Historical Foundations of Education: From Ancient to Modern

Historical Foundations of
Education
MICHAEL CARL S.R. DIVINAFLOR
MAED
TEACHING with Compassion, LEADING with Integrity

Historical Foundations of Education
Why study the historical foundation?
Historical foundations of education

from the ancient period, medieval era up
to the contemporary period and our
present educational system hinges from
the profound thoughts and ideas of the
great philosophical thinkers of the
world.
Modern
Educational
Ancient Era Medieval Period
Philosophy and
Education

Ancient Era
-includes the work of the Greek and

Roman thinkers
-influenced by ideas developed much
earlier in Egypt and Mesopotamia

Greek Philosophy falls into three parts:
-Pre-Socratic
-Works of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle
-The following schools of thought

Metaphysicians
-they were looking for the reality behind all

appearances
-They attempted to explain the nature of

the universe and life on Earth.

Monists (mono/one)
-sought to explain everything in terms of

one basic reality.

Monists (mono/one)
-sought to explain everything in terms of

one basic reality.

Thales of Miletus
-lived in the 7th and 6th century BC.
-Attempted to give an explanation of the
world that does not depend on Gods or
mythology but only on natural causes.
-believed that everything originated in
water.
-“Water as fundamental building block of
matter.”
Anaximander of Miletus
-6th century BC
-explained that the world was originating in
the conflicts between contraries such as hot
and cold and wet and dry.

Anaximenes of Miletus
-declared that air is the source of all water

- “nothing can be created from nothing”
-Matter, force and energy are indestructible.

Pythagoras
-numbers is the basis of reality

-the forms and relations of things can all be
explained numerically.

Heraclitus
-argued that the basic characteristics of the

universe is change. Permanence is only an
appearance.

Parmenides
-Permanence is real and change only an

illusion

Pluralist
-doctrine of multiplicity
-the position that there is not one consistent
means of approaching truths about the
world, but rather many.

Empedocles (5th century BC)
-believed that there are four basic elements:

earth, fire, air and water.

Atomist
Anaxagoras (5th century BC)
-taught that everything is made of
indefinitely small particles.
Democritus and Leucippus
-taught that all matter is made up of
atoms (tiny invisible units)
Lucretius
-Roman philosopher who wrote “On
the Nature of Things” TEACHING with Compassion, LEADING with Integrity
Sophist
-teachers of practical wisdom
-took money for their lesson
-first skeptics
-They cast doubt on the merit of
speculation
-learning to live and succeed in the real
world is the point of philosophy

Protagoras
- “Man is the measure of all things”

- views that the real world is the one
people live in and see

Classical Period (430-320 BC)

Socrates
-challenged the Sophist by saying it is

possible to learn absolute virtue and attain
truth.
-sought universal principles by pursuing
the clear, common meaning of terms, and
raised some of the basic questions of
knowledge and ethics.
-question and answer conversation
Two basic assumptions
-a person is never to do wrong, either

directly or indirectly,
-no one who knows what is right will act
contrary to it.

Plato
-Socrates’ foremost pupil and recorder of
many of his conversations
-authored “Dialogues”
-developed a many-sided philosophy
-theory of knowledge
-theory of human conduct
-theory of the state universe
- “there is a world of sense experience
that is always changing.” TEACHING with Compassion, LEADING with Integrity
Aristotle (100 AD)
-Plato’s foremost pupil

-Departed from Plato’s teaching on many
points
-his writings on nature made him the world’s
first real scientist

Aristotle (100 AD)
- “Material world is real and not a creation of

eternal forms”
-taught that individual things combine form
and matter in ways that determine how they
grow and change.
-founder of formal logic

Following Schools of Thought
Epicureanism (100 AD)

-regarded reality as a random
arrangement of atoms and decreed that
pleasure is the chief goal of life

Stoicism
-led by Zeno
-believed that the universe is ordered and
rational
- “to live in accordance with nature”
“Humans must be discipline themselves to
accept their place in the world.”
Stoicism
-fatalism (fate)
Marcus Aurelius
-explained philosophy clearly in his
“Meditations”
Epictetus
-left no writings but his teachings were
recorded and passed down in “Discourses”
by his pupil Arrian
Skepticism (4th and early 3rd century

