CHAPTER 1

PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHTS
ON EDUCATION

Prepared By:
Beverly Vergara – Musa, Maed
LEARNING OUTCOMES
At the end of this chapter, you should be
able to discuss at least 6 philosophical
thoughts on education.
In a Grade 3 Science class: What is the
function of the
mouth?
To digest food
Very good!
What about
the stomach?

To break the food Very good!

into smaller Perfect! And the
pieces small intestines?

To absorb the food

nutrients
 QUESTION:
What classroom scenario is/are
being depicted by the comic
strip and the Teacher-Students
question and answer.
 ISOLATED FACTS
AND
THE BANKING METHOD
A.
JOHN LOCKE (1632-1704):
THE EMPIRICIST EDUCATOR

✓ Was an English philosopher

✓August 29, 1632
✓Influential philosopher and
Physician
✓Acquire knowledge about the world
through the senses
✓Simple ideas become more complex
through comparison, reflection and
generalization
✓Questioned the long traditional view
that knowledge came exclusively
from literary sources, particularly the
Greek and Latin classics
✓Opposed he “ divine right of kings”
theory which held that the monarch
had the right to be an unquestioned
and absolute ruler over his subjects
✓Political orders should be based
upon a contract between the
people and the government

✓Aristocrats are not destined by

birth to be rulers. People were to
establish their own government
and select their own political
leaders from among themselves.

✓People should be educated to

govern themselves intelligently
and responsibly
 ✓ For John Locke education is not acquisition of
COMMENTS knowledge contained in the Great Books. It is
learners interacting with concrete experience,
comparing and reflecting on the same concrete
experience, comparing. The learner is an active
not a passive agents of his/her own learning.

✓ From the social dimension, education is seeing

citizens participate actively and intelligently in
establishing their government and in choosing
who will govern them from among themselves
because they are convinced that no one person
is destined to be ruler forever.
B. HERBERT SPENCER (1820-1903):
UTILITARIAN EDUCATION
✓Was an English philosopher
✓Biologist
✓Anthropologist
✓Sociologist and
✓Prominent classical liberal political
theorist of the Victorian Era
✓Spencer’s concept of “survival of the fittest”
means that human development had gone
through an evolutionary series of stages from
the simple to the complex and from the uniform
to the more specialized kind of activity

✓Social development had taken place according

to an evolutionary process by which simple
homogenous societies had evolved to more
complex social system characterized with
humanistic and classical education
✓Industrialized society require vocational and
professional education based on a scientific
and practical utilitarian objectives rather than
on the very general educational goals
associated with humanistic and classical
education.
✓Curriculum should emphasize the practical,
utilitarian and scientific subjects that helped
human kind master the environment
✓Was nor inclined to rote learning; schooling
must be related to life and the activities needed
to earn a living
✓Curriculum must be arranged according
to their contribution to human survival and
progress.
✓Science and other subjects that sustained
human life and prosperity should have
curricular priority since it aids in the
performance of life activities.
✓Individual competition leads to social
progress. He who is fittest survives.
 SPECIALIZED EDUCATION OF
SPENCER VS. GENERAL EDUCATION
✓To survive in a complex society. Spencers favors
specialized education over that of general education.
We are in need of social engineers who can combine
harmoniously the finding of specialized knowledge.

✓The expert who concentrates on a limited fields is

useful but if he loses sight of the interdependence of
things he becomes a man who knows more and more
about less and less. We must be warned of the
COMMENTS deadly peril of over specialism.
SPENCER SURVIVAL OF
THE FITTEST
✓HE WHO IS FITTEST SURVIVES.
Individual competition in class is what advocates of
whole-child approach and socio – emotional Learning
atmosphere negate. The whole child approach a
powerful tool for self –focused schools has a tenets -

