PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION
Year:2017 | Volume:1 | Issue:1|Papers Count:6

Considering the fact that the existing approaches in determining the ultimate goals of the educational system are based on Islamic education, therefore, to explain this education and highlighting its potentials for promoting excellence are highly important in educational science research. The aim of this study is to explain the position of aesthetics and aesthetic perception in promoting sublimity and the realization of religious education. The research method is descriptive - analytical. The purpose of the analysis was to identify and pin down the relevant concepts and map the network of their relationships. For this purpose, first the concept of religiosity and religious education and its approaches were examined. Then, the concept of aesthetics and the nature of aesthetic perception and the theory associated with aesthetic perception and aesthetic education were introduced. Finally, the conceptual relationships peculiar to the special place of aesthetic sublimity in religious education were proposed and discussed. Results indicate that, based on the conceptual networks established between the components of religious education and those of aesthetics, the introduction of aesthetics components in the educative process could provide grounds for the enrichment of internal motivation, inner experience and moral obligation. Thus it seems that for the successful execution of religious education attention to aesthetics as an important part of axiology of education is a necessary condition over and above the art of pedagogy.

The main purpose of this article is the representation of Maxine Greene views about public space and its major potentials for the rethinking of the educational behavior in schools. Thus, first of all, this idea is emphasized that public spaces are important places for discussion (for dialog) and a free exchange of ideas and information, through which an individual human being can make his voiceheard, while at the same time listening to other individuals’ voices, without being bothered by any fear and threat arising from a wide range of human contradictions, differences, conflicts and ambiguities that are inherent in human communication. Second, along with describing and criticizing the educational space governing the current schools, based on Greene ideas, it is demonstrated that the public space can provide new contexts for going beyond educational standards, and thus may secure grounds for the realization of agency, freedom, democracy and a shared world in the education of learners.

Moral autonomy means "self-government" and "self-rule". This paper presents the analysis and reasoning in search of answers to the following questions: first, what conditions does moral autonomy require? Second, does moral autonomy possess the requirements necessary for being considered as an aim of education? The theoretical framework of this study is based on Kant’s and Peters’ views that have served the theoretical sources and bases of the survey questions. The first question has been answered by referring to Kant’s ideas, whereas the answer to the second question has been derived from Peters’ sources. Kant believes that reason and free will are the fundamental bases for moral autonomy. On the other hand, Peters argues that the concept of "education" and the "educated person" provide the criteria and necessary conditions for moral autonomy. Hence, it was concluded that by recourse to conceptual analysis, and here, the analysis of the concepts of "education" and "educated person", we are able to demonstrate that moral autonomy should be one of the main aims of education because moral education implies the concepts of both education and educated person. The paradoxes between the concept of "autonomy‖ and ―educational authority‖, between "reason and habits" and "authenticity of choice and educational content" are also discussed.

The essence of faith is a controversial issue, especially among Muslim and, more prevalently, among Christian thinkers. In this connection, the relation between faith and doubt is one of the main cases of the differences of this controversy. In an attempt to pin down the sources of these differences, this paper trace their roots to matters such as differences in the contents of religious beliefs, the theoretical presuppositions of the religious thinkers, the different socio-political experiences of the religious societies and, finally, the differences in the intellectual-philosophical currents affecting these two religious fields. Admitting the important role of the last component, one can expect that the rapid growth of communications as the main channel of exchange of ideas may create opportunities for the Islamic thought to come into contact with rival and opposing views on account of which the Islamic Faith may face the same challenges that Christianity had to confront in recent centuries. This article, by using a concept analytical method toward explaining the relationship between faith and doubt, adopts an epistemological approach called constructivist realism as a basis for Islamic Faith and maintains that contrary to the belief by certain circles of Christianity, doubt cannot be regarded as an integral element of faith. Although the existence of doubt is undeniable, it is not a challenger vis-a-vis faith. This premise seems to predispose Islamic education to, on the one hand, promote tolerance regarding doubt and to emphasize effort and motivation for attaining certainty on the other.

The main aim of this study is to investigate and analyze the evolution of the concept of childhood through human history. First of all, we traced the various meanings of childhood in four historical periods (Ancient period, middle Ages, Renaissance and ultimately contemporary period) and their implications for child education. After that, applying conceptual analysis as our method we attempted to infer the key conceptual elements of childhood. Accordingly, this analysis provides four perspectives against which the conceptual patterns of childhood could be categorized and investigated. These perspectives, in spite of their different definitions and approaches toward child education, put forward four essential questions to be answered by philosophers of education dealing with childhood concept. The dependence of childhood concept on the concept of adulthood, and the nature of this dependence, is related to the first question. The second question is about the value dimensions of human nature and its nascent state in the child. The third question focuses on children’s abilities and the mechanisms of their growth, and the final question is concerned with the various dimensions of these abilities involving cognition, emotion and volition. Along the above line of thought, the four aforementioned components were considered for a possible use in connection with an Islamic approach to child education. This approach attempts to organize educational activities on the basis of the presence of one ability versus the absence of another.

Religious education with its concomitant attempt at shaping a single, uniform identity among the younger generation has always been the concern of our educational system over the past thirty years.To deal with this matter, the aim of this study is, first, to survey the dominant discourse of religious education with its subsidiary discourses of campaign against cultural invasion and the localization of sciences in post revolutionary Iran and, second, to investigate the pathology of the above discourse, particularly from the perspective of religious education. To achieve this purpose, the present investigation, using an analytical approach, surveying the history of the above discourse and categorizing the data thus obtained, attempted to review the Islamic education discourse over the past thirty years and critically evaluate its consequences. The results of the survey point to the fact that excessive emphasis on social engineering and attempt at forming a single uniform religious identity, the inculcation of an attitude forimitation through indoctrination, formalism, and a ―quarantined‖ education are the dire consequences of the above discouse.