BC)
-Founded by Phyrro of Elis
-asserts that humans cannot know anything
for certain.
-Cicero
-Introduced Greek philosophy to Rome
The so-called pagan philosophy

based in Athens came to an end when
schools of Athens were closed by the
emperor Justinian in AD 529.
Its teachers survived for a while
elsewhere, but with diminished
influence.
Neoplatonists
-their basic ideas were derived from Plato.
-their point of view includes ideas derived
from Aristotle and the Stoics.
Neoplatonists
Plotinus
-most prominent Neoplatonists
-used his teachings to combat Christianity.
-his notes were published as “Enneads” by
his disciple Porphyry.
-taught that the highest reality is the good
(God) and the lowest level of reality is the
material world.
Medieval Period
Medieval Period
Christianity became the dominant religion
of the Roman Empire in the 4th century.
-it dominated philosophy and tolerated

little opposition
-Platonism and Neoplatonism were
absorbed and used by Christian teachers
and blended with biblical doctrine.
Philosophers of Medieval Period

St. Augustine of Hippo
-identified the eternal ideas of Plato with
truth that come from God.
-This divine world of truth is encountered by
turning the mind towards God’s revelation.
-Immorality of the human soul can be proved
by its possession of eternal truths.
Boethius
-authored “Consolation of Philosophy”

-teaches that the eternal ideas are inborn
ideas that people remember from the
previous existence of the soul.
St. Anselm of Canterbury
-used both faith and reason to arrive at truth

-most remembered for his proofs of the
existence of God, derived from Neoplatonist
philosophy.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux
-was suspicious of building faith on

philosophical concepts.
-developed a doctrine of mystical love as the
path to truth
Peter Abelard
-constructed question and answer method

for teaching theology.
-published ‘Sic et Non” (Yes or No)
-taught that the material world is real
Accessing Aristotle’s Writings
-The writings of Aristotle were translated into

Latin in 12th century AD from earlier Arabic
translations.
-Avicenna and Averroes, early Muslim writers
-Metaphysics of Aristotle turned philosophers
away from Plato.
Scholasticism, Schoolmen or Scholastics
- “Suma Theologica” (Summary of Doctrine)
is a question and answer approach to
teaching that has never been equaled.
-stated objectives, then presented replies to
every objection.
Scholasticism, Schoolmen or Scholastics
-attempted to settle the conflict between
faith and reason by showing that reason
should deal with the facts of nature, but that
supernatural truths of revelation must be
accepted by faith.
- “Some truths, such as the existence of
God, are both revealed and provable by
reason.
Opposition to St. Aquinas (14th century AD)
Opposition to his teachings came from John
Duns Scotus, William of Ockham Meister
Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa.
The Modern Educational

Philosophy and Education
The Modern Educational Philosophy and Education
-Ideas of Plato, Aristotle and others had to
be dealt with but mostly for their relation to
practical thinking.
-Metaphysics still had its advocates but
many schools of thought denied its validity.
-Educational Philosophy found itself in a world

characterized by
-growth of cities
-the appearance of new inventions
-the refusal to accept God or supernatural
explanations for reality
-the inventions of printing to spread ideas
-the emergence of a new economic system

called capitalism
-the voyages of discovery to the New World
-the Reformation and,
-a great fascination with the natural world
and human abilities to exploit and
understand it.
Renaissance
-preoccupation with mathematics and
natural sciences
-attention turned to the nature of the human
mind and its abilities to master the natural
world.
-the two main philosophical points were the
rationalism and empiricism
The 19th Century
Romanticism
-irrational as an antidote to pure reason
Liberalism
-demanded democratization of the
political process
Socialism
-demanded economic justice
Francis Bacon
-ardent advocate of the new learning

-held that knowledge cannot be based on
accepted authorities but must begin with
experience and proceed by induction to
general principles.
-helped lay the foundation for British
empiricism
Rene Descartes
-Modern rationalism
- “I think, therefore I am”
-proceeded deductively to build a system in
which God ad mind belong to one order of
reality and nature to another.
Epistemology on the British Isles
-empiricism underwent new developments in

the British Isles.
-Some of the leading empiricists were
Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, George
Berkeley and David Hume
-They were mainly concerned with how the
mind can know.
John Locke
-stated that the senses are the ultimate of
ideas.
-all mental operations result from combining
perceptions into concepts.
David Hume
-carried empiricism to its ultimate conclusion
in his radical skepticism, contending that
there is no justification for assuming the
reality of either a material or spiritual world.
-No reality beyond perception can ever be
proved
David Hume
-his works awoke the likes of Immanuel Kant
from his “philosophical slumber” and led him
to launch attack on it in his “Critique of
Practical Reason”.
David Hume
Critique of Practical Reason
-deals with reason and its potentials and
limits
-examines ethics
Critique of Judgement
-explores the minds role in aesthetics
-influenced the works of Johann Gottlieb
Fichte, Friedrich Schelling, and Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel.
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
-one of the intellectual giants of the 19th

