...Essentialist or Non-Essentialist Essentialism and non-essentialism are two different stances on why something is named what it is. People who are essentialists believe that the names things are named what they are named because they contain certain properties that only that one object has. Non-essentialists believe that things are whatever we call them in a specific situation and that things do not have essences. I believe that essentialism is a much better way of thinking because they have both reason and justification. The Ancient Greek philosopher Socrates , was very firm on believer of essentialism. He believed that there must be justification for things all in the world. This man, wanted to know why people were said to have virtue instead of just claiming they have it much like Meno did. He was very stubborn with Meno on this topic that their argument ended in aporia, which is known as angered puzzlement. Meno tried offering Socrates examples, but Socrates decided to stick to his own personal opinion. He did this because he felt the need to live up to being the wisest man in Athens, even though he knew he was not wise at all. Justification is needed with essentialism in order to claim something truly has an essence. People typically have a reason for their actions otherwise they would not perform them. Often times it may not be a strong reason, but at least they had some sort of a purpose to their action. When parents are naming their children...
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...Bri Ehrler Metaphysics Feb 5 2014 The problem of change and identity can often be explained with the story of the ship of Theseus. In this story, a man named Theseus docked his ship and over time, he and the ship, grew old and weak. Over time, the ship started to fall apart and needed new parts until eventually all the original parts were replaced with new ones. This newly renovated ship is the first ship to consider. There is also a second ship that was reconstructed from all the original pieces of the old ship that had been set into a separate warehouse and put back together. We now have two ships: the renovated ship (created by replacing the old parts with new) and the reconstructed ship (created by reassembling the original pieces that had been removed). The question is: Which ship, the renovated or the reconstructed, is the original ship of Theseus? Whenever one makes an identity claim, such that two things are the same and share all the same properties, one usually uses two different descriptions to explain such phenomena. For example, "Mark Twain is Samuel Clemmons". Mark Twain is the author that most people know for writing The Adventure of Tom Sawyer, but this was his pen name, not his actual name; thus, making Mark Twain a descriptive name, but nevertheless having the same identity as Samuel Clemmons. Back to the ship of Theseus, the problem lies when trying to differentiate which ship is the original ship based on the principle of identity. Are the two ships...
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...The life that an individual lives and the destiny that they come to could be determined by the sex of the person. Two perspectives that can show this are essentialism and social constructionism. The essentialism view looks male and females brains and how the structure of the brain are slightly different from one another. Along with that, the way the brains are ‘wired’ are different, male’s brains are better with “logic and visual spatial manipulation” which allows them to find jobs as “scientists, mechanics and pilots.” Whereas female brains are more adapt to having “empathy, intuition and language skills” which leads them to service jobs. Looking at brain studies of different sexes is not the only thing that the essentialists look at. Sociobiologist...
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...My philosophy for education is essentialism, because you’re working with students to teach basic information or subjects. “Essentialism is prominent in American education today.” (Kauchak, Eggen. 203) Essentialism’s goal is to help students understand the basic content. Some people would say “Teachers primary goals should be to help students’ master essential content rather than to help them develop emotionally and socially.” (Kauchak, Eggen. 203) The topics that I will address are essentialism in the classrooms, essentialism in teacher educational programs, and also comparing essentialism to the other three philosophies of education. Essentialism in the classroom is important in a lot of different aspects in teaching. The teachers’ students have to be able to understand the information that is given to them but in order to do that they have to have a solid foundation with reading, writing, and mathematics. If students don’t have these skills and they don’t want to learn them then where would they end up after school or even for a job? Some students will end up not finishing school because they can’t do the material or possibly understand it. Other students may end up in low end paying jobs or may not even be able to get a job at all. A lot of employers want employees that have the basic skills from what they learned in school to help them at work, instead of spending time and resources to train them in the things everyone should know. So you see why it is important...
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...forms of the critical race theory in the form of the essentialism philosophy. Essentialism philosophy is the reducing of the experience of a category, gender or race, to the experience of one sub-group . Basically, all oppressed people share the commonality of oppression. However, that oppression varies by gender, class, race, etc., so the aims and strategies will differ for each of these groups. I chose these films because of this portion of the critical race theory. Its interesting how no matter what race or gender one is, they could still be facing some sort of the same oppression. These films are also very representative of both the past and present day California. Situations in both films can be seen directly around us. Crash takes aim at a wide range of essentialism philosophy in that it deals with a string of different situations and racial prejudices. It ranges from typical white on black racism, to more strange indian on mexican stereotyping. Throughout the film we can see how everyday situations had become racial prejudices. In the movie Boyz-N-the Hood it is mostly directed towards black racism, but it is interesting because a good number of the racism is done by blacks on blacks. This was very interesting to me. At the time when this film was made, essentialism philosophy of the CRT was very prominent in the LA area, especially with the gangs. One scene which I found particular showing of this essentialism philosophy was a scene in which the actor Cuba Gooding...
