Idealism
This philosophy seems like it is in the throes of its use in education, but it might just be that I don't get out that often. This is a very teacher-centered philosophy, one that is most concerned with filling students up with all of the known essential facts that the teacher has. There are underlying absolute truths in the realm of knowledge, and in order for students to be the most productive and model citizens, they must know them front and back. The trick is to see through the imperfect material world and see the wholeness of the true spiritual truths that exist. It seems that this is an older school of thought, and the fact that it is used by so many religiously founded schools might attest to that.
Realism
Ideas are not the ultimate reality, in contrast to idealism. The study of reality and knowledge is implemented by sensory perception and abstraction of the world. In this sense, a scientific approach to information is the main way realists come to their conclusions. Realism applies the Aristotelian idea of forms to grasp the concept of the material world, understanding the characteristics and principles that make it up in order to then classify and group the information.
Pragmatism
This philosophy encourages change, never content to allow there to be unquestionably true information to know. Pragmatists understand their environment through personal experience and observation, then use the information that they have gained as a way to solve problems with their conclusions. Because ideas about our world and our universe are always changing, Pragmatists argue that the Idealist and Realist philosophies are unable to be proven.
Existentialism
This philosophy believes that nothing is absolute, not even change. For this reason, students must be allowed to create their own meaning, since there is no ultimate meaning that one must gain. Since scientific knowledge is limited, the most important kind of knowledge is that which is personal.
Out of these educational philosophies, I found that I identified with the Pragmatists the most. It seemed like most of the other philosophies were extreme in their conservative or liberal leanings, and as someone who likes to stay in the middle, I was looking for a philosophy that didn't put all of its eggs in one basket. What intrigues me about Pragmatism is its attention to the importance of change. By contrast, a philosophy like Idealism puts too much faith in absolutes for me.
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