miércoles, 9 de mayo de 2007

The Philosophical Area of the Chilean Curriculum Framework

Ingrid López
Hellen Quintana
Cristian Sandoval
María Jesús Villa

The word of Greek origin, Philosophy, is a compound of phílos: friend, or lover and sophía wisdom, then Philosophy is, wisdom friend. But what does it have to do with Curriculum? As we have seen, curriculum has four sources, Sociological, Psychological, Pedagogical and Epistemological source, however, there are some people that say that there is one extra source, the Philosophical source. We do not agree with this statement, and we decided to refer to this supposed source, like to an area of the Sociological Source.

The pages that appear from now on will propose like an analysis, in general terms, of the Philosophical aspects in the Chilean Curriculum Framework. Before start with the definitions, we would like to share with you some educational and academic values upon which schools as learning institutions are based on, and we found them very interesting for you to know. (SCHOOL MANUAL: EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMEN)T

Values Relating to Education
* accepting the importance of learning and knowledge,
* encouraging curiosity and the questioning mind,
* encouraging and rewarding effort and achievement,
* promoting logical and critical thinking based on evidence,
* demonstrating a commitment to truth,
* recognizing the partnership between school, home and community in education,
* seeing education as a life-long process.

Hoping you enjoy it, we will now start given a brief definition of the Sociological Source, and the reasons why we think the Philosophical Source is NOT a source but an area the Sociological one.
Sociological Source provides information referred to the relations between the school and the society, its students' integration to the social surroundings in a criticize and free way, creating people socially compromised with their culture and their country. The school gives especial values to form responsible students in their social environment. Now, within this great topic, we can infer that exist an area destined to the creation of ideals, to form people of values, respectful people not only to deal with the society, but like an individual and autonomous being. We will call to this area, the Philosophical area, that has to do then, with all the things related to values, ethics, ideal of persons, moral responsability, System of beliefs, Concepts of reality, beauty and justice.

Inside the Chilean Curriculum Framework, we could distinguish lots of philosophical ideas that we will mention and comment next.


• The freedom that makes of each individual person and fellow of rights and duties.
• Capability of reasoning, distinguishing and appraising.
• To make possible the moral and responsible conduct.
• Principled set of ethical character
• The moral character governed by love
• Human ideals-Conception of person. (page 7)
• Conception of Human Development. (page 8)
• The OT must contribute to strengthen the person's ethical formation
• Personal auto-formation
• That the student develop capability to self-regulate his conduct.
• Respect for justice and the truth.
• To respect and appreciate the different ideas and beliefs from our own.
• To develop the reflexive and methodical thought and the sense of criticism and self-criticism
• Promoting an adequate self-esteem, self-confidence and a positive sense in front of life
• To understand and appreciate the affective and spiritual dimensions and principles and ethical standards
• The family role is highly relevant in children's moral formation
• Acquisition of life habits and strengthening of attitudes and personal ideals

We can infer with this that the Philosophical area of the Chilean Curriculum Framework wants responsible students, in all the matters and for all the purposes. It talks about the freedom of a person and his rights and duties, not in a society, but like single beings.
What it expects of the students, is that they have the capability of reasoning, distinguishing and appraising everything, starting from themselves, not particularly in benefit of the society that surrounds them. The Ethical character is part of the Philosophical area of the Chilean Curriculum as well the Ideals of person. Human Ideals and Development, are exactly what this area is about. The ethical formation in the students is highly relevant, teachers are forming persons, not just future professionals.
The idea is to give them the tools in order they can stablish their own Personal auto-formation, and they can grow like culturally and morally competent people.
To help the student to self-regulate his conduct with the aim of having a person emotionally controled. To create persons that valorate and respect justice and truth, in order to be an ideal of person.
During the scholarship period, the student must develop the reasonable area or reasonable thinking to make the difference between good or bad things. Also the student will understand that every action that he could do can damage him or his partners.

In simple words we can say that all of those statements are related with the philosophical area of the Chilean Curriculum Framework, in the way that they talk about values, ethics, ideal of persons, moral responsibility, etc. If you analyze them, you can find that are focused especially in the single person and not in the person immerse into the society. One thing is what we want to teach to create good people and other thing is what we want to teach to create active persons in a society. We consider those aspectes highly relevant in the integral development of the students.

To have a good direction, nowadays the modernity has been renovated all the time and schools are not the exception in this process of renovation, this does not mean that a renovation is based only in infrastructure, also it has to do with the spirit of education, what we mean is that teachers have to have a future view for new generations that are coming and realize that everything is in a process of changing.

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