Personal relationships in education

Abstract

This essay develops the argument that to be educated means to learn to become a person, which involves the development of mind through the acquisition of knowledge and understanding. It is for this reason that we shall start by analysing the concept of a person in the first chapter. We shall argue against both the dualist and the materialist positions and maintain that a person is a single entity, a whole, to which both mental and physical characteristics are ascribable. We shall follow Strawson in this and argue that the concept of a person is a primitive concept. We shall probe further, however, into what it means to be a person, since we believe this to be of supreme ethical importance because it forms the basis for a fundamental principle in morality, namely, that of respect for persons.