TO BELIEVE AND TO KNOW IN EDUCATION: ANTAGONISM OR CONVERGENCE?

Abstract

The aim of this article is to invite Education professionals to reflect upon their practice. The learning process is often a theme to scientific research with approaches in psychology, neurology, and methodology. This work, however, took a philosophical approach. How does the student learn? Are eloquence, good rhetoric, argumentation, and speech skills enough for the teacher to offer an efficient learning? To ask oneself if the student truly learned or simply believed in the spoken words is the beginning of this reflection, which will not run out in this text. In this sense, we also question if to know and to believe, in educational aspects, must be opposite or if they can converge. Do we not believe in all we know? Shouldn’t knowledge override the act of believing? When studying this subject with a low dose of reflection we are at risk of trusting abundantly in our scholarly words instead of the student’s role to believe in what is taught.