Homo Democraticus and Homo Philosophicus - Epistemological View on Teaching Philosophy in the Public Schools in Albania

Abstract

The educational system in Albanian has gone through many substantial changes and very challenging times over the last two decades. The majority of these changes were, without doubt, dictated by the very insistent endeavor to bring the Albanian educational system closer to the European one. After a very succinct, but concise description, of the changes the basic concepts of education were gone through, and of developmental strategies of the Albanian Educational Reform from 1992 to the present, in this paper we give a very brief account of the ideas and considerations the Albanian policymakers and other decision-making organs share about philosophy and its role in our times, as well as of the status and the place philosophy as part of the academic curriculum holds presently among, and compared to other fields of knowledge and culture. In this paper we present then our considerations and arguments on philosophy and on philosophizing, its nature and its importance to the human thinking, knowledge, and civic education, as well as the relation that has with democracy, freedom, the free individuals and the free society. Our paper aims to sensitize the community of teachers, of professionals and more specifically, the community of policymakers and decision-makers, to the vital importance philosophy has for the human life and existence, as well as to foster this last community to stop its actual attitude – which consists in sacrificing philosophy in the name of a mentality that has since long become part of the past – and to start its engagement for the creation of the necessary spaces and conditions to philosophy, by giving it the very place it deserves among other disciplines of academic curriculum. This is, at least, what the contemporary experience of other European countries is dictating us with more insistence than ever.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n2s5p64