A Personal Philosophy of Education
As a person, I am eclectic. My taste in food, music, movies, and other personal interests range from one extreme to the other. It is a challenge to box me up into one particular category, and this is no different when it comes to education. As an educator, my teaching philosophy is all over the board. I do not identify entirely with any one philosophy, but rather draw on all of them to create my own personal philosophy. There are five defined philosophies that I find myself using to build my own: perennialism, idealism, pragmatism, existentialism, and humanism. Before discussing each of the individual philosophies, it might be helpful to first define philosophy. Philosophy is the set of beliefs and values that comprise the way an individual thinks about the world; it is a search for meaning and understanding, as well as an analysis of the concepts that define an individual’s personal values and beliefs. Each of the philosophies describes a different set of core beliefs, including beliefs relevant to education. There is not one particular philosophy that can be said to be the right philosophy for education. Rather, each one has merit to be used in the school or classroom in some way or another. The perennialist philosophy is also known as the essentialist philosophy. Supporters of perennialism believe that there is a core set of knowledge that all students must know in order to be successful. Within this core set, perennialists want students to know certain things by the end of each grade. For example, if students study the Civil War in seventh grade, they are expected to know key facts about the war, and if they are not able to prove that they have learned those facts by the end of the year, they are not able to move on to the next grade level. That student must then repeat the seventh grade until he or she is able to demonstrate all of the knowledge required of students in the seventh grade. In the lower grades, primarily up to third grade, this might work as well in practice as theory, but as students grow and mature, they become aware of the reasons for students repeating a grade (or grades), and a social stigma becomes attached to repeating a grade. The social stigma then can impact the student staying back, and very rarely is it positive. Repeating a grade can cause a student to become disengaged, even more than before; sometimes a second chance at the content is not the solution for a student; and can stunt personal growth, as well as social growth. A perhaps outdated but popular author of the perennialist philosophy is E.D. Hirsch, Jr., who wrote Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know. In this book, Hirsch argues that the then-current education system is depriving students of valuable, even vital, knowledge--basic knowledge which would allow them to function in society. To accompany his argument, Hirsch includes a list of the 5,000 things that “every American needs to know,” a list ranging from important dates and people to common sayings and places. While this list is not comprehensive, it is a suggestion of the content that Hirsch believes Americans need in order to be able to communicate with one another, no matter the person’s background.
Personally, I agree with little of the perennialist, or essentialist, philosophy. I do feel that students should have a common set of core knowledge, but I do not think that the list Hirsch created is the magic core. I do not think 5,000 is the magic number and that once students know all 5,000 items on the list that they will suddenly become engaged students who enjoy learning. If schools want to use a core list like Hirsch’s, I believe they need to be willing to change every few years, to keep it current and relevant, so that it reflects the current society. I do not believe that students are empty receptacles for teachers to fill with knowledge. They may begin school as empty receptacles, but it is not the teacher’s role to fill them up. As Will Richardson, former public school educator says, “Education will only truly be transformed when we stop trying to jam content into our kids’ heads and start allowing them to explore and learn in contexts that feed their desire to keep learning” (Richardson 2012). I want my students to be able to explore content, find what they are interested, and create habits of lifelong learning. With society evolving at increasing speeds, a core list of things to be taught will become outdated just as quickly as it is created, generating an archaic curriculum that will not engage students because they will not see the relevancy to their lives. For this reason, I believe that perennialism should not be the entire foundation of an educational philosophy, but rather a building block that works with parts of the other philosophies to forge a stronger foundation.
