1-Grace Lau, Kwok Keung Ho

Hellenic Journal of Research in Education  Laboratory of Research in Pedagogy and Educational Practices Department of Education Sciences in Early Childhood Democritus University of Thrace eISSN 2241-7303 2017, Volume 6, Issue 1, p.p. 73-94 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.12681/hjre.10886

A Preliminary Exploration of the Influence of Greek Philosophy on Early Childhood Education: An Application in Hong Kong

Grace LAU Kwok Keung HO Education University of Hong Kong Education For Christ Foundation

Abstract The twentieth century saw great hopes but also great failures. Philosophy, however, by its timeless truth, might confront the ever changing fashion by giving people a pointer through its philosophical application in the realm of education. In this paper, the authors argue that many philosophical teachings from the famous Greek philosophers are indeed influential when their teachings are applied to the early childhood classrooms in Hong Kong. Their sphere of influence has extended from the British colonial period to the present era in Hong Kong as far as early childhood education is concerned. For Plato, his theory of Forms and his emphasis on the search of Truth will be compared with Aristotle empiricist views in his study of nature. While analyzing the theory of Forms and the idea of the Good, the authors found that Plato’s approach could be traced back to Xenophanes who proposed a monotheistic theory of God and is religiously related to Christianity. Their applications in the top-down teacher-directed play-based curriculum were valid in the early childhood educational mode during the early colonial period to the 1980s in Hong Kong. Since Aristotle was found to have a different approach to Forms as compared to those of Plato, Aristotle’s argument for Forms was mentioned and its relevancy to the prevalent hybrid mode of the play-work-based curriculum in early childhood education is explored. Following the most recent reform in early childhood education in Hong Kong, free play is recommended in the reform document. Heraclitus’s doctrine of ‘flux’ could apply most suitably in the free play condition as ‘flux’ signifies an ever changing condition just as the nature of free play does. A final touch of this paper is on exploring the divergent views of Plato and Aristotle and their impacts on education today so as to provoke further thoughts of the readers in the areas explored.

Key words: Early childhood education, curriculum, Greek philosophy, Plato, Aristotle

1. Introduction Following the Renaissance artist Raphael (1511) who placed Plato and Aristotle at the centre of the painting “The School of Athens” --a classic mural which illustrated the history of philosophy. The authors of this article will try to present how the philosophical stance of Plato and Aristotle, in particular, has played in the realm of early childhood education in Hong Kong.

______Corresponding author’s address: R.I.C.E., 5 Tong Yam St., 6/F, Tai Hang Tung, Kowloon, Hong Kong e-mail: [email protected] URL: http://ejournals.epublishing.ekt.gr/index.php/hjre/index 74

Figure 1 The School of Athens by Raphael (1509-1510)

(source-Wikipedia)

2. Religion, Philosophy, Myth and Education The twentieth century saw great hopes but also great failures. Alongside technological triumphs and unprecedented scientific advances, there were ecological disasters and a fear of science. In those parts of the world characterized by increasing prosperity and liberal democracy, there was at the same time an erosion of traditional beliefs and values, such as the decline of religious faith (O’ Hear, 2001).

Education has always been a religious function of society and is closely linked to its religion (Rushdoony, 1981). O’ Hear (2001) wrote that,

It is certainly true that religion is not the same as philosophy, and it never has been. Philosophy does not pretend to bring us revelations about the ultimate purpose of the universe or the intentions of its creator, if there is one. Its wisdom, such as it is, is what can be gleaned by reflection on the world and human experience without the benefit of the teachings from sacred scriptures or the revelations of gods or would-be prophets.

In the upheavals and dilemmas presented by the twentieth century, and following the disenchantment of Judeo-Christian religion, how much more could philosophy have to offer? Cultural historians would see philosophy as reflections of the times which produce it. But philosophy, surely, claims to be getting at timeless truths, truths which might confront and embarrass ever changing fashion, and which might, in their difficulties, give people pointers by which to steer through its philosophical application in the realm of education.

Greek ancient philosophers, like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle as well as philosophers like St. Thomas Aquinas were certainly interested in conceiving philosophy as a discipline leading to truth, about the best way to live, and about one’s place in the universe. These renowned philosophers were influenced by the Pre-Socratic philosopher, Xenophanes into believing that (through logical thinking that) in the universe, there is only one God instead of many gods as the rest of the ancient citizens in Greece did. Xenophanes aimed his critique at the polytheistic religious views of earlier Greek poets and of his own contemporaries like "Homer" did. Xenophanes argued that many vices of man like, theft, adultery and mutual deception "are attributed to the gods all sorts of things that are matters of reproach and censure among men (Zalta, 2017).

In our understanding, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle have no doubt provide such a good pointer, as Shields (2012) lamented that “anyone wishing to reflect upon the best sort of life available to human beings will benefit from an encounter with Socrates or someone schooled by him”. On the other hand,

Homer, his gods, as well as Xenophanes, Pythagoras, Parmenides to Heraclitus, had each contributed uniquely their parts in the educational paradigms even to the present era. It is found that Plato left his footprints in the construction of early childhood curriculum and pedagogy in Hong Kong during the British colonial period while Aristotle’s model of curriculum and pedagogic practices, effected its influence in the prevalent educational mode in Hong Kong. Coupled with the two gurus ancient Greek philosophers, the authors would like to argue that Heraclitus had exerted his influence in the latest curriculum model in Hong Kong in 2017 (Education Bureau, 2017) and onwards by his doctrine of flux through free play. The authors would present the arguments in the subsequent paragraphs that follow.

3. An overview of the Early Childhood Education in Hong Kong before the 1980s In a documentary film “Preaching and Education” under the series of “The History of Education” in Hong Kong produced by the Radio and Television Hong Kong, it was documented that there was no specific plan for education in Hong Kong in the beginning of the colonial era (RTHK, 2010). The population was small and there were not many students. So education was a reaction to the social situation. Seeing that the churches were zealous in providing education, the government was pleased with their initiatives and results. Many preschools and kindergartens in Hong Kong were run by religious organizations or non- government organizations (NGOs) in that period and many have survived even to the present day. The figure in HKedCity (2008) has shown that kindergartens and preschools has still amounted to 54 % out of the total 100 % number of kindergartens and preschools which are regarded as schools with religious belief (of all religions) in Hong Kong.

