Philosophers say the key to understanding human life is answering the really philosophical questions such as why are we here? Where did we come from? Where will we go? And so on and so forth. This has truly been a debate for the ages in philosophy, one that has stimulated thinkers, philosophers, theologists and scientists for thousands of years, hence led emergence of idealism and realism as two major traditional philosophical schools of thought in the realm of philosophy. So this paper projects the meaning of idealism and meaning of realism then discusses in detail the basic assumptions of idealism and those of realism and how these two traditional schools of thought differ and their implications within the educational setting.
Meaning
This tradition, opposed to the idea that nature is under the control of changeable divinity which are to be appeared rather than understood, is one of the roots of science. Aristotle also provides a good example of the way in which what one knows or believes influences the way one understands new information. Luke (2008) gives explanations on the scientific realism that is holds the view that the world portrayed by science (especial ideal science) is the real world, as it is, independent of what we might take it to be. Within philosophy of science, it is often framed as an answer to the question "how is the success of science to be explained?" The debate over what the success of science involves centers primarily on the status of unobservable entities apparently talked about by scientific theories. Generally, those who are scientific realists assert that one can make reliable claims about unobservable as observables, as opposed to instrumentalism.
Leading proponents of Realism are Aristotle- father of realism Student of Plato, Francis Bacon, John Locke, Jean Jacques Rousseau, John Amos Comenius, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and Thomas Aquinas.
Thus to say to the Realism reality exists whether mind perceives it or not, in metaphysics reality composed of matter (body) and form (mind), knowledge comes through senses and in axiology values derived from nature.
Assumptions put forward by the idealism vary from those put forward by the realism school of