PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHTS

ON EDUCATION
GLENN, CAPILITAN MACAYA, RUSSEL

MANGUINO, ZILJIANE VIDEÑA, NICOLENE

PRESENTED BY:
PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION
• The term philosophy has been derived from two Greek words, Philos
means “love” and Sophia means “wisdom”
• All teachers have a personal philosophy that colors the way they teach.
• Your educational philosophy consists of what you believe in about
education – the set of principles that guides your professional action.
MEANING OF PHILOSOPHY
o Philosophy has
• Love of knowledge
• An Activity
• A comprehensive picture of the universe
• A guide to a way of life
• Philosophy and Science
WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION
• Your beliefs and your own philosophy of education will influence all
your activities in the classroom from how you teach, what you teach,
how you manage your classroom, how you relate to students, parents,
and colleagues, and how you conduct your professional life.
BELIEFS ABOUT TEACHING AND LEARNING
• What will be your primary role as a teacher?
• Will it be to transmit knowledge to students and then guide their
practice as they develop skills in using that knowledge? Or will it be to
develop self-directed learners by building on students’ interests, prior
experiences and current understandings?
BELIEFS ABOUT WHAT IS WORTH KNOWING
• Teachers have different ideas about what should be taught.
EDUCATION
• In literary sense, education owes its origin to the two Latin words:
Educare and Educere.
• Educare means “to nourish”, “to bring up”, “to raise”;
Educere means “to bring forth”, “to draw out”, “to lead out”.
• Educatum means “the act of teaching and training”.
THE PURPOSE OF EDUCATION
What do you think is the purpose of education?
• To give knowledge
• To transmit culture
• To provide practical/hands-on experience/training
• To provide learner/human-centered education
PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION
• Philosophy of education may be defined as the application of the
fundamental principles of a philosophy of life to the work of education.
• Philosophy of education offers a definite set of principles and
establishes as a definite set of aims and objectives.
WHAT ARE THE BRANCHES OF PHILOSOPHY
• Metaphysics – what is real to you
• Epistemology – how do we know
• Axiology – values
• Ethics – morality, behavior
• Aesthetics – beauty, comfort
METAPHYSICS
• Concerned with the questions about the nature of reality.

• The very heart of educational philosophy.

• What is reality? What is the world made of? What does it mean to
exist?

• The school curriculum is based on what we know about reality.

EPISTEMOLOGY
• Concerned with the nature of knowledge.
• What knowledge is true? How does knowing take place? How do we
decide between opposing views of knowledge? What knowledge is
most worth?
• As a teacher, you need to determine what is true about the content you
will teach, then you must decide on the most appropriate means of
teaching this content to students.
AXIOLOGY
• Concerned with values.
• What values should teachers encourage students to adopt? What
values does a truly educated person hold?
• Highlights the fact that the teacher has an interest not only in the
quantity of knowledge that students acquire but also the quality of life
that becomes possible because of that knowledge.
AXIOLOGY (THE GOLDEN MEAN)
EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHIES
PERENNIALISM
• For Perennialists, the aim of education is to ensure that students
acquire understandings about the great ideas of Western civilization.
These ideas have the potential for solving problems in any era. The
focus is to teach ideas that are everlasting, to seek enduring truths
which are constant, not changing, as the natural and human worlds at
their most essential level, do not change.
PERENNIALISM
• The most conservative, traditional, or inflexible of all philosophies
• Reflects Plato’s belief that TRUTH and values are absolute, timeless
and universal
• Develop the students’ rational and moral powers; reasoning skills
• Reality is a world of reason
• Teaches concepts and focuses on knowledge and the meaning of
knowledge
• Is convicted that all human beings possess the same essential character
PERENNIALISM
• Places emphasis on general education
• Sees the student is a passive recipient
• Robert Maynard Hutchins and Mortimer Adler are the main
advocates of perennialism
• According to them, the Teacher’s role is to: instill respect for authority,
deliver clear lectures; interpret and tell; coach in critical thinking skills;
apply creative techniques and other tried and true methods which are
believed to be most conducive to disciplining the students’ minds
PERENNIALISM AND AIMS OF EDUCATION
• To develop the rational person and to uncover universal truth by
carefully training the intellect.
• Character training is also important as a means of developing one’s
moral and spiritual being.
PERENNIALISM: APPLICATION TO TEACHING
• Education should be the same for everyone
• A single curriculum should exist for all students
• Curriculum should include study of original sources
• Since man is basically the same, there is no need to tailor learning
experiences to the weak student
• Learners must be challenged and educators must expect
REASON(explanation for conviction) from them
• Education should be a tool that prepares one for life
• Great emphasis ought to be placed on teaching the great classics –
literature, history, philosophy, science
PERENNIALISM AND TEACHER
• An authority in the field whose knowledge is unquestionable.
• A master of the subject and discipline and must be able to guide
discussion.
PERENNIALISM AND MEHOD OF TEACHING
• Socratic method: Oral exposition, lecture and explication.
ESSENTIALISM
• Learners need to acquire basic knowledge, skills and values necessary
to understand the real world outside.
• Instill students with the “essentials” of academic knowledge, enacting
back-to-basics approach.
• The essence of education is knowledge and skills needed in preparation
for adult life.
• Pass on the cultural and historical heritage to each new generation of
learners, beginning with the “basics”.
ESSENTIALISM
• Emphasis on academic content for students to learn the fundamental
R’s – reading, ‘riting, ‘rithmetic, right conduct
• Accumulated wisdom of our civilization as taught in the traditional
academic disciplines is passed on from teacher to student.
• Maths, Natural Science, History, English

