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Aims of Education: How to Resist the Temptation of Technocratic Models
Author(s) -
HARÐARSON ATLI
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
journal of philosophy of education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.501
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1467-9752
pISSN - 0309-8249
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9752.12182
Subject(s) - technocracy , temptation , argument (complex analysis) , epistemology , suspect , curriculum , philosophy of education , sociology , education theory , positive economics , engineering ethics , political science , pedagogy , higher education , law , psychology , social psychology , philosophy , engineering , economics , biochemistry , chemistry , politics , criminology
A technocratic model of curriculum design that has been highly influential since the middle of last century assumes that the aims of education can be, and should be: 1. Causally brought about by administering educational experiences; 2. Specified as objectives that can be attained, reached or completed; 3. Changes in students that are described in advance. Richard S. Peters argued against the first of these three tenets by making a distinction between aims that are causally brought about by the means and aims that are constituted by the means. I argue that further distinctions between ways in which ends and means can be related throw doubt on the remaining two tenets. My argument against the second one rests on a distinction between open aims that cannot be completed and closed aims that can be reached. I use a third distinction, between aims as principles of design and aims as principles of reform, to show that the third tenet of the technocratic model is also suspect. I conclude that a realistic view of educational aims must take into account that they are more multifarious than envisaged by the technocratic model of curriculum design.