Similar to the perennialist philosophy is idealism, which focuses on teaching students through lectures and discussion rather than passive listening. However, learning is still curriculum centered, specifically a core set of standards that students must know. In addition to the core standards, idealists support the teaching of absolute truths. An idealist’s curriculum would include much of the Canon, history lessons that focus on places and dates rather than issues, and math would be taught lecture style with no hands on applications for students. Idealists believe in learning for the sake of learning, but students are not actively engaged with the content. Today’s students “are growing up in a sea of information 24/7, and schools must be helping them formulate questions, encouraging them to dig deep, to prepare them for a world which values the ability to formulate questions and then find answers to those questions,” (John Merrow 2012). In this quotation by Merrow, he includes a piece of idealism: “schools must be helping [students] formulate questions.” With the lecture and discussion style of teaching, schools are teaching students to ask questions, but the schools then leave students with questions that have yet to be answered. There is no freedom for students to seek out the answers to their questions during school. In an idealist’s classroom, students with questions irrelevant to the exact content they are studying, the students are expected to find their own answers, outside of class time. For some students, that time is spent taking care of family, working on homework for school, working, or playing sports. Students often have little time to continue their studies above and beyond the required curriculum outside of school because of their other responsibilities. The aspects of idealism that I do agree with are the lecture and discussion methodologies. I am not in favor of long, teacher-led lectures, but I do think that short, ten minute lectures can be useful teaching methods, as well as short discussions. Students need a variety of ways to handle content, and a combination that involves either lecture or discussion can be helpful for some students, depending on their learning preferences.
Pragmatism, also known as experimentalism, is a philosophy that tends to focus more on the learning styles and preferences of students and less on the curriculum. As the root word of experimentalism suggests, experimentation is the center of learning. Students are taught more life skills and real world content rather than a list of core knowledge. The role of students is to be active participants, while the educators are responsible for teaching methods related to reasoning and observations--skills that will teach students how to learn, not what to learn. By teaching students the scientific method (problem solving) and inductive reasoning, teachers are showing students how to be lifelong learners. The knowledge pragmatists value is practical and the skills are applicable to society. They are teaching students to be valuable members of society. A school developed around the pragmatist philosophy would allow students to take electives in a large variety of subjects. This lets students take classes that they are interested, which helps them to engage in learning, rather than being passive receptacles. Schools would also emphasize projects over tests, where students are able to show what they have learned instead of telling.
Of the five philosophies, I find that pragmatism is one I mostly agree with. I believe hands-on learning is important for students, as well as experimentation. Sometimes trial-and-error is the best way for students to learn. They might become frustrated with every failure, but when they finally understand the content, they will be proud of themselves, and not because they memorized the facts. Students will be able to apply what they have learned to real world situations, and that makes them better citizens--not knowing a list of important nouns. While it is difficult to escape the test, I do believe there are other ways of having students demonstrate mastery of the content. If a test is required, either by the school or the government, then the student should also have the opportunity to demonstrate his or her learning through a project or some other means, perhaps even before the test is administered. Giving students a chance to practice displaying mastery of the content prepares them for taking the test in a method that they are comfortable with, which increases the chances that they will do well on the test.
While perennialism is on one end of the philosophy spectrum, existentialism is on the opposite. Where perennialists believe in rigid, structured curriculum, existentialists believe in freedom of choice in regards to learning. An excellent example of this philosophy is the Summerhill school, founded by A.S Neill in 1921. At Summerhill, students are responsible for their own learning. Students between the ages of 5 and 18 have complete control over their learning and the school. If students do not want to learn a particular subject, are too tired to learn one day, or simply do not feel like it, there is no one to tell them otherwise. They are also responsible for creating the school’s government system. The teachers are there to encourage and facilitate learning, but only when the students show an interest. The structure of the school, or rather lack thereof, is meant to develop independence and responsibility in the students, but there is no way to measure whether this is happening or not.
While I agree with this in theory, I feel as though the practice is poorly executed. In a school of 95 students, of all ages, there are not enough teachers. If you want students to be able to learn what they want, when they want, you need to provide more teachers to facilitate learning. I also think the school might be more effective if it were divided into two sections based on age, one for children ages 5-12, and one for children ages 13-18. Children in these two age groups are in different stages developmentally, and while the school can function with students of all ages, I think the younger students look to the older students as role models, when that might not be the best scenario for them. I also think that there should be some set curriculum that students are required to master. It does not need to be extensive, but it should include the basics of reading, writing, math, and some communication skills. I do like that students are able to study what they want. If a student is interested in snowboarding and wants to learn all there is about snowboarding, then as a teacher, I would take advantage of that student’s interest and find ways to use snowboarding to engage him in all of the subject areas. The student can read about snowboarding, research the history of snowboarding, learn business related to snowboarding, calculate angles and trajectories in math, etc. If snowboarding, or anything other hobby, can be used to engage a student, then we should use it as a vehicle for teaching valuable skills to students. Who knows, maybe even the student will actually enjoy learning. John Seely Brown says that “...learning should be viewed in terms of an environment--combined with the rich resources provided by the digital information network--where the context in which learning happens, the boundaries that define it, and the students, teachers, and information within it all coexist and shape each other in a mutually reinforcing way” (Seely Brown 2011).
