style of argumentation. Whether this work is properly called philosophy
is part of an exciting contemporary debate.

Philosophers of education study the problems of education from a
philosophical perspective. To do this, they need to know something about
several of the standard branches of philosophy--epistemology (the the-
ory of knowledge), philosophy of language, ethics, social or political phi-
losophy, philosophy of science, and, perhaps, philosophy of mind and
aesthetics. This is a formidable task, and in preparing an introduction to
the philosophy of education, philosophers of education have often failed
to satisfy educators and teachers because the material has been too ab-
stract and esoteric. Some of the liveliest contemporary treatments have all
but abandoned what might be called the content of philosophy and con-
centrate instead on applying a clarity of thought (characteristic of philo-
sophical method) to serious problems of education.

Here, for better or worse, I will try to introduce readers to the content
of philosophy when it is relevant to problems of education, and I will also
try to choose problems of current interest. The purpose is to acquaint
readers with the rigor of philosophical argumentation as well as the com-
plexity of issues in education.

The first four chapters provide readers with some knowledge about
educational questions that have been important since the days of Socrates
and with the ways in which philosophers have approached these ques-
tions. After a brief historical survey of such questions and their treatment
prior to the twentieth century, I turn to the thought of John Dewey. This
chapter continues the historical development, but it also sets the stage for
current debate and introduces the methods of pragmatic naturalism. In
Chapters 3 and 4, I discuss other methods or approaches used by contem-
porary philosophers of education: analytic philosophy, existentialism,
phenomenology, critical theory, hermeneutics, and postmodernism. One
cannot expect anything like a full treatment of these approaches, but my
hope is to provide enough to enable students to read material from the
various approaches with some understanding and appreciation and to
recognize when writers are using the methods or content of a particular
tradition.

After the introductory chapters, we will look at specific educational
problems as they are studied philosophically--educational issues that fall
under the general title of epistemology, ethics, philosophy of science, and
the like. This arrangement is not entirely satisfactory even to me, its au-
thor, because I very much look forward to the day when sharp divisions
between disciplines and subdisciplines will be broken down. However, as
the exposition proceeds, I will try to point out the places where my own
arrangement gets in the way of a full discussion of the problem at hand--
where, for example, an issue that is currently treated as part of epistemol-

-2-