Educational Philosophy

4 Pages 916 Words

The five educational philosophies; idealism, realism, pragmatism, reconstructionism, and existentialism all share similarities and differences. Each philosophy gives us a different insight on how we should educate students. They have different teaching methods and different curriculum. Each philosophy has its pros and cons and from our class exercise, we can see that different philosophies apply to different people. To me, realism makes the most sense and because of that, it will be the basis of my assignment.

The main educational philosophies of our time were created by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Socrates saw teaching as a cooperative art. The teacher was not to lecture and teach the student as they do now; instead. the teacher was to merely assist the student in his creation of knowledge and ideas. This is done by having discussions with the student in which both the student and teacher learn. The student is to always learn actively and their understanding is to come from their gaining of insight. Plato, on the other hand believed that knowledge was simply the recalling of things we knew before birth. In other words, we do not need to experience things in order to learn them. They come to us naturally just as our sense or right or wrong does.

Plato believed that knowledge gained by rational thought was better than knowledge gained by the sense because our senses could sometimes deceive us. The highest form of this knowledge, according to Plato, was that of “the Good” which is the source is all other knowledge. Aristotle, like myself, was a realist. He believed in gaining knowledge by the use of the senses. He disagreed with Plato’s belief that human beings were born with innate knowledge. Instead, they must use their senses to understand the things around them.

Realism is predominantly based on gaining knowledge through fact-gathering, observing, measuring, skills development, accountability, and experimenta...