NATURALISM

Presented by
Amritha Anand AR
 Introduction
 Nature is everything, there is nothing
beyond it
 Nature is also termed as materialism
 Man should investigate the truth of
nature by scientific methods with all
his capacities and resourcefulness
 It doesn't believe in sentimentalism,
spiritualism, and supernaturalism
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 Protagonist of Naturalism
 JJ Rousseau – champion of naturalism
 Others – Aristotle, Comte, Bacon,
Darwin, Huxley, Spencer, Epicurus,
Tagore

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Definition of Naturalism
“Naturalism is metaphysics
which considers nature as
the whole of reality. It
excludes what is
supernatural or the other
world”
— Hocking

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 Meaning of Naturalism
 It emphasis on the nature in every
field of education
 It is a philosophy which considers
nature as everything and denies the
existence of ant spirit
 It does not believe in existence of God
 It gave importance to the matter and
the physical world
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 Forms of Naturalism
 Atomistic Naturalism
 Scientific Naturalism
 Physical Naturalism
 Biological Naturalism
 Mechanical Naturalism
 Historical Naturalism

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Principles of Naturalism (1/2)
 Stress on physical environment
 Universe is a huge machine. Man is
also a part of this machine
 Reality can be truly analyzed by
natural science
 The present is the real life, man
should try to make this life happy and
comfortable
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Principles of Naturalism (2/2)
 Unchanging loss of nature explains all
the events and occurrences of the
world
 Education in accordance with the
nature of the child
 Man is the highest creature or animal
according to his nature. So the
essence of his life is animal instinct
and not spiritually
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Characteristics of Naturalism
 Back to nature
 Negative education
 It is against bookish knowledge and verbalism
 Naturalism gives central position to the child in the
educational process
 Education prepares the child for his future adult life
 Freedom of the child
 It gives emphasis on the training of senses as senses
are the gateway of knowledge
 Material education
 Scientific education
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 Aims of Naturalism
 Attainment of present and future
happiness
 Struggle for existence
 Protection of human machine
 Adaptation to environment
 Improvement of racial gains
 Autonomous development
 Education according to nature
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Naturalism and Curriculum (1/2)
 Naturalist do not advocate a fixed curriculum
 Curriculum must be child-centered
 It gives place for skills and other useful
educational activities
 It considers literacy subjects as useless and gives
no place in the curriculum
 Curriculum should contain games, sports, physical
culture, biology, physics, nature study, language,
history, geography, and other allied subjects
 It lay stress on physical education and health
training and home science also
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Naturalism and Curriculum (2/2)
 Herbert Spencer classifies all human activities
into five and assigns a place to each of them in
the curriculum. The five activities in the order
of priority are
 Activities of self preservation
 Activities of a vocation
 Activities of a worthy citizenship
 Activities of a worthy home membership
 Activities of the leisure time
 These five activities constitute his ‘Complete
Living Aim’ of education
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Naturalism and Method of Teaching (1/2)
 Naturalism is a result against the old,
traditional, bookish system of education
 Direct experience with nature, things, and men
is the keynote of instruction according to
naturalists
 They follow different methods of teaching
according to the interests, capacities, and
aptitude of the child
 Learning by doing
 Direct method
 Heuristic method
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 Naturalism and Method
of Teaching (2/2)
 Observation and excursion
 Play way method
 Learning through senses
 Self government, self effort, and co-education
 Learning through participations
 Other methods: Apart from the above
methods, naturalists adopt Dalton plan,
kindergarten, excursion method, Montessori
method, experimentation and text book
method so as to bring about a natural
development in the child
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 Naturalism and Teacher
 Teacher should behave sympathetically
and affectionately forwards the children
 Nature – supreme teacher
 Teacher the observer
 Understand about child
 Teacher the stage setter
 Teacher the gardener

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 Naturalism and Discipline
 Naturalist give full freedom to the child to
perform and learn whatever he likes
 No punishment
 Full freedom
 Free society
 Naturalists assume that the child has no
knowledge of good and bad, but he suffers
pain when he makes a mistake, and pleasure
when he does something right. Thus he gets
reward or punishment for his actions
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 Naturalism and School
 The school environment should be completely free,
flexible and without any rigidity
 It should be helpful for the free and natural
development of the child
 It should be situated in the lap of nature, far away
from cities
 There should not be any fixed time table and ready
dozes of knowledge
 There should be no provision for punishment
 School develops the feeling of self learning and
self-discipline
 It does not want to burden the child with
examination
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 Merits of Naturalism
1. It gives the child a very important place in the
educational process. It treats a child as child and not
as an adult. The child is good and pure at the terms
of birth
2. It considers nature as the best teacher in whose
company the child learns better. Society is full of evils
3. It considers individual interests, aptitude, inclination,
needs and capacities while structuring the curriculum
4. It prepares and encourages the child to engage in
experimentation, discoveries and inventions
5. It motivates the child to acquire more knowledge in
the natural environment
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 Demerits of Naturalism
1. Nature centered study makes the child become unsocial
with no feeling of social service
2. Naturalism ignores the spiritual world and considers the
material world only
3. Naturalism lays stress on solutions for only the present
needs and problems of an individual and neglects his future
needs and problems. It has failed to prepare the child for
the future life
4. Naturalism advocates unrestricted freedom for the child to
develop himself naturally. This is undesirable and harmful
to the child
5. It minimizes the role of the teacher in the educative
process. A teacher is an observer, a sympathetic guide and
helper in structuring experiences for the child
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 Conclusion
 The contribution of naturalism in
significant in the progressive modern
educational thought and practice. All
the modern method of teaching
technique owe their origin to this
school of philosophy

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Relevance of naturalism in 21st century
(1/2)
 Shifting of subject-centred curriculum to an
experience centred curriculum.
 Modern life need various experiences to be given to
the child through co-curricular activities so that he
would be educated and trained to face life squarely
and solve all its problems successfully
 The child used to be punished severely and kept
under the control of teacher. This strict discipline
was discarded because of the influence of naturalism.
As a result, now the child enjoys full freedom to
learn and do whatever he likes. Thus freedom for
the child is the chief contribution of naturalism to
modern education
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Relevance of naturalism in 21st century
(2/2)
 Naturalists have given birth to new movements.
 New types of educational institutions have come up
in recent years
 Institutions like the summer school of AS Neil,
Vishuabharthi, of Rabindra Nath Tagore, Kindergarten
schools of Froebel, Montessori schools have come into
existence as a result of the influence of naturalism in
education
 The naturalist wants to protect the educand from
evils for this purpose, they favour residential schools
so that the environment of the educands who reside
in hostels attached to the school can be maintained
on a healthy level
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THANK YOU

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