As the historical record reflects, these Protestant and Catholic kindergartens have a long history of establishments. The origin of these religious schools was closely tied up with the development of education in Hong Kong since its early days as a port and British colony. The kindergarten curriculum during that period was mainly identified as the subject-based one and the pedagogy used was direct- instructional and was teacher-centred. The rationale behind the paradigm was mainly based on the philosophical belief that everything, including the curriculum and pedagogy applied should be God- centre (Wong, 2009). With a God-centre ideological/philosophical design in mind and practise, the paradigm of education mode should be of the traditional type. According to Dewey, the antagonists of traditional education, is one which is based on the teaching of religious belief/doctrine by believing that it is the search for certitude, determined “basic metaphysics” and led to the presupposition that “only the completely fixed and unchanging can be real” (Dewey, 1929, 1963). Morris and Adamson (2010) have further echoed that “schools were being used to induct the young into the beliefs of a given religion (e.g. Catholicism or Islam) or of a political ideology (e.g. Nazism or Communism) and thus the justification of having the traditional education was established”. Morris and Adamson (2010) quoted what Eisner (1992) had explained, “orthodoxies are not essentially about doubts, but about certainties. Indeed, to become orthodox is to become a true believer”. Accordingly, the missionaries and educators from the West, such as from England, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and France came with a missionary heart, established schools and communities services even prior to the establishment of the Anglican Churches in Hong Kong (Chan, 2017). On the side of the Roman Catholic, for example, historical record from the Catholic Church directory (2017) shown that the Canossian Missionary came as early as year 1860 to Hong Kong and in the same year, the Sacred Heart Canossian kindergarten, the Sacred Heart Canossian School and the Sacred Heart Canossian College were established. Their purpose is to preach the good news of the Gospel so as to inculcate the minds of the 76 young to become true believers of the Christian religion. The means to do so is through education. Historical record shows that the Sacred Heart Canossian Chapel was only built in year 1907, which was for more later than the establishment of their kindergarten and schools.

According to an Anglican bishop in Hong Kong, faith in the Christian religion is inseparable with every aspects of life, including the way how education is to be fostered. In other words, education should be seen as a holistic and integral part when preaching the Christian faith (Chan, 2017). Henceforth, the mode of curriculum and pedagogy so chosen must match with the Christian aim of education and is centred around the God-centred philosophy and ideology (Wong, 2009). As such, schools with the Christian missionary purpose (faith school) when first established in Hong Kong in the colonial period, would not employ the child development theory, the child-centred theory nor the experiential learning theory of Dewey (1938, 1997) though the early missionaries in Hong Kong knew very well that these theories had long been flourished at the time when they came to Hong Kong from the West.

4. Climate for Change since the 1980s The world is changing and so must the curriculum. The old paradigm of teacher-centred curriculum was now considered out-dated and was considered as “unbelievable” for “assessing” the young children at their young age as reported by the Llewellyn visiting panel (Llewellyn et al,1982). It was found that the Llewellyn visiting panel had the humanistic stance in education as opposed to the religious mind set for formulating curriculum issue.

Accordingly, what the Llewellyn visiting panel proposed in their report on the direction for teaching and learning of early education curricula (Llewellyn et al, 1982) was subsequently endorsed by the Education Commission (1986). It is the government’s stated aim of reform to improve the quality of education in the early years and one of the mechanisms has been through introducing ‘play’ as central to the curriculum. As such, the traditional mode of education for the young children studying in kindergartens should give way to a holistic development underpinned by a child-centred ideology for quality education near the end of the 20 th century (Lau & Ho, 2010). “Learning through play” has become progressively more enforcing in the subsequent early childhood reform in 1996, 2006 and in 2017.

In the 2006-07 policy address, the Chief Executive of Hong Kong committed HK$2 billion to enhancing holistic early childhood education (Tsang, 2006). The new paradigm of a child-centred curriculum is considered necessary to keep pace with international quality educational developments and the enhancement of child-centred curriculum is made through play , which is an integration of all the subject-disciplined for the young children.

In line with the implementation of the free quality kindergarten education policy, the Education Bureau (EDB) has announced the details of the Kindergarten Education Curriculum Guide (KGECG) as a heightening step for emphasising the direction of children’s whole-person development (Education Bureau, 2017). Of the key emphases of the KGECG, adopting learning through play and free exploration in play as major learning activities to inculcate a love to learn among children has become the focus of attention for the practitioners in the field.

Many educators in Hong Kong might have missed the fact that using play to foster learning is not a new adventure in the recent age, it could be traced back to ancient time in Greece.

5. Play as the major means for fostering learning of young children is well documented in ancient Greeks According to Brown and Cheesman (2003), the idealization of “play” was alive and well documented in the ancient world of Greeks.

Heraclitus is reported to have proposed that the act of play is more virtuous than the act of governing. But the sophists, such as Thrasymachos, preferred an approach such that education is to enable learners to acquire learning through force/coercion (bia). Having said that, both Plato and Aristotle argued that play and seriousness (work) should be distinguished; and of the two, seriousness is the most important (Miller 1973; Brown & Cheesman, 2003; Lau, 2005). It was a fact that Plato would prefer a demarcation of play and work and his stance could be echoed to the Christian belief that “pray” and “play” should be separated. What should be practised instead should be “pray” and “work” (Gozier, 2000).

6. The Philosophy of Plato and its similarity with the Christian one God Theology on Goodness Plato’s philosophy exerted its influence on Judaic philosophy in many ways. God as the fountainhead of goodness and the privation of God is evil. Those things that partake the God/the form of goodness are good, those things deficient in God/the form of goodness are wicked (Philosophy and Ethics, 2017).

The following is an attempt to draw the similarity of Plato’s philosophy with the ideological stance of Christianity and its application in education would be like. By doing so, one might be able to justify Plato has a close similarity, if not entirely, as the Christian educator on using “play” as a curriculum and pedagogy following the “recommendation” by the Hong Kong British Government since the 1980s (Education Bureau, 2017), to foster a more balanced curriculum on which the play elements must be added in the curriculum. But the “play” adopted in this period by the faith schools was basically the Platonic type, which has a FORM to follow.

6.1 Plato’s Idealism Plato’s Idealism influenced philosophy and religion during the Medieval Period (325-1300) “age of faith”. In order to explore Plato’s idealism and its application in education, one needs to understand Plato’s theory of Forms and his idea of the Good.

