Personal Philosophy
Of
Education
To state one’s philosophy of education, one must look back in the past in order to determine how one arrived at their current mindset. We are after all just a compilation of our life experiences. Nothing is either too small or too large to affect how we think and act.
It is safe to say that I decided to get into the field of education due mostly, but not entirely, to my own past experiences in the educational setting. One of the most important aspects of this past experience is the teacher that has left a lasting memory, both good and bad.
In the first grade, I got caught stealing from another student’s desk before school hours. How the teacher found out it was I is still a mystery. How she handled the situation said a lot about her character. She contacted my parents, came to my house, and asked me directly as to my guilt. She then gave me an opportunity to redeem myself by returning the stolen goods and apologizing to the victim. She did not involve the principle or anyone else for that matter.
My fourth grade teacher also left a lasting impression in my memory. I had just moved and was attending a new school but she made me feel right at home in the classroom. It was during this year that I became extremely ill, being bedridden for a couple months straight. She had all my classmates write get-well cards to me and made sure that I received all my schoolwork for the week. I think I ended up missing over 60 days of school that year, but I still received mostly A’s because of the teacher’s willingness to let me do my work at home. She also nominated me for the Talented and Gifted program in our school district.
Contrary to the understanding and good-hearted teacher I had in the fourth grade was my ninth grade Algebra teacher. Clearly an academic genius, he definitely lacked “people” skills. He was responsible for assigning me my first and only F of my academic career. Despite the fact that I had earned all A’s and B’s on my tests and quizzes and was one of the top five students in the class, he gave me an F for failing to turn in one few many homework assignments. As soon as I was told I was short one assignment, I immediately offered to make it up, but he would not let me. It still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. This same teacher is also famous for hiding behind cars and bushes during his off period so he can catch people cutting class. Even the other teachers do not like him for this reason. He eventually caught me leaving for lunch one day and I received a one-day suspension. The fact that I had never been late returning from lunch was evidently irrelevant to the situation.
The last teacher I want to talk about was my freshman English teacher. She perhaps left the largest impression of all because of our love-hate relationship. At the time I had her as a freshman I was in the English Honors program and in that honors class I was one of the top five students. A sleeping disorder that I have had since I was a little child made me sleep through most of my school day including the honors English class. This drove the teacher nuts and angered my classmates. While I managed to sleep through class and still pass the tests with A’s and B’s, the “popular kids” actually cheated on almost all their tests by “grouping together” in the back corners where it was hard for the teacher to see them. Despite their group effort, I still managed to get better grades than they did most of the time. That is why it angered me so much the following year when I received my schedule and found out that I had been expelled from the Honors program. I pleaded to be let back in and the teacher told me that if I got all A’s in regular English, she would reinstate me to the Honors program. I got all A’s but was still refused admittance to the program. I felt betrayed by the teacher and by the system. Since then, I have made my peace with this teacher and she has helped me on several writing projects for which I am thankful.
It was this betrayal and the general illogical way of doing things that caused me to want to change things. I thought to myself that the only impact that I could really have was be part of the system. Even though I could not change everything about schooling everywhere, I could control how I dealt with students that where in my classroom. I could treat them the way I wanted to be treated when I was in their position. This is probably the aim of a lot of education majors but after observing schools for my education courses, I have to wonder just how many stick with it once they graduate and enter the job market. I also have to ask myself if I will be able to stick with it and to which I answer to myself that I have to or my choice in career would be a failure.
Now as to my philosophy, I am neither simply an idealist nor a realist. Neither am I a pragmatist nor an existentialist. I am a combination of all of these people. Our ideals about the world determine the actions we take in the world. I do believe that ideals are reality in that some exist for generations and in some cases millennia. Something that lasts as long as this is real, even if only in our minds. To this extent I am an idealists. I believe in a capital T Truth that all men should come to know and live by. It is this Truth that should be the aim of education.
As much as I am an idealist, I am also a realist. I know that the world does not always work as it ought to, and that we have to adjust to our environment in order to survive. While the aim of education should be Truth, we must use our rational capacities to get at that Truth. I do believe in teaching a clear, precise content and the necessity of tests to evaluate student performance. Keep in mind that my faith does not lie in the tests themselves, but I do recognize the purpose they serve in our current education system.
Pragmatism states that the only truth is what works; that the universe is in a state of constant evolution. It stresses the concept of becoming rather that being1. While I do believe in absolute Truth and pragmatists do not, I do believe that the process of achieving that absolute Truth is an ongoing process that evolves in the soul and intellect of each person. To this extent, I am a pragmatist.
Existentialism is probably the philosophy that I adhere least to. I do not believe that “…we live an alien, meaningless existence on a small planet in an unimportant galaxy in an indifferent universe.”2 I do believe however in the notion that tracking and standardization robs the students of a self-fulfilling destiny, a fear that existentialists express.
When it comes to educational theories, I find myself in bed with three in particular. These theories are essentialism, perennialism, and progressivism. Like the above-mentioned schools of philosophy, I am not simply a follower of one of these theories but to all of them in part.
The perennialist in me believes in an unchanging truth about human nature and about true knowledge. This coincides with my notion of an absolute Truth that in the end all human beings are seeking to learn. I also believe that this unchanging knowledge should represent the core of our educational system. “Subject matter of a disciplinary and spiritual nature, like mathematics, language, logic, great books, and doctrines, must be studied.”3
Flowing from this quote is my connection to essentialism. “Essentialism holds that there is a common core of information and skills that an educated person in a given culture must have.”4 The above-mentioned subject matter fulfills this core requirement of information and skills. I believe that life-long learners as we all want our children to be, must have this core foundation in order to proceed outward into their areas of personal interests.
In a switch from authoritarian to non-authoritarian perspectives, I find a little bit of my educational world-view based in progressivism. In our children’s search for that everlasting Truth, we should encourage them to question and experiment. I do not want at this point to sound hypocritical by saying on one hand we need to teach children an unchanging core curriculum, and on the other hand say that we should tell our children to question everything we teach them. What I mean by the use of question and experiment is once the child branches out from the core knowledge into the not so concrete.
How does all of this affect the way I will handle my classroom? Let me try to explain how I see myself handling the classroom experience. Or to put it another way, how I want to handle the classroom experience.
First, I am an authoritarian by nature. I believe structure, discipline, and leadership is necessary for a quality-learning environment. Structure is important because students need to know what is expected of them and to relieve anxiety that comes with not knowing. Discipline is needed to keep the power arrangement in its correct proportion. While in the classroom, students should not fear me as a teacher but they should respect me. It also creates an atmosphere of justice and fairness. Delivering discipline to all offenders will show students that there are no favorites and that I expect the same effort from all of them equally. Leadership is necessary because children often times have no sense of real direction in their lives. Some may think they know what they want at the time but the truth is that they are usually fooling themselves. It is also important to lead by example and not be a hypocrite. Students are quick to see hypocrisy in action and therefore must be avoided at all times.
Second, once students know that I am the one in control and that they must respect their peers and me, a free-flow of exchange can take place. Of course they need the core content information to begin with, but I also want give my students an opportunity to discuss with their peers and me their thoughts and questions on the information.
In the end, I want the result to be that students are logical, rational, moral entities that make for good, but independent, citizens.