MODULE 2
PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE CURRICULUM
INTRODUCTION
A critical function of the philosophy of education is to give guiding principles and directives to knowledge concerning the aims of education by which they are actualized. Such a philosophy should necessarily give the basic principles to give an answer to the philosophical question, “What subject matter, experiences, and worthwhile activities are essential to realize the raison d’etre (reason for living) of the school?”
The curriculum is considered an important aspect of the science of education. It is the content of education. It is the medium through which a philosophy of life is transformed into reality. It converts potency into act. It mirrors the wisdom of the ages and the findings of thinkers, educators, and researchers in the field of education. The curriculum is held to reflect the values of society and the medium through which those values are being transmitted from one generation to the next.
The curriculum includes all the experiences of the learner for which the school assumes responsibility. In its broadest sense, the curriculum can be defined as the organized experiences that a student has under the guidance and control of the school. In a more precise and restricted sense, the curriculum is the systematic sequence of the courses or subjects that form the school’s formal instructional program.
For the traditional philosophies, the major goal of education is the transmission and preservation of the cultural heritage. A curriculum consists of skills and subject matter, the necessary tools in transmitting, in learnable units, to the immature for the survival of civilization. The subject matter is arranged in a hierarchy, with priority given to subjects regarded as more general, hence, more significant. The more recent philosophies are more concerned with the process of learning. The curriculum which follows this idea makes use of activities and projects, and experimental and problem solving modes that are determined by the learner’s interests and needs.
General Objective
To know and understand the philosophy of education as a foundation to the study of curriculum development.
Specific Objectives. After reading this module, you are expected to:
1. Know and understand the major philosophies and theories of education.
2. Analyze the major philosophies and theories of education in three aspects: aim, curriculum, and methods of instruction.
3. Explain the relationship between the philosophical foundation of education and the curriculum.
4. Answer the questions found at the last page of this module number.
Philosophy
Meaning of Philosophy
Philosophy in its literal sense means love of wisdom. In its broadest sense, philosophy is man’s attempt to think most speculative, reflectively, and systematically about the universe in which he lives and his relationship to that universe. Its remarkable feature is its effort to evaluate the sum total of human experience. Philosophy adds no new facts to existing knowledge. It examines the facts provided by scientists and analyzes the meaning, interpretation, significance and value of these facts. Most will accept the ideas that philosophy is a systematic and logical examination of life so as to frame a system of general ideas of which the sum total of human experience may be evaluated.
If education is to promote change for the better, than education has to turn to philosophy to determine what that “better” is for a particular segment of society or for society as a whole. Educational philosophy then is the application of philosophy to the study of all factors affecting the aims and goals of education, its method, content and organization in terms of human values as they affect the nature and purpose of man and society.
Areas of Philosophy
Metaphysics deals with the nature of reality and existence. Idealists see reality in non-material or spiritual terms; realists see reality in an objective order in educational philosophy; metaphysics relates reality to the content, experiences and skills in the curricula. The social and natural sciences are good venues in teaching reality to the learner.
Epistemology deals with the nature of knowledge and knowing and is closely related to methods of teaching and learning. Idealists see knowing or cognitive learning as the recall of ideas that are latent in the mind. The most appropriate method is the Socratic-method where the teacher stimulates the students by asking leading questions which elicit, ideas hidden in the learner’s mind. A teacher who used the realist’s formula of sensation and abstraction would develop classroom activities that utilize sensory stimuli. The pragmatists believe that people learn by interacting with the environment; hence, problem solving is a very appropriate method of teaching and learning.
Axiology deals with values. Axiology is divided into ethics and aesthetics. Ethics examines moral values and the rules of right conduct. Aesthetics deals with values, in beauty and art Parents, teachers and society reward certain preferred behavior and punish behavior that deviates from the concept of what is good, right and beautiful. Idealists and realists agree that the good, the beautiful and the right are universally valid in all places at all times while pragmatists believe that values are relative and vary in time and place.
PHILOSOPHIES OF EDUCATION
Idealism
Idealism is a philosophy that proclaims the spiritual nature of men and the universe. Its basic viewpoint stresses the human spirit, soul or mind as the most important element in life. It holds that the good, true, and beautiful are permanently part of the structure of a related coherent, orderly, and unchanging universe. In idealism, all of reality is reducible to one fundamental substance-spirit. Matter is not real. It is only the mind that is real.
Educational Implications of Idealism:
Aim of Education – to contribute to the development of mind and self, the school should emphasize intellectual abilities, moral, judgments, aesthetics, self-realization, individual freedom, individual responsibility and self-control.
Curriculum – a body of intellectual subject matter which is ideational and conceptual on subjects which are essential for the realization of mental and moral development. Subject matter should be made constant for all. Mathematics, history, and literate rank high in relevance since they are not only cognitive but value-laden.
Methodology – methods to be used in instruction should encourage accumulation of knowledge and thinking and must apply criteria for moral evaluation. Although learning is a product of learner’s own activity, the learning process is made more efficient by the stimulation which comes from the teacher and school environment. The idealist teacher should be conversant with a variety of methods and should use the particular method that is most effective in securing the desired results. Suggested methods are questioning and discussion, lecture and of course, the project, whether done singly or in group.
Teacher-Learner Relationship. The teacher must be excellent mentally and morally in personal conduct and convictions. The teacher must exercise creative skills and providing opportunities for pupil’s minds to analyze, discover, synthesize and create. The learner is immature and is seeking the perspective into his own personality. The teacher should see his role in assisting the learner to realize the fullness of his own personality.
