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A parrot is one of the most educatable of species (Oxford English Dictionary)
Part I — Replacing Instruction by Education
In speaking of teaching, a school is most often focused upon as a place for education, not instruction. This is, in itself, a somewhat surprising occurrence since a transmission of knowledge is by no means guaranteed by education — as a mode of rearing and training the individual — whereas all teaching necessarily consists in instruction.
Yet, pedagogues and educators seem to shy away from an analysis of what an instruction consists of and why it forms the basis of the school. Instead, they feel more at home in talking about educational and pedagogical procedures aiming to help achieve the student as a ‘whole’ person. Indeed, many educational programs today focus on developing the capacities of the student to understand a discipline or prepare them for a career and life. Meanwhile, the question of what it is to found knowledge or determine its truth is left in silence or viewed as a philosophical concern.
The reasons for this flight from instruction and its replacement with education are complex and go far in revealing the very problems facing teaching today. Such detours, if examined carefully, would explain the tendency to reduce the school to a kind of educational…
