SOCRATES (469 BC399 BC) Socrates Socrates is remembered as a Greek philosopher.

He was born in 470 BC and died in 399 BC. He is regarded as a puzzling personality as although he did not write any information, he completely and permanently altered the method of understanding and thinking philosophy. He laid the basis of Western philosophy. Considering the standard of fifth-century Athens, his appearance, demeanor, personality, methods and views were exotic. It is said that he had large, bulging, crab-like eyes, a flat and upturned nose and large, fleshly, ass-like lips. He grew long hair and roamed, without having a wash, barefooted. He looked arrogant and his boastful, conceited movements caused the enemy soldiers to maintain a safe distance. Plato, Xenophon and Aristophanes are the source of information regarding him. He had three sons named Lamprocles, Menexenus and Sophronisucs. It was declared that he was corrupting the young men in Athens and hence punished to death by consuming poisonous hemlock. Socratic method This is also called as the Method of Elenchus or Socratic Debate. Plato was the first to describe it in the "Socratic dialogues". This is a method of philosophical inquiry used for the assessment of key moral concepts. It is for this method that Socrates is considered as the father and originator of moral philosophy and western ethics. The method includes the following points:
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interrogating a range of questions regarding a pivotal issue providing answers to these questions defending certain points of view the ideal method to achieve triumph is that if the opponent asserts something opposite to his own statement, then this is an evidence that the enquirer is correct

Elenchos is said to be the prime technique of the Socratic method. Socrates used this technique to examine to nature of ethical concepts like virtue or justice. This was executed as follows:
y y y y y y y

an interlocutor makes a statement Socrates may consider it as wrong and aim to cancel it Socrates makes other statements the interlocutor accedes that these statements are contradictory to his statement Socrates asserts that the interlocutor's statement is false and its opposite is true one assessment can cause a more refined assessment of the concept under debate a series of elenchai may take place and culminate in a state of puzzlement

The Socratic method is to search for the assumptions that shape one's sentiment. These assumptions are pondered over and their consistency with other beliefs is checked. A series of logical questions are asked with the objective of assisting a person to discover the individual opinions regarding some topic. Socrates philosophy Socrates asserted that an individual must know himself in order to be wise. A life that has not been examined is not worth living. The philosophy of Socrates can be learnt through the writings of Plato. Socrates spoke that he was like a midwife. However, he attended the souls of men when they were in trouble. His art won when he could profoundly assess whether the thoughts that arose in the minds of the youth were false icons or true and noble. He had the opinion that just like midwives he was also barren. He was blamed that he asked questions for which he himself had no answer. He replied that he was not astute or had nothing to demonstrate that was the invention of his soul. However, those who would converse with him would necessarily gain something. Socrates also said that the youth belonging to the richer class accosted him of their own sweet will. They tried to ape him by examining others. There were many such rich youth who assumed that they knew some facts, but in fact knew very less or nothing. It so happened that the people examined by such rich youth rather than being angry with themselves showered their wrath on Socrates. So, he was titled as the "villainous misleader of the youth". These people could not tell precisely how Socrates was wrong. Only as they were large in number they could effect loud slander.

Plato (427347 BCE) Plato

Plato is one of the worlds best known and most widely read and studied philosophers. He was the student of Socrates and the teacher ofAristotle, and he wrote in the middle of the fourth century B.C.E. in ancient Greece. Though influenced primarily by Socrates, to the extent that Socrates is usually the main character in many of Platos writings, he was also influenced by Heraclitus, Parmenides, and thePythagoreans. There are varying degrees of controversy over which of Platos works are authentic, and in what order they were written, due to their antiquity and the manner of their preservation through time. Nonetheless, his earliest works are generally regarded as the most reliable of the ancient sources on Socrates, and the character Socrates that we know through these writings is considered to be one of the greatest of the ancient philosophers. Platos middle to later works, including his most famous work, the Republic, are generally regarded as providing Platos own philosophy, where the main character in effect speaks for Plato himself. These works blend ethics, political philosophy, moral psychology, epistemology, and metaphysics into an interconnected and systematic philosophy. It is most of all from Plato that we get the theory of Forms, according to which the world we know through the senses is only an imitation of the pure, eternal, and unchanging world of the Forms. Platos works also contain the origins of the familiar complaint that the arts work by inflaming the passions, and are mere illusions. We also are introduced to the ideal of Platonic love: Plato saw love as motivated by a longing for the highest Form of beautyThe Beautiful Itself, and love as the motivational power through which the highest of achievements are possible. Because they tended to distract us into accepting less than our highest potentials, however, Plato mistrusted and generally advised against physical expressions of love.

