Education as a Moral Concept



Abstract

This study is a philosophical examination of the fundamental normative
status of the concept of education. If education has universal normative features
,
what are the conditions of possibility for these features? The thesis explores the
extent to which and ways in which education specifically and human
development
more generally can be conceptualized and justified as a moral practice. It seeks to
establish an ethics of human
development that can serve as a normative standard
Upon which contemporary educational policies and practices can be critically
assessed.

Chapter One describes three general approaches to practical reasoning about
education. Chapter Two undertakes a critical analysis of the relationship between
education and practical reason through a reconstruction ofR.S. Peters' analysis of
the concept of education. Peters argues that education is fundamentally a normative
project of initiation into the good. Chapter Three rejects the initiation into the good
argument and adopts Peter's procedural ethics to
develop the thesis that education is
fundamentally a matter of initiation into practical reasoning generally. Chapter Four
undertakes a detailed account of Jurgen Habermas' Discourse Ethics. It examines the
limitation of the Peters version of the initiation into practical reason argument and
defends the view that Habermas' Discourse Principle (D) can better support the
initiation argument. Chapter Five examines three competing applications of (D) to
educational questions. It
concludes that an appropriately conceived practical
principle for the fundamental justification of educational policies will be reflected in
an expanded procedural moral principle of universalization
(U). Chapter Six
describes and defends such a principle that includes epistemic prohibitions against
what I term 'developmental coercion'. The prohibition against such coercion is
argued to secure conditions of possibility for the justification of moral norms of

en



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