Educational

Philosophy
Tarah Richards

College of Southern Nevada

Tarah Richards
Education Philosophy 1

For the last decade, I have been working in the food service industry. It is a dull

repetition job that allows me monetary freedom but no real happiness. When I started

ballroom dance, I sat down with my instructor and discussed my goals for dancing. We

did this every six months and I started thinking about where I was going with my life. I

needed personal goals not just dancing goals. I began thinking about returning to school

and getting a degree but needed a plan. I needed an endgame. I needed a career not

just another job. Education was something I considered as a maybe career choice when

I was younger because I had some relative that taught but the more I thought about

what I wanted to do as a profession that more teaching made sense.

I am choosing education as my profession now because I have a desire to share

my knowledge with the next generation. I want the younger generation in my family to

see that people can achieve their dreams. My older cousin, Michael, who earned a PhD

in Education a few years ago, is an inspiration to me along with other family members.

He is the first in our family to earn a PhD, while both my aunts are teachers. One of my

aunts has moved around the school system and is now teaching at an adult school

while the other one retired as a teacher after 30 years of teaching at the secondary

level. At the dance studio, I have met many teachers and they also inspire me to teach.

The teachers that attend classes at the dance studio are some of the nicest friendliest

people I have ever met and love really love their work. When I think about career

longevity and having a career I love education was the logical answer.

Learning about the different education philosophies and psychological

orientations I feel my philosophy would be essentialism. I lean toward essentialism

because it was how I was taught in school. The teacher centered philosophy the
Education Philosophy 2

practices memorization and places an importance on historic education. I plan to

implement the memorization part of essentialism and the Great Books into my teaching.

As a history teacher, I plan to combine the Great Books into many lessons. I think

students will enjoy learning how and why these books got written and about the authors.

I will approach learning, student diversity, student variability, and assessment in the best

way I can with the help and encouragement of my principle and the school district. I

believe that the education philosophies can be combined to make a diversity learning

environment. Student diversity and student variability are growing in Clark County with

more families moving here and I must learn to adjust to the different diversities and

variabilities. Assessments will be slightly easier, they can be achieved by test, pop

quizzes and homework. The future I envision for myself moving forward with education

is earning additional Bachelor’s degrees in Secondary Education with emphasis in

Special Education and History. I also will return to school to earn my two Master’s

degrees in Secondary Education with an emphasis in History and Museum Studies. My

plan is to continue my education taking two classes a semester while maintaining my

full-time job and volunteering at the Three Squares food bank. Volunteering at the food

bank is a great way to lean in to a career in education. Learning to give back to the

community before entering the educational field I believe is a great way to start

teaching.
Education Philosophy 3

When it comes to education there are many ideas on what how the education

system should teach the current and future students. The department of education was

funded to create unity over the whole system and set a standard that the whole country

can follow. While having, national standards are great, how teachers teach is something

completely different. Teachers must determine the philosophy they will follow to bring

students alive in the classroom. Educational philosophies help with teachers find a

common way to encourage students to learn in the classrooms. In the book,

Progressive Education and Social Reconstruction, Baughman and et al. (2001) broke

the education into two parts, the need to share the culture and the need to fix the

culture. When the meaning of education is broken down to the basic desire to teach the

cultural values and help create ones it is easy to see why there are different education

philosophies to help with that desire. There are five educational philosophies that help

guide educators in their teaching. The education philosophies are guideline and ideas

on how educators can teach their students. Each philosophy has its own beginning,

some based on the previous older philosophies while others are new different ideas.

There are two main themes when it comes to education philosophies, teacher centered

and student centered. The teacher centered philosophies are based on the idea that the

teacher is the most influential person in the classroom and all learning is done through

them. Those philosophies are essentialism and perennialism. Student centered

educational philosophies are based on the innocence of childhood. Teachers are taught

that the student must be engaged on some personal level for them to true want to learn.

