Four Philosophies

Idealism, Realism, Pragmatism, Existentialism are the 4 different types of philosophies that a teacher can live and teach by in their classroom. An Idealism approach gives more importance to thoughts, feelings ideals and values than to the child and his activities. They firmly hold that curriculum should be concerned with the whole humanity and its experience. A Realism Approach suggests that teachers focus on teaching their students the scientific method of problem solving and the teachers are considered to hold all the knowledge. Pragmatism's curriculum is based on problem solving according the scientific method and values are situational or relative and the student ha more say. In existentialism it is based on classroom and dialogue in which stimulates awareness that each person creates a self-concept through significant choices; the values are based on human free-will.


 When looking at these four philosophies I noticed that Idealism and Realism were a very concrete type of teacher and reminded me of the old fashion teachers that did not allow for a lot of variance. When reading about Pragmatism and Existentialism, I noticed that they two philosophies were more of the common day teacher, and where we are trying to go. I was also instantly drawn to these two types of teaching, because I felt like it was describing me in a nutshell. After taking a survey about which type of philosophy best fits us, I found out I am an even mix of both pragmatism, as well as existentialism. I think that these two fit me the best because of the fact that I am a very kinesthetic learner and love doing things hands on, and let kids try new things, and work with others. So I think my background and the way I learn, directly correlates with the way I will teach. Pragmatism is all about learning from the environment  which I think every school should implement anyway because it is one of the most critical things we may ever learn as we live in this world. To go along with environment, existentialism allows students choice, and responsibility. Both of these work in hand in hand, and can clearly see now why I got even scores on both of them.