Term Paper3

8/13/2019 Term Paper3

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Gripping and enduring interests frequently, and in respect of the higher

interests almost always, grow out of initial learning efforts that are not

intrinsically appealing or attractive. William Chandler Bagley

Every point in time, it seems, education has een e!pected to ta"e on the responsiility of

curing all of society#s prolems, even though many considered education to e one of its

prolems. $o one can argue the reality that society as a whole, has prolems. %ust watch the

news and you will see what "ind of shape our society is in with poverty all over the country,

corruptions in the government, drug addictions and crimes going on everywhere in the

&hilippines. We, 'ilipinos, with our high regard for education elieve that it is the answer.

'aced with constant changes in our world, others say that education in the &hilippines is

so lac"ing that it can#t possily help students develop into contriuting memers of society.

(here are so many critics and there are so many solutions that are eing proposed, ut which is

hard to say what will wor" with the inevitale and rapid changes of tomorrow. (hat is why, in

this writer#s opinion, it is requisite to "now what educational theory is essentialism and what is

its implication in the &hilippine educational system.

(he &hilippine educational system is dated ac" from the pre)spanish era and has evolved

and now patterned after the *merican system. +chools are classified into pulic government- or

private non)government or sectarian- ones. Basically pulic schools in the &hilippines are /0

traditional. (hey are teacher centered, have isolated curriculum su1ect are taught separately-,

product oriented, s"ills are learned thru repetition, concepts are presented as facts to memori2e,

have quantitative evaluation numerical testing- and have igger class. (he general pattern of

formal education follows four stages3 &re)primary level nursery and "indergarten- offered in

most private schools4 si! years of primary or elementary education, followed y four years of

secondary or high school education. College education usually ta"es four, sometimes five and in

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accumulated wisdom of our civili2ation as taught in the intellectual disciplines. +uch intellectual

discipline may include istory4 @athematics4 +cience4 :anguage and :iterature. Gute", 7-

*rthur Bestor also a leading essentialist of the fifties elieved that lieral arts and

sciences were the core of a general education which would enale men and women to function

intelligently. Gute", 7-

?nterest to essentialism theory came ac" when3

(he +oviet =nion launch of the +putni" satellite humiliated the =nited+tate which had fully e!pected to e first nation into space. *merican

lamed the pulic education system for not producing enough sufficiently

talented scientist and engineers to propel the =nited +tate into outer space

ahead of its then)enemy. Educators responded y developing a more intellectually demanding

curriculum. (he math, sciences and reasoning s"ills fostered in theessentialist curriculum proponents claimed, would produce the scientists,

engineers and technology wor"ers who would defend and protect the =nited

+tates from outside threats. +tudents> intellectual trainings ecame a criticalweapon of nationa defence. (o this day, most *merican high schools

continue to rely on an essentialist curriculum. Daplan 5 9wings, p.7/-

(he national security panic aout the schools failing that it led them to study the nation>s

educational standing, the prominent *pril, 7;8 report on *merican education, from the

$ational Commission on E!cellence in Education entitled * $ation *t is"3 (he ?mperative 'or

Educational eform reported =.+. children lagged ehind other nations> achievement level when

it came to asic su1ects. ?t concludes that pulic school needed to improve their teaching and

improve students> s"ills in asic areas li"e reading, writing and science. Wide support for ac"

to asics curriculum followed. Daplan 5 9wings, 6/77-

9ne of its educational principles is that guidance of the immature student should come

from a well)educated and cultured teacher. Generally essentialists view the teacher as the most

important, most "nowledgeale person in the classroom. (herefore, it>s no surprise that

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essentialist seem to show common methodological preference for the lecture method. (hey avoid

methodological frills and soft pedagogy and concentrate proven instructional methods. 9rnstein

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?f essentialists are against unconventional way of learning, what are they approve ofI *n

e!cellent description of the essentialist conception of the school was given y %ohn *. Ciardi,

associate professor of English at utgers =niversity

*ssume, for e!ample, that you want to e a physicist. Jou pass the great

stone halls, of say, @?(, and they cut into stone are the names of the master

scientists. (he chances are that few of you will leave your names to e cutinto those stones. Jet any one of you who managed to stay awa"e through

part of a high school course in physics, "nows more aout physics than did

many of those great ma"ers of the past. Jou "now more ecause they left

you what they "new. (he first course in any science is essentially a historycourse. Jou have to egin y learning what the past learned for you. E!cept

as a man has entered the past of the race he has no function in civili2ation.

*nd as this is true of the techniques of man"ind, so is it true of

man"ind>s spiritual resources. @ost of these resources, oth technical andspiritual, are stored in oo"s. Boo"s, the arts, and the techniques of science,

are man>s peculiar accomplishment. When you have read a oo", you have added to your human e!perience.

ead omer and your mind includes a piece of omer>s mind. (hrough

oo"s you can acquire at least fragments of the mind and e!perience ofKirgil, Aante, +ha"espeareLthe list is endless. 'or a great oo" is

necessarily a gift3 it offers you a life you have not time to live yourself, and it

ta"es you into a world you have not time to travel in literal time. * civili2ed

human mind is, in essence, one that contains many such lives and manysuch worlds. ?f you are too much in a hurry, or too arrogantly proud of your

own limitations, to accept as a gift to your humanity some pieces of the

minds of +ophocles, of *ristotle, of ChaucerLand right down the scale anddown the ages to Jeats, Einstein, E.B. White, and 9gden $ashLthen you

may e protected y the laws governing manslaughter, and you may e a

voting entity, ut you are neither a developed human eing nor a usefulciti2en of a democracy.

? thin" it was :a ochefoucauld who said that most people would never

fall in love if they hadn>t read aout it. e might have said that no one would

ever manage to ecome a human if he hadn>t read aout it. ? spea", ? am sure, for the faculty of the lieral arts colleges and for the

faculties of the speciali2ed schools as well, when ? say that a university has

no real e!istence and no real purpose e!cept as it succeeds in putting you intouch, oth as specialists and as humans, with those human minds your

human mind needs to include. (he faculty, y its very e!istence, says

implicitly3 We have een aided y many people, and y many oo"s, and ythe arts, in our attempt to ma"e ourselves some sort of storehouse of human

e!perience. We are here to ma"e availale to you, as est we can, that

e!perience.

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Brameld, (heodore 7

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