Educational Philosophies

Perennialism puts a strong emphasis on the classics and blends them with educational curriculum, and uses these sources to develop a learner who is a skilled reasoned. Perennialism uses the classics to teach a base of core knowledge that it considers vital for a student to succeed in the classroom and beyond.

Existentialism shares quite a few parallels with perennialism, most namely with the emphasis on a core of knowledge that needs to be taught to students. Existentialism is teacher centered and emphasizes mental discipline.

Behaviorism reads quite a bit like a psychology textbook, likely because of its roots in human psychology with Skinner. Behaviorism holds that people are a product of their environments, and to produce people that possess virtues that our cultures consider ideal we as teacher have to model that desired behavior.

Positivism is highly student centered and places a considerable emphasis on inquiry based learning where students experiment and uncover what is true through empirical or factual based evidence.

Progressivists prefer experience, or empirically based evidence to support learning and is very student centered. Progressivism supports programs that support the processes of thinking and reasoning to enhance learning. Flexibility and experimentation a valued virtues of and progressive curriculum.

Humanism asserts the innate goodness of people, but states that institutions corrupt this goodness. Humanist teachers believe in supporting a curriculum that supports individualism in students and a strong empathetic learning community.

Constructivism is closely linked with existentialism in its belief in a core of valuable truths, but differs on the means to reach these truths. In constructivism hands on, project based learning is favored by the instructor who takes a more passive role and helps students to build their own ideas and motivations.

Reconstructivism takes a focused perspective on education and channels into a system that strives for social improvement and reform. They believe that through a dynamic system the human condition can escape oppression and improve itself.

Personally as a philosophical humanist myself I immediately gravitated towards humanism as a teaching philosophy because of my fierce belief that we as humans are good and capable of wonderful things, and that if we work as an empathetic community that we can achieve so much more together and possess a much more rich education than we could otherwise.