COMMENTS
 “Each student learns in an
environment that is physically and
emotionally safe for students and
adults” and “each student has
access to personalized learning
and is supported by qualified and
caring adults”
 “LIKE PEOPLE,
LIKE GOVERNMENT”
C. JOHN DEWEY (1859-1952)
LEARNING THROUGH
EXPERIENCE
✓Was an American Philosopher
✓Psychologist
✓Educational Reformer whose ideas have
influential in education and social reform
✓Theorist focused around practices of
practicality; pragmatism
✓Education is a social process and so
school is intimately related to the
society that it serves.
✓Children are socially active human
beings who want to explore their
environment and gain control over it.
✓Education is a social process by which
the immature members of the group,
especially the children are brought to
participate in the society.
✓The school is a special environment
established by members of society, for
the purpose of simplifying, purifying and
integrating the social experience of the
group so that it can be understood,
examined and used by it’s children.
• School should be used by all, it being a
democratic institution. No barrier of
custom or prejudice segregate people.
People ought to work together to solve
common problems.

• Education is a social activity and the

school is a social agency that helps
shape human character and behavior.
• The sole purpose of education is to
contribute to the personal and social
growth of individuals.

• Values are relative but sharing,

cooperation, and democracy are
significant human values that should
be encouraged in schools.
• The steps of the scientific or reflective
method which are extremely important in
Deweys educations theory are as follows;
✓ The learner has a genuine situation of experience
✓ Within this experience the learners has a genuine
problem that stimulates thinking
✓ The learner possess the information or does a
research to acquire the information needed to solve the
problem
✓ the learner develops possible and tentative solutions
that may solve the problem
✓ The learner tests the solutions by applying them to the
problem
• The fund of knowledge of the human
race- past ideas, discoveries and
inventions was to be used as the
material for dealing with problems.

• The school is a social, scientific and

democratic

• Education is a social activity and the

school is the social agency that helps
shape a human character and behavior.
 • The Funds of knowledge of the
Human Race
✓Dewey does not disregard the accumulated
wisdom of the past. These past ideas,
discoveries and inventions, our cultural
heritage, , we will be used as the material for
dealing with problems and so will be tested. To
be part of the RECONSTRUCTED Experience.
This means that the ideal learner for DEWEY
is not just one who can learn by doing, conduct
an experiment but one who can connect
accumulated wisdom of the past to present.
• School for the People and by the
Peolpe
✓Schools are democratic institution where
everyone regardless of age, ethnicity, social
status is welcome and is encouraged to
participate in the democratic process of
decision – making. Learners and
stakeholders practice and experience
democracy in schools.
 D. GEORGE COUNT
(1889-1974)
BUILDING A NEW SOCIAL
ORDER
✓Counts was born and raised in
Baldwin, Kansas
✓His family was Methodist
• Education is not based on eternal truths but
is relative to a particular society living at a
given time and place.

• By allying themselves with groups that want

to change society, schools should cope with
social change that arises from technology.

• There is a cultural lag between material

progress and social institutions and ethical
values
✓Instruction should incorporate a
content of socially useful nature and a
problem-solving methodology.

✓School becomes an instrument for

social improvement rather than an
agency for preserving the status quo
✓Teachers should lead society rather
than follow it. Teachers are agents of
change.

✓Teachers are called in to make

important choices in the controversial
areas of economics, politics, and
morality because if they fail to do so.
Others would decide for them.
Schools ought to provide an
education that afford equal
learning opportunities to all
students.
 SCHOOL AND TEACHERS AS
AGENTS OF CHANGE
✓For George Counts, schools and teachers
should be agents of change. Schools are
considered instruments for social improvement
rather than as agencies for preserving the
status quo.
✓Teachers are called to decide on controversial
issues, not to make a decision is to make a
decision
✓Like Dewey, problem-solving should be the
COMMENTS dominant method for instruction
 LAG BETWEEN MATERIAL
PROGRESS AND ETHICAL VALUE
✓Count asserts that there is a lag
between material progress and social
institutions and ethical values. The
material progress of humankind is very
evident but moral and ethical
development seems to have lagged
behind. COMMENTS
A friend once wrote:
“The Egyptians had their horses. Modern man has his jets
but today it is still the same moral problems that plague
humankind.”
Indeed with science and technology, we have a number of
diseases and even postpones for many, we have conquered aging,
the planet, the seas but we have not conquered ourselves.
 E. THEODORE BRAMELD
(1904-1987)
SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION
✓Founder of Social Re constructivism
✓He recognized the potential for either
human annihilation through technology and
human cruelty
✓And the use of technology and human
compassion to create a beneficent society.
✓As the name implies, social reconstructionism is
a philosophy that emphasizes the reformation of
society. The Social reconstructionist contend that
✓So the social reconstructionist assert that
school should:
➢Critically examine present culture and
resolve inconsistencies
➢Controversies and conflicts to build a
new society not just change society
✓Technological era is an interdependence
and so education must be international in
scope for global citizenship.
 SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTIONISM - IS A PHILOSOPHY THAT
EMPHASIZES THE REFORMATION OF SOCIETY.
✓Social reconstructionist are firmly committed
to equality or equity in both society and
education. Barriers of socio-economic class
and racial discrimination should be
eradicated.

