ESSENTIALISM

By: Romel P. Cirineo Jr R.N.

AIMS

A curriculum of basic skills and

subjects.
Learning as the mastery of these
skills and subjects according to
high and verifiable standards.
AIMS

Schools as a place of order,

discipline, and efficient instruction.
That the goal of organized
education is to prepare people to
be productive, civil, and patriotic
individual.
AIMS

Learning of its very nature,

involves hard work and often
unwilling application.
The heart of the education process
is the assimilation of prescribe
subject matter.
Curriculum Content

Essentialists resolutely endorse the

subject matter curriculum in which
subjects are differentiated and
organized according to their own
internal logical or chronological
principles.
Curriculum Content

Essentialists argue that civilized

people learn effectively and
efficiently by using the knowledge
that has been developed and
organized by scientist, scholars,
and other experts.
Curriculum Content

Curriculum that ignores the past,

rejects subject matter boundaries,
and prides itself of being
interdisciplinary or trandisciplinary
often, in reality, causes educational
confusion.
Advocates of Essentialism

Issac L. Kandel
 Kandel was born in Botosani, Romania, to
English parents. He attended the Manchester
Grammar School and earned his B.A. in
classics in 1902 and M.A. in education in
1906 at the University of Manchester.
Issac L. Kandel

 From 1906 to 1908 he taught classics

at the Royal Academical Institute in
Belfast, Ireland. After summer study
with William Rein at the University of
Jena, Kandel enrolled at Teachers
College, Columbia University,
completing his Ph.D. in 1910.
Issac L. Kandel

 Over his long and prolific career,

Kandel received many honors,
including honorary doctorates from the
University of North Carolina and the
University of Melbourne, and the title of
Chevalier of the Legion of Honor from
France.
Issac L. Kandel

 Kandel's principal scholarly

contributions were in the areas of the
history of education, educational
theory, and, notably, comparative and
international education.
Issac L. Kandel
 In his most important work in the field,
Comparative Education (1933), Kandel
stated, "The chief value of a comparative
approach to [educational] problems lies in an
analysis of the causes which have produced
them, in a comparison of the differences
between the various systems and the
reasons underlying them, and, finally, a study
of the solutions attempted".
Issac L. Kandel

An avowed essentialist, Kandel

viewed subject matter not as
potential evidence for the
resolution of social problems, but
as a stable source of values to
guide social behavior.
Issac L. Kandel

 Indeed, Kandel's principal, if not sole,

concession to Progressive education
involved a recognition of its value for
improving "traditional methods of
instruction," although he gave principal
credit for that to psychology.
Advocates of Essentialism

Arthur Eugene Bestor Jr

 Arthur Eugene Bestor, Jr. (September 20,
1908–December 13, 1994) was an American
historian.Bestor was born in
Chautauqua, New York, the eldest son of
Arthur E. Bestor and Jeannette Lemon.
Arthur Eugene Bestor Jr

 Bestor was raised and educated in

Chautauqua and New York City, where
he attended the Horace Mann School.
He received his undergraduate and
graduate degrees from Yale University
Arthur Eugene Bestor Jr

 He taught at Teachers College,

Columbia University; the University of
Wisconsin; Stanford University; and the
University of Illinois. In 1963 he joined
the faculty of the
University of Washington, Seattle,
where he taught until his retirement.
Arthur Eugene Bestor Jr

 The next strong argument for Essentialism or

basic education was made by Arthur E.
Bestor Jr., who argued that schools,
particularly secondary institution, should
teach the fundamental “intellectual
disciplines” that cultivated “disciplined
intelligence”.
Arthur Eugene Bestor Jr

 Bestor like the earlier Essentialist argued that

education should provide “sound training in
the fundamental ways of thinking
represented by history, science, math,
literature, language, art, and other disciplines
evolved in the course of mankind’s long
quest for usable knowledge, cultural
understanding, and intellectual power.
Arthur Eugene Bestor Jr

 Bestor argued that a differentiated curriculum

in which able students took the academic
subjects and the students with less academic
ability enrolled in life-adjustment programs
was inherently undemocratic