatment of philosophy (which might be too comprehensive for my purposes, but that will be a later post!), including axiology as a third element of the content contribution to philosophy.

Anyway, Cahn's four elements might be thought to contribute to the foundation of education. From this philosophical foundation, be it stated or otherwise, we draw our intentions for education. And it is our intentions that determine our expressions of education, and what we measure our expressions against. This is a working model for the consideration of DE and e-learning in Christian education.

At this stage my impression is that I will find a rich philosophy of education from CE literature. Knight's work already provides that to a certain extent, and there are other books on my shelf waiting to round of his work. DE and e-learning literature is awash with intention and expression, and expression, respectively. I will need to be careful to emphasise those CE works that focus on intention and expression, and likewise those DE and e-learning works that aim to provide some sort of foundation (such works do actually exist in DE, but they are rare; Otto Peters's work comes to mind, as do the early writings of Borge Holmberg who once even sat in my office!)

Cahn, S.M. (1970). The philosophical foundations of education. New York: Harper International.