6.2 Plato and his theory of Forms Plato had little interest in the so-called gods of the Greeks. He saw those mythological characters trapped in the same dilemmas as the human race, unable to offer solutions to the problems of life nor could exercise justice. For example, Plato put his critique of the Homeric, anthropomorphic conception of gods into the mouth of Socrates when he said, “how is it that the gods themselves assign to many good men misfortunes and an evil life but to their opposites a contrary lot; and begging priests and soothsayers to go to rich men’s doors and make them believe that they by means of sacrifices and incantations have accumulated a treasure of power from the gods that can expiate and cure with pleasurable festivals” (Plato, 360B.C.E.). Plato was a believer of monotheism for he thought that truth could only be found in one God and Plato had used “Good” to analogize this one God.

The very fact that Plato rejected relativism might confirm Augustine’s saying that polytheism with its conflicting and multiple values do not justify truth itself. In our understanding of ‘truth’, it is an abstract Form and is distinct. It could not be ‘truth’ for something and ‘untruth’ for another under different conditions and time span.

Furthermore, Plato also did not believe that the study of the world around us, the world of nature, could provide answers, he rejected nature and its “facts” as a source of universal truth. He believed that truth was obscured by human preoccupation with the mundane experiences of the material world, a conviction he illustrated in an allegory of a cave (Plato, 360 B.C.E.; Kienel et al, 1998; Lau, 2005).

Figure 2 Plato’s Cave

The parable of the cave illustrates Plato’s picture of the human condition and it carries the meaning that, ‘most of the humanity is content with mere appearance, the equivalent of the flickering shadows on the wall of the cave. Philosophers, however, since they love truth, seek knowledge of reality. They journey out of the cave and get access to the Forms. The world of Forms is timeless and unchanging. Philosophers, with their love of wisdom, gain access to the world of Forms, and thus the possibility of knowledge, through thought; perception restricts us to the “flux” of the world of appearance’ (Warburton, 2014).

For Plato, the theory of Forms is a metaphysical argument because it is best understood as to reduce context-sensitive properties to sets of the sense particulars which manifest them. Forms are distinct and unchangeable, bereft of context-sensitivity, and so explanatorily basic relative to the particulars which, to use Plato’s word, participate in them (Shields, 2012).

Plato suggested that, “Forms are objects of thought, rather than objects of sense.” In this, Shields further wrote, “Plato relies especially clearly on facts about compresence of opposites ultimately rooted in Heracleitean doctrines about flux. 1” Plato did share Heraclitus’ conviction that only through such changes life in the world of experience is possible. Hence, Plato is said to have responded to such doctrines that comes to think of Forms as permanent, unchanging, abstract entities, graspable by discerning minds but unavailable to unabated sense perception.

6.3 Plato’s notion of the Good The concept of one God mentioned earlier in this article indeed could be traced back to Xenophanes who seemed to propose a monotheistic theory of god, which related closely to Parmenides’ theory of a single, eternal and changeless being. On whether Plato borrowed the monotheistic theory of God from them, one needs further exploration of literature (Baltzly, 2016). However, there is no doubt that in Plato’s work, one could confirm his idea of the Good.

The Good or the idea of the Good has a very special (ontological) status in Plato’s philosophy. It transcends even knowledge and being. What is meant by “the Good”, Plato had never made clear in his dialogue in metaphysics (Ross, 1995). It is Aristotle who gave us the answers in his metaphysics “Of those who maintain the existence of the unchangeable substances some say the ONE itself is the GOOD itself, but they thought its substance lay mainly in its unity (Ross, 1995). Plato’s (429-347 BCE) idea of the Good was formulated partly due to Plato’s own logical thinking that there would exist the Good above the Beings and partly might be due to the adaptation to Pythagoras’ ideas of the immortal souls (Huffman, 2014).

It is the Good which is the ultimate focus of philosopher’s quest for knowledge. Good does exist eternally. Plato thought that the idea of the Good was the “greatest stuff of learning” because “it is by their relation to it that just things and the others become useful and beneficial.” In other words, one has to know in what way e.g. justice and beauty are good. Christian scholars who studied Plato have identified the Platonic Good as the “God” of Christianity (Wild, 1949; Cross & Livingstone, 1997).

Plato used the simile of the sun to explain this idea of the Good. See figure 3

Figure 3 Notion of the Sun

Source: Modified from the website of docstoc.com

The sun makes sight possible and is the source of growth; the Form of the Good allows the mind’s eye to ‘see’ and understand the nature of reality. Without the illumination provided by the Form of the Good, we are condemned to live in a twilight world of appearance and opinion; in the light of the Good we can glean knowledge of how to live. In other words, the Good is the cause of both truth and knowledge, as like the sun is the cause of visibility and the capacity of seeing (Warburton, 2014). This concept of the ‘Good’ and the “Mind” has again confirms the metaphysical element in it.

Note that in a printing (see images below) by Michelangelo Buonarroti (1508-1512), namely “the Creation of Adam”, one might understand God’s pink cloak, which is the same shape as a brain. Some people think Michelangelo intended it to be a symbol of God’s Mind.

Figure 4 The Creation of Adam (source: picture taken from the website)

It is the “Mind ” that arranges all things in order and causes all things and the former Catholic Pope Benedict XVI once says “God is Mind”.

It is the theory of the Good which transcends the knowledge and “Being” that Aristotle has mostly disagreed with Plato. To Aristotle, the more the concept is abstract and general, the more he rejects it and regards it as not worth believing. Hence, Aristotle was an empiricist. The authors would like to argue that he laid the seed for the philosophers who came after him like David Hume, John Dewey for their experimental approach in education. It is this split of thoughts between Plato and Aristotle on Forms and the ideas of Good that has demarcated the educational approaches between the two philosophy gurus in ancient Greece. Each of them has impacted far-reaching ends in the realm of education even to the present day. Aristotle’s philosophical ideas and its application in Hong Kong early childhood education will be discussed in more details under section 7 of this paper.

