A C T A U N I V E R S I T A T I S L O D Z I E N S I S
F O L IA PH 1L O S O P H IC A 9, 1993
Dorota Horbaczewska
S O M E T R O U B L E S W IT H D E F IN IN G P E D A G O G IC A L N O T IO N S
T he fundam ental task o f logic broadly u n d ersto o d is, am ong others, the elim ination o f vagueness, instability and indistinctness o f n otions an d thus, indirectly, the elim ination o f inconsistency o f thinking. W hat is recom m ended in this case refers to all o th er branches o f science regardless o f their aims. T herefore, it also refers to practical sciences where the pedagogics is placed by m ost m ethodologists. T raditionally, the term ‘pedagogics’ is applied to label both the science describing the range o f activities aim ing at form ing the personalities o f people in different age and in various environm ents, and scientific researches an d itellectual reflection concerning these activities. T he investigations o f various educational processes resulted in the sep aratio n from pedagogics som e p articu lar dom ains as didactics, ed u catio n theory, education history, social pedagogics, all o f which bear the sam e nam e o f ‘educational sciences’ applied alternatively with the term ‘pedagogics'.
Every science has its ow n object, m ethods, its p artic u la r theorem s, and first o f all. its characteristic set o f concepts „S ystem atization o f concepts and term inology o f a given science facilitates the system atization o f its problem s, theorem s, principles and its o rganizational an d m ethodological issues” 1. The m entioned m ethodological feature o f science, and p articularity, the degree o f their preciseness indicates the level o f developm ent o f the science. M et-hodologists have observed som e regularity concerning the language o f science, nam ely, th a t com paratively little developped sciences persistently neglect the prospects opened up when the language is m ade precise by definitions. Pedagogics, like o th er sciences, has borrow ed the basic stock o f w ords from a n atu ral language striving, how ever, to present them with som e specified m eaning; which is necessary, since n atu ra l language is im perfect and brings
ab o u t various logical erro rs as equivocality an d vagueness o f concepts2. M ost sciences m ake use o f a mixed language contain in g the elem ents o f both: natural and artificial languages.
It is generally accepted th at the term inology o f science should meet two fundam ental requirem ents: o f precision and o f translatability. T he form er gu arantees the effectiveness o f co m m unication, the latter, the possibility of tran slatin g the whole a p p a ra tu s o f concepts o f a given science into the language o f related sciences, which enables th eir co operation; in o u r case pedagogics with educational sociology o r psychology. T o satisfy the condition o f translatab ility it is necessary to apply within one science p artic u la r term s o f a n o th e r one preserving their m eanings, which in case o f pedagogics is defficult. T he developm ent o f educational theories and their practical results depend to a great extent, on the linguistic relations and also on the prem isses provided to pedagogics by cooperating: psychology, philosophy, sociology, ethics, logic with m ethodology, and other.
T he term inology o f pedagogics com prises such concepts as ‘fam ily’, ‘sch o o l’, ‘peer’ environm ents originating with sociology: principle, m ethod, org an izatio n al form borrow ed from praxiology, and the concepts referring to psychic processes, m echanism s and dispositions taken from psychology. The specific concepts o f pedagogics are: ‘ed u c a tio n ’, ‘in stru ctio n ’, ‘teaching’, ‘class-lesson system ’, ‘lecture’, ‘lesson’ and others, especially those that app ear in the form ulations o f education and teaching objectives.
T he most frequently used concepts in the pedagogics broadly understood are ‘ed u c atio n ’, ‘instru ctio n ’, ‘teaching’. „T hey refer to the object o f their science and therefore they can be treted as its m ain concepts. Hence, their specification should be the point o f d e p a rtu re in setting the language of pedagogics and establishing an o rd e r in its term in o lo g y "3. T he language of educational science was criticised by: A. B. D obrow olski, G . K erschensteiner, В. N aw roczyński, W. W. C hartres, K. Sośnicki, F. K orniszew ski, H. M uszyń-ski, M. Krawczyk and o thers4. They claim ed th a t the language o f pedagogics is an everyday language and hence the m eaning o f different w ords is arb itrary , changeable and vague, which leads to obscurity and general ch a rac te r o f statem ents. T he im m aturity o f term inology results in the substantial and
2 J. G r e g o r o w i c z , B łędy logiczne w ypow iedzi w ję z y k a c h naturalnych. Ł ó d ź 1971.
3 F. K o r n i s z e w s k i , P edagogika..., p. 51.
4 See: W. W. C h a r t r e s , D ictionary o f Education, Introduction, N ew Y o rk 1945; A. B. D o b r o w o l s k i . M ó j życiorys naukow y, „ N a u k a P o lsk a ", z. 9, 1928; G . K e r s c h e n s t e i n e r .
