Running head: EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHIES ANALYSIS

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Educational Philosophies Analysis

Jessica Johnson
EDF 2085
23 March 2015

Introduction

EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHIES ANALYSIS

Educational Philosophies are an over-looked yet integral part of any students learning
experience because even though the student, their parents, and the majority of U.S. citizens may
not realize that these varying methods exist in their respective schools, each shapes the goals and
outcomes of a students learning experience. The role that is meant to be played by whom is
educating them and the approaches toward how the students are educated are just two examples
of how an educational philosophy helps to form every unique and inherently different education
that students across America receive. This paper will analyze three well-recognized educational
philosophies that have done much to shape the various educational experiences of the American
student: essentialism, perennialism, and progressivism. It will discuss the many ways that they
differ from each other, such as if they are student or teacher centered, but also draw comparisons
between them. Overall, it will seek to explain each philosophys goals and beliefs, and in what
ways each philosophy may be integrated by a teacher or an entire school into the classroom.
Essentialism
Essentialism strives to create a highly traditional, disciplined learning experience for the
student that is focused on a few main subjects. At the core of essentialism is its teacher-centered
approach; this approach is a style of teaching that views the teacher in an authoritarian light, with
the duty of the teacher being to use their wisdom and experience in order to teach and prepare
students to be not only proficient in demonstrating their knowledge of various subjects, but also
to help them establish key moral behaviors such as discipline, respect and perseverance that they
may carry with them throughout their adult lives.
With this mindset in place, an essentialist curriculum is designed to concentrate on core
classes in order to provide students with the essentials of academic knowledge, patriotism, and
character development, which values a traditional, back to basics kind of approach that is

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meant to establish a common culture among all Americans through education. (Sadker &
Zittleman, 2012). An essentialist curriculum may be largely described as typical because it is
perhaps the most popular approach that is seen throughout schools in America, where most the
courses that are offered are those in math, history, science and English, with barely any elective
courses taken in a students semester.
Essentialists are wary of elective classes that exist outside of literary, scientific, historical
and mathematical subjects because they see them as having the potential to draw focus away
from and thus water-down their established core curriculum (Sadker & Zittleman, 2012).
For example, a teacher with an essentialist philosophy may argue that even though a student may
be interested in a subject outside of this core curriculum, if given a class where they can explore
and develop a stronger passion in this elective subject they may lose the attention and focus
toward the subjects that are deemed most important. In order to keep this from happening,
teachers and administrators that follow this philosophy place very little importance on the
interests of the student and instead decide what is most important for them to learn for
themselves, building an academic curriculum that is strongly teacher-built rather than one
influenced by student choice. They are allowed little freedom of what it is that they learn, and
instead, this is decided for them in a way that is perceived to be for their own educational benefit.
Perennialism
The perennialist philosophy has many commonalities with the Essentialist. Both are
teacher centered, do not promote very much flexibility or student choice in the academic
curriculum, and are focused on refining student intelligence while also refining students moral
discipline. However, perennialism focuses more on the values that can be derived from the
teachings of particular resources, such as the Great Books (meaningful works produced by

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historys finest writers and thinkers); The word perennial itself means everlasting, which
encapsulates the perennialist goal of providing students with the ability to think rationally and
rigorously and explains why some perennialists criticize essentialists, claiming they force an
overwhelming amount of information on students that will be neither remembered nor used in
their future lives (Sadker and Zittleman, 2012).
A Perennialist teacher or administrator will most likely produce the lessons of the
curriculum around the exploration of important themes that seek to understand and universal
thoughts and questions. For example, the goal of many classes at a school that applies this
philosophy may be for a student to uncover important morals and ideas from the Great Books.
Thus, a huge emphasis is placed on reading and writing in the academic curriculum overall, as
these are the two skills that will most aid the student in discovering and understanding these
foundational concepts. Also, to support these main goals, less time is spent lecturing as it would
be in, for example, an essentialist classroom, and instead students are guided through a lesson
that demands reading comprehension and insight through its immense amount of student-teacher
discussion.
Perennialism also largely exists in religious private schools, with curricula reflecting
biblical texts such as the Bible or the Koran; this is considered a subdivision of perennialism
called secular perennialism, where teachers and administrators develop a curriculum that
analyzes such texts and honors the values found within them ( Sadker & Kittleman, 2012). This
differentiates the perennialist philosophy from the essentialist due to a lack of corporate textbook
usage in the classroom and a push for the understanding of important themes and ways of
thinking, rather than the comprehensive understanding or memorization of lessons to be learned
about various subjects.

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Progressivism
What boldly severs progressivism from essentialism and perennialism is its studentcentered approach. Unlike teacher-centered philosophies, student-centered philosophies like
progressivism are less authoritarian, less concerned with the past and training the mind, and
more focused on individual needs, contemporary relevance, and preparing students for a
changing future with students and teachers working with each other toward the decision of what
the student should learn as wells as how (Sadker and Kittleman, 2012).
With this style serving as the heart of this philosophy, progressivism is much less
traditional, openly choosing to keep up with highly influential changes in contemporary society
and letting such changes mold the educational experience for the benefit of the student, and with
an effort to enhance and strengthen the part that they grow to see themselves playing in society in
their future by giving them the power of choice in what they learn. Unlike in a perennialist or
essentialist classroom, students in a progressivist class are most likely going to be working on
separate lessons or projects in small groups based upon interest levels in certain subjects, instead
of sitting in rows and working on the same exact lesson within the same academic subject.
Unlike Essentialism, where lessons are taught through the mode of textbooks, or,
perennialism, where they are taught through the Great Books, lessons are taught by the
progressivist teacher through putting together meaningful questions with the students and then
developing real-world strategies to answer those questions with them; this is what makes
progressivism an application of pragmatism, an philosophy that says, The way to determine if
an idea has merit is simple: test it If the idea works in the real world, then it has merit (Sadker
and Kittleman, 2012). In other words, in the progressivist classroom, students are encouraged to
ask their own questions about the world as well as how to analyze them and work together to

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find realistic answers, rather than being told what questions they should ask and the ways in
which they should answer them through lectures or textbooks.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the three educational philosophies of essentialism, perennialism, and
progressivism have many contrasting approaches and ideals. For example, while essentialism
and perennialism are teacher-centered, progressivism believes in an approach that allows for
active student choice within the curriculum and extends far past choosing just a few elective
courses with its student-centered method. Each of these philosophies allows for a different
educational experience through differential usage of materials, teachers, and lesson organization,
making the philosophy an integral, essential driving force in the classroom.

EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHIES ANALYSIS

Works Cited
Sadker, D., & Zittleman, K. (2012). Teachers, schools, and society: A brief introduction to
education (3rd ed., pp. 184-192). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.