Jalexis Evans

October 19, 2018

Edu 201-1002

Dr. Vartouhi Asherian

Educational Philosophies

One of the Educational Philosophies is Perennialism, which focuses on things from the

books, ideas, and concepts. People who teach like this wants there students to use factual

information. They tend to focus on works of great thinkers that will always affect the society.

They want students to think deeper than usual and if you think this way they are preparing you

for leadership. Two people that believed that Great Books help create great leaders and bring the

ideas and concepts was to promote longer educations and were Robert Hutchins and Mortimer

Adler. Robert began the program of Great Books in 1963 while Adler continued on Hutchins

idea. Today the Great Books program is continued at St. Johns University where it’s used as a

core curriculum for students who major in literature, Philosophy, history, and many more.

Another philosophy is Progressivism that works around the real-world and how curious

the students will become. Yet, they want the child to live now and not to worry about the adult

life quite yet. This Philosophy program was to promote longer educations and give people the

knowledge of is based on pragmatism, which was to determine if the idea had merit. John Dewy

was a reformer that believed that learning from books wasn’t actually like getting up and doing

those things. He focused on the Scientific Method and put it to problems that will be faced.

Inside of a Progressive classroom the teacher will build the curriculum around abilities,

experiences, and interest of the students. They focus on working in groups based on interests.
 Social Reconstruction is another Educational Philosophy, which is based on social

inequalities and encourages schools, teachers, students, and etc to focus their studies around the

social world. Social Reconstruction focuses on the real world problems, such as poverty, racism,

sexism, and etc. They also most of these social issues are caused because we fail to teach these

topics schools or the information is not true. One person that noticed the problem was George

Counts, he believes that in reforming society should be taught in the educational system. Inside

of a classroom you will see the teacher creating lessons that focus on both intellectual inform and

emotions about social inequalities. Projects are seen as efforts to improve society, not just a basic

project.

Existentialism is the idea that students use education to find their propose and direction of

their lives. They believe that they find their own truth and they will learn when they want to and

what they need to learn. Main focus is to answer these two questions why am I here. And what is

my purpose? Inside of a classroom you’ll see the teacher creating multiple paths so the child has

many options on where they want to go. Each subject taught will have a deeper meaning to it.

For example art focuses on individual creativity and they way their imagination will work.

Lastly, Essentialism is a philosophy that believes that children need to know the

essentials of patriotism, character development, and knowledge. This is just the basics short of

like how the educations in America are right now. Essentialism didn’t become huge until

William Bagley with the launching of Sputnik, and also standardizing testing became mandated,

global competition, and increase immigration to the United States. Yet, there were many

different ideas from different essentialist. E.D Hirsch Jr believed more inclusive curriculum

offers knowledge that can be shared he believes in shared knowledge. Inside of a essentialist

classroom you will see basic teachings of normal American subjects like English, Math, Science,
History, Etc. The teacher will seem like a role model as well because they will help you decide

what is important and what isn’t important.

 A Brief History of the Great Books Foundation. (2018). Retrieved October 21, 2018,

from https://www.greatbooks.org/about/history/

 Balbuena, S. (2014, June 06). Philosophies of education. Retrieved October 21, 2018,

from https://www.slideshare.net/sherwinbalbuena/philosophies-of-education-35587809

 Maheshwari, V. (2011, November 12). Existentialism – As an Educational Philosophy.

Retrieved October 21, 2018, from http://www.vkmaheshwari.com/WP/?p=283

 Mosteller, A. (2012). Theories of Education:  Essentialism. Retrieved October 21, 2018, from

http://education101intrototeaching.pbworks.com/w/page/10077130/Theories of Education:

Essentialism

 Thomas, R. M., & Gelpi, E. (2018, August 29). Education. Retrieved October 21, 2018,

from https://www.britannica.com/topic/education/Social-reconstructionist-education

Education Philosophies Questions

When it come to why I wanted to become a teacher it was something I really thought

hard about my future. I always asked myself what is something I would love to do and would

benefit me in the future. When it comes to teaching I think long term and about changing the
world one step at a time, which will be through the younger generations. Being around teachers

that actually wanted to make me into a better person and wanted to have an impact on the kids is

what really inspired me. My senior year is when I made up my mind on what I wanted to do,

which was teaching because I had this teacher named Mr. Lacombe, he was really laid back but

yet so impacting and you could tell he loved his job. He would always tell me that “we are the

future and we need to choose wisely on what we need to do to change the world.” I would look

at him and notice that we had a lot of stuff in common and I compared things he done to things

that I could do as a teacher. Him being such an influential teacher, he made sure no child was left

behind even if that made him do one on one sessions as long as that helped the student. He had

patience and I noticed that I have patience as well. With the field observation I believe that it’s

going to open my eyes to the diversity and different teaching levels in the educational system.

Actually seeing how different each kid is compared to the student next to them will show how

society looks now and how the future is going to change. Teaching levels are impacting the

educational system now, so it’ll give me a view on what we can do to be able to help each and

every student.

When it comes to educational philosophies I tend to lean towards Social Reconstruction

because I focus on reconstruction the society into something better and new. I believe this

because once kids exit the school system the world will be around them so all the inequalities

will emerge, such as racism, poverty, sexism, and etc. I believe kids need to know what exactly

is going on around them in the society they are a part of. When it comes to history when it comes

to education it makes me believe how lucky this generation is and how much we grew as a

nation. Back in the day being a black individual we couldn’t get a public education at all leaving

us behind to not learning and basically being stuck. Almost the same for women education was
for the white man nobody else. When we look at it now we are very lucky and yet, many of the

students now are taking what they have in front of them for granted.

When it comes to today’s society we’re so diverse that we have to come up with new

strategies to make sure each and every student has a chance to learn. Students who have a harder

time then other students to learn will always know that if you need extra help I’m here before

and after school because I want them to succeed as much as they want too. I believe it all up to

how much the kid really cares about his education if they want to do the best they will make sure

they find a way to talk to me and do stuff that will help them achieve the right grade. When it

comes to learning I will make sure that I try to help each way of learning. If some of the kids are

more of hands on learner I will try to add some of that to the classroom and etc for all learning

ways.

In order to become a teacher I believe there are many teaching qualities you may need in

order to survive as a teacher. One as I stated before is patience. Many kids aren’t going to

understand things the first time you have told them. So you have to be patient and make sure you

put time into making sure they understand. You need to have a strong mindset because I will be

teaching high school. In high school kids are trying to find themselves at the same time are

highly influenced by the people around them. So there will be times they make you upset but

you need to learn how to handle situations. I feel like you will need to have been inside of school

teacher’s footsteps for example field observation. We need to see how things are around us and

how we see things. Without knowing what we’re getting into we might have a hard time

adjusting. When it comes to what I’m going to do to become a teacher I’m going to finish my

education at CSN then move to a university to finish my last two years then I will make sure I
get more hours done at school to make sure I’m prepared then I will be ready to become a

teacher.