3.1 The Philosophical Dimension of Education

Philosophy of education is a term that is used to define an approach to education that is based on the planning, policies regarding education, and programs that are used to support or encourage personal and academic development. In many cases, a philosophy of education will be used to inform the structure and mission of education.

More than a millennium before her birth, philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle were proposing philosophies about education. Plato, for example, believed that both men and women should be educated, which is a philosophy of education that is not shared universally. He also had some more radical ideas about education, including the idea that children should become wards of the state, which would be responsible for raising and educating them.

It is quite common for schools to develop a philosophy of education to guide their efforts. In schools, it is common for a philosophy of education to be applied to educational practices no matter the age of the students.

There are some schools that strictly follow one particular philosophy of education. This is especially true with Montessori schools, which adhere to the Montessori philosophies and methods. There are other schools that use ideas set forth by numerous educators and philosophers and weave them together to create unique philosophies of education to guide their practices and efforts.

3.1 The Philosophical Dimension of Education

As an academic field, philosophy of education is "the philosophical study of education and its problems, its central subject matter is education, and its methods are those of philosophy". "The philosophy of education may be either the philosophy of the process of education or the philosophy of the discipline of education. That is, it may be part of the discipline in the sense of being concerned with the aims, forms, methods, or results of the process of educating or being educated; or it may be multidisciplinary in the sense of being concerned with the concepts, aims, and methods of the discipline. For example, it might study what constitutes upbringing and education, the values and norms revealed through upbringing and educational practices, the limits and legitimization of education as an academic discipline, and the relation between educational theory and practice.