Our

Philosophical
Heritage:
Philosophies
of Education
The Existential Question
SEVEN PHILOSOPHIES OF EDUCATION
ESSENTIALISM  An American philosophy of
education which began in the
1930’s and 1940’s
 Introduced by American
philosopher William Bagley
 Originated from the philosophies
of idealism and realism
 Essentialists believe in teaching
the basic subjects.
Objective of Essentialism

This philosophy contends that teachers teach for

learners to acquire basic knowledge, skills and
values.
 Curriculum of Essentialism
Essentialist programs are academically rigorous.
The emphasis is on academic content for students to learn the basic skills or the
fundamental R’s as these are essential to the acquisition of higher or more complex skills
needed in preparation for adult life.
 The Essentialist Curriculum

MATH
NATURAL SCIENCE
HISTORY
FOREIGN
LANGUAGE LITERATURE
 Stresses the value of hard work, perseverance, discipline, and
respect to authorities to students.
 Students should be taught to think logically and systematically –
grasping not the parts but the whole (entirety)
 Methods of teaching centers on giving regular
Assignments

Drills

Recitation

Frequent testing and evaluations

 Teaching Strategies

Essentialist teachers emphasize mastery of subject matter. They were expected to

be intellectual and moral models of their students. They are seen as “fountain” of
information and as paragon of virtue, if ever there is such a person. To gain
mastery of basic skills, teachers have to observe “core requirements, longer
school day, a longer academic year.” With mastery of academic content as
primary focus, teachers rely on the use of prescribed textbooks, and drill method
and other methods that will enable them to cover as much academic content as
possible like the lecture method. There is a heavy stress on memorization and
discipline.
  Led by John Dewey, this was
developed in mid 1920’s
PROGRESSIVISM through the 1950’s
 Believe that Progress, Change,
and Individuality are
fundamental to education
 Strong emphasis on Learning by
doing Hands-on Experience
 Classroom settings are informal
 Cooperation between students
rather than competition
 Objective of Progressivism

 Progressivist teachers teach to develop learners into becoming enlightened and

intelligent citizens of a democratic society. This group of teachers teaches learners so
they may live life fully now not to prepare them for adult life.

 Students should not just be taught for a test, they should be taught to handle
themselves in the real world.
Curriculum

The progressivists are identified with need based and relevant curriculum.
This is a curriculum that responds to students’ needs and that relates to
students’ personal lives and experiences.
 Progressivists accept the impermanence of life and the inevitability of change. For
the progressivists, everything else changes.
 Progressivist teachers are more concerned with teaching the learners the skills to
cope with change.
 Instead of occupying themselves with teaching facts or bits of information that are true
today but become obsolete tomorrow, they would rather focus their teaching on the
teaching of skills or processes in gathering and evaluating information and in problem-
solving.
 Teachers expose students to many new scientific, technological and social
developments, reflecting the progressivist notion that progress and change are
fundamental.
 Teaching Strategies
 Progressivist teachers employ experiential methods.
 one learns by doing.

 book learning is no substitute for actual experience.

 One experiential teaching method that progressivist teachers heavily rely on is the
problem-solving method.
 This makes use of the scientific method.

 Other teaching methods used:

  The word itself means ‘eternal’,
PERENNIALISM ‘ageless’, ‘everlasting’,
‘unchanged’
 Truth is universal and does not
depend on circumstances of
place, time and person
 To learn means to acquire
understanding of great works of
civilization
 Advocates are Robert Hutchins
and Mortimer Adler
 Obejctive of Perennialism

To teach students to think rationally and develop minds that can think
critically.

We are all rational animals. Schools should therefore, develop the

students’ rational and moral powers. According to Aristotle, if we neglect
the students’ reasoning skills, we deprive them of the ability to use their
higher faculties to control their passions and appetites.
Curriculum of Perennialism
Philosopher Mortimer Adler claims that the Great Books of ancient and
medieval as well as modern times are repository of knowledge and
wisdom, a tradition of culture which must initiate each generation.

Curriculum should contain cognitive subjects that cultivate rationality,

morality, aesthetics, and religious principles.
This includes:
• History
• Language
• Mathematics
• Logic
• Literature
• Humanities
• Science
Teaching Strategies

 Classrooms are teacher-centered.

 The teachers must have the mastery of the subject matter and
authority in exercising it.
 Students engaged in Socratic dialogues or mutual inquiry sessions to
develop an understanding of history’s most timeless concepts.
 EXISTENTIALISM

 Rooted from the dehumanization of man by technology and reaction to the

traditional Philo of Kant and Hegel
 Defining feature is “existence precede essence”
 Known as the Philo of Subjectivity
 Stresses on knowledge about realities of human life and the choice that each
person has to make.
 Focuses on individual’s freedom to choose their own purpose in life.
Objective of Existentialism
• To help students understand and appreciate themselves as unique
individuals who accept complete responsibility for their thoughts,
feelings and actions

• Since “existence precedes essence”, the existentialist teacher’s role is

to help students define their own essence by exposing them to
various paths they take in life and by creating an environment in
which they freely choose their own preferred way.

Existence precedes essence?

