Philosophy of Education

- Education came from the Latin word “educare” which means “to bring up, to train, to lead.”
- the philosophical study of education and its problems...its central subject matter is education, and its
methods are those of philosophy.
- answers the questions about the purpose of schooling, a teacher's role, what should be taught and by what
methods.
- behind every school and every teacher is a set of related beliefs, a philosophy of education, that influences
what and how the students are taught.
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Teacher-centered philosophies
- tend to be more authoritarian and conservative, and emphasize the values and knowledge that have survived
through time.
- Ex. essentialism and perennialism
- give teachers the power to choose curriculum and construct classroom activities
- views students as vessels to be filled and disciplined in the proven strategies of the past.

Student-centered philosophies
- more focused on individual needs, contemporary relevance, and preparing students for a changing future.
- school is seen as a venue that helps students realize their individuality.
ex. progressivism, social constructionism, and existentialism
- students and teachers work together on determining what should be learned and how best to learn it.
- view the learner as the central focus of classroom activities.
- prepare students to be independent-thinking adults
- Progressivists strive for hands-on learning
- social reconstructiosnists want students to actively work to improve society.
- existentialist give students complete freedom and complete responsibility, with regard to their education.

IDEALISM
- ideas are the only true reality, the only thing worth knowing.
- category of philosophical systems that claim reality is dependent upon the mind rather than independent of
the mind.
- our understanding of reality reflects the workings of our mind first and foremost, that the properties of objects
have no standing independent of the minds perceiving them.
- The heart of reality is to be found in thought or reason.
- The universe is composed of mental or spiritual things
- [people should focus their thoughts on ideas that are perfect.]
- founded by Plato.

Kant
- though our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it all arises out of experience.
- Experience cannot show us that every change must have a cause since we have not yet experienced every
change.
- a priori knowledge – this is the knowledge we have prior to experience.
o For example: we have observed that a mother goat bears a kid. We have not seen a whale giving
birth but we know that a baby whale came from his mother whale.
- I can never know that thing-in-itself, for the moment I know it, I know it as my structured mind permits me to
know it.
o Just like when I put green glasses in my eyes I would always see green things.
- My mind always brings certain ways of thinking to things, and this affects my understanding of them.
- The mind transforms the raw data given to our senses into a coherent and related set of elements.
- Phenomenal and Noumenal Reality
o Phenomenal reality, the world as we experience it.
o Noumenal reality, thing-in-itself
o Our knowledge is limited. We will never know the underlying nature of things.

Hegel
- The mind is ultimately the source and content of knowledge, not physical objects.
 - [Hegel concluded that all objects, and the whole universe, are the products of an absolute subject, an
Absolute Mind.]
- Reality is rationality or Thought.
- Example: Chair
o What is a chair? A chair consists of the sum of the ideas we can have about it. We say that the chair
is hard, brown, round and small.
o These are all universal ideas and when they are related to each other in this way, they are a chair.
o The chair is what we know about it, and what we know about it is that it consists of a combination of
universals or ideas. There is no unknowable aspect.
- The essence of his idealism consisted in his notion that the object of our consciousness – the thing we
experience and think about – is itself thought.
- Reality is thought.

- Plato
o man did not create knowledge, man discovered knowledge.
o intelligent people should be taken care of by the government next to the best school to be of greater
service to the country.
o those showing little abilities in mathematics go into pursuits which would assist them in the practival
realities of life.
o the function of education is to determine which nature fits men into.

***Ideals are the stars. You will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like seafaring men on the desert
of waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny.
***it applies to the theory that holds ideas as the only reality.
***You believe that the student has an inborn capacity to learn. It is your job to stimulate it by presenting various
ideas.
***The birth process checks this perfection, so education requires bringing latent ideas (fully formed concepts) to
consciousness.
***Teaching methods focus on handling ideas through lecture, discussion, and dialogue.
***Introspection, intuition, insight, and whole-part logic are used to bring to consciousness the forms or concepts
which are latent in the mind.

Empiricism
- the view that all concepts originate in experience
- all rationally acceptable beliefs or propositions are justifiable or knowable only through experience
- from empeiria which means "experience"
- concepts are said to be a posteriori
- the senses are the ultimate source of human knowledge.

John Locke
- Knowledge is restricted to ideas – ideas that are generated by objects we experience.
- Each person’s mind is in the beginning like a blank sheet of paper upon which experience alone can
subsequently write knowledge.
- Sensation is the great source of the ideas we have.
- Reflection is an activity of the mind that produces ideas by taking notice of previous ideas furnished by
the senses.
- All the ideas we have can be traced either to sensation or to reflection.
- Simple and Complex Knowledge
o Simple knowledge is the chief source of the raw materials out of which our knowledge is made.
o Simple ideas originated in sensation
o Complex ideas put together by our minds as a compound of simple ideas.

RATIONALISM
- The view that regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge.
- The criterion of the truth is not the sensory but the intellect.
 - What is true is what is logical in the mind.

Rene Descartes
- Concerned with the problem of intellectual certainty.
- The basis of intellectual certainty is his own reason.
- He is searching for method that consists of rules by which our capacities of intuition and deduction are
guided in an orderly way.
- He wanted to affirm that our mind are capable of knowing some ideas with absolute clarity and
distinctness. (Mathematical reasoning).
- Intuition and Deduction
o These two methods are the most certain routes to knowledge.
o Intuition is when we grasp a simple truth completely and immediately.
o Deduction is inference from facts that are known with certainty.
- Descartes put little emphasis on sense experience and experiment in achieving knowledge.
o Example: Candle. Eventhough it is melted, my mind could identify it still as part of a candle though
my sense experience says otherwise.
- Methodic Doubt
o To attain true knowledge, we should never accept anything which we suspect to be doubtful, he now
tries to doubt everything.
o Perhaps God is deceiving him with everything he is experiencing.
o He set out to search for at least a single truth which is certain and indubitable from which to start.
o This one truth, he found in the very act of doubting.
o The mental act of doubting affirms his existence
o Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore, I am)
o What am i? a thing which thinks

PRAGMATISM
- an ideology or proposition is true if it works satisfactorily.
- unpractical ideas are to be rejected.