Each of the previously mentioned philosophies centers around learning or curriculum. Humanism, however, focuses more on the student and helping the student to attain certain needs. Mike Rose, author of Lives on the Boundary, has a philosophy that leans heavily toward humanism. He believes that every student, even those who have failed time and time again has ability and potential to learn; it just needs to be discovered. In his book, Rose shares his journey through school and into his work as a tutor, where eventually he starts teaching a course at a Veteran’s Program that served veteran’s of the armed forces. The stories that Rose shares are poignant, and truly show how Rose treats each student as an individual. Rose does not care what history or background his students bring to his class, he is just as willing to work with each and every one of them, for as long as it takes, to help them master the content. To engage his students, Rose finds ways of connecting the novel, play, short story, poem, etc., with the student’s lives. Teachers today complain that it is too difficult to connect everything to the real world for students, but Rose found a way to do it for his students, and he had students from a diverse background, students of all ages, students who were driving upwards of an hour to get to class. If Rose can connect Australian myths and the big bang theory to the lives of military veterans, we can connect Hamlet to our students’ lives.
Humanists also focus on helping students to become self-actualized. Boiled down, this means fulfilling one’s individual potential. In order to become self-actualized, one must first meet the needs of the lower tiers of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: physiological, safety and security, love and belonging, and self-esteem. Once all of these needs have been met, a student is able to fully reach his or her potential. While the philosophy focuses on the goal of self-actualization, humanist teachers connect learning to the students’ environment; make the learning relevant; and show students how the curriculum applies to themselves, the community, and the world. The instructional methods for a classroom based on the humanist philosophy would focus on group work and would allow students to spend one-on-one time working with the teacher. The curriculum would include topics such as would be found in a perennialist curriculum, but there would also be an emphasis on the needs of the students, which could be taught in units that focus on real world issues.
Ann Camacho, English teacher for 20 years, recently said,
“Educators must give assignments that engage students; curiosity and imagination instead of those that hold little authenticity and are simply to satisfy answers to a test; when they do, students will rise. They will lean into the issues in the world if given a chance, and it is inspiring to see that, when given an opportunity to voice their opinions and share experiences, they can do just that. In this kind of atmosphere, compliancy gives way to engagement and it is here where students find their own voices, where they uncover the seeds of their own stories and where they discover themselves.” (Camacho 2012)
Camacho does an excellent job synthesizing what I believe are some of the essential ideals and concepts for a classroom of the 21st century. She understands that students need to see the relevancy in what they are learning in order for them to reach their potential, which ties back to the humanist philosophy and Maslow’s theory on self-actualization. As George Cuoros says, “learning should be continuous, connected and meaningful” (Cuoros 2012). As a future educator, I believe one of the most important roles of the teacher is to take the content, whatever it may be, and find ways to connect it to the learner. In a recent blog post on education by Grant Wiggins,“...the point of learning is not just to know things but to be a different person--more mature, more wise, more self-disciplined, more effective, and more productive in the broadest sense. Knowledge is an indicator of educational success, not the aim. . . If a primary goal of education is high-level performance in the world going forward, how can marching through old knowledge out of context optimally prepare us to perform?” (Wiggins 2012). The common thread between Camacho, Cuoros, and Wiggins is that they all believe in teaching the student how to learn, by providing him with the skills necessary to be an effective citizen, which is done by making the content relevant to students in an engaging way that makes them lifelong learners.
