Explain role of contemporary philosophies in education?

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Contemporary Philosophies and Theories in Education signify new directions and possibilities out of a traditional field of philosophy and education. Around the globe, exciting scholarship that breaks down and reformulates traditions in the humanities and social sciences is being created in the field of education scholarship. This series provides a venue for publication by education scholars whose work reflects the dynamic and experimental qualities that characterize today’s academy.

The series associates philosophy and theory not exclusively with a cognitive interest (to know, to define, to order) or an evaluative interest (to judge, to impose criteria of validity) but also with an experimental and attentive attitude which is characteristic for exercises in thought that try to find out how to move in the present and how to deal with the actual spaces and times, the different languages and practices of education and its transformations around the globe. It addresses the need to draw on thought across all sorts of borders and counts amongst its elements the following: the valuing of diverse processes of inquiry; an openness to various forms of communication, knowledge, and understanding; a willingness to always continue experimentation that incorporates debate and critique; and an application of this spirit, as implied above, to the institutions and issues of education.

Authors for the series come not only from philosophy of education but also from curriculum studies and critical theory, social sciences theory, and humanities theory in education. The series incorporates volumes that are trans- and inner-disciplinary. For much of the history of Western philosophy, philosophical questions concerning education were high on the philosophical agenda. From Socrates, Plato, and (p. 4) Aristotle to twentieth‐century figures such as Bertrand Russell, John Dewey, R. S. Peters, and Israel Scheffler, general philosophers (i.e., contemporary philosophers working in departments of philosophy and publishing in mainstream philosophy journals, and their historical predecessors) addressed questions in philosophy of education along with their treatments of issues in epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind and language, and moral and social/political philosophy. The same is true of most of the major figures of the Western philosophical tradition, including Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Mill, and many others.

The concept of methods and knowledge of teaching

With the emergence of the new religion (Islam) and the civilization that arose with it, a set of religious and linguistic disciplines came into being, among which were those dealing with the Koran, hadith, fiqh, linguistics, the biographies of the Prophet and his companions, and the military campaigns of the Prophet, which were designated the ‘Arab sciences'. With the growth of Arab and Islamic culture, and through contact and interaction with and borrowing from foreign cultures, another set of disciplines arose, such as medicine, astronomy, chemistry, mathematics, philosophy and logic, which were called the ‘non-Arab' sciences. From these native and borrowed sciences a flourishing scientific movement grew rapidly, although a conflict soon arose between the religious sciences and the disciplines of philosophy and the natural sciences, or between the fuqaha' and the philosophers. Al-Ghazali and his Tahafut al-Falasifa was one of the elements in this struggle, which ended with the victory of the fuqaha' (and Sufis) over the philosophers and scientists. And yet the religious sciences emerged from this battle weakened and lacking in vigour, especially after the gate of independent inquiry was closed and the method of relying on earlier authorities gained supremacy: Arab civilization and science thus went from an age of original production, creativity and innovation to one of derivation, imitation and compilation.

As a scholar and teacher, al-Ghazali was interested in the problem of knowledge: its concepts, methods, categories and aims. True knowledge, in al-Ghazali's view, is knowledge of God, His books, His prophets, the kingdoms of earth and heaven, as well as knowledge of shari‘a as revealed by His Prophet. Such knowledge is thus a religious science, even if it includes the study of certain worldly phenomena. Disciplines relating to this world, such as medicine, arithmetic, etc., are classed as techniques.

The purpose of knowledge is to help man to achieve plenitude and to attain true happiness—the happiness of the hereafter—by drawing close to God and gazing upon His countenance. The value of learning lies in its usefulness and veracity. Hence, the religious sciences are superior to the secular sciences because they concern salvation in the eternal hereafter rather than this transient world, and because they contain greater truth than the secular sciences. This is not to say that the secular sciences should be completely ignored; they have their uses, and are needed by society. Examples of such disciplines are medicine and linguistics.

The Muslim philosophers and scholars (al-Kindi, al-Farabi, Ibn an-Nadim, Ibn Sina and others) had a passion for classifying the sciences, and were influenced in this respect by the Greek philosophers, in particular Aristotle. Al-Ghazali has several classifications of the sciences: he first classifies them according to their ‘nature' into theoretical (theological and religious sciences) and practical (ethics, home economics and politics), and then according to their ‘origin' into revealed sciences, taken from the prophets (unity of God, exegesis, rites, customs, morality) and rational sciences, produced by human reason and thinking (mathematics, natural sciences, theology, etc.)

There is no contradiction, in al-Ghazali's opinion, between the revealed sciences and the rational sciences. Any apparent conflict between the prescriptions of revelation and the requirements of reason stems from the incapacity of the seeker to attain the truth and from his faulty understanding of the reality of revealed law or the judgement of reason. In fact, the revealed and the rational sciences complement—and indeed are indispensable to—one another. The problem is that it is difficult, if not impossible, to study and understand them together. They constitute two separate paths, and whoever takes an interest in the one will be deficient in the other.

Finally, al-Ghazali classifies the sciences according to their purpose or aim, dividing them into the science of transaction (governing the behaviour and actions of human beings—the sciences of rites and customs) and the science of unveiling (pertaining to the apprehension of the reality and essence of things), an abstract science which can only be attained through unveiling a light which illuminates the heart when the heart is purified, a light which is ineffable and cannot be contained in books. It is the supreme science and the truest form of knowledge.

The 11th century (5th century H) witnessed the triumph of the religious sciences over philosophy and the natural sciences. al-Ghazali's violent attack on philosophy was one of the factors that contributed to its weakening in the Islamic East. Al-Ghazali divides the philosophical sciences into six categories: mathematics, logic, natural sciences, metaphysics, politics and ethics. Mathematics, logic and the natural sciences do not contradict religion, and may be studied. The problem is that whoever studies them may go on to metaphysics and other disciplines which should be avoided. Metaphysics is the science which is most dangerous and at variance with religion. Politics and ethics are not incompatible with the sciences and principles of religion, but here again, whoever studies them may slide into the study of other, reprehensible sciences.

Curiously, although al-Ghazali attacked philosophy and the natural sciences, and was influential in persecuting and weakening them, he also helped to restore them to the curriculum at al-Azhar at the end of the 19th century, where the head of that university, Muhammad al-Anbabi 1878 CE (1305 H) adduced al-Ghazali's writings on the natural sciences in order to demonstrate that they were not contradictory to religion and to authorize their teaching.

The Islamic educational system was divided into two distinct levels: elementary schooling was dispensed in the kuttab for the common people, and by men of letters in private houses for the children of the élite; higher education took place in various Islamic educational institutions such as mosques, madrasas, ‘houses of science and wisdom', Sufi hermitages, brotherhoods, hospices, etc. The elementary curriculum had a pronounced religious character, and consisted mainly of learning the Koran and the fundamentals of religion, reading and writing, and occasionally the rudiments of poetry, grammar, narration and arithmetic, with some attention being devoted to moral instruction.

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