* Perennialism

* Man and his existence are virtually permanent therefore the teaching
style should not change
* Emphasizes the importance of transferring knowledge, information, and
skills from the older generation to the younger one
* The teacher is not concerned of student’s interest (teacher-centered)
* Students acquire knowledge of unchanging principles or great ideas
* Less emphasis on vocational and technical education

* Places emphasis on general education

* Sees the student is a passive recipient
* Robert Maynard Hutchins and Mortimer Adler are the main
advocates of perennialism
* Acc. 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: 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
* A Perennialist high school English teacher would prefer that students to read
any of Shakespeare’s plays rather than a current best-seller novel.
* Science students would learn about Newton’s three laws of motion or three
laws of thermodynamics rather than build a model of a space shuttle.
* Portrait of a Perennialist teacher
Mrs. Busiada has been teaching English at the high school since mid-1980s.
Among students and teachers as well, she has a reputation for demanding a
lot. As one student put it, “You don’t waste time in Mrs. Busiada’s classes.”
During the early 1990s, she had a difficult time dealing with students who
aggressively insisted on being taught subjects that they called relevant. As a
graduate of a top-notch university in Kenya,
* Portrait of a Perennialist teacher
where she received a classical, liberal education, Mrs. Busiada refused to
lessen the emphasis in her classes on great works of literature that she felt
students needed to know, such as Beowulf and the works of Chaucer, Dickens
and Shakespeare.
As far as her approach to classroom management is concerned, one student
sums it up this way: “She doesn’t let you get by with a thing; she never slacks
off on the pressure. She lets you know that she’s there to teach and you’re
there to learn.”
* Portrait of a Perennialist teacher
Mrs. Busiada believes that hard work and effort is necessary if one is to get a
good education. As a result she gives students very few opportunities to
misbehave, and she appears to be immune to the grumblings of students who
do complain openly about the workload.
She becomes very animated when she talks about the value of the classics to
students who are preparing to live as adults in the 21st century.

* 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”.
* 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)
* 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
* Portrait of an Essentialist teacher
Mr. Katana is known around the school as a hardworking, dedicated teacher.
His commitment to children is especially evident when he talks about
preparing “his” learners for life in high school and beyond. “A lot of teachers
nowadays have given up on youngsters,” he says with a touch of sadness to
his voice. “They don’t demand much of them. If we don’t push them now to
get the knowledge and skills they’re going to need later in life, we’ve failed
them. My main purpose here is to see that my students get the basics they’re
going to need.”

* Portrait of an Essentialist teacher

Mr. Katana has made it known that he does not approve of the methods used
by some of the younger, more humanistic-oriented teachers in the school. He
is openly critical of some teachers’ tendency to “let students do their own
thing” and spend time “expressing their feelings.” He advises all teachers to
focus their energies on getting students to master subject-matter content, “the
things kids will need to know,” rather than on helping students adjust to the
interpersonal(involving relations) aspects of school life. He says that “kids
come to school to learn.” All students would learn, he points out, if “teachers
based their methods on good, sound approaches that have always worked—
not on the so-called innovative approaches that are based on fads(short-lived
fashions) and frills(unnecessary additions)
.”
* Portrait of an Essentialist teacher
Mr. Katana’s students have accepted his no-nonsense approach to teaching.
With few exceptions, his classes are orderly and businesslike. Each class
period follows a standard routine. Students enter the room quietly and take
their seats with a minimum of the foolishness and horseplay that mark the
start of many other classes in the school. As the first order of business, the
 previous day’s homework is returned and reviewed. Following this, Mr.
Katana presents the day’s lesson, usually a 15- to 20-minute explanation of
how to solve a particular kind of math problem. His mini lectures are lively,
and his wide-ranging tone of voice and animated, spontaneous delivery
convey his excitement about the material and his belief that students can learn.
During large-group instruction, Mr. Katana also makes ample use of a
whiteboard, software such as Encarta, and manipulatives such as a large
abacus and colored blocks of different sizes and shapes.

* Progressivism
* Believe that individuality, progress and change are fundamental to one’s
education
* Teachers teach so they may live life fully NOW not to prepare them for adult
life
* Curriculum is centered on the needs, experiences, interests and abilities of
students not on academic disciplines
* Textbooks, memorization, & other traditional techniques are replaced with
actual experiences and problem-solving
* Emphasis on life-long learning and social skills
* Students are active learners
* Student-centered
* 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
* 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