C harakter jeg o pojęcia i wychowania, W arszaw a 1932; K o r n i s z e w s k i , Pedagogika..:, M.
K r a w c z y k , Relacje m iędzy procesam i wychowania w w ęższym i szerszym zakresie. „R u ch P edagogiczny" 1974; H. M u s z y ń s k i , W stęp do m etodologii pedagogiki, W arszaw a; B. N a -w r o c z y ń s k i , Z a sa d y nauczania (preface 1 ed ition). W arsza-w a 1947; К . S o ś n i c k i , P otrzeby
logical inconsistency, which m akes the language o f pedagogics socially little com m unicative. The condition o f com m unicativity is satisfied when the language of pedagogics is clear and com prehensible no t only for educational theoreticians and practicians but also fo r a g reater a m m o u n t o f people.
In the last years the educationists have been m ainly concerned with the pioblcm s o f the actual statu s o f pedagogics and the possibility o f its scientific developm ent an d also its influence on the educational practice. O n account of this, the postulate to define concepts accurately, to specify the scientific language o f pedagogies, the application and reference to definitions has been generally ignored. Го the present day the opinion o f K erschensteiner (one o f the chief representatives o f 'w ork school' which em erged in the result o f criticism o f trad itio n al education) rem ains prevalent: „ fo r the m ost p art, the fights for a school are on because fighters dispute a b o u t vague concepts or because som e o f them u n ite a w ord with a concept to tally different from that which o thers m ean. M ost o f educational clichés concern conceptional sym bols perm itting varied com m entaries, since those sym bols were not investigated m ore precisely, or because o u r present know ledge on the spiritual life does not suffice to define them explicitely5.
K erschensteiner's ‘conceptual sym bols', being also today the subject of disputes, arc the fundam ental concepts o f pedagogics. T ak in g one o f them , ‘ed u c a tio n ’, as an exam ple, we shall attem p t to relate the difficulties o f educationists trying to define this concept.
In educational considerations there are em ployed concepts o f ‘ed u c a tio n ’, teaching and instruction although their co n ten ts vary depending on the a u th o r and alth o u g h they have not been yet so defined to satisfy a t least m ost o f them . T he theoreticians applying those concepts give different preferences thus causing tem porary p riority o f som e m eaning an d pushing o thers into the background. The définitions explaining term ‘pedagogics' alm ost always take education as an object of its investigation. M ost o f the controversies and disputes concern the m eaning and the range o f the concept. Practically each a u th o r attem p ts to render its sense at his discretion, often paying no atten tio n to w hat has been laid dow n before. T his p leth o ra o f ap p ro ach es and ways o f applications ol term education results in difficulties in com m unication eqivocality and chaos in the discussions on pedagogies. T he problem is often intensified by to o strong dépendance o f sense o f the term on the casual, cultural, social, political, an d religions situ atio n s alth o u g h both the ed u catio -nal concepts and theoretical pedagogics should easily dispense with the conditions m entioned.
Since the term s nam ing educational processes co n stitu te the result o f a long social experience and com m on ed ucational practice, and they have com e to the
educational vocabulary from a n atu ral language where they still function, the m ajority o f their explications ought to have the form o f real definitions: analytical (lexical) o r regulating.
T he theory o f definition is not a coherent part o f logic; m uch discussion a b o u t it was carried on am ong logicians and m ost o f it consisted in m isunderstanding. T he m ost thoroughly discussed problem o f the opposition between definitions o f things (real definitions) and those o f nam es (nom inal definitions) has been finally solved by dint o f differentiating the language levels.
