Now online: Avi Katzman interviews Israel Scheffler Prof. Scheffler speaks with VJEP staff member Avi Katzman about the questions facing philosophy of education today, the influences on his development as a thinker, and about his decades-long friendship with the late Seymour Fox, founder of the Visions of Jewish Education Project.  Follow this link to watch the video excerpts.

About Scheffler

Israel Scheffler is Victor S. Thomas Professor of Education and Philosophy, Emeritus, at Harvard University, where he directed the Philosophy of Education Research Center (PERC) and Scholar-in-Residence at the Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education at Brandeis University. A founding member of The National Academy of Education, he is the author of Four Pragmatists, In Praise of the Cognitive Emotions, Symbolic Worlds, and other works in philosophy. He has also written a memoir on his early Jewish education, Teachers of My Youth. 

For a bibliography of Scheffler's works up to 1992, see "Writings of Israel Scheffler" from Synthese 94:1 (January 1993), pp. 139-144.  An updated bibliography is available at the Pragmatism Cybrary.

For an essay on Scheffler's contributions to philosophy of education, see Harvey Siegel's "Editor's Introduction" in Reason and Education: Essays in Honor of Israel Scheffler (Dordecht: Kluwer, 1997), pp. 1-6.

An interview with Scheffler conducted by Michal Peleg and published in Ha'aretz discusses his views on technology in education, ethnic studies programs, and educational leadership. The interview, "היהודי המחונך"  (May 6, 1994) and an English translation are available here.

Scheffler's Conception

Scheffler pointed us to several works that provide a background to his paper "The Concept of the Educated Person: With Some Applications to Jewish Education" in Visions of Jewish Education (pages 219 to 232). Excerpts from these works are given in the Supplement to his paper, and we recommend the full versions as the basis for further study of Scheffler's conception.

"Sacred texts taught without a philosophical attitude," Scheffler claims, "are in danger of being received either as literal but incredible dogma, or as mere fairy tale, or as nonsense to be repeated with a pious incomprehension that will not survive adult reflection." In his memoir Teachers of My Youth: An American Jewish Experience (Dordecht: Kluwer, 1995) he has described the importance of his own education and the "special responsibility" that he feels for a commitment to Judaism. The Supplement quotes from the final chapter of Teachers of My Youth (see Visions of Jewish Education, pages 233 to 249). The full chapter, "Beyond," is available here.

A second essay, "Jewish Education: Purposes, Problems, and Possibilities," addresses the unique dimensions and concerns of Jewish education as distinct from those of general education and its philosophical categories. The essay, originally given as a commencement address to the Mandel Jerusalem Fellows in 1985, is reprinted in D. J. Margolis and E. S. Schoenberg's Curriculum, Community, Commitment (West Orange, NJ: Behrman House, 1992).

"Moral Education and the Democratic Ideal," also quoted in the Supplement, sketches some of the questions of education in democratic systems, and serves as a background for Scheffler's distinction between "education" and "schooling" and his consideration of character education. The essay was published in Reason and Teaching (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1973).