علی وحدتی دانشمند

Since the modernization of the Iranian school, the main question for reformers to deal with was how to interact and borrow from western education. Social reformers and educational activists have responded to this question and adopted a policy confronting it. The purpose of this article is to critically examine three moderate policies, namely: 1) Appropriation in the views of Mirza Malkum Khan and Mirza Yusuf Mustashar al-Dawla, 2) Selection in the views of Abdul Rahim Talibov, and 3) Instrumentalism in the efforts of Mohammad Ali Mojtahedi and Reza Roozbeh applying Derridean Deconstruction. Deconstruction shows that each of these policies has blind spots that have led to results contrary to the original intentions of their defenders. Appropriation, with its strong emphasis on commonalities, ignores the differences between the two systems of education. Selection has been inattentive to the gradual change of educational patterns by separating from their original context and the emergence of new interpretations. Instrumentalism with its focus on achieving the expected educational results has created an elitist system that ignores the unpredicted educational results and others marginalized by this consequentialism.

Discussions about the Gadamer-Habermas debate continue in philosophy. But in philosophy of education, Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics is usually accused of conservatism by the defenders of critical pedagogy, and there are few studies in defense of the critical power of Gadamer's hermeneutics. In Iran, official education reform documents emphasize both guarding and reconstructing tradition, but in practice, this balance seems ambiguous. Through re-reading Gadamer's hermeneutics, this paper analyzes the critical elements of tradition. In this way, it provides a defense of education based on philosophical hermeneutics and a model for confronting traditions in education. The central claim of this study is that Gadamer's understanding of tradition has both a descriptive expression as an educational basis and a normative expression as an educational principle. The ground for the realization of both is learning through negativity. In this context, historically effected consciousness, considering tradition as an answer to a question, critical distanciation from tradition, and application of tradition will be the most important critical elements that distinguish Gadamer's hermeneutics from conservative and traditionalist hermeneutics.

The main purpose of this study is to review and critique two competing educational borrowing policies in contemporary Iran, namely the wholesale reception of the West and the rebelling against it based on the issue of identity. In the first policy, the ideas of Akhundzadeh and Malkum Khan and in the second policy, the ideas of Shariati, Al-Ahmad and the official documents of educational reform after the Islamic Revolution are emphasized. Derrida's deconstruction approach has also been used to critique these policies and to reveal the contradictions of each of them, to go beyond the aporiatic situation resulting from this confrontation. Deconstruction shows that both politics are caught up in the metaphysics of presence and auto-immunity, ignoring the differance, supplementarity, and contamination between the "self" and the "other." It is also suggested at the end of the article, that the acceptance of the aporiatic situation as a transcendent condition of reform, identity non-closure, and supplementarity in Derrida's concept of negotiation be incorporated into the structure of any forthcoming borrowing policy.

The primary purpose of this study is to critique the official approach of educational reform in Iran from the viewpoint of immanent critique, which was first proposed by Hegel and then expanded and defended with some variations by Marx and Frankfurt School. In the first part, the ideas of Hegel, Marx, and Adorno on immanent critique are examined. Second, corresponding to each of these philosophers, three suggestions are made contrary to the current official approach to educational reform. In conclusion, the principles of immanent critique of the education system are stated, and the three criticisms raised by the Overseas Consultants Inc., Mohammad Ali Toosi and Samad Behrangi are evaluated accordingly.

The current crisis of meaning and identity is one of the major concerns for every educational system. Religious identity is one of the aspects of this problem that is highly recognized in Islamic Iran. This paper tries to provide a picture for the concept of religious identity, the role of stories, one of the chief sources of meaning, in its genesis and the consequences of storytelling for religious education based on the narrative hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur. The Ricoeurian thought shows that religious texts in general and religious stories in particular shape the religious identity. According to Ricoeur, description using narratives, is subject to pure narrativisim and it is necessary to move to explanation step. Although every narrative has its own world, but to explain the religious teachings using narratives, other rival discourses must be considered

It is commonly accepted that there is a significant difference between the most two prominent readings of phenomenology namely the Husserlian descriptive and Heideggerian interpretive ones. The present paper probes first to show that the aforementioned distinction arises from limited examination of Husserl's works. Besides, it is reflected that genetic themes with more hermeneutical elements in his last phase of thought have been neglected in the literature of the field. Second, a new approach is proposed, with the help of Merleu-ponty’s phenomenology, which in spite of similarities with both readings, goes beyond them. This new approach consists of three fundamental insights: (Re) considering the world, operative intentionality against thematized intentionality and considering passive synthesis at the final stage. Accordingly, some methodical suggestions include restricted and operative Epoche, description, imaginative variation, passive return to the phenomenon, and ongoing validation of the explanatione.

The main purpose of this study is to overcome the vulnerabilities of constructivism approach to history education and providing an alternative concept for student participation in this approach based on hermeneutical thought of Paul Ricoeur. The method of the research is conceptualization and philosophical induction. Findings indicate that constructivism in teaching history is vulnerable in positions like objectivity of the historical event and relativism in student interpretation. The metaphorical look to historical texts and the model of validation of guesses are the solutions that this article proposes. The appropriation of the world of historical text is also an alternative idea for active participation in learning.

Holistic education is one of the educational trends of the late twentieth century, which, resting on spiritual foundations, attempted to overcome the shortcomings of modern educational theories. Although the origin of this approach can be found in the works of contemporary Western educators, this paper traces its roots in the old Eastern philosophical and spiritual thoughts centered on Daoism, and illustrates the encounter between the contemporary form of this approach and its eastern form in ancient time .Using content analysis and philosophical evidence, this paper first elucidates the fundamental components of Daoism in the original texts of such books like “the Tao Te Ching” by Lao Tseu and Ching tse, and then deals with the part which this approach has in holistic education. Considering the fundamental themes of Daoism, such as the nature of Dao, the collapse of the conventional system of values, self-monitoring and negation of mind and language; the basic educational concept of "fluidity”, its basic purpose of "liberation from mind" and the fundamental concept of learning" not-learning" reveal the truth of Dao.