EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY
"The education of one folks obviously cannot be adapted from scratch to another, but there is always much to learn by studying it in detail. 'What contributed most to making the Romans masters of the world, says Montesquieu, is that having fought successively against all folks, they always renounced their customs as soon they found better ones' "
Gustave Le Bon(1841-1931)
What we understand by educational philosophy is the vision or the primary goal that every folks, nation or community has or expects from education. Having a clear educational philosophy is the first step for a successful education, because it is just after that that we can establish a appropriate (home, social and school) educational's system and pedagogies to achieve our vision. Before i continue, i will make some clarifications about the words: Education and Instruction.
The purpose of Instruction is the transmission and acquisition of knowledge to develop mostly a professional skill. But Education is wider than that because it includes others things like: morals, religious or spiritual and cultural values. Although the instructions of any country can be adopted by another, on the other hand it is more difficult to do the same with education that is why every society has its own definition of what we can call a "good kid or good man/woman" base on their own values. Here are some examples to clarify our point of view.
"... We can indeed give instruction to a stranger's child but education only to our own, because the one may know cessation, the other must proceed without interruption "
Jean Paul Richter (1763-1825)
(LEVANA p207)
First example: In his speech titled "Strenous life, p6" Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) describes how one can become a good American citizen at his time, in these lines:
"In the last analysis a healthy state can exist only when the men and women who make it up lead clean, vigorous, healthy lives; when the children are so trained that they shall endeavor, not to shirk difficulties, but to overcome them; not to seek ease, but to know how to wrest triumph from toil and risk. The man must be glad to do a man's work, to dare and endure and to labor; to keep himself, and to keep those dependent upon him."
Second example: the french Antropologist, Psychologist,Ssociologist, ... and the author of the well know book "crowd psychology" Gustav Le Bon (1841-1931) clearly described in another of his books (Psychology of Education, p28) the difference between english and french education in the past. He said:
"If English need no one to direct themselves, it is because they possesses by heredity an internal discipline which enables them to govern themselves. There is no people more disciplined, more respectful of established traditions and customs. And it is precisely because the have the discipline in themselves that they can do without constant tutelage. A very hard physical education maintains and develop these hereditary aptitudes, but not without the young man having to run the risk of accident to which no French parent would agree to expose his timid offspring."
We believe that the qualities mentioned above amoung the English are not primarily inherited traits, but rather, they stem from education and environmental influences. This perspective is echoed by Luis Aberto Machado (1932-2016) in his book "The Right to be Intelligent," page 7.
"No one is born civilized or primitive. The child of a civilized man and woman will never be a civilized being, if he does not acquire the necessary learning. The child of primitive man and woman will become civilized, if he is educated to be so. The difference between a primitive man and a civilized one is not biological; it is educational."
Even if the word "primitive" have to be redefined.
Third example: the case of Mori Arinori (1885-1889) from Japan is a great example of what we are talking about.
M ori Arinori was born into a samurai family of the Satsuma clan in Kyūshū twenty-one years before the 1868 Meiji Restoration ended Tokugawa military rule. At the time of his 1847 birth, few in Japan could foresee the abrupt end of Tokugawa rule or the role the Satsuma clan would play in bringing down the regime. During Mori’s early education, the Satsuma clan, long an opponent of the Tokugawa government because the Satsuma were far away from Edo, had some knowledge of Western technology despite Tokugawa suppression of many foreign ideas. The Satsuma clan had already experienced a painful introduction to modern Western military technology.
In 1862, Charles Richardson a British merchant residing in Japan, unwittingly rode his horse across the path of an advancing Satsuma procession returning home from an official Edo visit. A fanatical, incensed young samurai ruthlessly hacked Richardson to death, to avenge the murder, British Naval warships later bombarded Kagoshima, Satsuma’s capital, and because of superior military technology, reduced much of the defenseless city to ashes. The experience was a painful reminder to the Satsuma leadership of how the Tokugawa seclusion policy retarded Japan’s technology.
