Philosophy of education is a term that is used to define an approach to education that is based on the planning of courses and curriculum, policies regarding education, and programs that are used to support or encourage personal and academic development. In many cases, a philosophy of education will be used to inform the structure and mission of a school. The Montessori philosophy of education, for example, is based on the philosophy of education developed by Maria Montessori, an Italian physician who lived between 1870 and 1952. Today there are many schools that use the Montessori philosophy education to guide their curriculum and approaches to teaching.

Although Maria Montessori developed a philosophy of education that is used in a number of Western schools today, she was most certainly not the first philosophical thinker on the subject of education. More than a millennium before her birth, philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle were proposing philosophies about eduction. Plato, for example, believed that both men and women should be educated, which is a philosophy of education that is not shared universally. He also had some more radical ideas about education, including the idea that children should become wards of the state, which would be responsible for raising and educating them.

It is quite common for private schools to develop a philosophy of education to guide their efforts. In private schools, it is common for a philosophy of education to be applied to educational practices no matter the age of the students. For example, an 18-month-old child going to a private day care program may be taught along the lines of one particular philosophy of education that is set out by the school. The same may be true for a 28-year-old graduate student attending a private college or university for a master's degree.

There are some schools that strictly follow one particular philosophy of education. This is especially true with Montessori schools, which adhere to the Montessori philosophies and methods. The same is true for Waldorf schools, which adhere to the educational philosophies of Rudolf Steiner, who lived from 1861 to 1925. There are other schools that use ideas set forth by numerous educators and philosophers and weave them together to create unique philosophies of education to guide their practices and efforts.