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...Susan Best, author of The Serial Spaces of Ana Mendieta, bases her thesis around a desire to reevaluate Mendieta’s work; she does this in an effort to defend Mendieta’s artworks against being labeled and perceived by both, feminist theorists and art critics as belonging to essentialism. In other words, there have been many critics who in trying to understand the intent of Mendieta’s work, have concluded that though perhaps unintended, Mendieta’s work ultimately emphasizes damaging perceptions about women and their relationship to nature- suggesting that Mendieta’s approach to her work was unawaringly pushed by colonialist and patriarchal beliefs . The author expresses in both, direct and indirect ways, that Mendieta’s work should not be seen...
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...Introduction It was not until the 1960’s that the term of “gender” was widely used in the academic literature and public discussion to differentiate the gender identity and biological sex. By definition, the term “biological sex”represents the true meaning of an individual sex status. Gender, on the other hand, has multiple interpretations between men, women and what comes in beetween through social development and “nurture” of cultural adoption. Money and Erhardt (1972) suggest that biological gender is what a person perceives or assumes to expose and reveal that “he” or “she” has the sexual status of being male or female. Gender is more than that. It has more complexity that represents way of thinking, ideas, styles, patterns, habits, and many other aspects beyond biological sex status. One notion argues that gender in an essence is natural, stable and something given by God, which means that gender cannot be changed. Most scholars would perceive such theory as Gender Classification by Nature. Other argue that gender is a result of modification and influence of the shape of social institution that constructs and develops its profile on an individual. Thus, gender is based on social-view perception instead of being given and determined biologically. Gender also is recongnised as being derived from Nurture (Nurture Theory). This essays attempts to discuss the application of the above mentioned theories and ideas related to the writer’s social environment and cultural...
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...last student walks out, philosophy is affecting the way the teacher runs his/her classroom and how they interact with their students. There are four different types of educational philosophies: Perennialism, Essentialism, Progressivism, and Social reconstuctionism. There are also five classroom applications that help teachers decide which philosophies are used while they teach. They are educational goals, curriculum, teaching methods, learning environment and assessment. My educational goal is to develop problem solving, decision making and other life skills. This is progressivism. Progressivism is an educational philosophy emphasizing real-world problem solving and individual development. I feel that knowing the curriculum is important but it is just as important to teach the students how to use those skills in the real world. We have to help students to develop social skills as well as academic knowledge. Progressivism says that the purpose of schooling is to develop students as completely as possible—physically, intellectually, socially and emotionally. I completely agree with this statement. While teaching students curriculum, I feel that students should learn basic skills to help gain essential knowledge. This goes along with essentialism. Essentialism is an educational philosophy suggesting that a critical core of knowledge and skills exists that all people should possess. (Kauchak and Eggen, 203) It is more likely to change than any other educational philosophy...
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...throughout the peninsular Malaysia. From this movie, the first portrayal of a strong culture comes from Uncle Chuan, an Asian Chinese father despite being strict, unable to express their feelings and so on. As to Benji, raised in England with a different culture and also a childish behavior making it hard for Uncle Chuan to accept a different culture. In this movie, Chinese traditions and the cultures is strongly portrayed. For example, according to the culture, hand-delivering wedding invitation cards to friends and relatives brings out the sincerity to invite and as a sign of respect. A cultural and social background is highly descended in this film as also the value of family unity (Loong 2014). The intercultural concepts of essentialism and non-essentialism is depicted widely in this film where not just one culture but few is plotted in this movie such as the Chinese and the Western....
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...Purpose of education Name: Institution: Professor: Class: Date of submission: Purpose of education Education is considered to be a very important aspect of every individual’s life. Education acts as a tool that shapes each individual’s life. In general there is no single definition of education that fully defines what education is. Different scholars in the field of education define education in their own different ways. However, most of the definitions of education converge at the acquiring or passing of knowledge, skills and behaviour from one individual to another or through an institution such as the family, school or the society. The word education is derived from a Latin word e-ducere which means “leading out” and therefore it means leading out from the darkness of ignorance to the light of knowledge (Bailey, Barrow, Carr & McCarthy, 2013). In the formal setting education involves studying of a variety of subjects to learn new skills, habits and acquire new knowledge. It is usually divided into pre-school, primary school, secondary school and college or apprentice. For the purpose of this paper therefore education is defined as the practice of passing knowledge mostly in schools and colleges. The purpose of education in the society has been a matter of major debate among different philosophers of education. Education performs a very important role in an individual as well as the society. In our present society people...
