ESSENTIALISM

noun Date: 1927 an educational theory that ideas and skills basic to a culture should be taught to all alike by time-tested methods, a philosophical theory ascribing ultimate reality to essence embodied in a thing perceptible to the senses, the practice of regarding something (as a presumed human trait) as having innate existence or universal validity rather than as being a social, ideological, or intellectual construct, essentialist adjective or noun