S tarting with K. Ajdukicwicz, it has been ad o p ted th a t „real definition o f a certain object is the sam e as the univocal ch aracteristic o f this object, which is in fact an utterance ab o u t this object saying ab o u t it som ething th a t can be said only a b o u t this one object and no t ab o u t any o th er co nform ing the tru th ” 6. Such a definition requires solely a relativisation to an object, while a nom inal definition is alw ays a definition o f som e w ords or expressions and obviously, a relativisation to a defined w ord and to a language is dem anded.
M ethodology distinguishes m any kinds o f definitions categorizing them according to m anifold criteria; when one o f them is the purpose lor which a definition is constructed it can be either analytic o r synthetic (w ith regulating as its special case)7. A nalitic definition is used to provide the m eaning which a given expression already possesses in a language, w hereas synthetic definition serves to introduce to a language novel (i.e. not existing earlier) expressions or to give a new m eaning to old ones. T he latter case involves the d anger of equivocality unless it is stated clearly th at the old m eaning is rem oved from a given language or theory. Synthetic definitions are also handy to obtain univocal u n d erstanding o f equivocal expressions. In the event o f a vague expression, regulating definition is em ployed; it fixes the extention ol an expression discarding the designate co n tra d icto ry to the defined one. By way o f recapitulation it can be stated th a t analytic definitions describe scientific language in its actual state, while synthetic ones change, m odify and supplem ent it. „T he definitions o f scientific notio n fulfil their function only w hen the sense o f definiens does n o t imply any dou b ts. D efining a term by m eans o f presentation in the definiens o f features w hose m eaning is not sufficiently clear neither for us n o r for any future reader o f o u r definition, is useless an d called ‘ignotum per ig n o tu m ’. M oreover „term s occuring in definiens m ust be not only com prehensible for everybody w ho takes p art in the process o f scientific exchange, bu t also should be un d ersto o d in the m ost
6 K. A j d u k i e w i c z , T rzy pojęcia definicji, [in:] J ę z y k i poznanie, z. 2, W arszaw a 1985,
p. 296.
sim ilar way by all o f th e m " 8. O th er in fo rm atio n s concerning the conditions o f correctness o f definition an d its various types can be easily found in the literatu re0.
T here are few educationists w ho having noticed the draw backs o f educational language en d av o u r to find ou t the causes o f such a state; it seems th at they consist, am ong others, in a variety o f appro ach es, ways of understanding, contexts an d ap plications o f fu ndam ental notions referring to educational processes. T he literature analysis an d everyday educational practice point to tw ofold way o f treatin g those concepts. T he term ‘éd u c atio n ’ appears in 1) everyday usage which is intuitive, practical and appeals to feelings; 2) theoretical usage conceptual, recorded in definitions; being in agreem ent, o r not, with colloquial language. E stablishing the criteria o f this division gives rise to som e difficulties. F o r such we can consider the relativisation to a language an d to a m eaning fixed in it. In case 1) it would be a relativisation to a n a tu ra l language, in 2) to a mixed; scientific one. In a com m only used sense, m eaning renders the sense o f ‘ed u c a tio n ’ created by practice and everyday life; in the theoretical ap p ro ach m eaning is determ ined w ithin the fram ew ork o f a p artic u la r ed ucational theory. C om m only used sense predom inates am o n g practicians (teachers, tu to rs), parents, guardians, pupils but is also used by som e educationists theoreticians, regardless the theory they defend although (in this gro u p ) the theoretical a p p ro a c h avails.
In the educational literature there exist distinct conceptions treating ‘ed u c atio n ’ in broad and n arrow ways. They stem from B. N aw roczyński, K. Sośnicki, M. K raw czyk, and others w ho understan d ‘ed u c atio n ’ in a broad sense as affecting whole personality, i.e., em otional, intellectual and m otiv atio -nal - volitio-nal spheres o f psychic life. T reatin g this concept in term s o f educational processes one can state th at its range includes the following elem ents: education in narro w sense, teaching an d instructing. T he ideas o f the a u th o rs m entioned above diifer as far as the way o f interp retin g ‘ed u catio n ' in a n arro w sense is concerned.
