Advancing Education's Autonomy through Looking Educationally at Philosophy

Abstract

This article offers a general framework for considering education's autonomy and its implications for the relationship between education and philosophy. In it, Doron Yosef‐Hassidim examines an initiative in Israel that calls for an autonomous secular public education and uses it as a context to clarify what education's autonomy means and to identify its major characteristics. To enhance the idea of education's autonomy, he further argues that education should not be subordinate to philosophy and that the question about being human must be kept open and educational. In particular, education's autonomy requires resisting the temptation of applying a philosophical framework about being human to education, even if the particular philosopher of education agrees with the philosophical framework. Finally, Yosef‐Hassidim proposes a strategy for treating the question about being human as one that involves both the work of philosophers of education and practitioners in the classroom.

A step not beyond education’s autonomy

“…In other words, what we find guarded within the “autonomous social sphere” (Yosef-Hassidim, 2021: 56) of “the educational” is not education per se, but an idea(l) of a self-conscious human individual whose “legitimacy and capacity to define its own concerns and priorities” depends on its innate ability to separate its “mind” from anything deemed alien (i.e., external ) to its “nervous system” or “consciousness”—an ability that education as an autonomous social sphere with its own “mind” or “consciousness” allegedly secures.…”

“…Much like how the orifices in Pilgrim’s body mark the border between the gloomy labyrinth of the world and the paradisical home of his heart, the recent discussion concerning education’s autonomy seems to suggest a dividing line between education and its outside. Echoing Dewey’s claim that “to go outside the educational function and to borrow objectives from an external source is to surrender the educational cause” (Dewey, 1929 as cited in Yosef-Hassidim, 2021: 53, emphasis added), this line governing the contours of “the educational” allegedly allows us to “ask educational questions about education” (Norris, 2021: 130). While the border between education and its outside remains vaguely defined, it clearly presents a problem for educational thinkers.…”

“…Akin to how Plato in Phaedo separated the governing, invisible soul ( psūkhē ) from the obeying, visible body (80a), this language has the tendency to locate the inner nomos of “the educational” within the figural contours of an active, self-governing human being guided by its own, internal consciousness. Consider, for example, the following passage:autonomous education is a self-governing entity … that has its own “nervous system.” As an independent sphere, education has the legitimacy and capacity to define its own concerns and priorities and to make its own decisions without necessarily considering other matters; independent education is a self-determining entity that has its own “mind” or “consciousness.” (Yosef-Hassidim, 2021: 56–57)…”

“…autonomous education is a self-governing entity … that has its own “nervous system.” As an independent sphere, education has the legitimacy and capacity to define its own concerns and priorities and to make its own decisions without necessarily considering other matters; independent education is a self-determining entity that has its own “mind” or “consciousness.” (Yosef-Hassidim, 2021: 56–57)…”

The inherent fruits of educational endeavour

“…The pattern continues in the 21st century – in a range of different but highly manifest ways in Islamic republics and kingdoms, and significantly also in a newly assertive China. It also proceeds in less violent but emphatic ways in those democracies where governments assertively seek to use public education to extend their own preferred views of economy, society, religion, or culture (Hargreaves and Shirley, 2012; Sahlberg, 2021; Yosef-Hassidim, 2021).…”