Prevladavanje sukoba između znanja i odgoja za vrijednosti
Overcoming the Conflict Between the Knowledge and Value-Based Education

Summary/Abstract: This paper is based on a number of premises of fundamental nature. The first premise contains the idea of the historical conflict with the universal-social obligation to educate all members of society without regard to their racial origin, sex, religion and social status. Because of its universal-social dimension, modern society enforces this obligation by appropriate legislation which includes sanctions against its ransgressors. The most important sanction regards coercive abrogation of parental and guardian authority over a child with the purpose to satisfy the demand of his/her legislative obligation to be educated. The origin of this historical conflict is not the pure demand of education, but the gradual taking over of some very important educational activities from parents or guardians by the public, i.e. educational institutions. The second premise contains the idea of the historically formed and supported attitude that the status of knowledge is neutral. This premise additionally supports the previous one. In other words, if the propose of educational institutions is the mediation of knowledge and cognitions from various epistemic sources, and if, at the same time, it is (and was) believed that this knowledge and these cognitions are neutral or that perhaps they are not due to their specific epistemic source (such as some subjects from the field of the humanities and social sciences), then in the process of their mediation they should be presented as such, i.e. neutral. The third premise contains the idea according to which education – here primarily conceived as a self-understood component of both the activity and purpose of educational institutions – neither is nor can ever be conceived as neutral, since education is not neutral either in se or per se. Accordingly, both education and educational activity always imply that the educators’ activity is engaged in value, since otherwise one could not talk about education, but perhaps about ideological training, psychological pressure, brainwashing, physical violence and tyranny, etc. The fourth premise contains some aspects of the ideas expressed in the previous premises.[...]

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