(Zeno of Citium, 300 - 260 B.C.)

Philosophy 1. One to live in accord with Nature; worldly Nature and human nature. 2. The Unity of All; all gods; all substance; all virtue; all mankind into a Cosmopolis (Universal City). 3. That the external world is maintained by the natural interchange of opposites (poioun / yin, paskhon / yang) 4. That everyone has a personal, individual connection to the All; a god within. 5. That every soul has Free Will to act and that the action of the soul is opinion. 6. Simple Living through moderation and frugality. 7. That spiritual growth comes from seeking the good. 8. That Virtue is the sole good, Vice the sole evil, and everything else indifferent. 9. That the Cardinal Virtues are Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, and Temperance. 10. That the path to personal happiness and inner peace is through the extinguishing of all desire to have or to affect things beyond ones control and through living for the present without hope for or fear of the future; beyond the power of opinion. 11. The sequential reabsorption and recreation of the Universe by the Central Fire; the Conflagration.

Comenius, John Amos (15921670) Contributions Comenius is best known for his innovations in pedagogy, but one cannot gain an adequate appreciation of his educational ideas without recognizing his religious and metaphysical convictions. Despite the prevalent human suffering of his day, Comenius remained optimistic about the future of mankind, as he believed in the immanence of God and the imminence of God's kingdom on Earth. As God's creations, humans were necessarily good, not corrupt. Comenius also felt that Christ's Second Coming would end human strife but that people themselves could act in ushering the new millennium by engaging in pansophy, or the lifelong study of an encyclopedic system of human knowledge. By seeing the harmony among everything in the universe, all human beings would come to acknowledge God's glory and presence in themselves and in nature. Specifically, Comenius characterized human lifefrom the mother's womb to grave as a series of educational stages in which objects from nature would serve as the basis of learning. In this, he was influenced by the writings of the English statesman Sir Francis Bacon, an early advocate of the inductive method of scientific inquiry. Comenius believed that true knowledge could be found in things as they existed in reality and when one came to understand how they came about. As a result, Comenius urged all people to recognize the interconnections and harmony among philosophical, theological, scientific, social, and political facts and ideas. That way, one could reconcile three seemingly distinct worlds: the natural, the human, and the divine. Comenius felt that disagreements among religious, scientific, and philosophic enterprises arose because each held only a partial understanding of universal truthbut that all could exist harmoniously through pansophic awareness. Viewing the human mind as infinite in its capacity (as the benevolent gift of God), Comenius advocated universal education so that the souls of all people would be enlightened in this fashion. Through universal education and pedagogy, pansophy would eliminate human prejudice and lead to human perfectiona state of being that God had intended for man.

Works Perhaps Comenius's most familiar work is the Great Didactic, which he originally wrote in 1632. As Comenius held the conviction that pansophy was necessary for the spiritual salvation of humankind, he reasoned that a good man (a rational being who understood God through nature), and ultimately a good society, could only be created if all people acquired encyclopedic knowledge. In order to guarantee that this would occur, Comenius delineated a universal teaching method or standard set of pedagogical postulates that would facilitate an effective communication of knowledge between the teacher and student. Delineating four levels of schools lasting six years each, Comenius was one of the first educators to recommend a coherent and standard system of instruction. Indeed, Comenius suggested that the universality of nature dictated that all people shared common stages of intellectual development. As a result, he reasoned, teachers needed to identify their students' stages of development and match the level of instruction accordingly. Lessons should proceed from easy to complex at a slow and deliberate pace. Furthermore, Comenius argued that the acquisition of new material began through the sensesan idea that reflected the rise of empiricism in the seventeenth century.

