Analysis on Educational Essentialism

论文题目：Analysis on Educational Essentialism

论文语言：英语论文 English
论文专业：elementary education and teaching
字数：1000
学校国家：美国
是否有数据处理要求：否
您的学校：
论文用于：Master assignment 硕士课程作业

Analysis on Educational Essentialism

Introduction
Philosophy is a fundamental problem that people must face in design and planning of basic education. It not only affects the development and design of curriculum from the concept, but also affects the connotation and extension of teaching materials from the system, it determines the implementation and effects of teaching methods from the practice, thus study on the impact of philosophy on education plays a very important role (Ornstein, 1991). This essay is based on the author’s own educational practice to discuss the impact of educational essentialism on teaching activities, combining with examples to explore the challenges and dilemmas that educational essentialism faces.

Educational essentialism

Educational essentialism comes from philosophical base of idealism and realism (Ornstein & Hunkins, 1998). Educational essentialism believes that the essence of things will not change as time, environment changes. People who insist on educational essentialism think that students should learn traditional basic curriculum thoroughly and rigorously. In schools which advocate this kind of philosophy, their educational end is to instill students with the "essentials" of academic knowledge, developing a back-to-basics approach. Essentialism will ensures that the accumulated civilization which is taught in traditional academic curriculum will be passed on from teachers to students. Such curriculum will cover Mathematics, Literature, History, Music, Science, Art, and so on (Knight, 1998). In addition, this traditional approach aims to cultivate the mind, promote reasoning, and ensure a common culture. Educational essentialism plays an indispensable role in promoting the process of students’ questing for truth, having knowledge and understanding the world (Ornstein, 1982).

The school which the author experienced previously adheres to educational essentialism. On the one hand, it is affected by Chinese traditional philosophical and educational thought with the characteristics of essentialism; on the other hand, it also reflects an effort of education researchers in striving to make the basic concepts of curriculum precision, thus effectively improving the academic level of curriculum. This is specifically reflected in the following three aspects. Firstly, considering from the design of content of curriculum, it deliberately pursues the rigor and completeness of the system of content to mainly present learners certain knowledge and facts. Secondly, the textbooks are always intuitive, simple, and logical to show the systematic, objective and scientific of knowledge. The textbook design is more concerned about knowledge itself, ignoring the organic link between knowledge and students’ real life. Those issues and knowledge comes from real life and have some exploring value seldom appear in textbooks. Finally, in teaching methods, teachers are often in a dominant position, they are on behalf of the truth and authority. They provide the content and methods of teaching, classroom teaching is mainly based on instruction of teachers, students mainly listen to teachers and seldom make a statement and discuss, they also rarely refute teachers’ point of view. Teachers use so-called standard thinking to inspire, induce students' thinking, when students answer teachers’ questions in the classroom, they are not based on their understanding on a issues but guessing the authority answers which have already existed in the minds of teachers.

Discussion
With the advent of the era of knowledge economy, as well as China's economic transition from a labor-intensive economy to a technology-intensive economy and the needs for building a harmonious society, China's demand for new talents is growing. As far as the education level is concerned, it needs to cultivate students with an independent thinking, innovative and critical spirit. Developing teaching plans, curriculum and teaching materials, as well as determining course content on the basis of philosophical base of idealism and realism, as well as educational essentialism has a positive effect in the transmission of knowledge to students. It can help students to efficiently master the certain knowledge as soon as possible. However, Ornstein (1991) also points out that there is no perfect philosophy, each philosophy is flawed. Considering philosophical base of idealism and realism, as well as educational essentialism, they have deficiencies in developing students' independent thinking, critical spirit and innovative capacity.

These deficiencies are mainly embodied in the following three aspects. First of all, in real classroom teaching, the knowledge that teachers impart has some certainty and a certain degree of uncertainty. It has too much emphasis on imparting certain knowledge to students to cause their conservative, one-sided thinking, which is unfavorable for guiding and inspiring students’ independent thinking and innovative spirit (Knight, 1998). Then, the design of textbooks and curriculum in accordance with essentialism separates the organic link between knowledge and students’ real life, which is not conducive to students' understanding of social reality, resulting in their lack of critical thinking, it also goes against building students’ context to form a democratic thinking (Knight, 1998). Finally, educational essentialism is likely to result in the formation of a gap between teachers and students. Teachers are representatives of the truth and authority, students can only echo. This has seriously neglected students' subjective position and dampened students’ initiative in working hard, questioning and innovation, it also makes it difficult to develop a teacher-student relationship towards the direction of democracy, equality and exchange (Knight, 1998). All in all, building educational planning on the basis of philosophical base of idealism and realism, as well as educational essentialism is not conducive to cultivating new talents to satisfy China's current demands for new talents.

Conclusion
The influence of philosophy on work of education is very important, education planning, course arrangement and teaching methods must be consistent with a certain philosophy. However, it is worth noting that there is no philosophy which is perfect, each philosophy has its own advantages and disadvantages, educators should be based on what the society, community and students need to choose educational philosophy. Considering my previous educational experience, based on the philosophical base of idealism and realism, as well as educational essentialism to build educational planning is not conducive to cultivation of students' independent thinking, critical spirit and innovation ability, which is unable to meet China’s current needs for new talents.

References
Ornstein, A. C. (1982). Curriculum Contrasts: A Historical Overview. Phi Delta Kappan, 3(3), 400-410.

Ornstein, A. C. & Hunkins, F. P. (1998). Curriculum: Foundations, Principles, and Theory. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 56.

Ornstein, A. C. (1991). Philosophy as a Basis for Curriculum Decisions. The High  School Journal,74(2), 102-109.

Knight, A. (1998). Issues and Alternatives in Educational Philosophy. Scottland: Saint Andrew’s Press.

本文摘自 http://www.ukassignment.org/mgzydx/ 转载请注明