Summary

What is the aim of education in the 21" century? Is it to search for truth, to improve the human condition, or to bolster a country's economy and meet the workforce needs of the state? Or should the aim of education be focused on social, academic, cultural, and intellectual development so that young people can grow up to be engaged and critical citizens?

These very searching questions - questions about the nature of education - are the concern of an area of philosophy, namely, the philosophy of education. In the 3rd edition of Philosophy of Education Today: An Introduction, the authors, in their exploration of the various responses provided by different philosophies of education to these questions, have included posthumanism in the corpus of philosophies of education which influences education and the way that education is understood.

The interactive nature of the text encourages readers to reflect critically on the various philosophies of education discussed and to come to an understanding of what education might mean to both them and their community. Contents include: African philosophy and an African philosophy of education; Empiricism and an empirical philosophy of education; Scientific rationalism and a scientific rationalist philosophy of

education; Phenomenology and a phenomenological philosophy of education; Hermeneutics and a hermeneutic philosophy of education; Systems theory and a systems theory philosophy of education; Critical theory and a critical philosophy of education; Feminism and a feminist philosophy of education; Postmodernism and a postmodern philosophy of education; Critical realism and a critical realist philosophy of education; Posthumansim and a posthuman philosophy of education. The Appendix contains a comparison of African Philosophy and Western philosophies.