EF GROUP ASSIGNMENT

1. Study the EXISTENTIALISM school of thought and make notes on it

Meaning and definition
Main philosophical ideas (metaphysics,epystemology and axiology)
Existentialism and education, aims of education, curriculum, methods of
teaching, the discipline, the teacher and students.
Relevance to education and the dark side of it.

EXISTANTIALISM RELEVANCE TO EDUCATION

Pedagogy must allow the students to develop their own unique possibilities
, that is to say, the teaching methods should be more participatory in order to give room
for students to learn on their own capacity example through discussion method of
teaching; the students can discover many issues on their own.
Curriculum should include a diverse content as well as the varied pedagogical methods
, the prepared curriculum should match with the respective methods of teaching in order
to convey the required knowledge on a particular topic.
The school should provide an atmosphere where the individuals develop in a healthy way,
children learn better when relieved from intense competition, harsh discipline and fear
from failure.Thus, each child can grow to understand his own needs and values and take
charge of the experiences for changing them.
Any subject in school even extra activities like athletics, music etc.Can present
existential situations for teaching and the development of human beings
, for a learner to develop mentally and physically, he or she must be let free to engage in
extra curriculum activities like athletics, music ,sports and games.
Democracy in schools should be more practiced so as to make the individuals/learners to
share different ideas ie.partcipation in planning, self government, encouradgement of a
free atmosphere characterized the school. That means a student should be given a chance
to express his or her ideas freely on a topic being taught in the class.
The teachers are in a position to foster individual growth he can facilitate development of
originality and creativity by providing a climate as well as basic skills and tools which
make exploration possible. The aims of school tasks should be to nurture self discipline
and cultivate self- evaluation .Mass teaching and mass testing are not advocated. Primary
emphasize must always be on the person as learner and not on the learning program. The
schedule must be flexible and open, and the teacher must build positive relationship
between himself and his students.
 DARK SIDE OF EXISTENTIALISM IN
EDUCATION
It reject the existence of human nature by proposing that existence comes before
essence, meaning that our consciousness has the opportunity to determine how we
feel about the world around us independent of our basic genetic and
environmental characteristics.
Non ration approach- highly subjective means that some methodologies are not
good to be used when teaching the learners, for example mass teaching method
depends much on how competent the teacher is in a particular topic, and the
students act as the receivers of what is taught whether it is right or not.
It base on what feels right rather than what is. That is to say, existentialism theory
believes in what it focuses to be true rather than basing on reality which can be
proved beyond the unreasonable doubt.
It does not put enough emphasize on future, existentialism considers only the life
existing at the moment and never think about the future life, in this case the
learners will not be taught to overcome the challenges when they complete their
studies ,their mind becomes so narrowed in terms of thinking critically about life.
It puts much emphasize on individual freedom which seems to be a challenge in
the course of learning.forexample if the learner is given enough freedom can
forget important issues related to his or her studies and hence can lose direction
toward his or her future.