There is great emphasis on observing nature and learning through wanderings and pilgrimages. The importance of achieving wisdom, satori, enlightenment, or nirvana is supreme. All paths must lead to this, and from this wisdom spring virtue, right living, and correct behavior.

The student is changed as a result of contact with the guru, master, or prophet. This educational thought emphasizes transformation: The individual must be transformed to face life. Attitude shaping is important because the attitude a person holds toward life will determine the individual’s levels of goodness and wisdom.

Order, regularity, and patience that are proportional to and in harmony with the laws of nature are key to a good life.

Stress the inner rather than the outer world, intuition rather than sense, and mysticism rather than scientific discoveries.

Intertwined religious doctrines with philosophical views about the nature of the world and humans’ interactions with it.

As a group, stress inner peace, tranquility, attitudinal development, and mysticism. In general, ways of knowing emphasize order, regularity, and patience that are both proportional to and in harmony with the laws of nature.

Focus is on the mind.

Is a school of philosophy that holds that reality, knowledge, and value exist independently of the human mind.

Contends that reality is nothing more than lived existence and the final reality resides within each individual.

Each individual is the creator of her or his essence.

Idea centered rather than subject centered or child centered because the ideal, or the idea, is the foundation of all things.

 Believe in the power of reasoning but de-emphasize both the scientific method and sense perception, which they hold suspect.

A belief in an open universe that is dynamic, evolving, and in a state of becoming.

Is a process philosophy that stresses evolving and change rather than being.

 Ideas are the only true reality. The physical world we know through our senses is only a manifestation or imperfect representation of the spiritual world.

All that is necessary is for the individual, through introspection, to search for these universal ideas that are lodged deep in our minds.

The rational mind has the ability to reason its way to the underlying ideas that support the physical world.

 Believes that learning comes from within the individual rather than from without.

Matter takes on many forms or structures, and this is what accounts for the different components that compose the world.

The curriculum would be a subject-centered curriculum and would include natural science, social science, humanities, and instrumental subjects such as logic and inductive reasoning.

Because human beings have the ability to reason, their values and norms are those that are logical and consistent with the physical nature of the world.

Reality is what actually exists, not in the mind. The ultimate reality is the physical objects. Everything you can see, feel, touch, experience.

Focus is the body.

Natural causes for evolution of the universe.

Supernatural causes for creation of the universe.

Being open to change/evolving, nothing is permanent.

Truth is relative because it changes too. Depends on the situation/people. Experiences change thoughts and ideas.

Because we live in a constantly changing universe, values change too. We can clarify values by testing them and reconstructing them as needed. Values that work at one time or in one place or in one society might not work in another.

There are no absolutes and hence the teacher needs to help students learn to question what is and solve problems as they naturally occur.

Prefer a curriculum that draws the disciplines together to solve problems—an interdisciplinary approach. It is critical to present concepts as they relate to contemporary problems and questions. Because the world is always in flux, knowledge is subject to revision, so it is more important to know how to construct, use, and test knowledge claims.

Less interested in transmitting large bodies of information; rather, they favor solving problems through interacting with the environment in an intelligent and reflective manner. Teaching students to use methods of scientific inquiry is a high priority.

Believe that we live an alien, meaningless existence on a small planet in an unimportant galaxy in an indifferent universe. Each individual is the creator of her or his meaning.

Tend to feel that tracking, measurement, and standardization militate against the creation of opportunities for self-direction and personal choice.

Education ought to be a process of developing a free, self-actualizing person—a process centered on the feelings of the student. Students should be encouraged to discuss their lives and the choices they are making.

Values and norms come from rights and responsibilities that derive from rational thinking.

Big ideas that remain important throughout time: history, literature, philosophy, mathematics.

Existence is the only constant and what is learned is determined by the unique needs of individuals.

Change is constant and what we know is learned through inquiry that involves human interaction in society.

Result from careful investigations about the physical world: science, technology, engineering, mathematics.

Human beings are free to make choices. We make meaning in our world by the choices we make. We can choose to give up our freedom and allow others to define us or we can choose to be inner directed and authentic.

Problem solving with experience and reason.

Knowing is a personal reflective process. The most significant knowledge is personal and nonscientific. Knowledge is about the human condition and the personal choices that each human makes.