{"id":516872,"date":"2023-03-13T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-13T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leregardlibre.com\/?p=516872"},"modified":"2025-02-06T16:54:36","modified_gmt":"2025-02-06T15:54:36","slug":"gare-aux-sciences-de-leducation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leregardlibre.com\/en\/philosophy\/gare-aux-sciences-de-leducation\/","title":{"rendered":"Beware of educational sciences!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00abThe first error [against which education must guard] is forgetting or misunderstanding ends.\u00bb This phrase is found in the opening pages of a text by the French philosopher Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) entitled For a philosophy of education<\/em>. At a time when the educational sciences are taking up all the space, the idea of a philosopher of education may come as a surprise. How can philosophy still have a say, at a time when all educational practices are based on the \u00abscientifically validated\u00bb?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This type of discourse is clearly a form of positivism. A term coined in the nineteenth centuryth<\/sup> The term was coined in the 19th century by Auguste Comte, and is commonly used to describe any philosophical doctrine that holds that true knowledge can only be obtained through the experimental sciences. Positivism therefore rejects a priori<\/em> any form of metaphysics - or philosophy, for that matter - that seeks to understand the profound nature of things or their purpose. For the positivist, only knowledge of the \u00abhow\u00bb, as opposed to the \u00abwhy\u00bb, is possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Applied to the educational sciences, positivism implies \u00abconsidering that pedagogical methods can be determined scientifically\u00bb, as summarized by the Institut de recherche et d'\u00e9ducation sur les mouvements sociaux (IRESMO) on its website, in a article<\/a> entitled \u00abLa tentation positiviste en sciences de l'\u00e9ducation\u00bb. The idea is certainly seductive, but totally false.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the IRESMO article shows, a positivist approach to educational science comes up against empirical limits. Its objects of study are difficult to quantify. How, for example, could critical thinking be quantified? But the major flaw in such an approach is philosophical: the positivist approach is blind to the aims of education - precisely what Jacques Maritain denounces. These cannot be discovered through experimentation. So, while the sciences of education can legitimately study educational means, they are by nature incapable of attributing their own ends to themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n