JOHN LOCKE I. THEORY OF VALUE: What knowledge and skills are worthwhile learning? What are the goals of Education? The skill and knowledge needed to order our actions in accordance with the laws of nature; to treat our possessions and persons responsibly, and to avoid coming under the absolute control of others (Yolton, p. 16) Acquiring knowledge frequently establishes a habit of doing so -satisfying natural curiosity frequently establishes the habit of loving and esteeming all learning. Pursuit of truth is a duty we owe to God and ourselves. The goal of education is the welfare and prosperity of the nation -Locke conceived the nations's welfare and prosperity in terms of the personal happiness and social usefulness of its citizens. Education for Locke provides the character formation necessary for becoming a person and for being a responsible citizen. His education philosophy is an effort to show how democratic constitutional monarchy might be preserved and improved (Deighton, p. 20) II. THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE What is knowledge? How is it different from belief? What is a mistake? A lie? Knowledge is publicly verifiable, measurable, plain, demonstrable facts - not imagination the best instance of knowing is intuiting - by intuiting is meant a power which the mind possesses of apprehending truth Knowledge, like good character, is a set of mental habits rather than a body of belief Knowledge is limited to imperfections of ideas we have; we can have probable knowledge even when we can't have certain knowledge Knowledge is the perception of the agreement or disagreement of two ideas (Hutchins, p. 347) - may be four sorts: identity or diversity, relation, co-existence and real existence Knowing is an infallible intuition; opening is coming to a conclusion after weighing the evidence, but without certainty. Mistakes and lies would be a lack of evidence and defiance of evidence.

III. THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE What is a human being? How does it differ from other species? What are the limits of human potential? Man becomes moral through education - humans have no innate ideas of God, no innate moral truths, no natural inclination of virtue - Locke defined man as both rational and moral Man is subject to the rule of natural law which was ultimately God's law made known to man through the voice of reason Locke's denial of innate ideas put a premium on individual effort, on the labor necessary to gain knowledge from experience (Tarcov, P. 83). Man could be ruled and be free - man is endowed with natural rights such as life, liberty and property (Cranston,, p. 12)

IV. THEORY OF LEARNING What is learning? How are skills and knowledge acquired? The learning that gentlemen should possess is general, according to Locke Learning is the last and least part of education. Learning is a great help to virtue and wisdom, but without them it produces only the more foolish or worse men From infancy onwards, the child's efforts toward bodily pleasure and toward power in possessions and over others should be thoroughly frustrated. The result will be that habits of selfcentered, aggressive behavior and of preferring ignorance to learning will not become established. Skills and knowledge are acquired by example and practice instead of charging of children's memories with rules and principals Unconscious habits are bred by practice and manners learned by example V. THEORY OF TRANSMISSION Who is to teach? By what methods? What will the curriculum be? The goal of the gentlemen's education cannot be achieved by sending him to a school. Learning should be superintended by a tutor assisted by genuinely interested parents. For working classes, poor children of both sexes between the ages of 3-14 should be compelled to attend school with "teachers" Locke attacked ordinary method of teaching - manners learned by example, latin learned by speaking. The best way to get men to do what is wanted is not t terrify or force them but to motivate them, to arouse and then rely on desires, while letting them think, not without justice, that they are acting for their own sakes and of their own free will. Methods for poor - learn by practice; for gentlemen - bring pupil to practice the activities of the gentlemanly ideal until they become habitual. Curriculum for the poor: focus on regular worship for sake of religion and moral improvement, handicrafts and agricultural skills, vocational arts - may have intended that young should learn to read, write and do math but made no statements to that effect Curriculum for gentlemen: health - the first ingredient of personal happiness; development of good character - consisting of three