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...A Future Teacher’s Philosophy of Education Education and children has always been a big part of my life. Education was always stressed upon in my house by both parents. It has never been an issue whether or not my brother and I would go to college; it has been a known fact that we would both attend college. With both of my parents being educators, education and children have always been very important in my upbringing. All my life, I have been around children, whether it has been babysitting, tutoring, working at a daycare, or just interacting with the children at my mother’s elementary school. Since I have spent so much of my life around people who work with children, it has become more and more evident to me, that I really want to become a teacher. After I complete my undergraduate degree in elementary education, I plan to start teaching right away and start working on my master’s degree during the summer. I plan to receive a master’s degree in school counseling at a college or university in the northeastern part of the US, since that is where I would like to teach. I personally believe that having an education is very important. For this reason, and since I like to help children, I think that I would make a good teacher and eventually a good school counselor. As a teacher, I want all my students to know that they can succeed and they can do anything they aspire to do. I want my students to know they are each unique in their own ways. I think that it is important...
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...including their teaching style, rules, and grading scale, as well as how they react to students’s problems. Every teacher holds a philosophy about what they feel is important in the classroom, whether they acknowledge it or not. Philosophies are neither right nor wrong, it is simply what the teacher feels is most important for the students to learn. The philosophies that I hold to as I am preparing to become a teacher are a combination of two philosophies, essentialism and progressivism. Essentialism is refered to as “an educational philosophy suggesting that specific knowledge and skills exsis that all people should possess” (Kauchan, Eggen, p155). I believe that without the knowledge of certain things, such as reading, writing, and simple math, it becomes eccedingly difficult to excel in society. I also feel that there is information, that while not necessary, is important to be a well rounded person. These topics include subjects such as the nations history, literature, and any other culture shaping information. While essentialism deals with gaining knowledge, progressivism adds application. Progressivism is a philosophy that “emphasizes real-world problem solving, and individual development” (Kauchan, Eggen, p158). I believe that if a student leaves school with extensive knowledge, but no application in the real world the teacher has set them up to fail. In the same way, if a student leaves with many ways to use their knowledge, but have been provided with nothing to make them...
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...I chose education as my career path because I hope to be able to make a small difference in a child’s life. Time and time again I have seen children being educated poorly and/or not having appropriate role models in their life. I feel that an educator must not only be able to convey to the student the classroom material, but also be a counselor, coach, mentor, and a parent. Failing to fulfill these roles gives a child the chance to slip through the educational system without having the opportunity to influence them to some degree. I can not narrow down my educational philosophy to one area. I have studied the teacher-centered philosophies and I would consider myself somewhat eclectic, having a mixture of progressivism and essentialism. Essentialism is...
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...is to define my educational philosophy so I may better understand the direction I take as an educator. The three educational philosophies I will investigate are essentialism, perennialism, and progressivism. The revelations I hope to disclose by this pursuit of fully comprehending my own personal philosophy of education will help me become a better teacher. It is through recognizing what compels my teaching methods that will allow me to see clearly the path I am taking as a teacher. PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION 3 Exploring Different Aspects of My Philosophy of Education There are three educational philosophies that I would like to explore deeper to better grasp where my own philosophy of education is rooted. I took the Inventory of Philosophies of Education and found that my responses to the questions lead me to determine that my philosophy of education is a combination of essentialism, perennialism, and progressivism (Sadker & Zittleman, 2009, p.186). These philosophies shape how I approach teaching, classroom management, group dynamics, and curriculum development. It is essential for me as an educator to understand what drives my teaching so I can better understand the methods I have employed to get to the desired destination. The first philosophy I want to explore is essentialism. Essentialism is an American educational philosophy that began “in the 1930’s as a reaction to progressivism” (Ornstein & Hunkins, 2009, p. 41). The purpose of education for...
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...children; the purpose of education, particularly the question of whether the chief goal of educators should be imparting knowledge, developing intellectual independence, or instilling moral or political values. Philosophy means the love of wisdom, which is answering fundamental questions. Philosophy of education whether written or not, is the teacher’s love of wisdom regarding teaching that expresses itself in attitudes and actions every day in the classroom. The five components of philosophy of education are Essentialism, Perennialism, Progressivism, Social Reconstructionism and Existentialism. Essentialism is based on the belief that a core curriculum exists that everyone in the United States should learn. Which is true but societal always changed so that would want people to learn the basic root and then take it from there. Pernnialism means everlasting and is often used talking about plants. It is also based on a core curriculum, and in the regard it is similar to essentialism. Progressivism focuses on curriculum of interest to students. It’s more than preparation for the future, its life itself. Social reconstructionism is to change society rather than teach about it. Existentialism contends that teachers teach the whole person, not just math, reading, science, or any other particular subject. I think philosophy of education really goes into detail of what the meaning of education is when it comes to teaching students. It involves with everything, meaning all subject and what...
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