Value and Knowledge in Contemporary Education

Values and knowledge have always defined and interlaced each other regardless of how much we try to ignore or even conceal this. The value neutrality of knowledge is just as illusory as the cognitive neutrality of values is; the will to rule has found a firm foothold for the manipulation of spiritually cloven and (self)alienated people in this illusion of the separation of knowledge and values, which has facilitated their absolutisation for thousands of years. Even though philosophers have been interested in education almost since the inception of philosophy, no difference between education and manipulation was noted until the beginning of the 20th century; moreover, education was reduced to and identified with manipulation. As a rule, education was considered a means of the realisation of a given ‘higher purpose’, which was defined by theoreticians of education according to their own ideological convictions. However, independently of their mutual ideological differences, pedagogues imparted values and knowledge - more or less authoritatively and as if the two were detached - to children through ‘moral instruction’ on the one hand, and ‘education’ on the other, thus upholding the already created illusion that getting an education does not make people be better, as well as that it is possible to instruct people to be good although they are uneducated. Such ‘educational’ approaches supported authoritarian and traditional relationships, which originally conditioned the approaches themselves. The institution of civil society and the philosophy of self-consciousness have finally facilitated both the possibility to reflect on education through the concepts of man’s autonomy and personality, and the differentiation of education from manipulation. The increasing need of society for Creative individuals in all the spheres, particularly in commerce, has placed philosophy before the task to reflect on the relationship between education and creativity. As a result, people are becoming increasingly aware of the fact that value and knowledge - as constituent elements of education - are inseparable, that they permeate each other, and that the only way that it is possible to support and encourage the development of the personality of students - i.e., their peculiarities, autonomy, freedoms and creativity - is by respecting the unity of value and knowledge in education