Suggestions
from Subject
Specialists
Studies
Studies of of
Learners Contempo-
School rary Life
Purposes
Use of
Use of Psycho-
Philosophy logy of
Learning
Perennialism Essentialism Progressivism Roconstructionism
To educate To promote To promote To improve and
the rational the democratic reconstruct society
Aim of person ; To intellectual and social education for
Education cultivate the growth of living change
intellect the
individual
and educate
a
competent
person
Teachers help The teacher Knowledge Teachers act as
students is the sole leads to agents of change
Role of think with authority in growth and and reform in
Education reason his or her development various educational
subject area of lifelong projects including
or field of learners who research.
specializa- actively learn
tion by doing
Perennialism Essentialism Progressivism Reconstructionism
Classical Essentials skills Subjects are Focus on present
subjects, of the 3R’s and interdiscipli- and future trends
Focus in the literary essential nary, and issues of
curriculum analysis and subjects of integrative and national and
curriculum is English, interactive. international
constant Science, Curriculum is interests
History, Math, focused on
And Foreign students
Language interest,
human
problems and
affairs
Use of great Excellence in School Equality of
books and education, reforms, educational
Curriculum return to back to basics relevant and opportunities in
Trends liberal arts and cultural contextualized education, access
literacy Curriculum, to global
humanistic education.
education
Philosophical Foundations of Education
The most remarkable thing about
philosophy…is that the questions raised
never seem to get answered.
Idealism
- The most significant philosophy…most of the world’s religions
are based on idealism
- Idealism as idea-ism
- Plato—the Academy opened in 397 B.C., believed that material
things are of little
consequence…the everyday world of things and objects is a
shadowy copy of the true
idea which the soul carries within itself from heaven, reason is
rooted in a spiritual soul
- No discipline problems, because the teacher knows the content
well, likes to teach, and
knows the students
- The idealist philosophy views the school as representing the
community
Idealist philosophers
- Plato, Descartes, Kant, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hegel,
Schopenhauer
- Students are encouraged to stretch themselves
through higher-level thinking to become
truth seekers
- The teacher will devote considerable time and
energy to the one who goes astray
Realism
- Objects exist regardless of how
we perceive them
- Focuses on the scientific method
and personal experience
- The crux of realism is science—
empirical, objective, and
experimental…with precise
measurements
Realist philosophers
- Aristotle, Comenius, Pestalozzi, Herbart,
Montessori, Hobbes, Bacon, Locke
- Thomas Jefferson and Horace Mann
embraced realism
- Accountability in the schools is an
outgrowth of realism
Existentialism
- Focuses on the individual
- Not a logical theory, but one that can be felt as an
attitude or mood
- Awareness, anxiety, choice take on special meaning
- Revolt against the traditional philosophical stance
- A way of life which involves one’s total self in
complete seriousness about the self
Existentialist philosophers
- Kierkegaard, Sartre, Nietzsche
- Kierkegaard—themes of passionate choice,
absolute freedom, total responsibility
- Life must be understood backward, but lived
forward
- The theory focuses on value questions
