On Essentialism

Philosophy of Education: On Essentialism

Joshua Caesar O. Elegado, 3^rd Year Philosophy

University of Santo Tomas-Legazpi, Philippines

“Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done. It doesn’t mean just doing less for the sake of less either. It is about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in order to operate at our highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential.”

― Greg Mckeown, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

Essentialist Education is simply a type of education that teaches necessary skill sets, knowledge, and learnings for students to acquire in order to fit in the real world being to where man is expected to live life in modern times. Essentialist education ensures to offer learnings that eyes competencies an individual living in the modern world must acquire in order to be on par with the global demands or to be in par with universal competencies for man to follow, that is, if man possesses such competencies that are acquired in the curriculum, therefore Man is ready to face the real world is. The method by which Essentialist Education is administered is through teaching a student the proper learning in their own level, in effect, such type of education eyes that people can be categorized in levels and teaches what is needed that is fitting to such level in order to attain the necessary knowledge and competencies to progress into another step to another step, to another, and so forth, until he is ready for the reality of the world. Essentialist Education in comparison to realist education, the latter talks about what is the real learnings there is in the real world being, the former also talks the same, however, it is limited only to the essentials and is guided on the proper protocols that are ensured to guide students of their levels meet the necessary criterion of competencies to be able to proceed into the next level. In implication, we are indeed on levels, we cannot proceed to college without taking high school, we are in say college because we satisfy the demands and competencies necessary on the previous levels to get on this level, sometimes in life, we need to have proper capacities in order to proceed in life, we cannot be learning how to write Philosophical essays without knowing first the alphabets.