ABSTRACT
WHEN D.J.O'Connor published his small, but original and influential volume. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education, in 1957, 1 he cast some grave doubts on the adequacy and validity of contemporary theories in education. He also noted the prevalent confusion regarding the nature of philosophy of education and its rôle in educational theory. Since that time there has been a great deal of attention paid to these questions, both by educationists with a concern for philosophical issues, and by philosophers with a fresh interest in educational problems. In fact, the tendency toward self-analysis among scholars interested in education has become so widespread that it sometimes seems that we shall never see the issues for the meta-problems. However, during the past decade some very important gains have been made as a result of these investigations. Perhaps the most important of these is the recognition of the complexity of the field of education and the futility of any attempt to arrive at a notion of educational theory based exclusively on the model of theories in science. For the field of education is broad, ranging in its concerns from simple problems of tutoring to questions of desirable curricula for the secondary schools, from the efficacy of teaching machines to the limitations of Socratic method, from the methods of teaching grammar to criteria for success in moral education. And the disciplines that must be drawn upon in seeking solutions to this wide range of multi-faceted problems are several.
