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My Educational Philosophy
As someone who is planning on being a future teacher I am constantly thinking about the
philosophies that shape my ideas about education and my practices for teaching my classes.
There are two teaching philosophies that I feel agree with my beliefs about education. These
would be essentialism and progressivism. Both of these two ideas about education appeal to me
and my beliefs about a variety of the topics in education such as how teachers should teach.
Neither one of the philosophies alone can fully describe what I think about education, however
my personal philosophy contains concepts and values from both.
The first philosophy that I feel describes the way I think about education is essentialism.
This Philosophy is said to be founded by William C. Bagley. Bagley formed the Essensialistic
Education Society. People that believe in this philosophy think that there is a common
knowledge that all students need to learn during their time in school. This common knowledge
includes literacy, scientific, and mathematical skills that are seen as helpful for the student in the
future. In todays education this philosophy is seen in the Common Core Standards that push for
all students to leave high school knowing a set of standard and essential knowledge. This
educational program is based heavily on essentialistic ideas. Advocators for this philosophy or
the Common Core push for these standards because they believe that if students know and
possess the knowledge of the essentials then they will be able to succeed in their future. This is
true whether they are going into a four-year college, tech college, or right into the work force.
There are plenty of advocators for this teaching philosophy including E.D. Hirsch Jr (Parkay).
E. D. Hirsch is the founder of the Core Knowledge Foundation. Hirsch is currently a
professor at the University of Virginia. Originally Hirsch was an English teacher which is where
he got his insight and ideas about education. He realized that some students lacked literacy skills
that were needed to effectively read certain articles of text and know how to use the information
they learned from reading it. This troubled Hirsch and led him to adopt ideas from essentialism.
These ideas being that every school should be committed to teaching their students the basic
skills needed to extract information from pieces of writing and know how to use it effectively. He
published his ideas in his book Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. Since
then Hirsch has been an advocator of essentialism ideas and reforms. I myself have begun to
believe in the essentialism philosophy. But it is not the only philosophy I agree with (Common
Knowledge).
The second philosophy that follows suit with my beliefs is progressivism. Progressive
thinking took off after the writings of John Dewey. In its purest form progressivism is the
opposite of essentialism. The progressive philosophy believes that the curriculum that schools
need to teach should be based off the students needs. Thus, teachers should focus on their
students interests and create their curriculum around what their students lack and need to be
successful after their time in school. Using this philosophy teachers need to learn about their
students more to be effective in creating lesson plans that will help their students. An example of
this philosophy in education today was shown in an Article of Education Weekly. The article
describes teachers that take time to meet with their students in one-on-one or group meetings
where the teacher will ask open ended questions regarding what the class is learning at the time.

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The teachers do not focus so much on what answers the students give but how they are coming
up with their answers. From these meetings the teachers can figure out what skills the students
need to either arrive at a correct answer, or at least come closer to it so they can build off of that.
This is progressivism because the teachers are allowing their students to help shape the
curriculum to what they need and not just what someone else says they need. This is where the
philosophy is considered the opposite of essentialism which tells students what they need to learn
in order to be successful. One famous teacher who was a believer of this philosophy was Helen
Parkhurst (Parkay).
Helen Parkhurst was one of the first teachers to use the progressive philosophy in her
teaching. During the time period she taught education, schooling was all about teaching kids one
way in a factory type of model. Parkhurst was a firm believer that each student needed their own
individual lesson plan for them to get the most out of what they were being taught. Parkhurst
received a great amount of recognition and awards for her ideas and teaching style. Parkhurst
even founded a school strictly to teach using her student-centered philosophy. This school was
called the Dalton School. The school under her watch and teaching focused on allowing the
students to mold their lessons to fit their interests. This sparked a drive in the students that led
them to be very successful in completing the lessons they chose to complete. Parkhursts school
is one of the first examples of the progressive philosophy in education. I agree with some of the
methods that progressive teachers use and believe in, but I have my own ideas that blend with
them (Helen Parkhurst).
My philosophy for education stems from a lot of areas such as my experiences in school
and my beliefs about what is the purpose of school and education. One of my beliefs is that
schools in America today should be preparing students for the future. The reason students go to
school is to learn skills and knowledge that is supposed to prepare them to be successful in
society. By successful, I mean being able to make a living and provide for oneself and future
family. To do this a student is going to need a job to be a source of income to pay for their needs.
So by chaining all of this together, I believe that schools are preparing students for the future by
ensuring they have what they need to earn a job and be successful in doing that job, as well as,
being able to fit in and contribute positively to society. As a teacher, it is my job to help students
learn the knowledge and skills they need to be successful. Not successful in my eyes, but what
they believe is successful. A path that a student wants to follow may not have been an option for
me because I did not see it as rewarding enough to consider myself successful, but it may be
rewarding enough for them. As a teacher it is my job to help them achieve that goal by teaching
skills that will assist them in their journey. I also believe that I have to help spark an interest in
students to want to learn. Especially in my future field of mathematics, I have seen many
students that do not have the drive or thirst for knowledge and do not learn as well as others that
do have that want to learn. My beliefs about what should be taught also adds to my philosophy of
teaching.
In mathematics, I believe that there are skills that are used in everyday society that should
be taught to every student regardless of what they want to do in the future. But at the same time I
know that every student is going to have different needs within the subject to help them move on

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in the future and be successful. Some of the skills are more than just knowing an equation or
mathematical theorem. These include being able to think in a mathematical and scientific way to
help solve an everyday problem. In other words, being able to think critically in ways that a
student may not realize they can or are doing. But how do all of the beliefs tie into the
philosophies mentioned above?
My essentialist views are mainly that within the subject I am going to be teaching, and
others for that matter, there are skills, techniques, and knowledge that every student should learn
because they can be found on an everyday basis in todays society. Knowing this there should be
a curriculum that can help students learn these essential aspects of a subject. But I believe in
putting a progressive spin on essentialist ideas. Even though progressivism and essentialism are
opposites they can work together. Most people that believe in essentialism think that the
curriculum should be concrete. But I believe that if a teacher can identify the needs that a student
has by learning who the student is, they will be able to more effectively teach the essentials to
them by addressing the needs of each student individually in some way. I think that the
curriculum should have some flexibility in it to allow teachers the ability to do this. Together I
think that these two philosophies although appearing as opposites can work together to provide
students a more effective and efficient way of learning. This is why I chose both of these
philosophies. I believe that together these two philosophies represent my beliefs about education
well. Using both of the philosophies I can also see a teacher that I want to become.