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Chapter 3
Focus Questions
Educational Philosophy
Educational philosophy consists of what you believe about education the set
of principles that guides your professional action.
Metaphysics
Epistemology
Axiology
Perennialism
Essentialism
Progressivism
Existentialism
Social Reconstructionism
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is concerned with explaining, as
rationally and as comprehensively as possible
the nature of reality (in contrast to how reality
appears).
What is reality? What is the world made of?
These are metaphysical questions.
Metaphysics is also concerned with the nature of
being and explores questions such as, What
does it mean to exist? What is humankinds
place in the scheme of things?
Metaphysical questions such as theses are at
the very heart of educational philosophy.
Epistemology
Epistemology questions focus on knowledge: What knowledge is
true? How does knowing take place? How do we know that the we
know? How do we decide between opposing views of knowledge?
Is truth constant, or does it change from situation to situation? What
knowledge is of most worth?
Five Ways of Knowing about the world that are of interest to
teachers are:
Knowing Based on Authority
Knowing Based on Divine Revelation
Knowing Based on Empiricism (Experience)
Knowing Based on Reason and Logical Analysis
Knowing Based on Intuition
Axiology
Axiology highlights the fact that the teacher has an interest not only
in the quantity of knowledge that students acquire but also in the
quality of life that becomes possible because of that knowledge.
Axiological questions include: What values should teachers
encourage students to adopt? What values raise humanity to our
highest expressions of humaneness? What values does a truly
educated person hold?
Ethics
Ethics focuses on What is good and evil, right and wrong, just and
unjust?
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is concerned with values related to beauty and art.
Students make judgments about the quality of works of art.
Logic
Logic is the area of philosophy that deals with the process of
reasoning and identifies rules that will enable the thinker to reach
valid conclusions.
Axiology continued
Socratic Questioning
Perhaps the best-known teacher
to use the inductive approach to
teaching was the Greek
philosopher Socrates (ca. 470399 B.C)
Socratic questioning consists of
holding philosophical
conversations (dialectics) with
pupils and is know today as the
Socratic method.
Figure 3.2 (right) is a guideline
for using Socratic Questioning
techniques in the classroom.
Perennialism
Essentialism
Progressivism
Existentialism
Social Reconstructionism
Perennialism
Perennialism viewed truth as constant, or
perennial. The aim of education, according
to perennialist thinking, is to ensure that
students acquire knowledge of
unchanging principles or great ideas.
The curriculum, according to perennialists,
should stress students intellectual growth
in the arts and sciences.
Mortimer Adler
December 28, 1902 - June 28, 2001
Essentialism
Progressivism
Progressivism is based on the belief that
education should be child-centered rather
than focused on the teacher or the content
area.
The writing of John Dewey (1859-1952) in
the 1920s and 1930s contributed a great
deal to the spread of progressive ideas.
Deweyan progressivism is
based on three central
assumptions:
1.
2.
3.
John Dewey
(1859 - 1952)
Progressive Strategies
The progressive philosophy also contended that knowledge that is
true in the present may not be true in the future.
Educators with a progressive orientation give students a
considerable amount of freedom in determining their school
experiences.
Progressive teachers begin where students are and, through the
daily give-and-take of the classroom, lead students to see that the
subject to be learned can enhance their lives.
In a progressive oriented classroom, the teacher serves as a guide
or resource person whose primary responsibility is to facilitate
student learning.
Existentialism
Existentialism offers the individual a way
of thinking about my life, what has
meaning for me, what is true for me.
Existentialism emphasizes creative
choice, the subjectivity of human
experiences, and concrete acts of human
existence over any rational scheme for
human nature or reality.
Jean-Paul Sartre
(1905-1980)
Maxine Greene
(1905 - )
Social Reconstructionism
Social reconstructionism holds that schools should take the lead in changing or
reconstructing society.
Humanistic Psychology
Humanistic psychology emphasizes personal freedom, choice,
awareness, and personal responsibility. It also focuses on the
achievements, motivation, feelings, actions, and needs of human
beings.
Humanistic psychology is derived from the philosophy of
humanism, which developed during the European Renaissance
and Protestant Reformation and is based on the belief that
individuals control their own destinies through the application of their
intelligence and learning.
People make themselves.
Secular humanism refers to the closely related belief that the
conditions of human existence relate to human nature and human
actions rather than to predestination or divine interventions.
Abraham Maslow
1908 - 1970
Carl Rogers
1902 - 1987
Behaviorism
John B. Watson
1878 - 1958
B. F. Skinner
1904 - 1990
Ivan Pavlov
1849 - 1936
Constructivism
According to constructivism, students use cognitive
processes to construct understanding of the material to
be learned in contrast to the view that they receive
information transmitted by the teacher.
Constructivist approaches support student-centered
rather than teacher-centered curriculum and instruction.
The student is the key to learning.
Our understanding of learning has been extended as a
result of advances in cognitive science- the study of the
mental processes students use in thinking and
remembering.
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Dont feel that you need to identify a single educational philosophy around
which you will build your teaching career. In reality, few teachers follow only
one educational philosophy.
Colonial Schools
The Puritans view of the child included the belief that people are inherently
sinful. Even natural childhood play was seen as devil-inspired idleness.
The middle colonies (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware)
were more diverse, and groups such as the Irish, Scots, Swedes, Danes,
Dutch, and Germans established Parochial schools based on their religious
beliefs.
The vast majority of small farmers received no formal schooling and the
children of African slaves received only the training they needed to serve their
masters.
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The most common types were dame schools, the reading and wring schools
and Latin grammar schools.
