The Pragmatic Education Philosophy

Pragmatism emerged from the writings of John Dewey who believed that experimentation was the best approach for educating young minds. For example, pragmatists feel that field trips, commandmental excursions etc atomic number 18 more effective in teaching students about the world instead of audio-visual aids. Pragmatism includes such as thoughts as futurism, and educational humanism and Reconstructionism. Pragmatic education philosophy doesnt assign a traditional share to the teachers who are only seen as guides and not exactly more knowledgeable beings.George R. Knight in his disc on education philosophies explained that pragmatism focuses on real life experiences as the main source of knowledge and education. They gives the example of field trips as he says that for a child to learn about dairy products, its better to take him to a barn and let him experience the whole issue himself instead of showing him a movie on the subject. (p. 75) Idealism is an important philosophy that gained greater influence over education in the 20th century and was not so fashionable prior to that.It has been present in the educational field for a long time emphasizing the reality of ideas, thoughts, and mind over material and matter. William E. Hocking who is a new-fangled thinker in this area maintained that due to emphasis on ideas this philosophy should have been called idea-ism instead of idealism. This is because idealism is more concerned with intrinsic value such as honesty, truth, courage etc while idealism in the case of education stresses the importance of ideas, thoughts and mind precisely.Educationists working on idealistic philosophies would concentrate more on the development of ideas instead of more physical things believing that this would lead to action automatically. Students are taught that they create or produce what they think and they are told to pass for perfection. Realism is more or less a reaction to idealism. This philosophy maintains that mater ial and physical world exists independent of ideas and thoughts. Whether we think about a band or not, it does exist.It will exist even if we dont think about it or have never had an idea of what a mountain is like. Realist educationists would want students to learn by their senses of smell, feel, and taste since they believe in the existence of the natural world. They also maintain that the best way is to learn through experiencing the physical world. Nature plays an important role here as educationist would prefer to teach through observation of natural order. The teachers with realistic bend of mind would want students to development judgment and ethical motive by experiencing and observing the world.Behavior psychology is also one of the important branches of study for realist educationists. Existentialism philosophy focuses on emotions more than the intellect. The person, his values, beliefs, ideals, and identity are of greater importance than his intellectual capacity and fo r this reason it views education in slightly negative light. This is because they feel that a student learning through traditional educational means would become nothing more than a pawn in capitalist world.To become a whole and healthy human being who has a unique personality and thinking capacity, it is important to allow the students to explore the world on their own. Existentialism is not a philosophy but a punctuate for several widely different revolts against traditional philosophy. Most of the living existentialists have repudiated this label, and a bewildered outsider might well conclude that the only thing they have in common is a marked aversion for each other. (Kaufmann 75)The teacher in this case would be seen as a facilitator instead of an sniffy figure. Existentialism supports the idea of allowing students all possible answers to a question instead of handing them down one answer as the only and final solution. Existentialism has something in common with pragmatism a s both advocate a curriculum based on individual needs instead of fixed theories and ideas.