✓ For the social reconstructionist, education is

designed " to awaken students'
consciousness about social problems and to
engage them actively in problem solving".
(Ornstien, 1984)
 ✓Like John Dewey and George Counts, social
reconstructionist Brameld believe in active
problem – solving as the method of teaching
and learning.
✓Social reconstructionist are convinced that
education is not a privileged of the few but a
rigt to be enjoyed by all
✓Education is the right that all citizens
regardless of race and social status must
COMMENTS enjoy.
 F. PAULO FREIRE (1921-1997)
CRITICAL PEDAGOGY
✓Brazilian Educator, philosopher
✓Influential theorist of critical pedagogy
✓Bring literacy to Third world Countries
✓Lawyer, Language teacher, adult educator and
workers trainer, Director of the Department of
Cultural Extension of the University and Special
Educational advisor to the World Congress of
Churches
CRITICAL PEDAGOGY AND DIALOGUE VS.
THE BANKING MODEL OF EDUCATION
✓ Paulo Freire, a critical theorist, like social
reconstructionist , believed that systems must be
changed to overcome oppression and improve human
conditions.

✓Education and literacy are the vehicle for social change.

In his view, humans must learn to resist oppression and
not become its victims, nor oppress others. To do so
requires dialogue and critical consciousness, the
development of awareness to overcome domination and
oppression.
✓Rather than Teaching as Banking, in which the
educator deposits information into students’
heads, Freire saw teaching and learning as a
process of inquiry in which the child must invent
and reinvent the world.
✓Teachers must not see themselves as the sole
possessors of knowledge and their students as
empty receptacles. He calls this pedagogical
approach the “banking method” of education.
✓A democratic relationship between the teacher
and her students is necessary for the
conscientization process to take place.
✓Freire’s critical pedagogy is the problem
– posing education.

✓A central element of Freire’s pedagogy

is dialogue. It is love and respect that
allows us to engage people in dialogue
to discover ourselves in the process
and learn from one another.
✓All of these education philosophers, point to
the need to interact with others and create a
community of inquiry as Charles Sanders
Peirce put it. The community of inquiry is a
group of persons involved in inquiry,
investigating more or less the same question
or problem, and developing through their
exchanges a better understanding both of the
question as well as the probable solutions. A
community of inquiry will engage learners in
active problem solvingproblem-solving
LETS APPLY
A. Give a brief explanation about the following:
1. They say that the specialist knows more and more about less
and less, until he/she knows everything about nothing, while a
related joke cleverly twists this saying that “A generalist knows
less and less about more and more until he/she knows nothing
about everything.
2. If you cannot bring the learners to the world, bring the world to
the classroom.
3. Considering the Mission Statement of DEPED “ to protect and
promote the right of every Filipino to quality, equitable, culture-
based and complete basic education. What are the proofs that
Filipino children are given equal access to quality education?
4. Is FREE tertiary education pro–poor in the sense that it is the
poor who are indeed benefited? Justify your answer.

B. Make a Table summary of the Philosophies of education

Philosopher Philosophy on Aims and Classroom/ School
Methods of Education Application