Presenting models based on the philosophies of Carl Rogers, John Dewey, Erich Fromm, and Jean-Paul Sartre, this paper proposes a philosophical approach to education and concludes with pragmatic suggestions concerning teaching based on a fully-functioning-person model. The fully-functioning person is characterized as being open to experience, living in an existential fashion, and finding his organism as a trustworthy means of arriving at the most satisfying behavior in each existential situation. If the philosophies of Rogers, Dewey, Fromm, and Sartre were distilled into a model for curriculum development, the curriculum would be narrowed to the most relevant subjects, the introduction of new subjects would be dependent on the stage of development of the students, and emphasis would be placed on motivation. In the author's classroom, where the fully-functioning-person model is used, student interest is the goal, with skills being a by-product. Discipline is not imposed by the teacher, but self-discipline is encouraged. Students help determine the grading criteria, select class projects, write performance contracts, and discuss and evaluate their achievement. Educators are encouraged to emulate this model or to experiment, remembering their goal is to get students to function as independent persons capable of exercising choices to determine their own destinies. (Author/LAA)