Entry tags:

education, philosophy

Philosophy of Education: An Encyclopedia
Philosophy of Education: An Encyclopedia

Edited by J. J. Chambliss

Published by Garland, 1996.

This is a hardbound, 7" X 10" book of 720 pages including the index, in smaller type, a substantial work.

The introduction makes the claim that the book is the only encyclopedia of the philosophy of education in existence, which, if true, certainly makes it an important book, since educational philosophy is a field of great real-world importance and much disagreement.

The introduction says:

"The encyclopedia contains 228 signed articles written by 184 authors; it is designed to show the diversity of topics that contribute to the study of the philosophy of education. The core of the encyclopedia is its coverage of philosophical points of view that have had the greatest influence on educational thinking, from ancient Greece to the present. This core consists of philosophers such as Plato, Abelard, Descartes, Locke, and Dewey, along with the topics from the field of philosophy, such as epistemology, metaphysics, rationalism, and realism. Yet the scope of the encyclopedia is much broader at its core, because many ideas and thinkers influencing education come from outside the field of philosophy. Articles are thus included from such fields as politics, religion, poetry, rhetoric, and the social sciences.
...
"With the exception of one article that is eighty-five hundred words in length, the articles vary from six hundred to five thousand words, with only fourteen articles of more than three thousand words. Each article has a bibliography and a list of "see also" references. A comprehensive name and subject index provides easy access to information on topics that do not have individual entries."

My first thought on opening the encyclopedia was to look up the critical education theorist Henri Giroux. I was initially disappointed to find him missing, but when you consider that there are only 228 articles to cover the entire field of the philosophy of education, it can only be expected that contemporary figures, whose lasting impacts are not yet known, would not be given entire articles. The Encyclopedia only aims to communicate knowledge of major intellectual threads. There is an entry on Critical Theory, and Giroux is, in fact, cited in the bibliographies of some of the articles, and given five page references in the index.

The lack of an article on Paulo Freire, however, is more difficult to excuse, and he has only five page citations in the index, which seems scant. It may be that the editors regard Freire and the like as not philosophically foundational enough to include in the book, versus thinkers (like M. K. Gandhi, who does have an article devoted to him) whose influence was clearly on the philosophical side. To me, this argument would seem to be a bit of a stretch. Nevertheless, it is a very substantial and unique reference work.