Immanuel Kant and Idealism

They never lived at the same time, but history always put Locke and Kant on a dust up.

A famed German thinker, Kant (1724–1804) was an advocate of public education and of learning
by doing, a process we call training. As he reasons that these are two vastly different things.

He postulated “Above all things, obedience is an essential feature in the character of a child…”.
As opposed to Locke, he surmises that children should always obey and learn the virtue of duty,
because children’s inclination to earn or do something is something unreliable. And
transgressions should always be dealt with punishment, thus enforcing obedience.

Also, he theorized that man, naturally, has a radical evil in their nature. And learning and duty
can erase this.

Mortimer J. Adler and the Educational Perrenialism

Adler (1902- 2001) was an American philosopher and educator, and a proponent of
Educational Perennialism. He believed that one should teach the things that one
deems to be of perpetual importance. He proposed that one should teach principles,
not facts, since details of facts change constantly. And since people are humans, one
should teach them about humans also, not about machines, or theories.

He argues that one should validate the reasoning with the primary descriptions of
popular experiments. This provides students with a human side to the scientific
discipline, and demonstrates the reasoning in deed.

William James and Pragmatism

William James (1842-1910), an American psychologist and philosopher, ascribed to

the philosophy of pragmatism. He believed that the value of any truth was utterly
dependent upon its use to the person who held it. He maintained that the world is like
a mosaic of different experiences that can only be interpreted through what he calls as
“Radical empiricism”.

This means that no observation is completely objective. As the mind of the observer
and the act of observing will simply just affect the outcome of the observation.

John Dewey and the Progressivism

Dewey (1859-1952), an American philosopher, psychologist and educational

reformer, was a proponent of Educational Progressivism.
He held that education is a “participation of the individual in the social consciousness
of the race”, and that it has two sides; the psychological, which forms the basis of the
child’s instincts, and the sociological, on which the instinct will be used to form the
basis of what is around him. He postulated that one cannot learn without motivation.