The aim of education as an object of socio-philosophical research

Introduction. The research presented in the article is aimed at identifying the most significant aspects of the problems of educational aims. The existing ways of understanding the aims of education are considered, and conclusions are drawn regarding their distinctive features. The connection between the problems of the aim of education and other aspects of the philosophical reflection of education is shown – questions of the definition of education and criteria for assessing educational results. Purpose setting. The research sets the task of generalizing modern socio-philosophical ideas about the aim of education. The authors adhere to the position that the emergence, change, and functioning of educational aims are primarily determined by social factors. Methodology and methods of the study. In the course of the study, methods of substantive and comparative analysis of domestic and foreign literature devoted to the problems of educational aims were used. Results. Significant milestones in the development of understanding the problems of the aim of education in a socio-philosophical key are highlighted. The content of the normative approach to understanding the aim of education, developed by R.S. Peters, is considered, as well as the connection between his concept of the aim of education and the understanding of education as initiation. The innovations of the functionalist approach to understanding the aim of education are analyzed. The importance of distinguishing between the types of aims that appear in the educational context is shown. Some of the positions concerning the conditioning of educational aims by the influence of other social institutions – political, economic – are reproduced. Conclusion. The authors are inclined to the idea of the multidimensionality of the aim of education, its complexity. They emphasize the limitations of binary classifications of educational aims. The analysis carried out allows us to conclude that the question of the aim of education is one of the priorities for the socio-philosophical comprehension of educational reality.