In the opinion o f N aw roczyński „we reduce the field o f ed u catio n by excluding all th a t is called teaching” 10. Such a definition was em ployed by the a u th o r to elab o rate the theory o f teaching.
A ccording to Sośnicki. however, „e d u catio n in a narro w sense is an education whose object constitutes an em otional, volitional, rational and active side o f a hum an being” 11. T he definition thus un d ersto o d confines the range o f education to em otional and m otivational - volitional aspects.
я S. N o w a k . M etodologia badań społecznych, W arszaw a 1985, p. 138. e A j d u k i e w i c z , T rzy p ojęcia...
10 N a w r o c z y ń s k i . Z a sa d y naliczania.... p. 8.
Both conceptions are repudiated by K raw czyk w ho claim s th a t „th ere is no unique process o f education treted in a narro w w ay” 12. T his term refers to all trad itio n ally separate branches o f education: intellectual, m oral, aesthetic and physical. Each o f them constitutes a p a rt o f all ed ucational activities called ‘ed u c atio n ' in a bro ad sense. T he application o f term ‘ed u c atio n ’ in the context o f lim iting adjective denotes a narrow ed range o f ‘ed u c a tio n ’. T he develop-m ent o f educational sciences leads to edevelop-m erging the branches with still narrow er scope than that ad opted for trad itio n al types o f education. T here exist feedbacks between all kinds o f ed u catio n in narro w an d b ro a d sense. T heir interactions exert influence on the form atio n o f whole personality. D istinguis-hing the types o f education by their scope is o f great m ethodological and substantical value since discovering features an d regularities o f every „e duca-tio n ” in a n arrow sense yields in consequence m ore ad e q u ate image o f the entire educational reality.
C onsidering the discussed term on the sem antic level it can by noticed th at, on the one hand, it denotes ed ucational process as a sequence o f acts, on the o th er hand, the p roduct o f this process, parallely to the tw ofold m eaning o f „science” , functional and produ ctio n al.
In an everyday usage people can easily discern education as a process from its results. T he process o f education is treated as an act o f education. „T o educate in a com m on sense o f this term m eans to inculcate the com pliance with custom s an d the obedience o f rules, to consolidate the inclinations to p ro p er b eh aviour and good acts, to stim ulate the developm ent o f sense o f duty, an d to undertak e o n e’s m oral obligations to w ard s ouerself and o thers so th at the educated being could jo in the society w ithout any obstacles” 13. W hile the result o f this process is treated as a certain way o f being; m anners com bined with know ledge, for exam ple. X can be said to be a m an o f learning but not well educated (i.e. with bad m anners). T he theoretical ap p ro ach fitting the feelings is not always available o r easy. Intuitions arc m ost often sim ilar but conceptual ap p ro ach es fixed in definitions are usually quite various, often general, m ore o r less inconsistent.
A t present, the educationists are focussed on theoretical pedagogics14; they p ostulate to extend the trad itio n ally acknow ledged d om ain w here the process o f education was organized consciously, purposefully an d institutionally with sp o n tan o u s education occuring in the practice o f social life, with self-education, self-im provem ent, i.e. self-creation o f a m an, an d with an education treated as a developm ent o f a m an d uring his life time. Hence the very way o f organizing the process o f education is fu ndam ental for d eter-m ining its kinds, the doeter-m ains o f pedagogics.
12 K r a w c z y k . Relacje..., p. 348.
13 R . D o t t r e n s , W ychowanie i kształcenie, W arszaw a 1966, p. 19.
14 See: S. P a l k a , W stronę pedagogiki teoretycznej, „Z eszyty N a u k o w e U niw ersytetu Jagiello ń sk ieg o " 1987, n r 6.
T he above presentation of available ap p ro ach e s an d usages o f term ‘ed u c atio n ' needs com plem enting. A lm ost all the educatio n ists m aintain th at education is an object of pedagogics’ investigations, thus consequently, it seems th a t its m ain aim is, am ong others, to explain the m echanism s o f form atio n o f hum an psychic.