6.4 The significance of Plato’s Form and the Idea of the Good in the realm of early childhood education in Hong Kong Plato’s search for universal ideas and truths, which he referred to as Ideals or Forms mentioned earlier , and the ultimate reality from which everything in this world derived, led him to pass the material world to its origins. To Plato, the higher and more general is more inclusive and the more specific entities are derived from more general one. From the view of generation, more general is higher. Hence, as shown in the figure 5 below, “Point” is the highest since it is the most general among the Line, Plane and Body. Accordingly, the education mode and pedagogic practices of Plato would prefer a kind of top- down approach such that the teacher has the authority to initiate the curriculum content for the young children and the young children would be taught by the teacher accordingly. As such, the top-down approach of Platonic Forms is applied as the pedagogic practices in the early childhood education (ECE) classroom as far as Hong Kong is concerned. Apart from this top-down approach, Plato’s curriculum is regarded as an “old” traditional curriculum since Plato believes that every good things, including knowledge, justice, beauty, righteousness, love, friendship…etc are different kinds of Forms in its own merit which is fixed and cannot be changed to changing environments. For this reason, Form is metaphysical. Henceforth, Forms could not be taught by exploration nor by experiential education. As a student, one needs to learn his/her knowledge of Forms either through recollection of his/her memory of the Forms or through transmission of knowledge by the teachers to them. These are the

teachers who love philosophy and thus have acquired the true knowledge of things to transmit to them. As far as young children is concerned, the authors of this paper would argue that the role of teacher has become important for transmitting Forms to the young children especially when the latter is in their tender age who might not be able to recollect the Forms they acquire at birth (according to Plato). The transmission of Forms by the teachers to the young children is regarded as the second application of Platonic Forms in the ECE pedagogic practices in Hong Kong on which teacher has an important role of directly teaching the young children.

Since Form is definite and fixed, the knowledge transferred to the young children should be fixed if Platonic Form is to be applied. The third application of Platonic Forms is about the transmission of good values (Forms) from generations to generations through the design of a particularly type of play curriculum used by the faith schools in the early colonial years to the end of 1990s.

However, it is a fact that since 1980s onwards, the curriculum and pedagogic practices in early childhood education has progressively adopted the child-centered approaches advocated by the Curriculum Development Council in Hong Kong, the opposite direction to those of Plato’s practices is found. Crucially, the 1996, 2006, 2016 and the revised 2016 Guide to the Pre-primary Curriculum published in 2017 henceforth do not fit into the Platonic philosophical mode of practices even though the Platonic mode fits perfectly with the faith schools in Hong Kong (Education Bureau, 2017).

It is found that despite the enforcement of the child-centered practices by the Education Bureau (1996, 2006, 2017), most of the religious schools in Hong Kong despite saying that they espouse the new child-centered mode of play, in real practice, they are found still adopting the traditional teacher- centered approaches to education (Li, Rao & Tse, 2012; Chan, 2006), which is basically the mode that this paper mentioned as the “Platonic mode of practices” or the Aristotle’s mixed mode of practices. The Platonic approach is a concept familiar to Christians , who believe that “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…” without Him was not anything made that was made.” But Plato had no Scripture (being born before Christ) and no confidence in the supposed revelation of Greek mythology to set his fixed point of reference. He relied instead on a process of meticulous and logical deliberation and dialogue to bring ideas to their reasonable conclusion. Reason, applied to the meaningful questions of life, would provide an understanding of the first principles, the basic issues of life. Truth and reality could be found only by turning from the material world to the world of the mind and ideas, to intellectual, investigation of the Forms, Universals and Ideals (Kienel et al, 1998). Plato suggested that we could comprehend the Universals through reason because in a sense we once knew them. In the process of birth, of becoming particulars ourselves, the truths we once knew were submerged, lost in our subconscious. He believed that truth was both outside of nature and somehow, innately within us. In Raphael’s mural, Plato points upward, emphasizing that reality is above and beyond nature and must be explored by the mind and intuition. This emphasis is called idealism. Idealism is the dialectical search for the ideals Forms from which everything in our world derives.

Plato valued a reasoning mind and virtuous character, together with his emphasis on the innate knowledge, the wisdom of the past and personal responsibility. In real life situation, the education model based on Plato’s Idealism and when applied in Early Childhood Education is through Play. Examples of how Platonic Play is operated in the early years classroom will be mentioned in the sections 6.5.

In practical terms, directed play or game with teaching purposes belong to the top-down approaches and it is still widely used in the faith schools and survived in various stages of reforms in Hong Kong (Li, Rao & Tse, 2012; Chan, 2006)., even though these schools do not ‘openly’ admit that they are still practicing the traditional mode of play in the early childhood classroom (Lau & Lai, 2013).

Based on what has been discussed, the authors began to understand Plato’s mode of education paradigm and its relevancy for the kindergartens and preschools which have the Christian religion belief are mostly reflected in the colonial period. It could be regarded as the old version of curriculum paradigm versus the new version of curriculum paradigm advocated in Hong Kong since the advent of the Pre-primary educational guide in the new century (Education Bureau, 2017).

Figure 5 Derivation by Plato (figure deduced from Met. Book 5 ch. 8, 1017b17. 21 (=Test/ Plat. 33b), also book 5 ch.11 11, 1018b37.1019a4(=Test. Plat. 33a)

Point = one Derivation ↓ Line= two The higher and ↓ more general is Plain= lines (three points) more inclusive, ↓ more specific Body = planes (four points) entities are derived from more general one. Hence, more general is higher from the view of generation.

6.5 Plato’s Form of Play

Although nothing had been recorded in Plato’s writing that Play was a kind of Form, the very fact that Plato had thought of Play as something with educational value was suffice to justify that Play was a kind of Form.

For Plato, Play could be serious and useful when it contributed to the educational process. Plato himself employed Play with serious intent in the education of potential philosophers, when he used an imaginative myth to describe the education of learners as they moved from an unenlightened condition to enlightenment in the Myth of the Cave (514a-518b).

Plato honoured Play ( paidia ) as a means to encourage learning since he believed that it was the most persuasive and effective approach to learning for the free citizens in a society which honoured philosophers. The educational Play of children is central to the Republic. Socrates, who discussed with Glaucon the importance of Play in the education of the philosophical rulers in the city, stated in the Republic, 536d-f and 537a, that

So it’s while they’re young/children (paisin) that we should set them arithmetic, geometry, and the rest of the studies which are the essential preliminaries ( propaideuthenai ) before taking up dialectic. But we shouldn’t present the work as compulsory.

“Why not?”

“Because an autonomous person ( eleutheron ) should never learn a subject in a slavish fashion,” I explained. “It’s true that if physical work is performed under compulsion, the body isn’t impaired, but compulsory intellectual work never remains in the mind”.

“True,” he said.

“So the educational environment in which you foster your younger generation, Glaucon,’ I said, “should be light-hearted/play (paidzontas) rather than authoritarian/force (bia). This will also help you to see what natural abilities every one of them has”.

