A Study On The Essentialism

The Essentialism education theory can be traced back to some classical philosophers and educationists, such as Plato, Comenius and Herbart. The Essentialism was formally founded by Bagely in America in the thirties 20th . After that ,The Essentialism combated with the Progressivelism continuously, each of them rised and fell. The Essentialism has played a very important role in American K-12 education reform from the eighties 20th.The essay tries to make a clear introduction of the Essentialism,analyses the new development of trational Essentialism in modern society, reveals the reform strategy and methods in K-12 education.On the basis of American experience and lessons, the essay puts forward some concrete suggestions in order to resolve the problems in basic education reform theory and practice in China.Why does the Essentialism live so long in Education theory field? The author believes that the Essentialism is rational, especially in the rapid developed high- technology society. Any form of education can't pass on all the social and scientific knowledge to students in the rapid developed society. Teaching the students how to grasp the essence of each subject and develop an ability fo life-long study is the main task of basic education. The features of basic education are that teachers play a leading role in education process, students should be encouraged to study hard.The essentialism is fit for country-based education aim.With the severe competitive environment in the world, the developed countries,such as America, Japan play more attention to the educational quality and make great effort to raise young people's level of education, while the developing countries can't neglect the educational quality, otherwise we will be left behind farther and farther.The main subject of this essay is"The Theory of Essentialism and American K-12 Education Reform", The essay consists of four main parts:IntroductionThis part focuses on illustrating and defining three issues: First is the reason of this research,the subject of the research and the significance of the research, second is the logical structure of the essay, third is the methodology of the research.The EssentialismThis part illustrates the history of the Essentialism from the thirties,fifties to the present. It also analyses the social background, the theoretic basis ,the rationality and the limitation of the Essentialism. This part also comments the effect of the Essentialism in American K-12 education form.American K-12 education reformThis part focuses on American K-12 education reform from the eighties 20th to the beginning of 21th . The main subjects of this part are the reform strategy, concrete methods ,the features and the problems of the reform.The author tries to give readers a clear picture of American K-12 education reform.Enlightenment and referencesThe aim of researching foreign education is to use the experience of other countries for reference. So comparing the American K-12 education reform with Chinese basic education reform, we can put forward some suggestions in order to solve our problems in education reform.The innovation of this article exhibits in the following two aspects:One is the introduction of the new essentialists in the eighties.In the present research of the Essentialism ,the essentialists are Bagely in the thirties and Conant in the fifties.This article focuses on the new essentialists,such as Bennet ,Finn and Hirsch.The second is the comprehensive introduction and analyzing the present American K-12 education reform. The article tries to make a clear picture of the education reform from the macro and micro level in order to make the reader understood American education deeply.