Foundation To Christian Education Terms

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Metaphysics

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The most speculative and abstract area of philosophy. It inquires about the nature of ultimate reality.

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Epistemology

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Study of the theory of knowing and knowledge

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Empiricism

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develops the quest for knowledge on the foundation of experience and observation

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Axiology

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Study of values and aesthetics that prescribe what is good and right. The categories of ethics and aesthetics are subsumed under axiology.

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Relation of Axiology to metaphysical and epistemological beliefs

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our metaphysical and epistemological beliefs and commitments are crucial to the formulation of our axiological judgments.

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Progressivism

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contends that scientific knowledge is of the greatest value. Exemplified by Jane Adams and John Dewey. They embraced Darwin but rejected the social Darwinism of Spencer and Sumner.

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Essentialism

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Rejected progressivism, insisted that education should transmit a core of knowledge and skills from past generations to our contemporary children. In addition the knowledge and information should be arranged cumulatively and sequentially in a well constructed and organized curriculum.

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Perennialism

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Following the Aristotelian concept that people are rational beings, perennialists maintain that the main function of a school is to produce students who are growing intellectually. Follow the essentialist idea of a prescribed body of knowledge.

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Reconstructionism

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Committed to establishing a new society that demands the deliberate changing of the so-called obsolete ideas and values of traditional education.

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Existentialism

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Existentialist educators encourage students to philosophize about the human experiences of life, love and death - poses the questions to stimulate self consciousness.

Attacks authority of Scripture & personal relationship with God through Jesus

Concepts reach back to Descartes, Pascal & Kierkegaard, Nietzsche & Heidegger.
Existential theologists include Barth, Bultmann, Brunner & Tillich.

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Analytic Philosophy

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THe heart of the teachings is a desire to clarify the language and methods used to communicate ideas. The writing of Bertrand Russel, Alfred Whitehead and Ludwig Wittgenstein have provided some of the initial genesis for this movement.

Is disinterested in making metaphysical, epistemological or axiological statements.

Seeks to explicate the meanings of educational terms and map out the logic of educational philosophy as a whole region of discourse... which would assist us to build our own philosophy of of education.

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Modernism

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(Descartes, Kant - although they have distinct differences)

Begins with the individual; Has and exalted sense of human reason; holds that reason ought to be objective in the sense of a detached observer.

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Postmodernism

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a philosophical movement away from the viewpoint of modernism. More specifically it is a tendency in contemporary culture characterized by the problem of objective truth and inherent suspicion towards global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. It involves the belief that many, if not all, apparent realities are only social constructs, as they are subject to change inherent to time and place. It emphasizes the role of language, power relations, and motivations; in particular it attacks the use of sharp classifications such as male versus female, straight versus gay, white versus black, and imperial versus colonial. Rather, it holds realities to be plural and relative, and dependent on who the interested parties are and what their interests consist of. It attempts to problematise modernist overconfidence, by drawing into sharp contrast the difference between how confident speakers are of their positions versus how confident they need to be to serve their supposed purposes.