Education and Civilization: The Transmission of Culture

It has been asserted that there is no one universal proposition with which all philosophers would agree, including this one. The pre- dicament has rarely been recognized and almost never accepted, although neither has it been successfully challenged. If the claim holds true for philosophy taken by itself, how much more must it of religion, the hold for crossfield interests, such as the philosophy philosophy of science and many others. The philosophy of educa- tion is a particular case in point. The topic of education itself is generally regarded as a dull af- fair, a charge not entirely without substance. The blame for this usually falls on the fact that it has no inherent subject matter. The teachers of history teach history, the teachers of biology teach biology; but what do the teachers of education teach? Presumably how to teach; but this simply will not do because every topic requires its own sort of instruction.