century
-thoughts on the “great builder”
-formulated a logic that he believed accounts
for evolution in nature, history, and human
thought.
-Johann Friedrich Herbart, Arthur
Schopenhauer, Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx,
Existentialism
Soren Kierkegaard
-held that reality cannot be fully
comprehended by human existence is always
involved in choices that are absurd from the
rational viewpoint.
Existentialism
Soren Kierkegaard
-he conceived these viewpoints as a human
being and that all people are responsible for
their own development and free to direct their
own lives.
Existentialism
Soren Kierkegaard
-implies that one’s existence creates one’s
essence
-People become what they will be; they are
not determined from birth by a nature that
determines it from them
Existentialism
-other known philosophers of this movement

where Martin Heidegger, Karl Jasper, Jean-Paul
Sartre, and Gabriel Marcel.
Positivism
-founded by Auguste Comte

-rejects pure speculation as a form of self-
indulgence
-assertions must be subject to verification
-attempted to apply the methods of the natural
sciences to the discovery of social laws
Positivism
-influenced John Stuart Mill and Herbert

Spencer
-Herbert Spencer believed that the notion of

survival of the fittest applies to society as well
as to the biological world.
German Idealism
-name given to the work or Kant and his

followers
-critics of empiricism
Pragmatism
-An American philosophy in the 19th century
-first formulated by Charles Sanders Peirce
-William James extended pragmatism to
include a theory of truth:
“A proposition is true if it fulfills its
purpose.”
-John Dewey, another leading 20th century
exponent of pragmatism
Irrationalism
-Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche
-displaced reason with the human will and its
dark side, its propensity to seek power by any
means.
-along side Kierkegaard, provided a non-
rational explanation of human nature that
cam to the forefront in the politics of the 20th
century.
Philosophy in the 20th century and
Universities
-Philosophy became captive to the
universities
-few professors like Jean-Paul Sartre in France
and George Santayana in Spain wrote for
popular readership.
-professionalism sharpened the differences
between schools of philosophy
-made the task of defining philosophy more
Henri Bergson
- ‘Creative Evolution’
-says that the mind is capable of two different
types of knowing
-Method of Analysis which is the means of
used in the sciences.
-Intuition by which people are able to know
their deepest selves and the profound truths
of reality.
North Whitehead
- a mathematician as well as philosopher
-Metaphysics was his main interest
-the task of philosophy is “to frame a
coherent, logical, necessary system of general
ideas in terms of which every element of our
experience can be interpreted.
John Dewey
-his writings encompassed ethics,
metaphysics, education, and scientific
method.
- “philosophy should be geared to human
needs.”
-desired to find the same positive
underpinnings for ethics and politics that were
being stated in the sciences.
Schools of Thought in the 20th Century
 Logical Empiricism
 Linguistic Analysis
 Phenomenology
Logical Empiricism
-inspired by David Hume, Bertrand Russel,
Rudolf Carnap and Ludwig Wittgenstein
-Insisted that philosophy must be scientific.
- “The object of philosophy is the logical
clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not a
theory but an activity.”
-The result of philosophy s to make
proposition clear.
Linguistic Analysis
-emerged from Wittgenstein after becoming
skeptical of the logical foundations of
mathematics and science.
-believes that language itself is the object of
philosophical investigation
-Traditional problems in philosophy can be
solved if language is rid of its obscurities and
confusion.
Phenomenology
-Originated by Edmund Husserl
-It is possible to examine the world without
any preconceived notions about causes or
underlying structures.
-By carefully exploring all the data available to
conscious experience.
Phenomenology
-it is possible to arrive at an explanation of
essential structures of phenomena.
-Phenomena are the realities perceived by the
senses.
In the united states, Mortimer J. Adler

published “The Conditions of Philosophy”
in 1965 as a defense of traditional
philosophical functions
The rest of modern thought has become
extremely technical and complex, dealing
mainly with the nature of language
communication and symbolism.
Those who are determined that philosophy

be scientific and those who are devoted to
metaphysical speculations go their separate
ways.
Brain function is being analyzed by
physiologist.
Experts in the computer field pose the
possibility of creating artificial intelligence.
Allan Turing in England, they seek to create

devices that will match the higher intellectual
capacities of humans -such as ability to
reason, discover meanings, and generate
from past experience.
“If achieved, artificial intelligence would pose

a serious challenge on previous views of
epistemology and to the nature of philosophy
itself.” Francisco Zulueta
Thank you!
Michael Carl S.R. Divinaflor

Epistemology
-the theory of knowledge, especially with

regard to its methods, validity, and scope.
Epistemology is the investigation of what
distinguishes justified belief from opinion

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Historical Foundations of

TEACHING with Compassion, LEADING with Integrity

Why study the historical foundation?