The philosophy behind the essentialist framework is that all students should be taught core or common information that is standardized across the board. Such information should also be delivered to students with a systemic approach and strong disciplinary tone. Neglect, mindlessness, misbehavior and disrespect to authority are not tolerated within the essentialist philosophy for classroom management. (Reference 1)
One of the defining characteristics of essentialism is that essentialists believe in adaptation and accept that core common standards and knowledge have to change sometimes. (Reference 1) While basic skills---such as reading, writing, math and science---are always a part of the essentialist's curriculum, technicalities may have to change to adapt to the times. For instance, rather than strictly teaching students to read books to fulfill the literary standards, essentialists may have to adapt to teaching students how to navigate the Internet to read online publications to keep up with the times.
Students of essentialist classrooms are provided with strong academic foundations with which they can build basic skills, such as reading, writing, history, math and science. Teachers in essentialist classrooms do not stand for unproductive behaviors or unmotivated attitudes. Students must always be working hard. As such, discipline is a large component of the essentialist classroom, which benefits the learning environment.
Students within an essentialist classroom are not as free to explore, question and test academic material the way that other philosophies permit, such as the progressivism movement. The essentialist classroom also does not knowledge the importance of extra-curricular or non-academic subjects, such as art, music, drama and sports, according to David Miller Sadker, Ph.D. and Karen R. Zittleman, PhD. (Reference 2) As such, students may miss out on developing skills in these "elective" areas.