The purpose of this research is to articulate a philosophy of education. The research will set forth a working definition of the purposes of education and the social and psychological benefits it is meant to provide, and then discuss educational goals and methods, including the relationship between education and truth, the role of human nature in the educational process, the pedagogical environment, and the optimal content of educational curricula.
The fact that education has been an issue of concern to a variety of Western commentators from the ancient period onward implies that its structure and content affect the structure and content of society and responsible participants in it. Although they use somewhat different terminology and although their emphases are somewhat different, both Plato and Aristotle connect the quality of education to the quality of political leadership. Training of leaders determines the quality of the government that a society has as well as the development of personal character, which has to do with ethics and virtue. Plato envisions his ideal Republic (ideally ruled by the fabled philosopher-king) as the product of the quality of education that the youth of a society receive, and Aristotle characterizes politics as the highest and best expression of what he calls the Good. What this comes down to is that the overall purpose of education is to serve the ends of a society characterized by justice in Plato's formulation and by the shared experience of the Good in Aristotle's. The society gains good governance, and the individual gains an ethical, just, and wise habit of mind.
Plato's analysis is that whether a just society is possible is a function of the character of the people who compose it. In other words, a society is no more just than the people who inhabit it.
[Justice] . . . is not a matter of external behaviour, but of the inward self . . . . The just man . . . sets his house in order, by sel...