• Students build on what others learned (not trial/error)

ESSENTIALISM
• Subject-centered
• Mastery of subject matter is the key focus
• Advocates the covering of as much academic content as possible
• Excludes/downgrades Non-academic subjects such as P.E.
• William C. Bagley is main proponent
• Teachers role: is to transmit traditional moral values and intellectual
knowledge that students need to become model citizens; deliver clear
lectures; stress on memorization and discipline
PROGRESSIVISM
• Skills are taught to cope with change
• Problem-solving methods; scientific method
• Natural and Social sciences
• Learning by doing; book learning is no substitute for actual experience
• Progressive teachers begin with where students are and through daily
give-and-take of the classroom, lead students to see that the subject to
be learned can enhance their lives
• John Dewey is the key proponent
PROGRESSIVISM
• Teacher’s role: facilitate student learning, provide students with
experiences that imitate everyday life as much as possible, foster
cooperative learning activities and hands-on/practical/concrete
activities.
EXISTENIALISM
• Focuses on the experiences of an individual
• Rejects the existence of any source of objective, authoritative truth
about metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics
• “Existence precedes essence. . . .”
• Individuals are responsible for determining for themselves what is
"true" or "false," "right" or "wrong," "beautiful" or "ugly.”
• There exists no universal form of human nature; each of us has the free
will to develop as we see fit.
EXISTENTIALISM
• Education of the whole person, not just the mind.
• Helping the students understand and appreciate themselves as unique
individuals who accept complete responsibility for their thoughts,
feelings, and actions. Subject matter takes second place
• Learning ought to be self-paced; self-directed
• Emphasis on HUMANITIES (grammar, history, poetry ethics )
• Yes to vocational educational(relating to career or job skills)
• Existentialists judge the curriculum according to whether it contributes
to the individual’s quest for meaning
EXISTENTIALISM
• Encourages individual creativity and imagination
• Offers the individual a way of thinking about my life, what has meaning
for me, what is true for me.
• Teachers employ values clarification strategy – teachers remain non-
judgmental and take care not to impose their values on their students
since values are personal.
• Jean-Paul Sartre one of the proponents
• Teacher’s role: 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
EXTENTIALISM AND METHOD OF TEACHING
• Experimentation
• Self-expressive activities
• Method and media that illustrates emotions, feelings and insight.
BEHAVIORISM
• Behaviorism is a theory of animal and human learning that only
focuses on objectively observable behaviors and discounts mental
activities.
• Behavior theorists define learning as nothing more than the
acquisition of new behavior.
• Modification and shaping of students’ behavior by providing for a
favorable environment.
BEHAVIORISM
• Teachers teach to students to respond favorably to various stimuli in
the environment
• Teachers provide incentives to reinforce positive responses and weaken
or eliminate negative ones
• B.F. Skinner is the main proponent
IDEALISM
• Asserts that because the physical world is always changing, ideas are
the only reliable form of reality
• The focus is on conscious reasoning in the mind.
• The aim of education is to discover and develop each individual's
abilities and full moral excellence in order to better serve society.
• The curricular emphasis is subject matter of mind: literature, history,
philosophy, and religion.
IDEALISM
• Lecture, discussion, and Socratic dialogue (a method of teaching that
uses questioning to help students discover and clarify knowledge).
• Truth is perfect and eternal, but not found in the world of matter, only
through the mind
• The only constant for Plato was mathematics, unchangeable and
eternal
IDEALISM
• Plato: The first is the spiritual or mental world, which is eternal,
permanent, orderly, regular, and universal. There is also the world of
appearance, the world experienced through sight, touch, smell, taste,
and sound, that is changing, imperfect, and disorderly.
IDEALISM
• Plato believed education helped move individuals collectively toward
achieving the good.
• The State should be involved in education, moving brighter students
toward abstract ideas and the less able toward collecting data…a gender
free tracking system
• Those who were brighter should rule, others should assume roles to
maintain the state
• The philosopher-king would lead the State to the ultimate good
IDEALISM
• Evil comes through ignorance, education will lead to the obliteration of
