Philosophy of education is connected with general philosophy partly by its purposes but more directly by its methods. To explain this we need to look at the nature of philosophy as
an enterprise. In the past it was thought to be the philosopher’s job to give a comprehensive and rational account of the nature of reality and of man’s place in the scheme of things, and to deal with issues like the existence of God, the immortality of the soul and the purpose of the universe. Philosophy conducted in this way and to this end is known as metaphysics and from Plato’s day until comparatively recently metaphysics in one form or another
has been the main area of traditional philosophical activity. Plato, Aristotle, Descartes,
Spinoza and Hegel, for example, were to a large extent occupied with giving something like an overall picture of reality supported by arguments of a rational kind. The trouble with this kind of philosophy, however, was that each philosopher gave a different account and no one account was found to be generally satisfactory. After more than two thousand years of metaphysical speculation questions about the true nature of reality, the existence
of God, the nature of man and his soul, and the purpose of the universe are still asked and still call for a generally acceptable answer. This persistence of problems in philosophy has been seen as being in great contrast to the history of problems encountered in science.

Philosophers of education, then, are concerned with a scrutiny of what is said about education by those who practise it and by those who theorise about it. We may regard the
complicated phenomena of education as a group of activities going on at various logical
levels, ‘logical’ in the sense that each higher level arises out of and is dependent on the one below it. The lowest level is the level of educational practice at which activities like teaching, instructing, motivating pupils, advising them, and correcting their work are carried on. Those engaged at this level, teachers mainly, will employ a language specifically adapted to deal with their work and they will use a specific conceptual apparatus when they discuss what they are doing. They will talk about ‘teaching’, ‘learning’, ‘knowledge’,
‘experience’…an indefinite number of such topics, with an indefinite number of associated concepts. These activities and these concepts are basic. Unless educational activities were carried on and talked about there would be no subject matter for higher-order activities to work on. Arising out of these basic ground-floor activities is another activity, educational
theorising, the first of these higher-order concerns. The result of educational theorising is
educational theory, or more accurately, educational theories. The connection between practice and theory is complicated and will be looked at later in this chapter. Here it will be sufficient to say that educational theorising may be one or other of two kinds. The theorist
may be making a general point about education. He may say, for example, that education is the most effective way, or the only way, of socialising the young, of converting them from human animals into human beings, or of enabling them to realise their intellectual
and moral potentialities. Or he may say that education is the best way to establish a sense of social solidarity, by giving everyone a common cultural background. It is not important here whether or not such contentions are true. It is important to notice that they could be
true or false. It may well be true that education of the formal kind is an effective way of socialising the young or of securing social cohesion. Whether it is so or not is a matter of
fact and the way to find out is to look at education in practice and see what happens. In other words, theories of this kind are descriptive theories, purporting to give a correct account of what education, as a matter of fact, does. Such theories stand or fall according to the way
the world happens to be. They belong to the social sciences, to descriptive sociology.
The other kind of educational theory is one which does not set out, primarily at least, to give a description of the role or function of education but rather to give advice or recommendations about what those engaged in educational practice ought to be doing. Such
theories are ‘practical’ theories, giving reasoned prescriptions for action. Theories of this kind exhibit a wide variety, in scope, content and complexity. Some of them are fairly limited in character, such as the theory that teachers should make sure that any new material
introduced to the pupil should be linked to what he knows already, or that a child should not be told a fact before he has had a chance to find it out for himself. Limited theories like this may perhaps be better called theories of teaching, or pedagogical theories. Other theories of
this kind are wider in scope and more complex, such as the theory that education ought to promote the development of the innate potentialities of the pupil, or that it ought to prepare him for work, or to be a good citizen or a good democrat. Theories like these may be called ‘general theories of education’ in that they give comprehensive prescriptions, recommending the production of a particular type of person and, very often, a specific type of society.
These overall types of educational theory are often met with in the writings of those who for other reasons are known as philosophers. Plato, for instance, gives a general theory of education in the dialogue known as The Republic, in which his aim is to recommend a certain type of man as worthy to be the ruler of a distinctive type of society. Rousseau gives a general theory of education in Emile. Others are given in Frobel’s The Education Of Man, in James Mill’s ‘Essay on Education’, and Dewey’s Democracy and Education.

Two further points need to be made here about these general, prescriptive theories. First, it must be recognised that, unlike theories about education, they do not belong to the social sciences. They are not meant to be descriptions of what actually goes on in the world, but
are recommendations about what ought to be done. As such they involve a deliberate commitment on the part of the theorist,and assumption of some end which he considers ought to be adopted and worked for. The recommendations which constitute the conclusions set out in the theory presuppose a major value component, the notion of an ‘educated man’. This value commitment means that theories of this kind cannot be verified or validated in the way that scientific, descriptive theories may be. Whereas a scientist is committed only to the formal assumption that the truth is worth having but not to any prior notion about what
that truth should be, an educational theorist commits himself initially to the conviction that a certain substantial state of affairs is desirable, that a certain type of individual should exist. So whilst a scientific theory may be established or rejected simply by checking it
against the facts of the empirical world, the validation of a prescriptive theory demands
a more complex and piecemeal approach, involving both an appeal to empirical evidence
and a justification of a substantial value judgement.
The second point is that such general theories are sometimes known as ‘philosophies of education’, so that one reads of Plato’s, or Froebers, or Dewey’s ‘philosophy of education’.
This book takes the view that to call them such is misleading. Not all that is written by philosophers qualifies as philosophy, and these comprehensive practical theories of education are not themselves philosophical products. They are general theories of education
offered by philosophers. They may be closely connected with philosophy of education but
the connection is not that of equivalence or identity. What the connection is, in fact, now
needs to be looked at.