groups of habits - virtue, wisdom and breeding; to include reading, writing and arithmetic, Latin, language and literature (Greek for scholars only) ; literature of France and England, the natural and social sciences; the arts should occupy a minor place -which Locke considered a useless or dangerous thing Learning -that gentlemen should possess is general; detailed learning is only for those who would become scholars; one should know in detail what is directly useful in managing personal affairs. VI. THEORY OF SOCIETY What is society? What institutions are involved in the educational process? Men once lived in a state of natural anarchy but had banded together to form political society Men entrusted power to rulers on the condition that natural rights were respected by rulers. Natural rights and natural law are rooted in edicts of God which were inalienable Men possess these traits: 1) natural freedom - right to life and liberty; 2) necessity for labor; and 3) capacity of reason - from # 1 & 2 - f lows right of property in things which is chief factor in foundation of society The child enters both a family and a nation. The family's duty being slowly to awaken the child to virtue. The government must perform its part in the social contract - to preserve the rights to life and liberty of all the citizens Each of these communities should be guided by moral laws, laws devised from the laws of nature which are God's laws VII. THEORY OF OPPORTUNITY Who is to be educated? Who is to be schooled?The citizens of the nation fall into two kinds: those who posses property to some significant degree and those who do not. The f first group is made up of gentlemen, the second of workingmen. Both gentlemen and workingmen ought to be personally happy and socially useful, but since they occupy different stations in society, their happiness and usefulness must differ. The welfare and prosperity of the nation demand that children of the propertied class be educated in a way quite different from children of the poor. Locke believed that the daughters of gentlemen should be education in much the same way as their sons Children of the poor class should be kept away from schools - even the best - because they would fall into the company of undesirables VIII. THEORY OF CONSENSUS Why do people disagree? How is the consensus achieved? Whose opinion takes precedence? Wrong doing is a sign of ignorance; people should be enlightened, use own power of reason, be prudent, reflective and calculatory instead of being moved by impulse. The mind perceives the agreement between our idea and itself, and a disagreement in this respect between it and all others (for example, white is white and not black). The mind also perceives a violation between its ideas. In one sense all the agreements are violations, for an agreement is a violation.

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi

Pestalozzis principles of education are predominantly expressed in his seminal work How Gertrude Teaches her Children. In it, he argued that young children should learn through experiencethrough physical activity and through concrete experiences with objects, and not through the world of words by studying books. His ideas can be summarized under the following three topics: Goal of Education The goal of education is not to impart knowledge, but to unfold the natural faculties latent and hidden in every human being. In another words, educators need to focus on the human being, a child, and not on education per se. Pestalozzi presented two general purposes of education: for development of the individual and for the improvement of society. On the individual level, educators should strive to educate the whole child, not just their intellect. Physical or technical knowledge, as well as emotional development, are also important. He stressed that there should be balance between the head, hands, and heart, i.e. between intellectual knowledge (head), physical and technical education (hands), and moral and religious education (heart). Through developing a balance among these three areas, a person becomes a "whole man." On the social level, education provides the means for general development of the whole society. In other words, the more the individuals in a society develop intellectually, emotionally, morally, and socially through education, the more educated and regenerated the whole society becomes. For Pestalozzi, therefore, education plays a central role in the improvement of society. Method of Education Pestalozzi asserted that education should be centered on the child, not the curriculum. Since knowledge lies within human beings, the purpose of teaching is to find the way to unfold that hidden knowledge. Pestalozzi advocated direct experience as the best

method to accomplish this. He also advocated spontaneity and self-activity, in contrast to the rigid, teacher-centered, and curriculum-based methods used in other schools. Teachers should not teach through words (giving children ready-made answers), but allow children to discover answers themselves. Nothing is better than a direct sensory experience. Thus, in early education, Pestalozzi recommended that children use no books, but rather learn through direct experience. He advocated an inductive method, in which the child first learns to observe, to correct its own mistakes, and to analyze and describe the object of inquiry. The child starts with simple objects and simple observation, and builds toward more complex and abstract things. Only after that can the child start to use books. In order to allow children to obtain more experience from nature, Pestalozzi expanded the elementary school curriculum to include geography, natural science, fine art, and music.