Dame schools provided initial instruction for boys and, often the only
schooling for girls. These schools were run by widows or housewives in their
homes and paid for by modest fees from parents. Children were taught the
essentials of reading and writing and arithmetic. Girls were taught sewing and
basic homemaking skills.
Reading and writing schools offered boys an education that went beyond
what their parents could teach them at home or what they could learn at a
dame school. Reading lessons were based on the Bible, various religious
catechisms, and the New England Primer, first printed in 1690.
Latin grammar schools was patterned after the classical schools of Europe.
Boys enrolled in the Latin grammar schools at the age of seven or eight,
whereupon they began to prepare to enter Harvard College (established in
1636).
The Puritans decided to make education a civil responsibility of the state. The
Massachusetts General Court passed a law in 1642 that required each town to
determine whether young people could read and write. Parents and
apprentices masters whose children were unable to read and understand the
principles of religion and the capital laws of the country (Rippa 1997, 36)
could be fined and, possibly, lose custody of their children.
In 1648, the Court revised the 1642 law, reminding town leaders that the good
education of children is of singular behoof and benefit to any commonwealth
and that some parents and masters were still too indulgent and negligent of
their duty (Cohen 1974, 394-395).
The Massachusetts Act of 1647, often referred to as the Old Deluder Satan
Act, mandated the establishment and support of schools. In particular, towns
of fifty households or more were to appoint a person to instruct all such
children as shall resort to him to write and read. Teachers were to be paid
either by the parents or masters of such children.
One of the first schools for African Americans was started by Elias Neau in New York
City in 1704. Sponsored by the Church of England, Neaus school taught African and
Native Americans how to read as part of the Churchs efforts to convert students.
Other schools for African and Native Americans were started by the Quakers, who
regarded slavery as a moral evil. These schools existed as early as 1700.
One of the best known schools was founded in Philadelphia in 1880 by Anthony
Benezet, who believed that African Americans were generously sensible, humane,
and sociable, and that their capacity is as good, and as capable of improvement as
that of white people
The first recorded official ground for school segregation dates back to a decision of
the Massachusetts Supreme Court in 1850 when the Roberts family sought to send
their daughter Sarah to a white school in Boston. The court ruled that equal, but
separate schools were being provided and that the Roberts therefore could not claim
an injustice (Roberts v. City of Boston 1850)
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Franklins proposals for educating youth called for a wide range of subjects
that reflected perennialist and essentialist philosophical orientations: English
grammar, composition, and literature; classical and modern foreign languages;
science; writing and drawing; rhetoric and oratory; geography; various kinds of
history; agriculture and gardening; arithmetic and accounting; and mechanics.
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Horace Manns Contributions continued Horace Mann (1796-1859) was a lawyer, Massachusetts senator,
and the first secretary of a state board of education. Horace was the
champion of the common school movement and worked tirelessly to
convince people that their interest would be well served by a system
of universal free schools for all.
Improving Schools
Mann submitted twelve annual reports, the Common School
Journal, the Fifth Report and the Seventh Report all in the support of
improving common schools.
The Normal School
During the late 1830s, Mann put forth a proposal that required
teachers to be trained beyond high school and be trained in
professional programs.
The first public normal school in the United Stated opened in
Lexington, Massachusetts, on July 3, 1839. The curriculum
consisted of general knowledge courses plus courses in pedagogy
(or teaching) and practice teaching in a model school affiliated with
the normal school.
Reverend W. H. McGuffeys
Readers
Reverend William Holmes McGuffey (1800-1873) had
perhaps the greatest impact on what children learned in
the new school. Far exceeding Noah Websters speller in
sales were the famous McGuffey readers.
It has been estimated that 122 million copies of the sixvolume series were sold after 1836.
The six readers ranged in difficulty from the first-grade
level to the sixth-grade level.
Through such stories as The Wolf, Meddlesome
Matty, and A Kind Brother, the reader emphasized
virtues such as hard work, honesty, truth, charity, and
obedience.
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The Kindergarten
The Professionalization of
Teaching
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Education of Immigrants and Minorities continued In 1928, a landmark report titled The Problem of Indian
Administration recommended that Native American education be
restructured. Recommendations were the building of day schools in
Native American communities, school curricula be revised to reflect
tribal cultures, and the needs of local tribal communities.
Another fifty years passed before the recommendations began to be
implemented.
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The 1960s: The War on Poverty and the Great Society continued The administrations of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson funneled
massive amounts of money into a War on Poverty. Education was
seen as the key to breaking the transmission of poverty from
generation to generation.
The War on Poverty developed methods, materials, and programs
such as subsidized breakfast and lunch programs, Head Start,
Upward Bound, and the Job Corps that would be appropriated to
children who had been disadvantaged due to poverty.
The education of low income children received a boost in April 1965
when Congress passed the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act.
In 1968, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was
amended with Title VII, the Bilingual Education Act. This act
provided federal aid to low-income children of limited Englishspeaking ability.
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The 1970s: Accountability and Equal Opportunity continued During the late 1960s and early 1970s increasing numbers of young
people questioned what the schools were teaching and how they
were teaching it.
In the 1970s, federal acts were passed to bring about success and
encouragement: Title IX Education Amendment prohibiting sex
discrimination (1972), Indian Education Act (1972), Education for All
Handicapped Children Act (1975), and the Indochina Migration and
Refugee Assistance Act (1975).
The Education for All Handicapped Children Act (Public Law 94142), passed by Congress in 1975, extended greater educational
opportunities to children with disabilities.
This act (often referred to as the mainstreaming law) specifies
extensive due process procedures to guarantee that children with
special needs will receive a free, appropriate education in the least
restrictive educational environment.
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3 Things I Learned
2 Things I Enjoyed
1 Thing I Still Have a Question
About
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