FROM MYTHOLOGY, THROUGH THINKING BY VALUES, TO TELEOLOGY OF EDUCATION

The methods of interpretation of reality, including social functioning of man in all its aspects, have undergone evolution from mythological to scientific thinking. Despite technological advancement, the human thought is still ensnared in the outcomes of this process of changes that have taken place on the way between a myth and philosophy. This is especially noticeable in the field of humanities, and particularly dangerous in the case of social disciplines such as education. Regardless of its kind, any social order defends itself against the loss of power, prestige, status and influence, and hence employs all possible means, including science together with pedagogy and media, in order to maintain the existing status quo.

Has rationalism liberated humanity from mythical, and consequently ideological, interpretations of educational methods? Or perhaps thanks to its ideological content the myth utilised by human mind still dominates in pedagogy?

Plato’s introduction to epistemology of a method of raising an element of imagination with metaphorical colouring (i.e. myth) towards a true world of universals has become a way of expressing the goal of knowledge achievable in the ultimate experience of reasoning (theoria). His epistemology reinforced thinking by possibilities in Neoplatonic philosophy. In pedagogy possibilities have become a sphere of chances, and thereby educational successes. As a consequence this method has led to the adoption of another one, namely axiologism.

The language of pedagogy usually refers to the concept of ‘the attainable’ and, according to a particular worldview and ideology, it assumes axiology as its aim, the latter in turn becoming the cause of educational processes, with a possible result of a value assumed in teleology. In this way, through teleology, axiology becomes a mythological goal of education. It is mythological because a choice of a world of values is an arbitrary reflection of some contemporaneous ideology.

Apart from a thorough description of the chain of such transformations, the present article also discusses the effects of adopting an axiological method in the process of education. Additionally, it points out that there is a different approach to teleological issues in pedagogy, namely, that the focus falls on the anthropological basis of education in line with the assumptions of Aristotelianism. Such assumptions lead to a statement that the essence of being lies in itself and the process of education must be based on the potential of a human being rather than on an abstract goal or some preconceived value.