Bricks in the Wall: What is wrong with modern education?

ISBN-13: 9781514274729 / Angielski / Miękka / 2015 / 56 str.

Dr Stephen C. Lovatt

Opis

Something is going wrong with people's attitudes. People are less considerate of and polite to each other. Neighbourliness is difficult to find. People are less respectful of authority. The electorate is failing to turn-out on polling days and the reported incidence of mental health issues, especially depression and anxiety, is increasing. I suggest that this is all due to a single common cause: namely the loss of values, vision and purpose which has resulted from the substitution of subjective-relativism for objective-realism at the heart of our culture. This has been a long drawn-out process. In the academic sphere, it started with Aristotle's Materialism; continued through the "Renascence," "Reformation" and "Enlightenment"; gathered pace as "Rationalist Empiricism," and culminated in Nietzsche's Existentialism. The change of orientation has gradually percolated into general society over the years, causing havoc wherever it has taken root. More recently, this process has been aided by the rise of state sponsored and controlled education, which was hijacked by proponents of subjective-relativism in the 1960's. Before training to be a teacher, I believed (on the basis of my own happy experience of school and college) that education was a straight-forward matter. Now, I know differently. Over the last half century, a battle has been fought out among very different philosophies of education. From my point of view, this battle has largely been won by "the enemy" and the sad consequences of their victory are only too visible on every side. This pamphlet is an attempt to delineate what the real issues in education are and to suggest why a return to a Platonic understanding and practice of education is so very necessary.