Chastened by the humiliating event, Satsuma leaders promptly tried to reduce the technology gap by establishing a clan school in 1864 called Yogakkō Kaiseisho. The curriculum included Western languages and culture which defied the Tokugawa ban on foreign studies, but the central government was too weak to stop Satsuma leaders. Teenager Mori Arinori entered the school to study English. The impatient Satsuma government proceeded one step further in learning from it's attackers and disobeying the Tokugawa government by formulating a secret plan to send promising young samurai boys to England to study Western culture and technology. In March 1865, fifteen young men, including Mori, clandestinely boarded an English ship offshore from a Satsuma port for a long and arduous journey halfway around the globe.
In fact after studying in England and serving like the first Japanese ambassador in the Unites States during the Meiji period, he became very interested not just in western instruction but also in their educational philosophy.
Mori many years later will become the founder of Japan's modern educational system. He will manage successfully to transform the Japanese instruction but not its educational philosophy. And wanting absolutely to make Japan abandon part of its culture, religion, social values that he found detrimental to evolution. He even recommended to abandon the Japanese language in favor of English because for him english was more adapted for the sturdy of scientific matters, he will end up being assassinated for having desecrated the Shinto shrine of Ise fear years ago.
For people who watch documentaries on Netflix, there is a series called "Old Enough" that teach us about Japanese educational philosophy of today. We can see how families and cities organized themselves to educate children by giving them tasks through which children learn in their early age: to overcome difficulties, be helpful for the family and society, learn how society work, how to do things by themselves, being respectful, facing some of their fears and developing their intellectual abilities. So, Although Japan has copied the American's and english's instruction, it has kept its own educational philosophy by modifying it slowly and they are doing well.
Source : Ten Geat Educators of Modern Japan By Terumichi Morikawa
Conclusion
Gustav Le Bon (1841-1931) in his book "crowd Psychology, p50" give us a wise and smart way how a healthy and profitable cultural evolution should happen. He says :
"So, the two great occupations of man since his existence have been to create a network of traditions and then to destroy them when their beneficial effects are worn out. Without stable traditions, no civilization; without the slow elimination of these traditions, no progress. The challenge between stability and variability. This difficulty is immense. When a people allows its customs to settle too firmly for many generations, it can no longer evolve and becomes, like China, incapable of improvement. Violent revolutions themselves become powerless, for it then happens either that the broken fragments of the chain are ruined, and then the past resumes its empire without change, or that the scattered fragments engender anarchy and soon decadence. So the fundamental task of a people must be to keep institutions of the past, by modifying them little by little. Difficult task. The Romans in ancient times, the English in modern times, are about the only ones to have realized it."
China, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Isreal, Botswana and many others country have applied the same process and today we are seeing that they are accomplishing great things. According to Prof. Chenggang Xu professor of economics at CKGSB(Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business) the real revolution that transforms China was first the cultural reform and after that was the economical reform (Youtube channel: Institute for New Economic Thinking, "how China's Economy Actually Works.") . Now we understand why some country around the world are developing so slowly. Especially in some African countries where the balance between religion, traditions, and science is really difficult to find. Without ever forgetting That a great part of Africa's culture have been destroyed or perverted during colonization, and it is worst for countries that have been colonized by France. Contrary to England which generally aspired to a military domination and exploitation (except the case of America) and imposed on the cultural level almost only the English language; France, meanwhile aspired to a complete domination and exploitation of its colonies military and culturally(language, religion, tradition, customs ...) and this sudden cultural change led to a great psychological shock of populations, thus leading to a form of alienation and the consequences are still visible until this days. These are not accusations or complaints but facts, that, these countries should take into account for a better understanding of their today's difficulties and be able to rebuild themselves psychologically, spiritually, culturally and materially.
That is why we offer our services to help some country specially in Africa to build a new educational philosophy base on one hand, on some of theirs still existing cultural and religious values that they find important and useful , and on another hand on a greater valuation of science. Because no country can exist in the new world without science and technology even for protecting its culture, people and sovereignty. This automatically leads us to the first step in realizing our vision which is parenting.