Realism
Realism may be defined as any philosophical position that asserts:
1. The objective existence of the world and begins in it and relations between these begins independent of human knowledge and desires;
2. The know ability of these objects as they are in themselves;
3. The need for conformity to the objective reality in man’s conduct.
Realists refer to those universal elements of man that are unchanging regardless of time, place and circumstance. It is these universals that make up the elements in the education of man. According to the realists, education implies teaching, teaching implies knowledge, knowledge is truth and truth is the same everywhere. Hence, education should be everywhere the same.
Educational Implications of Realism
Aim of Education
The aim of the education is to provide the student with the essential knowledge he will need to survive in the natural world.
Curriculum
The realists believe that the most efficient and effective way to find out about reality is to study it through organized, separate, and systematically arranged subject matter. This is called the subject-matter approach to curriculum which is composed of two basic components, the body of knowledge and the appropriate pedagogy to fit the readiness of the learner. The liberal arts curriculum and the math science disciplines consist of a number of related concepts that constitute the structure of the discipline.
Methodology
The teacher is expected to be skilled in both the subject matter that he teaches and the method of teaching it to students. Formal schooling means the transmission of knowledge from experts to the young and immature. The school’s task is primarily an intellectual one. The administrator’s role is to see to it that the teachers are not distracted by recreational and social functions from performing their intellectual task of cultivating and stimulating the learning students. In the elementary level, emphasis is on the development of skills for reading, writing, arithmetic and study habits. In the secondary and collegiate level, the body of knowledge regarded as containing the wisdom of the human race will have to be transmitted in an authoritarian manner. Students will be required to recall, explain, compare, interpret and make inferences. Evaluation is essential, making use of objective measures. Motivation will be in the form of rewards to reinforce what has been learned.
Teacher-Learner Relationship
The teacher is a person who possesses a body of knowledge and who is capable of transmitting it to students. This is the kind of relationship stressed in realism. Teaching should not be indoctrinating. Learning should be interactive. The teacher utilizes pupil interest by relating subject matter to student experiences. The teacher maintains discipline by reward, and control the pupil by activity.
Pragmatism
Pragmatism is derived from the Greek word pragma, meaning ‘a thing done, a fact that is practiced’. This doctrine claims that the meaning of a proposition or idea lies in its practical consequences. This philosophy stresses that education has been in vain if it does not perform the social functions assigned to it, and unless it is considered as a social institution in itself.
The pragmatists claim that society cannot fulfill an educational task without an institution designed for this purpose. The school must maintain intimate relations with society if its role is to be played well. They also assert that the school should aim to be specialized institution with three features: (1) designed to represent society to the child in simplified forms; (2) selective in a qualitative, if not ethical, manner as it represents society to the young; and (3) responsible in giving the child a balanced and genuinely representative acquaintance with society.
Educational Implications of Pragmatism
Aim of Education
The aim of education, as far as the pragmatists are concerned, is the total development of the child either through experience, self-activity, or learning by doing.
Curriculum
The pragmatists suggested that the curriculum must offer subjects that will provide opportunities for various projects and activities that are relevant to the needs, abilities, and interest as well as the socio-economic conditions of the learners.
Methodology
Pragmatists believed that the learner must be made the center of all educative processes – a concept based on Dewey’s tenet that education is life, education is growth, education is a social process, and education is the construction of human experience.
EDUCATIONAL THEORIES
Perennialism
“Human nature never changes; therefore good education should not change either”. The perennialist believes that the great ideas, which have lasted for centuries, are still relevant today and should be the focus of education. Perennialism is an educational theory that is greatly influenced by the principles of realism. It has a conservative/traditional view of human nature and education. Perennialists contend that truth is universal and unchanging, and, therefore, a good education is also universal and constant.
Aim of Education
For Perennialists, the aim of education is to ensure that students acquire understandings about the great ideas of Western civilization. These ideas have the potential for solving problems in any era.
The perennialists have for their aim the education of the rational person. The central aim of education should be develop the power of thought. They view the universal aim of education as the search for and dissemination of truth. They look up to the school as an institution designed to develop human intelligence.
Robert Hutchins, a most articulate spokesperson of perennialism, argued that education ought to cultivate the intellect as well as the harmonious development of all human faculties. The central aim of education should be to develop the power of thought. He also described the ideal education as one that develops intellectual power.
Curriculum
The focus is to teach ideas that are everlasting, to seek enduring truths which are constant, not changing, as the natural and human worlds as their most essential level, do not change. Teaching these unchanging principles is critical. Humans are rational beings, and their minds need to develop. Thus, cultivation of the intellect is the highest priority in a worthwhile education. The demanding curriculum focuses on attaining cultural literacy, stressing students’ growth in enduring disciplines. The loftiest accomplishments of humankind are emphasized – the great works of literature and art, the laws or principles of science.
The perennialist view education as a recurring process based on eternal truths; thus, the school’s curriculum should emphasize the recurrent themes of human life. It should contain cognitive subjects that cultivate rationality and the study of moral, aesthetic, and religious principles to develop the attitudinal dimension. The perennialists prefer a subject matter curriculum which includes history, language, mathematics, logic, literature, the humanities, and science.
Robert Hutchins’ educational philosophy is based on the premise that human nature is rational, and knowledge resides in unchanging, absolute, and universal truths. He stressed that education must be universal because the rationality of human nature is universal. Hutchins advocated a curriculum that consisted of permanent, of perennial studies. He strongly recommended the study of the classics, or the great works of Western Civilization. He believed that reading and discussing great books cultivated the intellect and prepared students to think carefully and critically. In addition to these classics he advocated the study of grammar, rhetoric, logic, mathematics, and philosophy.