T he heterogenous stock o f m eanings, usages, an d ap p ro ach es to the term ed u c atio n ’ (and probably term s ‘teaching’ an d ‘in stru c tio n ’ are in a sim ilar situ atio n ) is one o f the reasons o f the lack o f precission in the conceptual a p p a ra tu s o f educational sciences, o f ed ucational sciences, o f m ultitude o f various definitions, som e being no longer feasible, som e to o general, som e erro n o u s. O ne o f the few educationists w ho were not satisfied with the m ere criticism o f the language o f pedagogics but w ho also put forw ard some rem edial m easures is F. K orniszew ski15. His advise is, by m eans o f specifica-tion o f m eanings an d the range o f main educaspecifica-tional concepts, to follow som e m ethodological directives and to consider only those m eanings th at are intuitively accepted to belong to the core o f the genuine stru ctu re o f educational processes in o rd e r to discover their im m anent features, which perm its a precise differentiation o f these concepts. Perform ing the act o f determ ining the processes o f education an d its real nature, one should rem em ber ab o u t its polarized ch aracter: on the one hand the influence o f educating persons o r en vironm ent on educated individuals, on the o th er hand, activities it those individuals an d charges occuring in their m ental lives and whole personalities. ‘Process o f ed u c a tio n ’, when defined, should be treated in a th o roughgoing but not general way.
Term s can be defined variously, how ever, once a definition has been ad o p ted , it m ust be con stan tly used, which is not alw ays the case in pedagogics. W hat characterizes its definition decisions is th a t they are ra th e r not obligatory and som etim es even their a u to rs neglect them .
O pinions different from trad itio n al ones (till the begining o f 19th century) em erged in the so called ‘new ed u catio n '. H ere ‘ed u c a tio n ’ is not co m p reh en -ded as a ‘m oulding’ (from rigorous one to extrem ely liberal, see S ośnicki16) but as unconstrained grow th viewed as by E. C lapared an d o th er representatives of psychologism 1 or as „ingrow ing o f an individual into a social cousciousness o f species” p ropagated by J. Dewey, the representative o f p ra g m a tism 18. „ I f education cousciously aim s at a fixed point disregarding inner situations and individuality o f person being educated, and w ants to o btain the results, th a t
ls See: K o r n i s z e w s k i , Pedagogika... 1<s See: S o ś n i c k i , Istota...
17 See: E. C l a p a r e d , W ychowanie funkcjonalne. Lwów. 18 See: J. D e w e y , M oje pedagogiczne credo, cz. 1, W arszaw a.
are to transform entirely his individuality, then it is a rigorous m oulding” 14. T his is an am ple o f a conditional definition. M oulding can be replaced with „ u n c o n strain ed grow th which is founded on the innate m akings lying in an organism and psyche of a child, n atu ra l laws steering this g ro w th ” 20. The present attem p ts to m ake the term 'e d u c a tio n ' m ore precise fluctuate between 'm o u ld in g ' and 'u n c o u n train ed g ro w th ’.
T he h itherto going considerations tend tow ards the realization not only by educationists but also by o rd in ary people, o f difficulties with which the theoreticians o f pedagogics deal when they try to render their language precise. M any definitions o f pedagogics have been form ulated, one o f them states that it is a „cousciously organized social activity w hose purpose is to evoke intended changes o f hum an p ersonality” 21. T his definition gives to o general idea o f the concept o f „e d u catio n ” . A n o th er prop o sitio n com es from B. S uchodolski: „T h e vital thing in a co n tem p o rary education is to shape people so that they could live in the conditions o f m odern civilization an d could meet its requirem ents, so th at they see the possibility o f a c u ltu ra l developm ent it gives them and, finally, so that they know w hat objectives and ways to them to chose an d from where to derive the jo y o f life” 22. This exp lan atio n is m ore m inute than the previous definition because is presented in term s o f the effects o f ed u catio n al processes (o f result, not action). A lthough both a u th o rs use the sam e concept, the definienses o f their definitions vary, which results from their specializations: W. O koń treats ‘ed u c a tio n ’ in m ore general term s since as a didactician he focussed on the problem s o f teaching and instruction. B. Suchodolski as a theoretician o f pedagogics m entions m any particu lar features. Still an o th er definition o f 'e d u c a tio n ' is provided by R. W roczyński, a social educationist. F rom his angle 'e d u c a tio n ' is a „system o f actions aim ing at determ ined educational result” 23 but it is also a social process d u rin g which a m an is under the influence o f an organized environm ent aim ing at his p re p ara tio n to life and at the optim um developm ent o f his personality. C om m only ad o p ted definition o f ‘ed u c atio n ’ says th at „it is a purposeful and intended influence on hum an psyche, especially o f adolescents in social te rm s" 24. The last expression narrow s the range o f 'e d u catio n ' to 'intended influence' thus excluding all the d om ains o f pedagogics m entioned earlier. The definitions quoted above characterize 'e d u c a tio n ' either as a process or as its effect.