Discipline in the classroom Pestalozzi maintained that the classroom should be like a family. The atmosphere must be loving and caring, like in a good Christian family, where the family members are cooperative, loving, and kind to one another. He developed the idea of the family classroom from the way his mother raised him and his sister. Pestalozzi said "There can be no doubt that within the living room of every household are united the basic elements of all true human education in its whole range" (Smith 2005). Family is thus, for Pestalozzi, an essential component of education. Based on this assumption, Pestalozzi suggested that teachers always need to be loving and kind, and earn the trust of the children. He believed that "without love, neither the physical nor the intellectual powers will develop naturally" (Smith 2005). He viewed harsh discipline, as was commonly used in schools at that time, as only serving to alienate children from the teachers, and thus prevent their normal, natural development, particularly in areas of morality and ethics.

JOHN DEWEY For John Dewey, education and democracy are intimately connected. According to Dewey good education should have both a societal purpose and purpose for the individual student. For Dewey, the long-term matters, but so does the short-term quality of an educational experience. Educators are responsible, therefore, for providing students with experiences that are immediately valuable and which better enable the students to contribute to society. Dewey polarizes two extremes in education -- traditional and progressive education. The paradigm war still goes on -- on the one hand, relatively structured, disciplined, ordered, didactic tradition education vs. relatively unstructured, free, studentdirected progressive education. Dewey criticizes traditional education for lacking in holistic understanding of students and designing curricula overly focused on content rather than content and process which is judged by its contribution to the well-being of individuals and society. On the other hand, progressive education, he argues, is too reactionary and takes a free approach without really knowing how or why freedom can be most useful in education. Freedom for the sake of freedom is a weak philosophy of education. Dewey argues that we must move beyond this paradigm war, and to do that we need a theory of experience. Thus, Dewey argues that educators must first understand the nature of human experience. Dewey's theory is that experience arises from the interaction of two principles -continuity and interaction. Continuity is that each experience a person has will influence his/her future, for better or for worse. Interaction refers to the situational influence on one's experience. In other words, one's present experience is a function of the interaction between one's past experiences and the present situation. For

example, my experience of a lesson, will depend on how the teacher arranges and facilitates the lesson, as well my past experience of similar lessons and teachers. It is important to understand that, for Dewey, no experience has pre-ordained value. Thus, what may be a rewarding experience for one person, could be a detrimental experience for another. The value of the experience is to be judged by the effect that experience has on the individual's present, their future, and the extent to which the individual is able to contribute to society. Dewey says that once we have a theory of experience, then as educators can set about progressively organizing our subject matter in a way that it takes accounts of students' past experiences, and then provides them with experiences which will help to open up, rather than shut down, a person's access to future growth experiences, thereby expanding the person's likely contribution to society. Dewey examines his theory of experience in light of practical educational problems, such as the debate between how much freedom vs. discipline to use. Dewey shows that his theory of experience (continuity and interaction) can be useful guides to help solving such issues. Throughout, there is a strong emphasis on the subjective quality of a student's experience and the necessity for the teacher of understanding the students' past experiences in order to effectively design a sequence of liberating educational experiences to allow the person to fulfil their potential as a member of society.

RENE DESCARTES I think, hence I am, was so certain and of such evidence, that no ground of doubt, however extravagant, could be alleged by the sceptics capable of shaking it, I concluded that I might, without scruple, accept it as the first principle of the philosophy of which I was in search. It is strange that Descartes did not further pursue this line of reasoning, as he would then likely have solved the problems of philosophy / knowledge. The reasoning is simple. 1. 'Cogito Ergo Sum' - I think therefore I exist (a thinking thing exists). 2. I think I exist as a material body in space and that I can see and interact with other material things in the space around me, including other thinking things (other humans). 3. Thus three things seem to exist in an interconnected way; i) Many thinking minds (of which I am certain of my own). ii) Many material things (people, cars, trees, houses, earth, sun, stars, ...). iii) One common Space (that these many minds and material things exist in). From this there is only one way to describe reality if we abide by the rules of simplicity (Occam's Razor) and metaphysics (necessary connection). i.e. There are many minds and material things - but they all seem to exist in one common space. This leads to a simple deduction of the wave structure of matter in Space which then deduces the fundamentals of physics (without any opinions), i.e. Quantum Theory,Albert Einstein's Relativity and Cosmology. The complete argument is on the Truth Statements on Physical Realitypage. I do find it strange though that many people now seem to reject Descartes argument that we cannot doubt our thinking minds exist. As I see things, postmodernism has

