UNIVERSITY OF LUZON
GRADUATE SCHOOL
PERENNIALISM
Reporter:
KATHLEEN LAT ENCARNACION

PERENNIALISM
 Aims to develop student’s
intellectual and moral qualities.
 They emphasize that students
should not be taught information
that may soon be outdated or
found to be incorrect.

PERENNIALISM
 Classrooms are centered on
teachers.
 It ensures that students
acquire understandings about
the great ideas of Western
civilization.

PERENNIALISM
 Perennialism teaches concepts and
focuses on knowledge and the
meaning of knowledge.
 Aimed at teaching students
ways of thinking that will secure
individual freedoms, human
rights, and responsibilities
through the nature.

WHY IS IT CALLED TEACHER-CENTERED?
 Emphasize the importance of
transferring knowledge, information
and skills from the older generation to
the younger one.
 The teacher is not concern at the
student’s interest.

WHY IS IT CALLED TEACHER-CENTERED?
More focus on the curriculum
and nature need.
 The teacher set everything
based on the syllabus.

TEACHER-CENTERED PHILOSOPHIES
Focus on
curriculum
.
Sample
Educational
classroom
Leaders. PERENNIALISM activity.
Goals for Role of
Students. Teacher.

Focus On Sample Role of Teacher Goals for Educational
Curriculum Classroom Students Leaders
Activity
-Universal and - Instill respect
unchanging for authority,
truth. perseverance, - Train the
duty, students intellect
- To espouse consideration, and moral
personal and practicality. development. - Robert
development and Maynard
internal Indoor - Act as the Hutchins
transformation. - Experiment director and - Able to
(Science) coach of intellect discipline - Mortimer J.
- To search and respondent. themselves. Adler
disseminate the
subjects based - Must deliver
on the universal clear lectures. - Will gain the - Jacques
and immutable ability to develop Maritain
truth. - Coaching in a full “range of
critical thinking rational powers.”
- History, Science, skills.
Language,
Mathematics,
Religion.

THE GREAT IDEAS IN WESTERN
CIVILIZATION ARE:
 History
 Religion
 Works of literature and art
 The laws and principles of
Science

THE GREAT IDEAS IN WESTERN
CIVILIZATION ARE:
 These ideas have the
potential for solving
problems in any era.

THE FOCUS
 Is to teach ideas that are
everlasting.
 To seek enduring truths which
are constant (not changing), as
the natural and human worlds at
their most essential level, do not
change.

CURRICULUM
Focuses on attaining
cultural literacy,
stressing students’
growth in enduring
disciplines.

CURRICULUM
They recommend that students
learn from reading and
analyzing the works by history’s
finest thinkers and writers.
(Perennialists think it is important that
individuals think deeply, analytically, flexibly
and imaginatively.)

CURRICULUM
Perennialists believe that reading is to
be supplemented with mutual
investigations (between the teacher
and the student) and minimally-
directed discussions through the
Socratic method in order to develop a
historically oriented understanding of
concepts.

CURRICULUM
A skilled teacher would keep
discussions on topic and
correct errors in reasoning, but
it would be the class, not the
teacher, who would reach the
conclusions.

The advocates
ROBERT MAYNARD HUTCHINS
- Developed a Great Books program in
1963.

The advocates
MORTIMER J. ADLER
[1902-2001]
JACQUES MARITAIN
[1882-1973]

ADLER STATES
“… our political democracy depends upon the
reconstruction of our schools. Our schools
are not turning out young people prepared
for the high office and the duties of
citizenship in a democratic republic. Our
political institutions cannot thrive, they may
not even survive, if we do not produce a
greater number of thinking citizens, from

ADLER STATES
whom some statesmen of the type we had in
the 18th century might eventually emerge. We
are, indeed, a nation at risk, and nothing but
radical reform of our schools can save us
from impending disaster…whatever the
price…the price we will pay for not doing it
will be much greater.”

Hutchins point of view
“…new books have been written that have
won their place in the list. Books once
thought entitled to belong to it have been
superseded; and this process of change will
continue as long as men can think and write.
It is the task of every generation to reassess
the tradition in which it lives, to discard
what it cannot use, and to bring into context
with

Hutchins point of view
the distant and intermediate past the
most recent contributions to the Great
conversation…the West needs to
recapture and reemphasize and bring to
bear upon its present problems the
wisdom that lies in the works of its
greatest thinkers and in the discussion
that they have carried on.

Perennialists think
Perennialism believed it
was a solution proposed in
response to what was
considered by many to be
a failing educational
system.

REFERENCES
EBSCO Research Starters® • Copyright © 2008 EBSCO
Publishing Inc.
• Contemporary Theories of Education by Richard
Pratte.
• Philosophy and the American School by Van Cleve
Morris.
• http://www.everythingphilosophy.com/philosophy-
of-education/

Thank you and
have a good
day!!!