evil
• More modern idealists: St. Augustine, Descartes, Immanuel Kant,
Georg Hegel
• Goal of Education: interested in the search for truth through ideas…
with truth comes responsibility to enlighten others, “education is
transformation: Ideas can change lives.”
IDEALISM
• Role of the Teacher: to analyze and discuss ideas with students so that
students can move to new levels of awareness so that they can
ultimately be transformed, abstractions dealt with through the
dialectic, but should aim to connect analysis with action
• Role of the teacher is to bring out what is already in student’s mind:
reminiscence
REALISM
• Aristotle was the leading proponent of realism, started the Lyceum, the
first philosopher to develop a systematic theory of logic
• Reality exists independent of the human mind
• The ultimate reality is the world of physical objects
• The aim is to understand objective reality through "the diligent and
unsparing scrutiny of all observable data." 
REALISTS
• Thomas Aquinas advocated a synthesis of pagan ideas and Christian
beliefs…reason is the means of ascertaining or understanding truth,
God could be understood through reasoning based on the material
world…no conflict between science and religion
• The world of faith with the world of reason, contemporary Catholic
schools
MODERN REALISM
• From the Renaissance, Francis Bacon developed induction, the
scientific method…based on Aristotle, developed a method starting
with observations, culminating in generalization, tested in specific
instances for the purpose of verification
• John Locke and tabula rasa, things known from experience… ordered
sense data and then reflected on them
PRAGMATISM
• Pragmatism encourages people to find processes that work in order to
achieve their desired ends…action oriented, experientially grounded
RATIONALISM
• Rational knowledge is labeled a priori, to indicate that it is prior to and
independent of experience.
•  The rationalist’s confidence in reason and proof tends, therefore, to
detract from his respect for other ways of knowing.
• Pure Reason (i.e. Reason independent of Experience) can yield
informative knowledge, knowledge of (some aspects of) the world
rather than just of the relations between our concepts.
• "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual
and deductive.“
EMPIRICISM
• Knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experiences
• Emphasizes the role of experience and evidence
• John Locke, David Hume, George Berkeley
• Empiricist thought stresses the need to eliminate assumptions about
notions of how the world is supposed to work. The only truths are
those that demonstrate how the world actually does work. 
• One of the controversial aspects of empiricism is that it often conflicts
with traditional views of religion. 
SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTIONISM
• A social reconstructionist curriculum is arranged to highlight the need
for various social reforms and, whenever possible, allow students to
have firsthand experiences in reform activities.
• Schools should provide students with methods for dealing with the
significant crises that confront the world: war, economic depression,
international terrorism, hunger, natural disasters, inflation, and ever-
accelerating technological advances.
• Theodore Brameld, George Counts are key supporters.
UTILITARIANISM / HEDONISM
• Ethical hedonism is the idea that all people have the right to do
everything in their power to achieve the greatest amount of pleasure
possible to them.
• School of thought that argues that pleasure is the only intrinsic good
• Strives to maximize net pleasure (pleasure minus pain)
EPICUREANISM
• Epicurus believed that what he called "pleasure" is the greatest good,
but the way to attain such pleasure is to live modestly and to gain
knowledge of the workings of the world and the limits of one's desires.
• Epicureanism emphasizes the neutrality of the gods, that they do not
interfere with human lives.
•  The emphasis was placed on pleasures of the mind rather than on
physical pleasures.
POSTMODERNISM
• An educational philosophy contending that many of the institutions in
our society, including schools, are used by those in power to
marginalize those who lack power
• Criticized for using schools for political purposes
CONSTRUCTIVISM
• Students construct understanding of reality through interaction with
objects, people or events in the environment and reflecting on
interactions
• Learning occurs by conflicting with what is already known; previous
experiences determine what is learned
• Teachers act as facilitators
• Students interact with experts
THANK YOU FOR LISTENING
GLENN, CAPILITAN MACAYA, RUSSEL

MANGUINO, ZILJIANE VIDEÑA, NICOLENE

GROUP 1