Philosophies and movements in education

There are a number of well-known educational movements out there. All of them sound confident with their respective claims, which are often inconsistent, if not conflicting, answers to the basic problems of education. What ought to be the purpose of education? What ought we to teach in education? How ought we to teach?

Often, the proponents of the movements would justify their answers to these questions by citing the "truth" or "universality" of their assumptions about reality, the human being, knowledge, good, and, at times, beauty. Such assumptions, it may be noticed, are traceable to one or more philosophies. One, of course, has his/her own philosophy, possibly quite different from the known ones. Often, however, the student's or teacher's philosophy is more or less consistent with or similar to one or more philosophies. Platonic Idealism, Aristotelian/Lockean Realism, Augustinian Idealism, Thomasian Realism, Sartrean Existentialism, and Rousseau's Naturalism are some of such philosophies. (Already, my use of the expression "philosophy" here suggests that it is basically a body of fundamental beliefs or assumptions that one uses to justify answers to questions that are more or less similar to the educational problems that I've just stated.)

Students of education should be cautioned that it's not uncommon for a certain philosophy to be tied to the ideals and visions of a certain educational movement. Experts, however, may not agree as to the connections other authors make between an educational movement and a certain philosophy. This implies that impeaching a certain aspect of a philosophy does not necessarily mean that one has effectively undermined the validity of a certain educational movement.

One way to effectively invalidate an educational movement, and its recommended educational practices, is to show first that there is indeed a lack of robust connection between such movement and its supposed theoretical foundation (a philosophy or a cross between two or more philosophies). The next job is to attack the areas of philosophy/philosophies that serve as the major pillars of an educational movement in question. Another way to invalidate an educational movement is to prove that it has, if any, very little practical value, and it does more harm than good to the stakeholders, especially the students, in education. Of course, a more potent approach is to question both the theoretical and practical value of the movement in question.

The simple lesson that I wish to state here is that it's just unwise to embrace something if there is no good reason to do so.