A non-pragmatic view on education

Abstract

The point of this essay is to argue that education may improve its quality if its fundamental principles transcend the pragmatic targets, e.g. preparing the offspring to adult life, the psychosocial needs, manual, intellectual and vocational skills, etc, and deal with such essential problems as the sense of life, the nature of the world, the phenomenon of consciousness and its evolution, i.e. problems which typically become the subject of philosophical speculations and deliberations. The point of departure of the argument is the classical view that education should be seen as educing the potential of every individual learner. The possibility of such a qualitative improvement may result from the capacity of consciousness to generate complex motivational drives of learning which are rooted in the higher mental processes.