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Introduction: T.S. Eliot on the Aims of Education
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10537 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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1 / 1993 |
1,206 Words |
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No justification is needed for a presentation of T.S. Eliot's views on education.
Our own predicament should prompt us to seek all possible help, but the profundity of Eliot's views his searching criticism of past and current slogans and dogmas, and his insistence on the complexity of society and its educational enterprise are all salutary reminders as we witness the continuing decline of education in this country and, indeed, around the world.
Although the notion of "one best educational system" has been largely discredited, the nation that there is "one best remedy" for our educational ills has not. We still look for and frequently are offered simples to cure these ills, one-ingredient prescriptions that claim to be panaceas. But there is no cure-all, no educational antibiotic to be administered externally by injection into the body politic, without any attempt at health on our own part.
What is needed is a serious and far-reaching examination of the moral and intellectual foundations of our society, our culture. Our educational shortcomings may or may not be in curriculum, or finance, or testing, or community involvement, but we never will know this or the out a deeper philosophical analysis of our own condition. Eliot's contribution to this-whether we agree with him or not-is both significant and challenging.
Eliot's writings on education are sparse. His first extended comments came in a chapter appended to Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1950). This chapter identified and commented on the following five assumptions.
1.That, before entering upon any discussion of education, the purpose of education must be stated.
When writers attempt to state the purpose of education. Eliot says, they are doing one of two things. They are eliciting what they believe to have been the unconscious purpose always, and thereby giving their own meaning to the history of the subject; or they are formulating what may not have been, or may have been only fitfully, the real purpose in the past, but should in their opinion be the purpose directing development in the future.
Eliot then takes examples from current statements of purpose. First, it is claimed that the purpose of education is to transmit culture. But culture remains undefined; it is implicitly summed
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