Curriculum
• Students are given a wide variety of
options from which to choose.
• The humanities, are given tremendous
emphasis to provide students with
vicarious experiences that will help
unleash their own creativity and self
expression.
• Methods are geared on giving
opportunities for the students for self
actualization and self direction.
 Teaching Strategies

 Methods focus on the individual.

 Learning is based on the willingness of the student to choose and give meaning to
the subject.
 Character development is through the responsibility of every individual in making
a decision.
 To help students know themselves and their place in society, teachers employ
values clarification strategy. In the use of such strategy, teachers remain non-
judgmental and take care not to impose their values on their students since
values are personal.
BEHAVIORISM  Rooted in the work of Russian
experimental psychologist Ivan
Pavlov and American
psychologist John Watson in the
early 1900s
 Asserts that human beings are
shaped entirely by their external
environment
 Focuses on the acquisition of
new behavior based on
environmental conditions.
Objective of Behaviorism
• Behaviorist schools are concerned with the modification
and shaping of students’ behavior by providing for a
favorable environment, since they believe that they are a
product of their environment. They are after students who
exhibit desirable behavior in society.
Curriculum
• Man by nature is neither good nor bad but a product of his
environment. Hence, an autonomous acting man is but an illusion since
it negates the faculty of free will.

• Because behaviorists look at “ people and other animals as complex

combinations of matter that act only in response to internally or
externally generated physical stimuli, behaviorist teachers teach
students to respond favorably to various stimuli in the environment
Teaching Strategies
• Behaviorist teachers ought to arrange environmental conditions so that
students can make the responses to stimuli.
• Physical variables like light, temperature, arrangement of furniture, size
and quantity of visual aids have controlled to get the desired responses
from learners.
• Teachers ought to make the stimuli clear and interesting to capture and
hold the learners’ attentions.
• They ought to provide appropriate incentives to reinforce positive
responses and weaken or eliminate negative ones.
• Behaviorist concepts include mastery learning and standards-based
education.
  Approach in philosophy
Linguistic Philosophy common in the mid 20th century
that tends to see philosophical
problems as arising from
inappropriate theoretical use of
language and therefore as being
resolved by detailed attention to
the common use of expressions.
Objective of Linguistic Philosophy

 To develop the communication skills of the learner.

 The ability to articulate, to voice out the meanings and values of things that
one obtains from his experience of life and the world is the very essence of
man.
 Teachers teach to develop in the learner the skill to send messages
clearly and receive messages correctly.
Curriculum
• Learners should be taught to communicate clearly
• How to send clear, concise messages and how to receive and correctly
understand messages sent.

• Communication takes place in three ways – verbal, non verbal and

para-verbal.
• Verbal component refers to the content of our message, the choice and
arrangement of our word.
• This can be oral or written.
• Non verbal component refers to the message we send through our body
language
• Para-verbal component refers to how we say what we say-the tone , pacing
and volume of our voices.
Teaching Strategies
• The most effective way to teach language and communication is the
experiential way.
• Make them experience sending and receiving messages
through verbal, non verbal and para-verbal manner.

• Teacher should make the classroom a place for the interplay of minds
and hearts. The teacher facilitates dialogue among learners and
between him students because in the exchange of words, there is
also an exchange of ideas.
  A philosophy of learning which
CONSTRUCTIVISM asserts that reality does not
exist outside of human
conceptions. It is the individual
that construct reality by
reflecting on is own experience
and gives meaning to it.
 Learning is the process of
adjusting one’s mental modes to
accommodate new experience.
 Objective of Constructivism

 To develop intrinsically motivated and independent

learners adequately equipped with learning skills for
them to be able to construct knowledge and make
meaning of them.
 Curriculum of Constructivism

 The learners are taught how to learn. They are taught

learning processes and skills such as searching, critiquing and
evaluating information, relating these pieces of information,
reflecting on the same, making meaning out of them,
drawing insights, posing questions, researching and
constructing new knowledge out of these bits of information
learned.
Teaching Strategies
 In the constructivist classroom, the teacher provides students with data or experiences that
allow them to hypothesize, predict, manipulate objects, pose questions, research, investigate,
imagine and invent.
 The constructivist classroom is interactive. It promotes dialogical exchange of ideas among
learners and between teacher and learners. The teacher’s role is to facilitate this process.
 Knowledge isn’t a thing that can be simply deposited by the teacher into the empty minds of
the learners. Rather, knowledge is constructed by learners through an active, mental process of
development; learners are the builders and creators of meaning and knowledge. Their minds
are not empty. Instead, their minds are full of ideas waiting to be “midwife” by the teacher with
his skillful facilitating skills.
In summary:
We have a very rich philosophical heritage. But only seven philosophies
were discussed here: essentialism, progressivism, perennialism,
existentialism, behaviorism, linguistic philosophy and constructivism. The
seven philosophies differ in their concepts of the learner and values, in
why do we teach (objectives), what should be taught ( curriculum) and
how should the curriculum be taught ( teaching strategies). However,
there exist also some similarities among the philosophies.

Notes : Philosophy is your attitude, viewpoint, thinking, way of life, values or beliefs.
Linguistics is the study of language and how language works. Heritage is something
that you inherit.