A Comparative Study of Morteza Motahari's View and Matthew Lipman's Approach to the Goals of Education

The main goal of this research is comparing Motahari’s approach to goals of education, which is based on Islamic education, and Lipman’s approach to the theory of “Philosophy for Children”, which is based on reflective education. To achieve this goal, first the approaches of both scholars about the research subject were extracted from library sources; then, they were compared based on the descriptive-inductive method. Both Motahari and Lipman, emphasize on reflection, thinking, rational education and reasonableness as the goals of education, but not as ultimate goals; rather, they consider them as preliminary goals to achieve the more superior  goal. Motahari believes that the ultimate goal of education is reaching the degree of God’s servitude and obtaining the spiritual degrees, which is presented under the Islamic value system; While the most important goal of “Philosophy for Children”, is teaching the children and juveniles to attain a better and more qualified life and become civilized and democrat citizens.
The results of this research show that although we can find some educational similarities between Motahari and Lipman, because of their influence from different value and anthropological systems, their approaches to ultimate goal of education are different.