- John Dewey
o Set aside the more formal and traditional method of learning – listening and taking notes – and
instead encouraged students to become involved with educational projects.
o Spectator theory of knowledge – we learn simply by observing.
 This was rejected by Dewey
 Static and too mechanical
o The person and his environment are dynamic
 In this case the spectator knowledge will not work
 mind is not a fixed substance and knowledge is not a set of static concepts
 human intelligence is the ability in us to cope with our environment.
o Thinking or active intelligence, arises in “problem situations”; thinking and doing are intimately
related.
o he named his theory instrumentalism, emphasizing thinking is always instrumental in solving
problems.
 Reflective thought is always involved in transforming practical situations.
 My mind does not know simply individual things, but mediates between myself as an
organism and my environment.
 Thinking is the act of trying to achieve an adjustment between individuals and environment.
 This instrumentalism is a problem-solving theory of knowledge
o The best values are those that produce satisfactory consequences, relative to the aim that we hope
to achieve.

REALISM
 - If a tree falls in the woods does it make a sound?
- Is there a true reality which exists outside of human perception or is reality only what we perceive?
- Realism is a philosophy started by Aristotle
- It states that there is a true reality, and things exist whether humans perceive them or not.
- Belief that we should study logic, critical thinking and scientific method.
- The first thing a teacher is likely to do is to study the natural world.
- It believes that the job of schools is to teach students about the world around them.
- The teacher wants to teach his students how to use logical processes to find truth in the natural world.
- ex. instead of teaching your students about gravity from a textbook, the teacher takes them outside and
show how gravity works.

- [Plato - must study ideas

- Aristotle - must study matter
- because humans are the only creatures endowed with the ability to think, their purpose is to use this
ability.
- Realism, in philosophy, the viewpoint which accords to things which are known or perceived an
existence or nature which is independent of whether anyone is thinking about or perceiving them.]

EXISTENTIALISM
- Derived from a powerful belief in human free will, and the need for individuals to shape their own futures.
- Students control their own education.
- Students are encouraged to understand and appreciate their uniqueness and to assume responsibility
for their actions.
- Humans define their own meaning in life.
- Individuals are entirely free and must take personal responsibility for themselves.
- People make decisions based on what has meaning to them.

- At first man is nothing, only afterward will he be something.

- Individuals must choose their own way without the aid of universal, objective standards.

- Why am I here?
- Why do I exist?
- What is the purpose of life?
- What is my essence?

- Human persons do not possess the essence; they make choices that create their own nature.
- Choice is vital and inevitable to human existence; even the refusal to choose is a choice.
- Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.

- educational implication: classroom dialogues stimulate awareness that each person creates self-concept
through significant choices.

- Soren Kierkegaard
o father of existentialism

- Jean Paul Sartre

o existence precedes essence
o knife – before it was created it existed in the mind of its creator. Thus, essence precedes existence
o Is this also the case in man? What if there is no God?
 If human nature was already given and fixed, we could not be responsible for what we are.
o Freedom and Responsibility
 We are what we make of ourselves, we have no one to blame except ourselves.
 If we say our essence precedes our existence then we have to blame for what we are.
 We are responsible for what we are.
 However, when we act we must act that what if everyone acted so?
 If we create ourselves we are also creating an iimage of our human nature
 Would you be willing for others to choose the same action?
 If I evade this responsibility, I will not be at ease with my conscience.
  I am coward because I make myself coward.
o since there is no God or designer to give man a purpose, it is up to the individual to choose the life
they think best.
- aims of education:
o to help students understand and appreciate themselves as unique individuals who accept complete
responsibility for their thoughts, feelings, and actions.
o to educate the whole person not just the mind, since feeling is not divorced from reason in decision
making.
o to help the learner become fully his authentic self
o learning is self-paced, self-directed
o there should be private and open spaces in the classroom to facilitate dialogues, small groups, and
individualization
o to freely choose what subject/s the student want to study

Perennialism
- focuses on the universal truths that have withstood the test of time.
- urge the students read the Great Books and develop their understanding of the philosophical concepts that
underlie human knowledge

Progressivism
- based on the belief that lessons must be relevant to the students in order for them to learn.
- the curriculum is built around the personal experiences, interests, and needs of the students.
- education should focus on the whole child, rather than on the content or the teacher.
- stresses that students should test ideas by active experimentation
- the student is a problem solver and thinker who makes meaning through his individual experiences.
- teachers provide experiences so that students can learn by doing.
- proponent: John Dewey

Essentialism
- focuses on teaching the essential elements of academic and moral knowledge.
- urge to get back to the basics.
- the view that things have essences (the attributes, that make an object or substance what it
fundamentally is)
- characterizes a permanent, unalterable and eternal substance, or a form.

- educational essentialism is an educational theory that states that children should learn the traditional
basic subjects and that these should be learned thoroughly and rigorously

- believe that teachers should try to embed traditional moral values and virtues such as respect for
authority, perseverance, fidelity to duty, consideration for others, and practicality and intellectual
knowledge that students need to become model citizens.
- argue that classrooms should be teacher-oriented.
- the teacher should serve as an intellectual and moral role model for students.

Social Reconstructionism
- they desired more direct and immediate attention to societal ills.
- interested in combining study and social action.
- education should go hand in hand in ameliorating social problems.
- proponent: Theodore Brameld