The School and The Community

Information Sheet
Philosophical Thoughts on Education
Learning Objectives:
By the end of the lesson, the students shall be able to;
 rr
Discussion
Observe the conversation below:
In a Grade 3 Science Class:

Teacher: What is the function of the mouth?
Student: To break the food into smaller pieces.
Teacher: Very Good! What about the stomach?
Student: To digest food.
.
Teacher: Very good! Perfect! And the small intestines?
Student: To absorb the food nutrients.
Isolated Facts and the Banking Method
Depicted in the question and answer corresponding in class are a common classroom
scenario. Most lessons are devoted to teacher asking low-level questions and students
answering with what they memorized the night before. Teacher deposited these facts a day
before and withdraws them the next day. This system does not make the learner reflect and
connect what he or she was taught in real life.
We have nothing against facts. But isolate facts makes no sense but become meaningful
when seen in relation to other facts. These facts when combined with other facts help the
learner see the connection to his or her life.
Example: to connect facts the teacher should ask more questions like: “What if the food is not
chewed in the mouth, what happens to food in the stomach and the stomach itself? What if the
stomach if it fails to digest food, what happens to the small intestines?
John Locke: The Empiricist Educator
For John Locke education is not acquisition of knowledge contained in the Great Books. It
is learners interacting with concrete experience, comparing and reflecting on the same
complete experience, comparing. The learner is an active not a passive agent 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.
 Acquire knowledge about the world through the senses – learning by doing and by
interacting with the environment.
 Simple ideas become more complex through comparison, reflection and generalization –
the inductive method.
 Questioned the long traditional view that knowledge came exclusively from literary
sources, particularly the Greek and Latin classics.
 Opposed the “divine right o kings” theory which held that the monarch had the right to be
an unquestioned and absolute ruler over his subjects.
 Political order should be based upon a contract between the people and the government
 Aristocrats are the destined birth to be rulers. People were to establish their own
government and select their own political leaders from among themselves; civic education
is necessary
 People should be educated to govern themselves intelligently and responsibly (Orstein,
1984)
Herbert Spencer: Utilitarian Education

 He believed that people in an industrialized society needed a utilitarian education in order
to learn useful scientific skills and subjects.
 Learning should be a sensory experience where a student interacts within his/her
environment ; a slow, gradual, and inductive process.
 Children should be encouraged to explore and discover which would allow them to
acquire knowledge naturally.
 A student should only engage in those activities that would allow him/her to survive in
society.
 Industrialized society require vocational and professional education based on scientific
and practical (utilitarian) objectives rather than on the very general education goals
associated with humanistic and classical education.
Spencer’s Specialized Education vs. General Education
To survive in a complex society, Spencer favors specialized education over that of general
education. The experts who concentrate in a limited field is useful, but if he loses sight of
independence of things he becomes a man who now more and more about less and less. We
must be warned of the deadly peril of over specialism. Of course, we do not prefer the other
extreme, the superficial person who knows less and less about more and more.
Spencer’s Survival of the Fittest
He who is the fittest survives. Spencer’s concept of “survival of the fittest” means that human
development had one through an evolutionary series of stages from the simple to the complex
and from the uniform to the more specialized kind of activity.
John Dewey: Learning through Experience
Dewey does not disregard the accumulated wisdom of the past. These past ideas,
discoveries and inventions, our cultural heritage will be used as the material for dealing with
problems and so will be tested. If they are not totally accurate, they will still be part of a
reconstructed experience. This means that the ideal learner for Dewey is not just one who can
learn by doing (ex. Conduct an experiment but one who can connect accumulated wisdom of
past to the present).
Schools are for the People and by the People
Schools are democratic institutions 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.
 Emphasis on learning by doing –hands-on projects, experiential learning.
 Integration of entrepreneurship in to education.
 Strong emphasis on problem solving and critical thinking.
 Group work and development of social skills.
 Understanding and action as the goals of learning as opposed to rote knowledge.
 Collaborative and cooperative learning projects.
 Education for social responsibility and democracy.
 Highly personalized education accounting for each individual's personal goals.
 De-emphasis on textbooks in favor of varied learning resources.
 Emphasis on lifelong learning.
 Assessment by evaluation of child’s projects and productions.
George Counts: Building a New Social Order

 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 arise from technology.
 There is a cultural lag between material progress and social institutions and ethical values.
 Instruction should incorporate a content of a socially useful nature and a problem solving
methodology. Students are encouraged to work on problems that have social significance.
 Schools become 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 on to make important choices in the controversial areas of economics,
politics, and morality because if they failed to do so, others would make the decisions for
them.
Lag Between Material Progress and Ethical Values
Counts asserts that “there is a cultural lag between material progress and social
institutions and ethical values”. Material progress of human kind is very evident but moral
and ethical development seem to have lagged behind.
Theodore Brameld: Social Reconstructionism
Social reconstructionism is a philosophy that emphasizes the reformation of the society.
The social reconstructionist content that:
 There is a serious lag in cultural adaptation to the realities of a technological society.
Humankind has yet to reconstruct its values in order to catch up with the changes in the
technological order and organized education has a role to play in reducing the gap between
the values of the culture and technology.
 Education is design to awaken students’ consciousness about social problems and to
engage them actively in problem solving.
 Focuses on building a new society by letting the school examine and resolve the society’s
inconsistencies, controversies and conflicts.
 Education is not all privilege of the few but a right to be enjoyed by all.
 Education is a right that all citizens regardless of race and social status must enjoy.
Paulo Freire: Critical Pedagogy

 Systems must be changed to overcome oppression and improve human conditions.
 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.
 A democratic relationship between the teacher and her students is necessary in order for
the conscientization to take place.
 Dialogue is the basis of critical and problem-posing pedagogy, as opposed to banking
education, where there is no discussion, only the imposition of the teachers’ ideas on the
students.
Activity no 1
Form 4 groups in the class debate the following topics:
1. Should schools produce generalist or specialist?
2. Are you favor in Singaporean educational system from which whether a child finishes first
or last will no longer indicated in the primary and secondary recognitions?
Activity no. 2
Explain why each education philosopher was associated with these given words:
1. John Locke – the empiricist
2. Spencer – the utilitarianist
3. John Dewey – Experience
4. George Counts – Building a new social order
5. Theodore Brameld – the Social Reconstructionist
6. Paulo Freire – Critical Pedagogy vs. Banking Method

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Information Sheet

Philosophical Thoughts on Education

By the end of the lesson, the students shall be able to;

Observe the conversation below:

In a Grade 3 Science Class:

Isolated Facts and the Banking Method

Herbert Spencer: Utilitarian Education

George Counts: Building a New Social Order

Paulo Freire: Critical Pedagogy

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