chools today, especially in the science fields. Concepts and skills are much easier to learn if you can experience them. The empirical way of teaching has brought about the use of the scientific method. First, students must observe a situation and decide if there is a problem. Secondly, make an educated guess, or hypothesis, of what will happen. Next, test this hypothesis. If it is true then draw a conclusion. If not, make a new hypothesis and test again. This is a very valuable way to learn. The students get to experience the whole situation and will in tern retain and understand this information better. Along with using empirical methods of learning, Locke insisted that all the senses be used when learning. It is not enough for a teacher to just stand in front of a classroom and lecture; students are only using one sense (hearing) to try to comprehend the material. Locke feels that you must hear, feel, see, smell, taste everything in order to get the full potential knowledge. This is very relative to today's teachings because we, as teachers, need to appeal to all learning styles. Some students learn better visually, others orally and so on, so we have to hit all area in order to give all students an equal chance to learn. In closing, John Locke was a very significant figure on how we educate children today. He gave us the idea of starting students with a clean slate, the use of the scientific method, and the essential use of all the senses. All these ideas are important aspects of today’s classroom and will most assuredly be a continued use in the future. ...