Here Socrates presented the optimum approach to education as a non-coercive Play activity in which children were to participate freely/autonomous (536d, cited in Lau, 2005). The term “autonomous” in this context does not imply that educational Play is unstructured and has no limits, since the freedom of individuals in the Republic must be viewed within the limiting context of the city (434a-e) and in the form of a more “ law-abiding Play ” ( ennonmoterou…paidias, 424e) (Krentz, 1998, ibid., 2005) which young children are joyfully engaged with in Play according to rules set by the adults.

The children of our community must engage in more lawful amusements right from the start, because when pastimes become lawless and children follow suit, it is impossible for them to grow into law-abiding exemplary adults. Yes?

From the Republic (ibid.) , we understand that Plato distinguished between “non-serious Play (539b)” and “the law-abiding Play (nomoterou…paidias) or serious Play (spoudaious) (424e-425a)”. Plato considered that “non-serious Play” was the kind of Play that did not lead to the discovery of the truth but instead focused on the dialectical activity as a pastime unrelated to the pursuit of the truth. “Serious Play” has the goal of fostering excellence in the education ( paideia ) of the young (424-a-b) by encouraging and enabling children and learner ( paides paidzein, 424a) to learn through music, stories and athletic games and other healthy pursuits. Of these two forms of Play, Plato concluded that the more serious form of Play was of particular importance to the education of children.

In our view, when Plato said that Play, especially “serious Play”, was good for educational purpose, the “Play” he referred to is a lower form of Play with an element of work in it. It is because in this form of serious Play, in essence, there is not much ‘genuine’ autonomy for the players. The players have either to subordinate their ‘self’ to the values imposed by the adults or to the requirements of the rule of the games.

If we look at Plato’s last work, the Laws translated by Melling (1987, cited in Lau, 2005), we can find evidence to support that what Plato meant by ‘Play’ is indeed ‘Work’ if the concept of “self” comes in. From the following writing of Plato, we could see that children were not given much autonomy in the “learning process”. All they were required to do is to follow the instructions of the trainers. Play can only be regarded as ‘genuine’ Play if the “self” can exercise its will according to what it wishes or follow the flow of ‘eros’ without being subjected to external forces or expected outcome:

From four to seven the child is taught through Play. The officials who supervise the children’s Play will encourage them to develop the maximum degree of skill and versatility in the use of both hands and both feet (ibid.).

It is even clear in a different translation of the Laws (Bloyd, 1962, cited in Lau, 2005) which suggests that Plato did not like children to change their games quite often. “…children who play new games will grow up different from their fathers, and will come to crave new customs and new laws”. What it implies is that children are not encouraged to play freely or spontaneously according to their self- willed desires. Every game is pre-arranged and being “guided” by the adults for the ‘benefit’ of the children according to the adults’ wishes.

Apart from that, Plato also suggested that too much Play (pleasures) was not good for the upbringing of children since an excessive of Play would make the child form bad habits which were detrimental to his future development:

…as is sometimes thought, that it is a good thing to provide a constant succession of pleasures. To bring up a child in this fashion at this critical period of his education would completely ruin him…. And very specially it applies to the newborn child, since it is in infancy more than at any other period that character is formed by habit (ibid.).

From this review of literature, the authors share with Miller (1973), Brown and Cheesman (2003) that Plato viewed seriousness (work) more important than Play.

It is not difficult to understand from the teachings of Plato, we could visualize an ordered society where everybody is fitted into classes according to their talents by nature. The education is devised to bring out the aptitudes of the individual and then train them for social use. Under such a system, Play and seriousness (work) should be distinguished; and of the two, seriousness is the more important. It is only when we want to bring out the aptitudes of the individual that Play is needed, for play enforces creativity and spontaneous flow of interest/talent that is unique to each individual. But then if the individual is trained for the specific purpose of performing a social function, which asks for a specific outcome, then work is needed. Since Plato puts stability of society as the first priority, work is treasured more than the creative but frivolous Play.

In short, what Plato did stress is the importance of child’s Play since it is educational, but, not to the extent of understanding Play as ‘free Play’ practices and its associated pedagogic practices.

From what have been discussed in this section, one can understand the Form of Play should be of the more serious nature and it could be taught by the teacher (by means of the top-down approach) and with content (Form) designed by the teacher so as to ensure young children to learn good music, good stories and righteous athletic games and other healthy pursuits.

On the other hand, if Play is out of the realm of the aforesaid one, it is not a Form and should not be encouraged. Accordingly, what the faith schools should be practiced is Play of the serious kind. This Form of Play was practiced in the early year classroom before the advent of the humanistic educational reform before the 1980s in Hong Kong.

7. The significance of Aristotle’s Form Aristotle has a different interpretation of Forms with Plato. It is this split of thoughts between Plato and Aristotle on Forms and the ideas of Good that has demarcated the educational approaches between the two philosophy gurus in ancient Greece.

7.1 What is Form to Aristotle? Though taught by Plato, he rejected his teacher’s idea that reality lay beyond the everyday world in the realm of the Forms. He did talk of ideal Forms, not as transcendental entities but rather as a component of the actual material object. The authors are thinking that Aristotle’s idealistic Form could be interpreted as the realization of one’s own unique function in a virtuous manner and through dialectic exchange of knowledge to derive at. Aristotle had examined more minutely the actual physical world in which we live (Palmer, 2001). Aristotle thus did not believe in Plato’s myth of the Cave (Warburton, 2014). In order to understand Aristotle’s idea of Form, one might read how he had wrongly interpreted Plato’s theory of Forms when jotting down notes of Plato’s teaching.

7.2 Aristotle’s rejection of innate knowledge in man Following his rejection of Plato’s Forms, as well as his denial of Plato’s theory that knowledge was innate within us, Aristotle thought that our mind was like a blank slate at birth but with capacities to act on impressions coming into it from the outside world. The building up of knowledge starts with sense perception. We observe objects or events and from these build up in our mind a general principle by which to understand and explain these. This is the process of inductive reasoning, which moves from particular observation to general conclusions.

7.3 Aristotle’s Realism Philosophy Aristotle was a realist, in the sense of affirming the reality and objectivity of the physical world. Unlike Plato, Aristotle did not believe that there were two separate orders of reality, but just one which we perceived through the senses. The figure below shows how Aristotle perceived his understanding on this.

Figure 6 Aristotle’s philosophical world (figure deduced from Met. 1029a24-26, 1049a24-27, De gen.et corr.332a35-b1)

The world of gods One and many, unchanging, pure forms, intellectual and thinking The world of experience The world of natural things, one and many, change, accessible to sense perception, matter and form Pure potentiality This condition facilitates the higher levels to operate. It is accessible neither to senses nor to intellect.

