Philosophical Influences on Christian Education

Practices, programs, projects, and structures that lack rigorous attention to an informing philosophical foundation tend rarely to be effective over the long run. Lacking a philosophical base that informs practice assures that most educational enterprises will flutter from one technique, approach, or fad to another trying to find “what works.” That practice ensures a perpetual lack of direction, an inability to practice discernment, and a lack of guiding principles and values to inform and shape practice.

Below is a short list of some of the most influential philosophies of education. Can you determine which you embrace over others?

• Behaviorism (Watson). Theory of human behavior which holds that actions can be explained entirely as responses to stimuli.
• Empiricism (Locke). Any theory that emphasizes sense-experience rather than reason or intuition as the basis for knowledge.
• Existentialism (Kierkegaard, Sarte). Distinguishes between the kind of being possessed by humans from that possessed by objects. Persons as being are essentially open-ended, free from determination from pre-existing essence (“existence precedes essence”). Emphasizes personal freedom, choice, and responsibility.
• Functionalism. Theories that define things in terms of what it does or the function it plays in its relationships and environment. Tends to define things in terms of their cause and effect; defines cognition in terms of its effect on behavior.
• Idealism (Plato). The school(s) of thought which holds that reality exists or depends intrinsically and causally on the mind.
• Inductivism. Epistemological view that inference in accordance with some version of the inductive principle is logically valid or at least rationally legitimate.
• Instrumentalism. Philosophical view that laws and theories are not interpreted as truth or as objective, but as instruments for the formulation of hypotheses. A theory, belief, or value is judged in terms of its usefulness rather than its correctness or “truth.”
• Intuition. Any philosophical view claiming that some of our knowledge is attained by a direct process independent of the senses and not open to rational assessment.
• Neo-Platonism (Plotinus, Hegel). A concept that strives to reconcile the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. Reality is hierarchically ordered.
• Postmodernism (Jancks, Faucault). The concept that instead of single sets of values, truth, or political loyalties there is a wide variety of groups and classes, aims and ideologies, each with mutually valid claims to truth. While not a philosophy per se, there are enough who are enamored with this new form of Relativism to warrant attention to its influence.
• Pragmatism (Dewey, Peirce). Pragmatism holds that the meanings of concepts are propositions lay in their effect on our experiences, senses, emotions, and practices.
• Rationalism. Relating to theories emphasizing reason or intuition as the basis for acquiring knowledge or as the basis for moral judgement.
• Realism (Kant). The view that abstract concepts have a real existence and can be understood empirically; the view that the physical world has a reality separate from the mind.

Selected from A Christian Educator’s Book of Lists by Israel Galindo (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, ) You can order the book from the publisher, http://www.helwys.com/books/galindo2.html or from Amazon.com.