become so skeptical that people even doubt that they exist as thinking things - they take the idea that language is metaphor to illogical extremes. This is discussed more on the Friedrich Nietzsche page. Let us assume that we do not know reality- the solution to metaphysics(substance and its properties). Thus any statement you make about the external world is uncertain. For example we can say; "I experience seeing a tree." But of course this does not mean the tree necessarily exist. The certain truth is the personal / subjective truth (what we experience with our minds) not the objective truth (that the tree actually exists). Thus all we can say with certainty is "I experience seeing a tree so this experience of the tree exists." However, there is one and only one exception to this. I experience thinking thus thinking things exist. This cannot be doubted - as we must Thus we can be certain that we exist as thinking things. first think to doubt.

What is most interesting is how we solve this, by solving metaphysics - by correctly imagining what exists - space - the one thing that we all commonly experience existing in as one thing. David Hume explains this problem of causation and necessary connection very well.

WALDORF STEINER
Philosophy Steiner schools have a unique and distinctive approach to educating children, aiming to enable each stage of growth to be fully and vividly enjoyed and experienced. They provide a balanced approach to the modern school curriculum. The academic, artistic and social aspects, or head, heart & hands, are treated as complementary facets of a single program of learning, allowing each to throw light on the others. This is implemented by using art as a practice, and language to develop the feelings, by nourishing the children with the rich heritage of wise folk tales, histories, fairy stories, poems, music and games that are part of our world civilisation. This creates the cultural atmosphere in which the children are taught reading, writing, arithmetic, nature study, geography, science, languages, music and other subjects. Steiner designed a curriculum that is responsive to the developmental phases of childhood and the nurturing of the childs imagination in a school environment. Steiner thought that schools should cater to the needs of the child rather than the demands of the government or economic forces, so he developed schools that encourage creativity and free-thinking. His teaching seeks to recognise the individuality of the child and through a balanced education, allows them to go into the world with confidence. The unique quality of human beings is our capacity for conscious thought. Steiner schooling strives to support the development of well rounded human beings who are able to feel deeply and broadly, to think penetratingly and clearly, and then to act rightly out of conscious and free choice. The best overall statement on what is unique about Steiner education is to be found in the stated goals of the schooling: What is Waldorf Education? Waldorf education is a unique and distinctive approach to educating children that is practiced in Waldorf schools worldwide. Waldorf schools collectively form the largest, and quite possibly the fastest growing, group of independent private schools in the world. There is no centralised administrative structure governing all Waldorf schools; each is administratively independent, but there are established associations which provide resources, publish materials, sponsor conferences, and promote the movement.

B.F. SKINNER Philosophy of education Philosophy of education is the study of such questions as what education is and what its purpose is, the nature of the knowing mind and the human subject, problems of authority, the relationship between education and society, etc. Since at least Rousseau, philosophy of education has been linked to greater or lesser degrees to theories of human development. The philosophy of education recognizes that the enterprise of civil society depends on the education of the young, and that to educate children as responsible, thoughtful and enterprising citizens is an intricate, challenging task requiring deep understanding of ethical principles, moral values, political theory, aesthetics, and economics; not to mention an understanding of who children are, in themselves and in society. Critics have accused the philosophy of education of being one the weakest subfields of both philosophy and education, disconnected from philosophy (by being insufficiently rigorous for the tastes of many "real" philosophers) and from the broader study and practice of education (by being too philosophical, too theoretical). However, its proponents state that is is an exacting and critical branch of philosophy and point out that there are few major philosophers who have not written on education, and who do not consider the philosophy of education a necessity. For example, Plato undertakes to discuss all these elements in The Republic, beginning the formulation of educational philosophy that endures today. There are certain key voices in philosophy of education, who have contributed in large part to our basic understandings of what education is and can be, and who have also provided powerful critical perspectives revealing the problems in education as it has been practiced in various historical circumstances. There is one particular strand in educational philosophy that stands out as of extreme importance in the present time, which may be identified as the "Democratic Tradition", because it is a product of philosophers who, seeking to establish or preserve democracy, turn to education as a method of choice.

