PRAGMATISM AND EDUCATION

Mrs. Ronalyn N. Logatiman

 Introduction
OUTLINE  Main Topics and Sub-topics
OF THE  Roots of the Pragmatist Worldview
 Induction: A New way of Thinking
REPORT  Centrality of Experience
 Science and Society
 American Pragmatists
 Charles Sanders Peirce
 William James
 John Dewey
 Pragmatism as a Philosophy of Education
 Aims of Education
 Methods of Education
 Curriculum
 Role of the Teacher
 Critique of Pragmatism in Education
 Conclusion
 Personal Note (with video as a summary)
INTRODUCTION
 The root of the word pragmatism is a Greek word meaning
“work”. Pragmatism is a philosophy that encourages us to
seek out the processes and do things that work best to help us
achieve desirable ends.

 Pragmatism examines traditional ways of thinking and doing

and, where possible, seeks to incorporate them into everyday
life, but it also supports creating new ideas to deal with the
changing world in which people live.

 Although pragmatism is viewed primarily as a contemporary

American philosophy, its roots can be traced back to British,
European and ancient Greek philosophical traditions. The
background for pragmatism can be found in the works of
Francis Bacon, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and
Charles Darwin. However, the philosophical elements that
give pragmatism a consistency and system as a philosophy in
its own right are primarily the contributions of Charles
Sanders Peirce, William James and John Dewey.
ROOTS OF THE
PRAGMATIST
WORLDVIEW
A. Roots of the Pragmatist Worldview

1. . Induction: A New way of Thinking

Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626)

 The inductive method he suggested has

served as the basis for the scientific
method, which in turn has been of
fundamental importance to pragmatism.
Whereas Bacon thought that science
should be concerned primarily with materials things, pragmatists
extended its range to include problems in economics, politics,
psychology, art, education and even ethics.

 Some pragmatists did not narrowly construe the meaning of

induction so as to restrict it only to physical and material studies.
George Herbert Mead applied it to social and psychological areas;
William James used it in explaining religious and moral beliefs; and
John Dewey, learning from his predecessors, applied it to education
and democratic society.
A. Roots of the Pragmatist Worldview

2. Centrality of Experience

a. John Locke (1632 – 1704)

 He investigated the ways human beings experience and come to

know things, and his examination led him to the view that the
individual’s mind at birth is blank, a tabula rasa. Ideas are not
innate, as Plato maintained; rather, they come from experience.
These experiences are all imprinted on the mind through one or
more of the five senses.

 He believed that as people have more experiences, they have more

ideas imprinted on the mind and more with which to relate. He
also emphasized placing children in the most desirable
environment for their education, and he pointed to the importance
of environment in making people what they are.
A. Roots of the Pragmatist Worldview

2. Centrality of Experience
b. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778)

 He thought that individuals are basically good but have been

corrupted by civilization. He chose Daniel Defoe’s story of
Robinson Crusoe to represent the kind of “Noble savage” he
envisioned, and used it as the basis for his most important book on
education, Emile. In this book, Rousseau describes a child taken
out of civilization and brought up in the country. Rousseau gave
little attention to the education of the girls but Emile does have
portions concerned with Sophy, who is Emile’s counterpart.
 His major contribution to pragmatism was the educational
connection he made between nature and experience. His emphasis
on the place of naturalism in education affected the way
pragmatist thinkers viewed the child. Children were seen as
natural organisms going through various stages of development.
He helped educators become more sensitive to the physiological,
psychological and social stages of child development.
A. Roots of the Pragmatist Worldview

3. Science and Society

a. Auguste Comte (1798 – 1857)

 Comte influenced the early development of pragmatism by

helping thinkers become sensitive to the possibilities of
using science to help solve social problems.

 His dream was to reform society by application of science.

 His willingness to view social structures and relationships

as capable of systematic study and control helped usher in
elements of social theory that influenced pragmatism.
A. Roots of the Pragmatist Worldview

3. Science and Society

b. Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882)

 Darwin’s major work, On the Origin of Species by Means of

Natural Selection (or simply The Origin of Species, 1859), rocked
the intellectual and religious communities of the Western world.
 Religionists attacked his theory because it challenged Biblical
creation.
 He argued that species arise naturally through what he called a
universal struggle for existence. Through this process, some
species arise and then disappear as conditions change; this
selection process operates over a considerable time span.
 For pragmatists, Darwin’s view on natural selection and evolving
universe meant that reality is open-ended in process, with no fixed
end. This process encouraged the view in pragmatism that a
person’s education is tied directly to biological and social
development.
American
Pragmatists
B. American
Pragmatists
1. Charles Sanders Peirce
 He argued that people always should remain
extremely sensitive to the consequences of how
they conceive of ideas.
 He maintained that the concept of practical
effects makes up the whole of our concept of an
object.
 He concluded that true knowledge of anything
depends on testing one’s ideas in actual
experience because, in and themselves, ideas are
little more that hypotheses until tried upon the
anvil of experience.
B. American
Pragmatists 2. William James
 He was the philosopher who brought the philosophy
of pragmatism to a wider public audience.
 He likes to say, “the proof is in the pudding”, that is,
before one can tell if the pudding (an idea) is any
good (true), one has to taste (test) it.
 He held that truth is inseparable from experience; to
get at truth, one must study experience itself, not
some immutable, otherworldly absolute, extraneous
to experience.
 He called on thinkers to concentrate on experience in
lieu of essences, abstractions and universals because,
as his study of experience revealed to him, the
universe is open-ended, pluralistic and in process.
3. John Dewey
B. American  Nature and Experience. Experience and nature are not two
Pragmatists different things separated from each other; rather experience itself
is of nature. People do not experience “experience” but the world
in which they live – a world of things, ideas, hopes, fears and
aspirations, all rooted in nature.

