Why Does Epistemology Matter in Education?

Abstract

The question posed in the title above presupposes that epistemology does in fact matter in education. Does it? One reason that it does matter, at least at first glance, is that a traditional and rarely questioned aim of education is that students acquire knowledge. If educational efforts are rightly thought to aim at transmitting knowledge to students and providing them with the abilities and inclinations needed to acquire more (Goldman 1999, p. 349), then epistemology does seem to matter, insofar as epistemology is that branch of philosophy that takes knowledgeincluding the knowledge education aims to pass on to students and the knowledge it strives to enable students to acquire on their ownas its subject of study. But this may seem too quick. For example, a "practical" member of the local school board might well agree with the aim, but disagree that it warrants student study of epistemology. After all, epistemology pursues rather abstract questions and problems-What is knowledge?; Do we actually know anything?; If so, how can we distinguish the genuine item from ersatz imposters?; etc.and knowledge concerning these epistemological questions concerning the nature, scope, and limits of knowledge, although they may fascinate professional epistemologists and the occasional student, is the sort of "impractical" esoterica that does not deserve a place in the curriculum, for it won't help students in the practical business of life. Worse still, an objector to the inclusion of epistemology in the curriculum might object on the grounds that philosophical speculation of the sort that epistemologists traffic in, concerning, for example, the conditions of knowledge, the nature of truth, or the character and possibility of justification, does not itself constitute knowledge. Rather, the objection goes, it is idle speculation: like much of philosophy, it is the locus of interminable argument and counterargument, unprovable claims and counterclaims, and so is not entitled to a place in educational institutions, if the aims of those institutions include that of transmitting knowledge to students and enabling them to acquire more. These possible objections to the inclusion of epistemology in the curriculum are important, but they can be answered. The first objection depends upon the alleged fact that philosophical wonderand at least for some, subsequent inquiryis irrelevant to students' actual, "practical" lives. But this is false: many, perhaps most students, are naturally led, in the ordinary course of their lives, to wonder about all sorts of things that are at