Jeromie Caballero Notes – Not for Sale [Personal Use only]

PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS OF EDUCATION

EXISTENTIALISM
Paul Sartre & Soren Keirgeraad
 "Existence precedes Essence"
 Philosophy of Subjectivity
 People are free to choose what to make of their lives and their individual passions are what drive them.
Concerns of the Existentialist
 to help students understand and appreciate themselves.
 to be taught how to accept complete responsibility for their thoughts, feelings and actions.
The Existentialist Teacher's Role
 to help students define their own essence
          -by exposing them to various paths they take in life.
          -by creating an environment in which they freely choose. their own preferred way.
 Since feeling is not divorced from reason in decision making, the existentialist demands the education
of the whole person, "not just the mind."
What to Teach?
 Students are given a wide variety of options from which to choose from.
 The humanities, however, are given tremendous emphasis to "provide students with vicarious
experiences that will help unleash their own creativity and self-expression.
 Teacher - helps students define their essence. (Facilitator)
 Learner-Centered (Student's interests and needs) (Student— emphasis not the curriculum)
 Holistic development - make good decisions
 Teachers should not impose values too since values are personal.
 Learning is self-paced, self-directed.
 Create various task to cover multiple kinds of learners.

ESSENTIALISM
William Bagkey, James Koerner
 "Essence precedes Existence"
 We cannot control our lives because it is designed even before we are born. It is called destiny or fate.
Grand design.
 Because there is already a life prepared for everyone, the role of the teachers is to teach learners the
basic knowledge, skills and values.
 Traditional approach or Back to basic approach that emphasizes the basic skills or the fundamental 4
r's (reading, 'riting, 'rithmetic, right conduct)
 Foci: math, natural science, history, foreign language, and literature.
 4r's are needed for the students to acquire higher or more complex skills needed in preparation for
adult life..
 The teachers and administrators decide what is most important for the students to learn without
considering students' interest, background and learning styles.
 Teacher-centered - everything comes from the teacher. 
 Teachers-fountains of knowledge, paragon of virtues.
 Emphasis - mastery of subject matter.
 Rely heavily on the use of prescribed textbooks, Method: the drill method, the lecture method,
memorization, and discipline.

BEHAVIORISM
John Watson, B.F. Skinner
 Human beings - shaped by the environment
 Man - neither good/bad - product of the society
 Teachers create classroom atmosphere/classroom climate that conducive to learning: -Physical
climate: light, temperature, arrangement of furniture, size and quantity of visual aids.
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-Psychological Climate: feeling of students in the presence of the teachers and their classmate:
respected, welcomed, supported?
 Teachers ought to make the lesson as clear and interesting as possible to capture and hold the
learners' attention.
 Power of positive reinforcement and appropriate incentives to eliminate negative ones.

PERENNIALISM
Robert Hutchins, Mortimer Adler
 Ageless, eternal, unchanged
 Truth- universal - does not depend on circumstances of time, place, and person (transcendent truths
and values)
 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.
 The perennialist curriculum is a universal one on the view that all human beings possess the same
essential nature. 
 It is heavy on the humanities, on general education.
 There is less emphasis on vocational and technical education.
 What the perennialist teachers teach are lifted from the Great Books. 
 History, religion, literature (Past ideas- relevant) Understand the great work of civilization.
 Curriculum — based on the recurring themes.
 The perennialist classrooms are "centered on teachers." The teachers do not allow the students'
interests or experiences to substantially dictate what they teach.
 Students engaged in Socratic dialogues, or mutual inquiry sessions to develop an understanding of
history's most timeless concepts."

CONSTRUCTIVISM
The formalization of constructivism is generally attributed to Jean Piaget. He identified processes of
assimilation and accommodation that are key in this interaction as individuals construct new
knowledge from their experience.
 Constructivist sees to develop intrinsically motivated and independent learners adequately equip with
learning skills for them to be able to construct knowledge and make meaning of them.
 The learners are taught how to learn.
 They are taught learning processes and skills such as searching, critiquing and evaluating information,
drawing inferences posing questions out of the information provided.
 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.
 Teacher's role is to facilitate.
 Their minds are full of ideas waiting to be "midwifed" by the teacher with his/her skillful facilitating skills.
(They don't believe in Tabularasa)

PROGRESSIVISM
John Dewey "Learning by Doing"
 Contrasted-essentialism and perennialism.
 Change and growth.
 Learners- enlightened and intelligent to fully live NOW.
 Progressivist teachers teach to develop learners into becoming enlightened and intelligent citizens of a
democratic society. 
 This group of teachers teach learners so they may live life fully NOW not to prepare them for adult life.
 The progressivists are identified with need-based and relevant curriculum.
 This is curriculum that "responds to students' needs and they relate to students' personal lives and
experiences.
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 Progressivists accept the impermanence of life and the inevitability of change.
 Change is the only thing that does not change. Hence, progressivist teachers are more concerned with
teaching the learners the skills to cope with change.
 The subjects that are given emphasis in progressivist schools are the natural and social sciences.
 Teachers expose students to many new scientific, technological, and social developments, reflecting
progressivist notion that progress and change are fundamental.
 Progressivist teachers employ experiential methods - "one learns by doing"
 Book learning is no substitute for actual experience (Dewey). One experiential teaching method that
progressivist teachers heavily rely on is the problem-solving method.

PRAGMATISM
John Dewey, Charles Pierce
 Experienced and Useful = Truth
 Greek Word: to do, to make,
 Thought must produce action
 Student centered; Involves students to work in group/ peer.
 Curriculum: framed on the principles of utility, interest and experience.
 Not focused in the facts, theories – not help students solve life problems.
 Subject to be taught: should help students solve practical problems (language, science, agriculture,
domestic science).
 Life is the subject matter of instruction

IDEALISM
Socrates, Plato
 Believes in two forms of the world: Spiritual and material.
 Prime of life: to achieve spiritual values of truth, beauty, goodness (undying values)
 Ideas are the only true reality, more important than objects and materials.
 Serve the society better.
 Emphasis-Philosophy. Literature, Religion, History
 Character development: is through emulation of examples and heroes.

REALISM
Aristotle, St. Thomas
 Actualities of life – what is real
 Ultimate reality is the world of Physical Objects: the world is material.
 Reality is independent of the human mind.
 Most effective way to find about reality - study it through organized, separate and systematically
arranged matter.
 Foci: Science and Mathematics. Nature and Vocation
 Medium of instruction: mother tongue - foundation for all subjects and livelihood.
 Character development is through training in the rules of conduct.

NATURALISM
JJ Rousseau, John Lock
 Denies everything that has supernatural significance - dogmas/revelation/God/Ghost - for all can be
accounted by scientific laws.
 Truth can only been found in nature and in science.
 Focus: development and growth (The teacher should know what to give in the certain level)
 Democratic and Universal way – everyone must be educated in the same manner.
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 Emphasis: Physical development rather than 3r’s