Existentialism Philosophy in Education

Existentialism is a philosophy of existence appeared in the 20^th century; it can be defined as philosophic stand point which prioritize existence over essence. The existentialist uses existence to attribute especially to human existence and believed that only materialistic things can exist. He also suggests that to be an existent one you should be capable of being conscious, where the main interest about existentialism is the possibility of man’s self-realization.

Existentialism and education:

Applying existential philosophy in education is not possible. The issues discussed in existential philosophy reveals that education philosophy is a theoretical study and believes it should give more attention to the individual of student, and allow them to realize their true value, and how to be responsible to their quality of life. Existentialists consider that the existent moment appears when public awareness is spread between the people in the world as a self, and this mainly happen at puberty. Its characteristics are the person’s recognition to his presence among other things and the development of the knowledge and insights around his own responsibility towards their actions. Existentialist education starts at the school years and continue through high school and college. Here the aim of education is to find the individual’s consciousness. Elements of experience are supposed to be subjective, emotional, and personal which rise questions about good, evil, wrong and right.

Existentialists stated that they prefer to philosophize about the human conditions instead of creating a philosophical system where classification, standardization, and injustice which reduced personal choice and individual recognition are known as obstacle. These trends are not consistent with providing chances for creativity of genuine people. There is another social source that limits the individual’s identity, is the socio-economic pressures that played a major role in changing the teaching and learning. Existentialists believe that education should drive students to awareness and this means that students must be able to select their choices freely, wisely, an independently.

 Existentialist teacher and learning method

An existentialist teacher must be democratic and uses technology and different methods in his teaching without imposing his goals to students. The teacher’s major role is to guide students. Socratic dialogue method is a suitable one for existentialists, it do not neglect the relationship between me and you, it employs dialogue approach, in which any type of question can be answered only in the sense of student’s performance. The teacher promotes students and provides opportunities so they can be able to express their minds.

In existential teaching, a teacher must encourage, facilitate learning, and recognize the individual in the broad sense of the world. According to existentialist, the teacher should not define students according to their age, status, race…etc.

The first principle of Sartre’s philosophy in existentialism is that the man is not a subject, but he is what he chooses and creates for himself who make him more responsible.

Curriculum in existentialism

The curriculum includes skills and subjects that show social facts like human sciences that tell about human selection, there are various topics like history, language, math, science… are indisputable as fields of knowledge. Although the existentialist can choose several methods in his duty, however he is not allowed to harm any of these methods among (I-you) relationship that occur between the teacher and the student, so from here we can say that no lesson is more important than the other. Training is essential to help the person have the self-realization and awareness of the world.