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Evolution of Educational Thought - Coggle Diagram
Evolution of Educational Thought
Unit 1. Ancient Education
• Greek Pedagogical Thought
In Athens, pedagogical ideals were influenced by the social structure.
The city had a population of about 100,000 free men, 60,000 to 70,000 slaves, and 45,000 foreigners.
The latter did not enjoy all the rights of citizenship, but took part in the educational and commercial activities of the city-state.
• Roman Education
At first Roman education was dominated by the family.
In the Roman family, the father exercised supreme authority and his word was like a decree of the state.
The ideal of Roman education was to cultivate manhood and self-control.
• The Ideals of Jesus
The influence of Jesus on the pedagogical history of the West is enormous.
It was exercised on groups as different as the Quakers and the Jesuits, and it was as strong on the deists, who believed in reason, as on the pietists, who advocated emotion as the dominant note of religion.
Orthodox believers like Loyola felt his ascendancy, and liberals like Schweitzer have found in Jesus the inspiration for his philosophical and humanitarian work.
• The Origin of the Public School
The oldest known education systems had two common characteristics; they taught religion and maintained the traditions of the people.
In ancient Egypt, temple schools taught not only religion, but also the principles of writing, science, mathematics, and architecture.
Similarly, in India most of education was in the hands of priests.
Unit 2. The Middle Ages and the Renaissance
• Scholasticism and Universities
The 12th and 13th centuries saw the birth of universities.
Medieval universities were organized like corporations, and they were more concerned with scholarship than with buildings.
The teaching methods were based on the formal lecture, which the students had to memorize.
• Appreciation
The weak point of medieval education was its lack of interest in the experimental sciences.
The truth was considered an absolute pattern.
Heresy was not tolerated. Knowledge should be a rigorous process and not a reason for enjoyment.
• The Pedagogical Ideals of the Renaissance
The Renaissance represents a new stage in human culture.
His break with the Middle Ages was gradual, but it resulted in a new vision of the world. While the Middle Ages had advocated mortification of the body, Renaissance scholars strongly asserted that life should be fully enjoyed.
During the Renaissance, the middle class assumed great importance: nationalism and the glorification of wealth became permanent aspects of European civilization.
• Evaluation of Humanistic Education
The advantage of the new system lay in his enthusiasm for the classics. the classical ideal represented a way of life based on moderation and enjoyment of this world.
He glorified the ideals of wisdom and regarded the scholar as the leader of civilization.
However, the new system also degenerated the study of literature, gave importance to cold memorization and insisted on imitating the past.
Unit 3. The Renaissance and the Modern Age
• Education and the Reformation (of Luther)
More than any other reformer, Martin Luther created a new concept of religion and education.
He was cultured, insanely brilliant, and possessed, in addition to intelligence, intense moral zeal.
In 1517, unable to bear the sale of indulgences (special pardons granted by the Pope that "cleansed" sins and allowed entry to Heaven) he sent his famous ninety-five theses.
• Importance of the New Science
In the Middle Ages, the main concern of man was the afterlife; nature itself inspired little interest.
Prominent sages, like Roger Bacon, were often viewed as suspects. Bacon believed that the new science could be combined with the old theology, and that it would actually consolidate the dogmas of the Church.
The leaders of Catholicism did not share his opinion; they preferred to follow Aristotle and Saint Thomas rather than adhere to an experimental approach to knowledge.
• Juan Comenio, Educational Reformer
Through the centuries, John Comenius (1592-1670) deserves a high place among educational reformers.
The story of his life was overshadowed by the persecution and he had to experience the terrible effects of the Thirty Years' War.
He was born in Nivnitz, as a member of the Moravian Brotherhood.
• Panorama of Oriental Ideas
Eastern thought has often favored regressive social trends.
Thus, Hinduism has served as support to the caste system; Islam has fostered feudalism and Shintoism the cult of the emperors.
In China, Confucianism was an obstacle to the realization of adequate educational reforms, as well as to the introduction of new ways of life and new methods of government.
Unit 4. Current Education
• Operational Pedagogy
Neither the school can teach all the current knowledge in five hours a day, nor the student learns only at school.
Nor do we know what knowledge the student should apply in his future activities.
Therefore, school education has the mission of ensuring that students learn all kinds of procedures that allow them to learn on their own in the present and in the future.
• Significant learning
One of the defenders of cognitive learning theories is D. Ausubel, a psychologist who has tried to explain how individuals learn from verbal material, both spoken and written.
His theory of Learning by Significant Reception (1968), maintains that the person who learns receives verbal information, links it to previously acquired events, and in this way, gives new information, as well as old information, a special meaning.
Ausubel states that the speed and thoroughness with which a person learns depends on two things: The degree of relationship between previous knowledge and new material; The nature of the relationship that is established between the new and old information.
• Constructivism
The most important knowledge is the knowledge of oneself, it seems to be on the way to becoming one of the dominant concerns of school education today.
This conception was defended by Dewey in 1902 with the argument that possibly no thought or idea can be communicated as such from one person to another.
When an idea is expressed, it constitutes another fact or another idea for the person to whom it is exposed.
What that person receives directly cannot be an idea. Only by struggling closely with the conditions of the problem, seeking and finding one's own way out of it, does one come to think.
• Adaptations to Social Reality
Like all human activity with interests, not always convergent or explicit, school education, in addition to encountering the complexity of all individual and collective behavior, is subject to conditions of all kinds that have been widely studied by the sociology of education.
This social political character of the education systems is not only exclusive to the decisions that can be taken by the administration or by groups with social, economic or ideological power, but also affects issues that seem impregnated with a certain objectivity.
The school system is not a natural and constant phenomenon, but an artificial social construction that can serve very disparate interests.