The lowest level is the pure potentiality. It is this condition that facilitates the higher levels to operate. The second level is “the world of experience’ which is the world of natural things, one and many, change, accessible to sense perception, matter and form. It is in this level that Aristotle matters most. 86

The third and highest level is “the world of gods’, which is one and many, unchanging, pure forms, intellectual and thinking. Aristotle’s world of gods cannot be taken in the way we understand today, which is thoroughly Christianized sense. The world of gods is the most being equated to Plato’s cosmos of ideas. Despite that Aristotle did make provision for this level as “the world of gods”, in actual practice, Aristotle thought that it would seldom apply.

7.4 The significance of Aristotle’s “World of experience” in the realm of Early Childhood Education Overall many of the key themes emphasized by Aristotle remain with us in education to the present day, including his empiricist model of how we learn, the stress on early habit training in moral education followed by contemplation are all interrelated and are key educational goals, and finally the ideal of liberal education with its stress on the intrinsic values of learning.

7.5 Aristotle’s notion of Play

There are only scraps of Aristotle’s work on education left and he did not write something directly relating to the notion of play for education purposes as Plato’s did. As such, the review can only be based on a general collection of Aristotle’s views related to the issue of play (Lau, 2005).

Generally speaking, Aristotle believed that education was central – the fulfilled person was an educated person. Along with many others in his time, Aristotle placed a strong emphasis on all round and ‘balanced’ development. Play, physical training, music, debate, and the study of science and philosophy were all have their place in the forming of body, mind and soul.

With a ‘balanced’ development comes the ‘balanced’ curriculum. Aristotle welcomed the notion of play and work to enforce this ideal curriculum. Aristotle’s mode of education when applied to the early years would represent the prevalent mode of curriculum and pedagogic practises, starting from 1980s onwards to the current year of 2017, which is a mixture of play and academic work in the early years classrooms.

Like Plato before him, Aristotle saw such learning happen through life – although with different emphasis at different ages of development of the person (Suppes, 1995; Lau, 2005). He looked to both education through reason and education through habit. By the latter he meant learning by doing – “Anything that we have to learn to do we learn by actual doing it…We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate ones, brave by doing brave ones” ( Tredennick , 1976).

Due to his concern for the practical – and for practical reasoning, Aristotle contributed a significant element in the reformulation of informal education. According to King (1988), what is usually called informal education is probably characteristic of most British infants’ schools. But then ‘progressive’, ‘child-centred’, ‘open’ (used particularly by American commentators) and perhaps even ‘exploratory’ in the HMI Survey (D.E.S., 1978) are near synonyms for informal.

In line with his interest in the informal education, Aristotle honoured pleasure, when it arises from the proper activities of men in a proper moral condition. Pleasure in a sense, which equates play to Aristotle, is involved in any un-frustrated activity that exercises our natural capacities (NE 1174b14- 75a3). Since Play is defined as an un-frustrated activity by Aristotle, it is assumed that by engaging themselves in the Play activity, children as self are encouraged to pursue their eros 2 in Play to a certain

extent. But the extent to which children should be allowed to pursue their eros is limited. It is because even though Aristotle was not opposed to pleasure itself (Barnes, 1995; Lau, 2005), he took a dim view of what he called the life of pleasure. Aristotle thought that pleasure was bad when pleasure- seekers pursued it for a bad course, like engaging in bodily pleasure; otherwise, pleasure was not bad (Barnes, 1995). Ross (1995) confirmed Aristotle’s stance on pleasure by reiterating that Aristotle’s discussion on the three views of pleasure (Lau, 2005):

(1) that no pleasure is good either in itself or per accidens – the view of Speusippus,

(2) that some pleasures are good but most are bad – a view expressed in the Philebus of Plato (48a ff.), and

(3) that even if all pleasures were good, pleasure could not be the supreme good – a view also expressed in Philebus (53c,66 e-fin ).

The main interest here lies in Aristotle’s discussion of the theory that pleasure is not totally good; his contentions are as follows: (1) Some pleasures could be good only for a particular person or at a particular time, while others, which imply pain, are not really pleasures at all.

(2) Some pleasures are bad because they are bad for moneymaking; even thinking is sometimes bad for health.

(3) The arguments drawn from the facts that the temperate man avoids pleasure, that the wise man pursues not pleasure but freedom from pain, that children and the brutes pursue pleasure, all rest on a failure to distinguish between the bodily pleasure that involves appetite and pain, and the pleasure that is good without qualification. (1152 b25-1153 a35)

From this, we understand that Aristotle had been talking about the bipolar/dual nature of pleasure. On one hand, Aristotle thought that pleasure was at least an ingredient of well-being (Ross, 1995; Lau, 2005). This is considered as the good pleasure that would bring forth positive well being for people. On the other hand, there is also the bad pleasure that would cause pain to people and is therefore considered not suitable for people to pursue it. Aristotle’s views on the dual nature of pleasure/play finds its support in Rousseau’s notion of eros 2, with its good side of eros, “ amour de sour” and the bad side of it, “ amour propre”.

In discussing the bipolar/dual nature of pleasure, Aristotle seems to be perplexed by the fact that if good pleasure is associated with well-being, then it must be unimpeded, but in fact Aristotle prefers it not to be. ‘Unimpeded’ would mean an individual self could fully utilize the eros. This self could pursue his/her desire as he/she wishes in order to achieve the well-being. Yet Aristotle does not think that the entire free pursuance of eros could lead to well-being. This clash of thoughts perplexed Aristotle. Perhaps Rousseau’s distinction between the two types of eros could help solve Aristotle’s perplexity (Lau, 2005).

We could see that Aristotle was in favour of a kind of Pleasure/Play that was not in its extreme form. 88

But how far or to what extent that one might consider Play was not in its extreme form? Aristotle could not provide the answer. For this reason, the authors of this paper would argue that Aristotle though might try to identify the Form of Play, he could not be able to do so as his boundary for defining Play is too loose to establish the clear cut line.

In practical terms, children are encouraged to play only when Play is considered to be within the boundary that is considered good. But what is the boundary to that ends has remained obscure. It appears that the kind of Play preferred by Aristotle is either the teacher-directed play or child-initiated Play, where the child is being disciplined by his peers as distinguished from the free play, which is highly valued by Dewey (Lau, 2005).

