> I would take it back to Socrates -
no, don't do that... 'Socrates' (ie the character used as a mouthpiece
by Plato, Xenophon etc) talked about educating the young largely as a
political issue from the perspective of what was good for the state. I'm
not sure that's what we are doing (though it's an interesting
conversation). His contemporaries, the Sophists, taught something closer
to what we do when we think about 'transferable skills', 'employment'
and so on (and Socrates was their fierce opponent). Plato does talk
about something we could consider 'self-actualisation' in his middle
career but by the bitter end of his life (don't read the Republic, read
The Laws...) had returned to his favourite issue of the well-governed
state, by whatever means necessary. Not very 'student-centred', I'm
afraid.
I'm rather puzzled by why people reliably talk in this field about
Socrates without ever giving a reference... is there anyone else who
would get that treatment? it could be because he didn't write anything,
of course...;)
Socrates seems historically to have insisted on his own ignorance (and
everyone else's). He is actually an odd choice as the adopted legendary
character in the field of education...! And he certainly wasn't a benign
thoughtful and kind character if the texts we have are anything to go
by.
If we're going to look for a date for pedagogical research, we need to
define what we mean by it: there are some really interesting ideas all
the way from Parmenides, but it depends what counts as research...
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