.6 How Philosophies Affect Teaching

Let's look at how different philosophical positions will influence the way you act as a teacher. If you are a Perennialist your job is to pass on the wisdom of the past. The wisdom is there and it's your job to pass it on. The Perennialist still likes to have up-to-date textbooks. You want the latest version of the past. I find that kind of quaint. Incidentally, we are always changing our mind about the past. The past isn't something that is stable at all. We keep having new ideas, interpreting history
differently all the time. So that makes it a little tough on the Perennialist, who thinks that the knowledge is out there and it hasn't changed. The Progressivist thinks that we are teaching problem solving. For the Perennialist the job is to teach the kids
"the stuff," to teach the concepts, and to teach a list of things. For the Progressivist, it's to teach the process of learning things.
Whatever we teach, one of the main reasons we are teaching is to help people learn why we are teaching it. The Essentialist says that there is essential knowledge out there. Back to the basics. Actually it is both the Perennialist and the Essentialist that
would take you back to the basics, because both of them believe that there is a basic body of knowledge to be mastered. The Progressivist would say that there are basics as well, but their list would be a very different list than the list of the Perennialist or Essentialist. The Existentialist says education isn't all that much about knowledge at all. What education is about and the purpose of learning, is to help the child confront freedom. We as teachers have the responsibility to be a whole lot more aware of our actions. If we are not aware of our actions then we pass along all sorts of misunderstandings to the kids. This then creates very definite consequences for the generations ahead. We can't afford to do that. The basic responsibility of teachers is to both preserve the heritage of the society and to help guide the society to the next century with new understandings. The
place where I have the biggest problem with Perennialists and Essentialists is that the world that I see around me, is a world that is constantly Changing. And I can't imagine even thinking about the world as a place that doesn't change. Teaching kids how to learn, teaching kids how to find things is more important than teaching them a long list of things. But that is a philosophical position and there are people who would disagree with that and I respect that. Mortimer Adler would argue
convincingly and people who are trained as Perennialists, function very well in society - that if you really read all of the great books and understood them and really mastered their ideas, you'd be all set to live in any world that anyone could dream up. Why? Because that world basically looks like it is changing but it isn't. That the essential ingredients go on the way they were. Well, I respectfully disagree. But you as a teacher have to understand where you come out on that scale. You have to understand how you are going to deal with the real or apparent changes around us. Take the textbook that you are studying which is the eighth edition. Well, one of the reasons textbook publishers publish new editions is because it increases sales. If you are lucky when you are done with this class and you are tired of the textbook you can turn it in and get half of the price
you paid for it.

But, if you are the unlucky ones, that's 1/6 of all the students in ECI 300 who have the textbook the lastsemester of its edition, the new edition of this textbook comes out and you can't sell it back. You are stuck - or to put it another way, you are fondly encouraged to keep this textbook on your shelf for the wonderful memories it will hold from the wonderful time we have spent together. Is that a fair world? Did you do anything to make the brilliant choice to be in this class in a semester where the textbook doesn't become obsolete at the end of the semester? No, this is the roll of the dice. So, textbook publishers love to publishnew textbooks every three years because that evaporates the used textbook market. But there are also true benefits. One of the reasons I am glad you have a new edition of the book, is that there is a good discussion of the Internet. Now, there couldn't have been a good discussion about the Internet three years ago because it wasn't around in the visible sense of the World Wide Web. We live in a world that is constantly changing and our philosophical position has to take that into consideration.

	How is the Perennialist and the Essentialist stance on education similar?	Answer Here
	As a perennialist, Mr. Jordan feels that he should pass knowledge from the past down to his students. A student teacher is assigned to Mr. Jordan who is an existentialist. How can the two teachers work together effectively despite their differing philosophies?	Answer Here