Naturalism

Naturalism

Naturalism is concerned with natural matters and there is no reality beyond nature. It does not allow any place for supernaturalism and spiritualism. It says that a man acts like a child in front of nature and grows well by the physical world not by spiritual world. Naturalists named the activities of mind as 'instincts'.They give importance of the scientific method of observation and evaluation. 

Definition

According to H.Joyce, naturalism is a system of which the salient characteristic is the exclusion of whatever is spiritual or indeed, whatever is transcendental of experience.  

Types of naturalism

Three forms are physical, biological and mechanical naturalism.

1. Physical naturalism: It believes that laws of nature guide the man to survive in the physical world.
2. Biological naturalism: Here, man is considered as a descendant of ape and not from God.
3. Mechanical naturalism: It considers the man as a machine, needs the training to bring him as a good citizen.

Principles of naturalism

• Child-centered education- Curriculum should be planned based on the needs of the nature to help the child to survive in the physical world. 
• Development of child's capacities- Education should help the child to stimulate his/her power to cope up with the natural development.
• Negative education- It doesn't support the forced learning of the child. It recommends a simple persuasion to initiate learning in the early childhood.
• Development of psychological level of the child- It tells us to consider individual difference while teaching lessons. A teacher should identify the individual difference in intelligence, temperament and emotions should be identified and taken into account while implementing the educative process.
• Teacher as a guide- It takes an opposite stand on passive learning. Here, the teacher has to arrange an environment for learning and invite the students to actively participating to learn the lessons. The teacher should teach the students regarding the importance of love and sympathy in life.