Aim of his Philosophy of Education Skinner influenced education as well as psychology. He was quoted as saying "Teachers must learn how to teach ... they need only to be taught more effective ways of teaching." Skinner asserted that positive reinforcement is more effective at changing and establishing behavior than punishment, with obvious implications for the then widespread practice of rote learning and punitive discipline in education. Skinner also suggests that the main thing people learn from being punished is how to avoid punishment. Skinner says that there are five main obstacles to learning: 1. People have a fear of failure. 2. The task is not broken down into small enough steps. 3. There is a lack of directions. 4. There is also a lack of clarity in the directions. 5. Positive reinforcement is lacking. Skinner suggests that any age-appropriate skill can be taught using five principles to remedy the above problems: 1. Give the learner immediate feedback. 2. Break down the task into small steps. 3. Repeat the directions as many times as possible. 4. Work from the simplest to the most complex tasks. 5. Give positive reinforcement.

Maria Montessori The Montessori Education Philosophy To aid life, leaving it free, however, to unfold itself, that is the basic task of the educator. Ours was a house for children, rather than a real school. We had prepared a place for children, where a diffused culture could be assimilated, without any need for direct instruction... Yet these children learned to read and write before they were five, and no one had given them any lessons. At that time it seemed miraculous those children four and a half should be able to write, and that they should have learned without the feeling of having been taught. We puzzled over it for a long time. Only after repeated experiments did we conclude with certainty that all children are endowed with this capacity to absorb culture. If this is true- we then argued- if culture can be acquired without effort, let us provide the children with other elements of culture. And then we saw them absorb far more than reading and writing: botany, zoology, mathematics, geography, and all with the same ease, spontaneously and without getting tired. And so we discovered that education is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being. It is not acquired by listening to words, but in virtue of experiences in which the child acts on his environment. The teachers task is not to talk, but to prepare and arrange a series of motives for cultural activity in a special environment made for the child. My experiments, conducted in many different countries have now been going on for forty years (Editor Note: now more than one hundred years), and as the children grew up, parents kept asking me to extend my method to later ages. We then found that individual activity is the one factor that stimulates and produces development, and that this is not more true for the little ones of preschool age than it is for the junior, middle, and upper- school children.

JOHANN FRIEDRICH HERBART Philosophy According to Herbart, begins with reflection upon our empirical conceptions, and consists in the reformation and elaboration of these, its three primary divisions being determined by as many distinct forms of elaboration. Logic, which stands first, has to render our conceptions and the judgments and reasonings arising from them clear and distinct. But some conceptions are such that the more distinct they are made the more contradictory their elements become; so to change and supplement these as to make them at length thinkable is the problem of the second part of philosophy, or metaphysics. There is still a class of conceptions requiring more than a logical treatment, but differing from the last in not involving latent contradictions, and in being independent of the reality of their objects, the conceptions that embody our judgments of approval and disapproval; the philosophic treatment of these conceptions falls toAesthetic Principles of Education Herbarts pedagogy emphasized the connection between individual development and the resulting societal contribution. In Platonic tradition, Herbart espoused that only by becoming productive citizens could people fulfill their true purpose: He believed that every child is born with a unique potential, his Individuality, but that this potential remained unfulfilled until it was analysed and transformed by education in accordance with what he regarded as the accumulated values of civilization (Blyth p. 70). Only formalized, rigorous education could, he believed, provide the framework for moral and intellectual development. The five key ideas which composed his concept of individual maturation were Inner Freedom, Perfection, Benevolence, Justice, and Equity or Recompense (Blyth 72). According to Herbart, abilities were not innate but could be instilled, so a thorough education could provide the framework for moral and intellectual development. In order to develop an educational paradigm that would provide an intellectual base that would lead to a consciousness of social responsibility, Herbart advocated that teachers utilize a methodology with five formal steps: Using this structure a teacher prepared a topic of interest to the children, presented that topic, and questioned them

