The Philosophy of Mathematics Educa

The Philosophy of Mathematics Education
Different terms are used to these outcomes including aims, goals, targets and objectives. Since Taba (1962) a distinction is commonly drawn in education between short-term educational goals (objectives) and ‘broad aims’, the longer-term and less specific goals (aims)
Hirst (1974) argues that nothing is gained by making the distinction, and prefers the term ‘objectives’. Thus, for example, the index entry for ‘aims’ in Hirst(1974) reads ‘see objectives of education’. He argues that
this shift to a more technical term (objectives) alone indicates a growing awareness that more detailed description of the achievements we are after is desirable… (I)n speaking of curriculum objectives I shall have in mind as tight a description of what is to be learnt as is available.
(Hirst, 1974, page 16)
Thus Hirst, in keeping with both a systems view of the curriculum and behaviourist psychology, sees aims and objectives in technical and normative terms. That is they are a means to rational curriculum design, a means of specifying what the curriculum should be. This is a widespread view throughout the literature on curriculum theory, which has been described as assuming a static society, lack of conflict, and ‘the end of ideology’ (Inglis, 1975, page 37).
However, a specification of the aims of education can also serve another purpose. That is the criticism and justification of educational practice, in other words, educational evaluation, whether theoretical or practical. For in its broadest sense, educational evaluation is concerned with the value of educational practices. In contrast, the technical and normative approach to aims and objectives, by focusing on particular leaning outcomes, accepts much of the context and ‘status quo’ of education as unproblematic. The social and political contexts of education and the received view of the nature of knowledge are seen as the fixed backdrop against which curriculum planning takes place. Stenhouse acknowledges this.
The translation of the deep structures of knowledge into behavioural objectives is one of the principal causes of the distortion of knowledge in schools noted by Young (1971a), Bernstein (1971) and Esland (1971). The filtering of knowledge through an analysis of objectives gives the school an authority and power over its students by setting arbitrary limits to speculation and by defining arbitrary solutions to unresolved problems of knowledge. This translates the teacher from the role of the student of a complex field of knowledge to the role of the master of the school’s agreed version of that field.
(Stenhouse, 1975, page 86)
Contra Hirst, we retain the distinction between the aims and objectives of education, and focus on the former. This allows us to avoid presupposing the unproblematic nature of the assumptions on which education is based. It also allows the social context and social influences on the aims of education to be considered, as opposed to being assumed as unproblematic.