Caritas et veritas 2018, 8(2):59-77 | DOI: 10.32725/cetv.2018.036

What's Wrong in Modern Education? Maritain's Warning is Valid Today More than Ever

Andrej Rajský

Trnava university in Trnava, Faculty of Education, Department of Educational Studies, Priemyselná 4, 918 43 Trnava

The neo-Thomist philosopher Jacques Maritain, in his pedagogical work Education at the Crossroads (1943), which contains four lectures delivered at Yale University, organically presents his dual vision on which his educational-philosophical considerations are based: awareness of values that make the person one universe and 'the absolute', which is connected with the sense of historical forms and needs. Transhistorical ideals need to be transferred to time structures. Education at the Crossroads deals with pedagogical questions in relation to the nature and aim of the human person, especially in the function of requirements typical for modern civilisation and education. Education is primarily a service of help to human nature that acquires its own developed form in man. Education is an extraordinarily demanding art which, by its very nature, belongs to the sphere of morality and practical wisdom. Maritain identifies seven major misconceptions in the effort to reflect education theoretically, which is, however, directly transferred to defective educational practice: 1. a confusion of ends with means, 2. a image of the end of education, 3. the focus of education on practice, 4. sociologism, 5. intellectualism, 6. voluntarism, and 7. a belief in the omnipotence of education. The submitted paper presents and analyses Maritain's warnings for education, valid perhaps even more today than at the time they were written.

Keywords: Jacques Maritain, philosophy of education, personalism, pedagogy, integral humanism, seven misconceptions

Published: September 30, 2018  Show citation