The Theoretical World & World of Praxis
Education or hands-on learning and philosophy or theorizing cannot be shorn from the other. As Michael J. Anthony and Warren S. Benson write in Exploring the History and Philosophy of Christian Education, "philosophy and education cannot be separated because each relies on the other for illumination."[1] In a similar manner, since the theoretical world grounds or serves as a foundation of the world of praxis or experience, the two cannot be separated because each relies on the other.
Praxis refers to activity or action and derives from Greek origin and is rooted in the theories of Aristotle. Aristotle argued there were three basic activities of man, theoria, poiesis and praxis.[2] These correspond to three kinds of knowledge: "Theoretical, to which the end goal is truth; poietical, to which the end goal was production; and practical, to which the end goal was action."[3] Praxis, then, is the process or activity through which a theory or skill is practiced. My own philosophy of education believes that without praxis, theory is useless since it exists only in the abstract without being put into action.
Praxis is the educational experience compared to the philosophical theory grounding that experience. If theory is the idea then education is the consumption and testing of those ideas. Matthew Fox provides an excellent example of the distinction between the world of theory and the world of praxis that aligns with my own view of education as a hands-on process in the following excerpt from a YES! Magazine interview:
Wisdom is always taste-in both Latin and Hebrew, the word for wisdom comes from the word taste-so it's something to taste, not something to theorize about. "Taste and see that God is good," the psalm says; and that's wisdom: tasting life. No one can do it for us. It is about tasting and trusting experience, before instituti...