 Experimentalism and Instrumentalism. Ideas are instruments in

the solution of human problems, and those solutions should be
tried on an experimental basis so that we can learn from our
efforts and redirect them to better effect.
 The Individual and the Social. Individuality is important because
it is the source of novelty and change in human affairs. Sociality
refers to a milieu or medium conducive to individual
development. Genuine individuality could not exist without
humane, democratic and educative social conditions; therefore,
individuality and sociality cannot be divorced in Dewey’s system;
they are interdependent and interrelated.
B. American 3. John Dewey
Pragmatists  Religious Experience. He held that being “religious” did not
require the acceptance of supernaturalism, and he thought
that most organized religions have a negative effect because
they tend to separate and classify people, which is untenable
practice in a democratic society.

 Moral Development. Moral rules should be considered in

light of particular situations and in terms of their
consequences; hence each action can be judged good or bad
in terms of its moral outcomes.

 Aesthetic Development. For him, education is an art rather

than a science. Good education helps unify the mind and
body, or thinking and doing, and when this is achieved,
education becomes the supreme art form – the art of
education.
PRAGMATISM AS
A PHILOSOPHY
OF EDUCATION
C. Pragmatism as a Philosophy of Education

1. Aims of Education

 Individuals should be educated as social beings, capable

of participating in and directing their own social affairs.

 Education should be an experimental enterprise, as well

as something that assists in social renewal.

 It should promote a humane spirit in people and the

desire to find new answers to current economic,
political, and social problems.

 Education should promote individual and social

interests, which will diminish reliance on custom and
encourage more reliance on intelligence and democracy.
C. Pragmatism as a Philosophy of Education

2. Methods of Education
 Pragmatists prefer flexible education methods that can be used in
various ways.
 They also prefer functional schools, with such things as movable,
child-sized desks, large print in books for small children and so
forth, all of which came out of Dewey’s experimental work at the
Laboratory School in Chicago.
 Pragmatists are adherents of action-oriented education; therefore,
they would suggest an activity-oriented approach so students would
learn not only that they can relate various kinds of knowledge and
use them to attack s problem but also that they can act on them.
 Pragmatists believe that real-life situations encourage problem-
solving ability in a practical setting.
 Pragmatists tend toward a broad education rather than a specialized
one.
 Pragmatists agree that the proper method of education is
experiential, flexible, open-ended, and oriented toward growth of the
individual’s capacity to think and to participate intelligently in social
life.
C. Pragmatism as a Philosophy of Education

3. Curriculum

 Pragmatists reject separating knowledge

from experience and fragmenting or
compartmentalizing knowledge.

 Pragmatists believe in a diversified

curriculum.

 Many pragmatists advocate “problem-

centered learning” as the proper approach
to curriculum organization.
C. Pragmatism as a Philosophy of Education

4. Role of the Teacher

 Children are motivated to learn naturally and the teacher should
capture and use the motivation that already exists.

 Teachers must understand that all children are not at the same point,
however, and cannot be educated in the same way.

 Rather than teachers merely imparting knowledge and students

passively receiving it, pragmatists want active teachers and students
.
 The pragmatists’ model of the teacher call for an exceptionally
competent person - one who possesses breadth and depth of
knowledge, understands current conditions that affect the lives of
students, knows how to organize and direct student investigations,
understands psychological development and learning theory,
provides a supportive environment in which students can learn, and
possesses a refined understanding of school and community
resources that are available for teaching and learning.
C. Pragmatism as a Philosophy of Education

5. Critique of Pragmatism in Education

 Some critics attack pragmatism for its relative and

situational approach to life problems. They
maintain that pragmatism rejects traditional
values in favor of values that are uncertain,
changeable and impermanent.

 The lack of specificity in pragmatism makes it

difficult to apply in education.

 The type of person needed to teach Dewey’s way

had to be exceptional, that is, extremely capable
and highly educated in several disciplines.
CONCLUSION
According to William James, it is important
that teachers should realize the importance of
habit. As educational leaders, it is likewise
important to develop this habit – good habit – to
become better and improved the way we lead and
manage.

The core of pragmatism was the pragmatist

maxim, a rule for clarifying the contents of hypotheses
by tracing their ‘practical consequences’. In the work of
Peirce and James, the most influential application of the
pragmatist maxim was to the concept of truth. This can
also be best applied in today’s educational leadership for
the concepts behind pragmatism will help leaders solve
whatever problems they encounter.
PERSONAL NOTE
Pragmatism is an educational philosophy that
says that education should be about life and growth.
That is, teachers should be teaching students things
that are practical for life and encourage them to grow
into better people.

Another key component to pragmatism is

experiential learning, which is another way of saying that
education should come through experience. It is the
difference in learning ideas versus learning through
practice. Experiential learning is all about practice and
figuring out how to discover knowledge through experience.

A SUMMARY
Thank You