19 S o ś n i c k i . P otrzeby..., p. 16. 20 Ibid., p. 18.
21 W. O k o ń , Słow nik pedagogiczny, W arszaw a 1981. p. 347.
22 B. S u c h o d o l s k i . W ychowanie dla przyszłości. W arszaw a 1959, p. 16.
R. W r o c z y ń s k i , W prowadzenie do pedagogiki społecznej. W arszaw a 1966, p. 9. 24 H. M u s z y ń s k i , Z a rys teorii wychowania, W arszaw a 1976, p. 23.
In the educational literature we com e across m any m ore definitions o f this term , their form ulations being strictly related to the ed u catio n al theory, within which they function. T he m ost often ‘ed u c atio n ’ is defined in term s o f a process, an d less o f its effects. T he judgem ent o f logical correctness o f a definition can be m ade only within the fram ew ork o f a given educational theory. T herefore all those definitions can be hardly related. If we com pare all these ways o f understanding the concept o f ‘ed u c a tio n ’ to the scale, we should place ‘rigorous m aulding’ on one pole an d ‘inconstrained g ro w th ’ on the other. M ost definitions o f the concept o f ‘ed u c a tio n ’ in Polish post-w ar pedagogics would oscilate tow ards ‘rigorous m oulding'. Lately, how ever, there can be noticed a turn to ‘unconstrained g ro w th ' an d alm ost to ‘an ti-e d u catio n ’ which is not com pletely elab o rated , but already p o p u lar in the W estern E urope.
Being confined to the limits and subject o f the paper, we can only pose the problem o f difficulties connected with the precise description o f educational sciences concepts. T he reflections concerning this m atter, and especially the specification o f concept o f ‘ed u c atio n ’ with use o f the elem ents o f logical theory o f definition, are to enable the theoreticians o f education to go beyond the considerations within the fram ew ork o f general pedagogics as understood now, and to solve the linguistic problem s on the basis o f m etatheory o f education and self-education o f a m an which, according to S. P alk a25, should be theoretical pedagogics.
D e p artm en t o f Logic Ł ó d ź U niversity Poland
Doroto H orbaczew ska
O T R U D N O Ś C IA C H W P R E C Y Z O W A N IU P O JĘ Ć P E D A G O G IK I
Język n au k pedagogicznych w ielokrotnie p o d d aw an y był krytyce. Jego p o rząd k o w an ie należy rozpocząć od sprecyzow ania pojęć: „w ychow anie” , „k ształcen ie” i „ n a u c za n ie ” , uw ażanych za p o dstaw ow e pojęcia pedagogiczne, a d o tą d nieokreślone w sp o só b zyskujący a p ro b a tę p rzy n aj-mniej większości pedagogów . W iększość k ontrow ersji i sp o ró w dotyczy przede w szystkim treści i zakresu pojęcia „w ychow anie ". R ó żn o ro d n o ść ujęć i sp o so b ó w użycia tego term inu pow oduje tru d n o ści w p o rozum iew aniu się, w ieloznaczność i c h ao s w dyskusjach i rozw ażaniach pedagogicz-nych. A naliza literatu ry ze zw róceniem szczególnej uwagi na definicje o m aw ianego pojęcia i codzienna p ra k ty k a pedagogiczna pozw oliły n a przep ro w ad zen ie p ró b y uśw iadom ienia wszyst-kim posługującym się językiem n au k pedagogicznych tru d n o ści, z jak im i b o ry k ają się pedagodzy teoretycy w precyzow aniu sw ego języka.