* Portrait of a Progressive Teacher

Mr. Leitoro teaches social studies at a middle school in a well-to-do part of
the city. Boyishly handsome and in his mid-thirties, Mr. Leitoro usually works
in casual attire—khaki pants, soft-soled shoes, and a sports shirt. He seems to
get along well with students. Mr. Leitoro likes to give students as much
freedom of choice in the classroom as possible. Accordingly, his room is
divided into interest and activity centers, and much of the time students are
free to choose where they want to spend their time.
* Portrait of a Progressive Teacher
One corner at the back of the room has a library collection of paperback and
hardcover books, an easy chair, and an area rug; the other back corner of the
room is set up as a project area and has a worktable on which are several
globes, maps, large sheets of newsprint, and assorted drawing materials. At
the front of the room in one corner is a small media center with a computer
and flat screen monitor, laser printer, and DVD/VCR.
Mr. Leitoro makes it a point to establish warm, supportive relationships with
his students. He is proud of the fact that he is a friend to his students.
* Portrait of a Progressive Teacher
“I really like the kids I teach,” he says in a soft, gentle voice. “They’re
basically good kids, and they really want to learn if we teachers, I mean, can
just keep their curiosity alive and not try to force them to learn. It’s up to us as
teachers to capitalize on their interests.”
The visitor to Mr. Leitoro’s class today can sense his obvious regard for
students. He is genuinely concerned about the growth and nurturance of each
one. As his students spend most of their time working in small groups at the
various activity centers in the room, Mr. Leitoro divides his time among the
groups. He moves from group to group and seems to immerse himself as an
equal participant in each group’s task. One group, for example, has been
working on making a papier-mâché globe. Several students are explaining
animatedly to him how they plan to transfer the flat map of the world they
have drawn to the smooth sphere they have fashioned out of the papier-mâché.
* Portrait of a Progressive Teacher
Mr. Leitoro listens carefully to what his students have to say and then
congratulates the group on how cleverly they have engineered the project.
When he speaks to his students, he does so in a matter-of-fact, conversational
tone, as though speaking to other adults.
As much as possible he likes to bring textbook knowledge to life by providing
his students with appropriate experiences—field trips, small-group
 projects, simulation activities, role-playing, Internet explorations, and so on.
Mr. Leitoro believes that his primary function as a teacher is to prepare his
students for an unknown future. Learning to solve problems at an early age is
the best preparation for this future, he feels.

* Existentialism
* 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.
* 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
* 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
* Portrait of an Existentialist teacher
After he started teaching English eight years ago at a suburban high school,
Florence began to have doubts about the value of what he was teaching
students. Although he could see a limited, practical use for the knowledge and
 skills he was teaching, he felt he was doing little to help his students answer
the most pressing questions of their lives. Also, Florence had to admit to
himself that he had grown somewhat bored with following the narrow,
unimaginative Board of Education curriculum guides.
During the next eight years, Florence gradually developed a style of teaching
that placed emphasis on students finding out who they are. She continued to
teach the knowledge covered on the achievement test mandated by her state,
but he made it clear that what students learned from her, they should use to
answer questions that were important to them.
* Portrait of an Existentialist teacher
Now, for example, she often gives writing assignments that encourage
students to look within in order to develop greater self-knowledge. She often
uses assigned literature as a springboard for values clarification discussions.
And whenever possible, she gives her students the freedom to pursue
individual reading and writing projects. Her only requirement is that students
be meaningfully involved in whatever they do.
Florence’s approach to teaching is perhaps summed up by the bumper sticker
on the sports car she drives: “Question authority.” Unlike many of her fellow
teachers, she wants her students to react critically and skeptically to what she
teaches them. She also presses them to think thoughtfully and courageously
about the meaning of life, beauty, love, and death. She judges her
effectiveness by the extent to which students are able and willing to become
more aware of the choices that are open to them.

* 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.
* 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.
* 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
* 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.
* 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
* 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
* Methods of Instruction
* Lecture from time to time, but primary method of teaching is the dialectic…
discuss, analyze, synthesize, and apply what they have read to contemporary
society
* Curriculum…importance of the study of the classics…many support a back to
the basics approach to education
* 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." 
* Aristotle’s Systematic Theory of Logic
* Begin with empirical research, speculate or use dialectic reasoning, and
culminate in a syllogism
* A syllogism is a system of logic that consists of three parts: (1) a major
premise, (2) a minor premise, and (3) a conclusion
* For a syllogism to work, all the parts must be correct
* 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
* Goal of Education for Realists
* Notions of the good life, truth, beauty could be answered through the study of
ideas, using the dialectical method…for contemporary realists, the goal of
education is to help individuals understand and apply the principles of science
to help solve the problems plaguing the modern world
* Teachers should be steeped in the basic academic disciplines

* Pragmatism
* An American philosophy from the 19th century….C.S. Peirce, William James
& John Dewey
* Pragmatism encourages people to find processes that work in order to achieve
their desired ends…action oriented, experientially grounded

* John Dewey’s Philosophy

* Education starts with the needs and interests of the child, allows the child to
participate in planning her course of study, employ project method or group
learning, depend heavily or experiential learning
* Children are active, organic beings…needing both freedom and responsibility
* Ideas are not separate from social conditions, philosophy has a responsibility
to society
* Dewey’s Role for the Teacher
* Not the authoritarian but the facilitator…encourages, offers suggestions,
questions and helps plan and implement courses of study…has command of
several disciplines
* Inquiry method, problem solving, integrated curriculum

* 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. 

* 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. 
* For example John Locke held that some knowledge (e.g. knowledge of God's
existence) could be arrived at through intuition and reasoning alone.
Similarly Robert Boyle, a prominent advocate of the experimental method,
held that we have innate ideas

* Rationalism
* 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.“
* 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.
* Social Reconstructionism
* Holds that schools should take the lead in changing or reconstructing the
current social order.
* Schools should not only transmit knowledge about the existing social order;
they should seek to reconstruct it as well.
* Social reconstructionism has clear ties to progressive educational philosophy

* 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
* School of thought that argues that pleasure is the only intrinsic good
* Strives to maximize net pleasure (pleasure minus pain)
* 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.
* Aristippus of Cyrene (student of Socrates), Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart
Mill

* 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 (Critical Theory)

* 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