Philosophy of education as a discipline in Korea has diverse sources for its disciplinary formation from three different traditions. The British/American influence helped us develop a more rigorous philosophical method and the German influence provide...
Philosophy of education as a discipline in Korea has diverse sources for its disciplinary formation from three different traditions. The British/American influence helped us develop a more rigorous philosophical method and the German influence provided us with a rich sense of ‘being educational’ (or ‘being educative’); the traditional Korean thoughts contributed to our being keen to Korean contexts or Korean identity in developing educational theories. However, the sheer diversity in its sources can lead philosophy of education in Korea as an academic discipline to suffer from the lack of disciplinary integrity. Some Korean scholars from older generations tend to think that the current coexistence of three different schools is something to celebrate on rather than to complain about, which seems congenial to a post-modern spirit. But to many young scholars in the field, who want to seek indigenous educational theories, this cerebration of the older generation looks like a pre-modern naivete because the celebration is not the consequence of their thorough examination of and criticism on the way they were doing philosophy of education, i.e., their own philosophical method. To these young scholars, what seems lacking with Korean philosophers of education is a philosophical rigor in their works, as well as a set of educational questions to be worth tackling with over generations. Without these two requisites, the mere coexistence of three different traditions in philosophy of education cannot be led into creative diversity, but to destructive fragmentation in our disciplinary identity.
Then, what sort of move do we need to make to overcome this fragmentation in our disciplinary identity How should we reorient the competing three different traditions of philosophical studies of education in Korea Since we use different philosophical languages and have different priorities in educational questions to pursue across the three different schools, it is almost impossible for us to communicate with each other. Thus, it seems quite urgent to create a shared disciplinary space where we sort out together differences across the three schools and see if the differences can be bridged or acknowledged by one another. This approach would not demand us to abandon our own philosophical language and tradition into which each of us has already been initiated; it would rather demand us to be more aware of what and how we are doing philosophy of education in our own philosophical language by being challenged and contested by the other philosophical languages. This will obviously help Korean philosophers of education to work on their own philosophical method in a more rigorous way.
On the other hand, this process would also demand us to re-think about what role philosophy of education as an academic discipline today is supposed to play in relation to educational practice and other educational studies. Is it supposed to provide ‘conceptual tools’ through which educational reality in Korea can be better described, or ‘reasonable solutions’ or ‘better judgment’ in response to complicated practical matters of education in Korea, or ‘self-understanding’ of our educational culture and practice No matter which one we are led to agree on, what seems common among these candidates, I think, is their relation to the educational contexts in Korea. In this sense, what distinguishes a good work from a bad work in philosophy of education may have to do not so much with a mastery of philosophical methodology, which we usually consider internal to the academic discipline, as with its relevance to the educational contexts in Korea, which is external to the discipline. Yet, the educational relevance of a work is more likely to be carved out sharply in a uniquely form, only in the work where the disciplinary nature of the work is distinctively manifested.