Apart from that, from the writings of Aristotle, we can see that he devoted much attention to moral virtues - not just the four cardinal virtues of wisdom, courage, self-control, and justice - emphasized by Plato in the Republic, but also intellectual virtue (Book VI of the Ethics ). These he also characterized as “states of the soul” and they are five in number: art, scientific knowledge, practical wisdom, philosophic wisdom, and intuitive reason. Their function is to provide methods for knowing what is true and the intellectual basis for the selection of the right rule. From this we can see that Aristotle would encourage the individual self to pursue eros through play and exercise their creativity according to one’s nature but subjected to some confinement under the name of virtues. The importance of both moral and intellectual virtue is emphasized in his following passage:

The origin of action - its efficient, not its final cause - is choice, and that of choice is desire and reasoning with a view to an end. This is why choice cannot exist either without reason and intellect or without a moral state; for good action and its opposite cannot exist without a combination of intellect and character. Intellect itself, however, moves nothing but only the intellect which aims at an end. (1139a31)

In summary, the aim of education to Aristotle is to teach the intellectual and moral virtues necessary for right action. Aristotle’s concept of moral and virtue, however, must be distinguished from that moral and virtue advocated by the Pragmatists, like William James. For Aristotle, moral and virtue are static. For the Pragmatists, moral and virtue could evolve from a particular situation and therefore are subject to change (Ko, 1984; Lau, 2005). In Book VII of the Politics , Aristotle talked about the “balanced development” of education from a different perspective (to achieve the greater good for society):

The statesman therefore must legislate with all these considerations in view, both in respect of the parts of the soul and of their activities, and aiming more particularly at the greater goods and the ends. And the same principle applies in regard to modes of life and choices of conduct: A man should be capable of engaging in business and war, but still more capable of living in peace and leisure; and he should do what is necessary and useful, but still more should he do what is noble. These then are the aims that ought to be kept in view in the education of the citizens both while still children and at the later ages that require education (1333a9).

To enforce this “balanced” development, work is also needed. When one applies Aristotle’s mode of education in today’s world, Aristotle would welcome a mixture /balance of Play and Work mode which Aristotle deem as good. Good in a sense that the activities would enhance virtue and liberal learning for the young children.

8. Two Divergent Views of Ancient Greek Philosophers and their impacts on Education today Plato and Aristotle’s individual positions (Plato on ideas of Forms and the Good; Aristotle on nature and realism) provide useful categories to describe and define philosophical differences and educational strategy. To a large extent, the authors do agree, along with the others, that both Plato and Aristotle have great ideas to contribute for the betterment and good living of mankind. To take for an example, Aristotle’s idea of the ‘function’ 3 on which one must excel the cause of the things through reason and virtues is impressive. With this understanding, we, as authors are sure that many teachers will try to excel their roles (function) as good teachers by helping young children to pick up virtues via the arrangement of educational practices. Practically speaking, people of all walks of life can be better professionals or citizens if they heed Aristotle’s teachings.

8.1 Plato’s idea of the Forms and the Good The authors are interested in Plato ’s idea of the Forms and the Good. It confirms and reinforces the Christian faith since we have found that Plato’s logical argument that Equality is not the same as Equal, is really persuasive. Henceforth, for abstract things such as Justice, Truth, Beauty, Obedience, Understanding, Docility, Discipline, Piety …and even Play etc. must belong to some higher Forms in a metaphysical sense. With the confirmation of Forms, Plato has provided logically to us the existence of “the One, the Mind, which is Good” and has transcended Beings . With this understanding, the authors of this article would know what we could do is to fulfil those tangible daily duties/obligations to the best that we can, but will leave all the intangible, abstract things to the Christian faith through prayers for answers after trying our reasonable efforts in vain. It is the ultimate Good—the prayer hearing God who will grant us graces according to what He deems fit for our good.

8.2 Aristotle’s realism model Due to his concern for the practical – practical reasoning, Aristotle contributed a significant element in the reformulation of informal education. According to King (1988), what is usually called informal education is probably characteristic of most British infants’ schools (Lau, 2005). But then ‘progressive’, ‘child-centred’, ‘open’ (used particularly by American commentators) and perhaps even ‘exploratory’ in the HMI survey (D.E.S.,1978) are near synonyms for informal.

Although there is no evidence to show Aristotle’s intention to formulate an informal curriculum, his idea of a ‘balanced’ curriculum between a play-based and work-based elements is suffice to show its relativistic nature. If such is the case, Aristotle’s ‘balanced’ curriculum would hark back to Protagoras’ famous pronouncement: “Man is the measure of all things” (Boghossian, 2007) and instead of having a real balance, the chance for having different combinations is high since its setting is dependable by different ‘rational’ minds and at different interval of time. This is precisely the education mode that most of the kindergartens and preschools practised in Hong Kong in the recent two decades; in essence, the practise is a kind of dilemma for the practitioners in the early childhood field as they have to struggle along the chain of old and new mode of curriculum and pedagogic practices.

The defects of informal education have been repeatedly reported by the front line practitioners that it is responsible for causing low academic standard and disruptive behaviour of the young children. Ironically, it is this kind of curriculum which has its origin traced back to Aristotle’s Realism model that stresses virtues and rational approaches (through reasoning) on the first hand.

Having discussed all these, the authors have no intention to devalue Aristotle’s contributions in the realm of education. One needs to understand the fact that when Aristotle was born, Greek education reflected the humanistic faith on ‘informality’ and ‘relativistic’. Poetry held a place of importance comparable to the Bible, except that no written work had any binding power. In Homer’s epics, we find not only ancient cults and rituals, but also conceptions of god and man; Homeric gods are immortal while Homeric men are mortal. Since men are mortal, they do mind about fame, honour and glory. It is Aristotle, with his intellectual mind that has re-shuffled us on how we might live a happy life in his Nicomachean Ethics. He was bright enough to show us ‘living well’ required not only the usual understanding of the Greek heroes, like Achilles and Hector, who placed honour more important than life itself. To Aristotle, to live a virtuous life with rational thinking was far more important. But of course, he did not deter people from pursuing material things though they were of secondary importance ( Tredennick, 1976 ).

To secular minds, truth is the product of human reason, experience and analysis. However, does a rational mind suffice for a happy life by living virtuously on earth? According to Boghossian (2007), Aristotle might not think so as he wrote, “reasons are defeasible, one can have good reasons to believe something at one time and then, as a result of further information, cease to have good reasons to believe that some proposition at some later time”. Accordingly, happy life is not dependent on rational thinking alone since rationality by itself has allied with relativism.