inductively, so that they reached new knowledge based on what they had already known, looked back, and deductively summed up the lessons achievements, then related them to moral precepts for daily living (Miller 114). In order to appeal to learners interests, Herbart advocated using literature and historical stories instead of the drier basal readers that were popular at the time. Whereas the moralistic tales in many of the primers and readers of the period were predictable and allegorical, Herbart felt that children would appreciate the psychological and literary nuances of the masterpieces of the canon (Smith 111). Though he died in 1841, his pedagogy enjoyed a renaissance of sorts in the midnineteenth century; while Germany was its intellectual center, it found a ready echo in those countries such as the United Kingdom, France, and the United States in which the development of Individuality into Character appeared particularly well attuned to the prevailing economic, political and social circumstances (Blyth 77). The combination of individual potentiality and civic responsibility seemed to reflect democratic ideals. Though the emphasis on character building through literary appreciation diminished somewhat after the movement toward utilitarianism following World War I, Herbarts pedagogy continues to influence the field by raising important questions about the role of critical thinking, and literary appreciation in education.

LEIBNIZ, GOTTFRIED WILHELM (both: gt fr t v l h lm brn fan l p n ts) , 1646 1716, German philosopher and mathematician, b. Leipzig. Although known primarily as a philosopher, Leibniz's scholarship embraced the physical sciences, history, law, diplomacy, and logic. The recognition of his work in logic came quite late; manuscripts published in the 20th cent. mark him as the founder of symbolic logic. Philosophy Leibniz's philosophy is a consistent rationalism. The universe forms one context in which each occurrence can be seen in relation to every other. Since the universe is the result of a divine plan, Leibniz calls it the best of all possible worlds; for this he was satirized by Voltaire in Candide. Leibniz's assertion, however, does not imply an unqualified optimism, since evil is a necessary ingredient in even the best of all possible worlds. The ultimate constituents of the universe, in his view, are monads or simple substances, each of which represents the universe from a different point of view. Being simple, monads are immaterial and thus cannot act. Apparent interaction is explained in terms of the principle of preestablished harmony. The principle of continuity as expressed in the phrase "nature makes no leaps" is another part of Leibniz's rationalism. The monads are arranged in an infinitely ascending scale, based on the distinctness with which each represents the universe. All monads have perception (consciousness), but only rational monads have apperception (selfconsciousness). A basic distinction in Leibniz's logic is that made between "truths of reason," or necessary propositions, whose principle is the law of noncontradiction, and "truths of fact," or contingent propositions, based on the principle of sufficient reason. The principle has its root in the divine intellect, and its most important expression is his law of causality. With the decline of interest in metaphysics in contemporary philosophy, recent studies have tended to emphasize Leibniz's significance in mathematics and logic. However, Leibniz's metaphysics have not been neglected but rather reinterpreted in light of his mathematical and logical works.

Important Philosophical Works Most of Leibniz's philosophical writings are occasional pieces, addressed to various people. The two published in his lifetime wereEssais de Thodice sur la bont de Dieu, la libert de l'homme, et l'origine du mal (1710) and Monadology (1714). It was largely these works that influenced Christian von Wolff, whose popularization of the Leibnizian system became the standard academic philosophy in 18th-century Germany. Leibniz's major philosophical work, Nouveaux Essais sur l'entendement humain (1704), contains the views of Leibniz on points raised in Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Because of Locke's death, however, it was not published until 1765. The publication of Nouveaux Essais in 1765 was important because it revealed for the first time the "true Leibniz" as opposed to the popularized version of Wolff, and it had a decisive effect on Immanuel Kant and the whole German Enlightenment.