Which Teaching Method's Right for Your Child?

Progressivism encourages students to learn from real-life experiences. Teachers support curiosity and encourage their students to formulate meaningful questions and contrive their own strategies to solve them. The curriculum is based on students and their experiences, interests, and abilities. Students are able to merge several subjects in their studies. Progressivism is based on pragmatism and John’s Dewey’s theory that learning is best done through social interaction in the real world.

The objective of Essentialism is to educate students on our civilization’s accumulated knowledge and focuses on the traditional disciplines: math, science, history, english, and foreign language. Teachers serve as the intellectual role model and moral compass for students. Essentialist schools measure progress based on achievement test scores and ensure that its graduates all possess basic skills and a single, unifying body of knowledge that will benefit them in the real world.

Social reconstruction encourages teachers and students to focus their academic efforts on minimizing social inequalities. It uses education as a tool for reconstructing a society with a more just social order by shaping the minds of the next generation. Teachers serve as facilitators, educating students on the inequalities that surround them. Even though this is a radical approach to education, the idea of reforming society through education has caught on in the U.S. and abroad.

Perennialism focuses on enduring themes and questions and the development of rational thought and a disciplined mind to think rigorously. Schools are built around books and ideas and concept, but place special weight on teaching values and character training. Perennialist schools search for and prepare the intellectually gifted for leadership by honing their intellectual powers and strengthening their moral compass.

Existentialism does not support the existence of any source of authoritative truth other than the individual and rejects any kind of traditional thinking. It places individual perceptions, decisions, and actions at the highest level of importance. Students are allowed to make all education decisions and evaluate those decisions however they see fit. Teachers only help their students by presenting them with various life paths. Students are encouraged to choose their way freely.