From Ratzinger (1985), the former Catholic Pope --Benedict XVI, wrote, “It is known that in the final analysis for genuine Catholic morality there are actions that reason will never be able to justify, since they contain in themselves rejection of the Creator God and therefore a denial of the authentic good of man, his creature. For the Magisterial there have always been fixed points of reference, landmarks which can neither be removed nor ignored without breaking the bond that Christian philosophy sees between Being and the Good. By proclaiming, instead, the autonomy of human reason alone, now detached from the Decalogue, one is forced to embark on a search for new fixed points: to what shall one adhere, how are moral duties to be justified if they are no longer rooted in Divine Revelation, in the commandments of the Creator?”

9. Concluding remarks We have no doubt to agree that Plato is a prophet-like great philosopher for his philosophical insight and contributions which enable the Christian to understand how a better Christian curriculum should be like. The insight is drawn from the distinction between Forms and the Good in Platonic’s terminology. The following echoes what has been written earlier in this paper in that what “The Good” Christian- traditional education is like in the words of John Dewey 4—who is a humanist, a progressivist, a pragmatist as well as an antagonist of Christian Education.

Traditional education is based on the teaching of religious belief/doctrine: believing that it is the search for certitude, determined “basic metaphysics ” and led to the presupposition that “only the completely fixed and unchanging can be real” (Simpson & Jackson, 1997).

Note that the ‘unchanging’ status mention above might hint us the opposite direction of Heraclitus’s discipline of “flux”. Therefore, it is suffice for us to understand that only the unchanging can be real while the changeable one is unreal, no matter how small the change is.

Since the Christian educational model emphasized on unchanging and uniformity of practice, it has aroused the criticism of the Father of modernity and child-centeredness, John Dewey, who thought that “its passivity of attitude, its mechanical massing of children, its uniformity of curriculum and method would not be good.

In the most up to date revised curriculum guide (Education Bureau, 2017), the elements of Play have become a mandatory requirement for schools that opted for the 15 years free education benefits. These schools are required to spend 30 minutes on free play for a 3-hour schoolings and has added to 50 minutes spent on free play for a whole day schoolings.

Because of this requirement, the authors have aware of the Heraclitus’s doctrine of “flux” being introduced to the early childhood curriculum and pedagogic practices via the mode of free play, which by its nature is “flux”—ever changing.

When the status of “flux” with its ever-changing and shapeless character is applied, the anticipated effects of the 30 minutes autonomous free play in the 3-hour schoolings for the young children is considered as significant and its potentiality of up-rooting the religious inclinations in the mind of the young should not be undermined, not to mention the adverse effects it has had on the whole-day schoolings.

While most academics in Hong Kong are giving credits to Dewey and agreed that he is the father of child-centeredness---the prophet-like scholar who advocate democracy and considered him as the pioneer of modern education, he is but a shadow of the ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, if to be viewed in this way.

From what has been discussed in this paper, the central message is that it is a big discovery that Greek philosophy has indeed exerted a lot of influences to the history of early childhood education in Hong Kong than any other scholars in the field might have taken notice of.

“Wisdom is supreme” wrote Solomon in Proverbs 4:7, therefore get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding (Kienel et. al, 1998). With an understanding on the traditional wisdom of Plato and Aristotle and possibly Heraclitus, the ‘cause’ of things has been unfolded.

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Endnote: 1. Heraclitus theory of flux: Heraclitus saw unity of opposites, the way upwards and the one downwards are the same road; just and unjust are the same…in the cosmic level, the universe is the unity of all, more or less, opposite elements, fire, early and water, summer and winter, just and unjust things, war and peace etc. His logos is the dynamic structure of things, the constant changes of elements and the unity between elements and the whole, and in some cases, the unity of opposing elements in the whole.

2. Eros, according to Rousseau, has two facets: one is amour de soi and the other is amour propre. Rousseau (1762; 2003) wrote: The love of self ( amour de soi), which regards only ourselves, is content when our real needs are satisfied; but self-love ( amour propre ), which makes comparisons, is never satisfied, and could not be, because this feeling, by referring ourselves to others, also requires that others prefer ourselves to them - thing which is impossible. This is how the gentle and affectionate passions spring from the love of self, while the malevolent and irascible passions spring from self-love. Rousseau considered amour de soi as a kind of dynamic force with intention, aimed at the preservation of life (Rousseau 1716, 1995; p.212-213). On the other hand, the notion of amour propre , or literally self-love, is usually represented as a quality of being and mode of perception that is predisposed to mastery over others. Essentially both expressions, amour de soi and amour propre , mean self-love for Rousseau. From the passages on Emile , one could see that Rousseau saw amour de soi and amour propre as two different terms, one being positive while the other negative. Here we could also see how Plato’s sympos ium had influenced Rousseau in his conceptualization of two types of eros, one being the ‘heavenly’ and the other ‘vulgar’. One is about preserving the integrity of being, a benign care for the self; and the other is about a self-love grossly amplified to vanity and to an insatiable desire for mastery and domination.

3. Aristotelian Function In his Nichmachean Ethics , Aristotle says that if we want to know what constitutes goodness for human beings, then we need to uncover the function of a human being, Aristotle thought that human beings have a characteristic function 4 or activity (an ergon ). The word ‘function’ suggests that human beings were designed for a particular purpose. (Warburton, 2014).

4. John Dewey John Dewey (1859 – 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey is one of the primary figures associated with philosophy of pragmatism and is considered one of the founders of functional psychology. He was regarded as the Father of Democracy by the Americans and the Father of Child-centredness by the British. John Dewey was the major signer of the Humanist Manifesto I in1933 (source: wikipedia). As in 1933, humanists still believe that traditional theism, especially faith in the prayer-hearing God, assumed to live and care for persons, to hear and understand their prayers, and to be able to do something about them, is an unproved and outmoded faith. Salvationism, based on mere affirmation, still appears as harmful, diverting people with false hopes of heaven hereafter. Reasonable minds look to other means for survival. Those who sign Humanist Manifesto II disclaim that they are setting forth a binding credo; their individual views would be stated in widely varying ways. This statement is, however, reaching for vision in a time that needs direction. It is social analysis in an effort at consensus. New statements should be developed to supersede this, but for today it is our conviction that humanism offers an alternative that can serve present-day needs and guide humankind toward the future. - Paul Kurtz and Edwin H. Wilson (1973) Source: Wikipedia