Student centered philosophies are progressivism, social reconstructionism, and

existentialism. The choosing of an educational philosophy to follow as a new educator is

Education Philosophy 4

an important task. The philosophy an educator choosing will be the guide to how that

teacher teaches future students and learning the differences between the five

philosophies is important.

Education philosophies began with the teacher centered philosophy,

essentialism. The essentialism philosophy is the traditional historical way of teaching.

Teachers are the leaders in the classroom they have full control over what and how the

students will learn. E.D. Hirsch is an essentialism who has made a career writing books

about the failing school system and ways to make it better. Hirsch wrote (2009)

essentialism taught students had a shared sense of knowledge and democratic values

and increase competence and fairness (27 and 129). Perennialism is also teacher

centered with stronger leanings toward reading literacy. Perennialism using the Great

Books in a large part of their curriculum planning.

Student centered educational philosophies come to be during the early 19 th

century when people started to look at children as more than just mindless drones that

needed to be told how to act. John Dewey founded the progressivism philosophy. John

Dewey wrote (2004), “Development is conceived not as continuous growing, but as the

unfolding of latent powers toward a definite goal (53). Hirsch wrote (2009) “student

centered education was to encourage the independent thinking and avoid passivity”

(25). Hirsch wrote (2009) that progressivism encouraged teachers to allow students to

discover their own interest in learning while protecting their childhood innocence (35).

According to Hirsch, (2009) the progressivism philosophy had a large following because

it focused on the desire to allow children to enjoy their childhood. Two important schools

were opened during the progressivism movement. Laboratory School at the University
Education Philosophy 5

of Chicago and Lincoln School at Teacher’s College of Columbia University (35).

Goldstein wrote (2014) “the Laboratory School, founded by Dewey in 1896, based their

curriculum on the observations of child psychology” (81-82).

While progressive philosophy change how students would be taught it was not

enough for some educators. Social reconstruction is a divided branch from

progressivism. Researchers Baughman and et al (2001) “social reconstruction is the

philosophy of values, ends, purpose, with a democratically empowered world and

civilization as the central goal of education”. Social reconstruction was popular during

the 1930’s when social reform was popular (2001). The philosophy was created to

“teach students social reform and help students to connect to the world and how it

works.”

Progressivism and Social reconstruction education philosophies shared many

believes in common, their most common one was still a constructed form of traditional

education. Borchert wrote (2007) Existentialism have not defined their philosophy they

instead use common themes which each person can interpret their own way. Borchert

(2007) wrote the themes for “existentialism is: the individual, being and absurdity, nature

and significance and choice, role of extreme experiences, and nature of

communication.” Listed by Borchet (2007) are few existentialism and how they are

dissimilar, “Frank Brentano believed in the lonely individual to undercover the emotional

state of people and Edmund Husserl who study the individual’s consciousness of his

own acts as having a primary role.” Husserl’s student, Jean-Paul Sarte extended his

theory.
Education Philosophy 6

The educational philosophies are different in their delivery but all share the same

purpose, to educate students, current and future. Essentialism and perennialism are the

more traditional route while the progressive philosophy changed education with student

centered focus. Social reconstruction can be seen today with the No Child Left Behind

Act and the Common Core curriculum that has become the national standard. For

teachers, they might mix and match multiple educational philosophies to make one they

can follow.
Education Philosophy 7

References

Progressive Education and Social Reconstructions. (2001). In J. S. Baughman, V. Bondi, R.

Layman, T. McConnell, & V. Tompkins (Eds.), American Decades (Vol. 4). Detroit: Gale.
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MacIntyre, A. (2006). Existentialism. In D. M. Borchert (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2nd
ed., Vol. 3, pp. 500-510). Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA. Retrieved from http://0-
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Dewey, J. (2004). Democracy and Education. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, INC.
Goldstein, D. (2014). The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession. New
York, NY: Doubleday.
Hirsch, E. D., Jr. (2009). The Making of Americans: Democracy and Our Schools. New Haven and
London: Yale University Press.