Blog 6

Blog 6: Education Philosophy Chart

Philosophy	Approximate Date	Key Figure	Short Description	Application in Today’s Classroom
Essentialism	1930’s	William Bagely	The purpose of education is to learn specific knowledge in core academic subjects such as math, science, literature, and history. Teachers must teach the key parts of these subjects so students have access to this basic or “essential” knowledge.	I think teachers today teach the key parts of each subject in a way so students understand what the key parts are and how to build greater knowledge independently upon what they have learned.
Perennialism	1980’s	Mortimer Adler	All knowledge or wisdom gathered over time is represented in great works of literature and art as well as religious texts.	Teachers discuss great works of literature with their students talking about what they have read and what the reasons they were written may be.
Progressivism	20th century	John Dewey	Stresses active learning through problem solving, projects, and hands-on experiences.	Teachers will use their student’s strengths to guide them into learning more independently to discover new things on their own through their own experiences.
Social reconstructionism/ critical theory	20th century	Paulo Freire	Social and political reform through observing social problems and what needs to change.	This is probably mostly used in high school where teachers challenge students to be critical about social injustice and dispute oppression.
Existentialism	19th to mid-20th centuries	Soren Kierkagaard Jean Paul Sartre	Students seek what their place in the world is by making all the decisions involving their choice of subject matter and activities.	I don’t know of many places where the student makes most of their own decisions about what they want to learn besides college. I do see some of this philosophy in classrooms when teachers guide their students to make their own decisions about what is or is not important to know.