Running head: MY PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION

My Philosophy of Education Dustin Ellis Azusa Pacific University Philosophy/Ethics and History of Education EDTC 573 Valerie Suffern June 10, 2013

MY PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION My Philosophy of Education Philosophy is a funny thing, and a defining thing, in fact it is many things all at the same time, but one thing that is should be in the midst of all of its complexity is unified. A person is

the living embodiment of what he or she believes and as a result his or her philosophy of life will dictate, not only, what he or she believes, but what he or she says, what he or she does, how he or she looks and how he or she treats others. My philosophy is a foundational and powerful part of what makes me, me. When given the task to write down my specialized philosophy of education I began to think that my philosophy of education is really just an outgrowth or integral part of my personal life philosophy. I though, if these two philosophies are not compatible then I have a much larger problem than disagreeing philosophies, I have a lying problem! If ones philosophies do not agree then one part is in disagreement with the other parts and is in essence being dishonest with the rest of the person. Luckily, my philosophies do match up and I am not being dishonest with myself. Education is part of my lifes tradition. I was born the son of an educator, and the grandson of an educator. Education is in my blood, but more than that it has been the fabric of my life. When I was young I remember going to school during the summer with my dad and spending time in science classes examining creatures in jars and measuring liquids in funny shaped glassware. But more than this I learned that education is vital to who we are as people. The philosopher William Bagley would have one believe that the teacher is the sole authority for all learning and should never be questioned, but merely followed and revered. This brand of essentialism is something that I have never experienced in all my years growing up in an education centric family. There are many things that bind us together as a nation and education is one of the most important, but no one thing is sacred in the sense that I believe Mr. Bagley

MY PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION would hold teachers. A teacher is merely an instrument of the process, a willing participant, but a part of a whole, nonetheless. I grew up knowing that school was foundational in each of our lives. I watched my father go off to school each day, rarely missing not out of a dogmatic adherence to an ideal, but out of a steadfast conviction that he was participating in something of worth to mankind. And because of this model I rarely missed school either. I knew by example that school has value beyond the books, the desks, the buildings, and the teachers. It is a place that is focused on the betterment of mankind. It is an enterprise that exists to catalyze the spirit

of man, and create those new things that will be needed for all of us to carry on and prosper. It is not, and has never been a tool to perpetuate a status quo, or to maintain an order, and when it has been that it has degraded into something that could no longer sustain itself under the weight of outside influences. Education is about the future, and never about the past. Because of this foundational truth of education the most important part of the puzzle is the student. The student is the object of the lesson, the target of the teacher, the life cared for by the building, and the pearl of hope for the future. Simply put the student is the reason for education. The student should be viewed by all segments of the educational enterprise as the center of the universe. All practice, planning, teaching, administrating and meeting should have at its core this one question, How will this benefit the student? If this question cannot be clearly answered then whatever has been proposed should be scrapped and the process should start over. In todays educational environment very often teachers are stymied by a system that has placed student achievement above the student himself. What that student can produce has become the goal, not the well being, or future of that student. This is a distortion of the principles of progressivism that John Dewey proposed. Schooling must be relevant to the student and create meaning for each student("Progressivism," n.d., para. 1). Students should be

MY PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION held in a high place and be treated as the most important part of the educational process. When that student is placed in the center he or she will be able to be an individual not only in society, but in his or her own life. They will understand what it means to have value because they are themselves, and not only because of what they can do. When a student realizes that they have value because of who they are then they become a self-actualized learner who sees value in learning and does so to become a better version of themselves, and not a copy of an arbitrary ideal that they do not know, nor necessarily care about. When a student becomes this self-actualized learner is there still a place for the teacher? When a teacher realizes that the student is the most important part of the equation then they find that they have a new kind of value, they become a guide to help the student along his or her journey. In order to do this with a high degree of purpose and success teachers must understand the constructivist theory of learning espoused by Lev Vygotsky. When a student is young and does not understand a concept they need the help of a teacher or more advanced peer to spur them onward toward understanding. This is called the Zone of Proximal Development(Driscoll, 2000, para. 3). The zone is divided into three rings that look like an archery target, in the center are those things that the student can do unaided, one ring out is the

ZPD or the zone of proximal development where the teacher should attempt to be a good deal of the time, and the outer ring are those things that the learner simply cannot do for any number of reasons. When a teacher accepts the idea that he or she is not the disseminator of knowledge but rather a help of scaffold for the student to understand concepts that they would not be able to on their own then they are freed to be organic purveyors of help. Those that foster an environment that make asking questions, seeking help, failing over and over, and finally discovering valuable

MY PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION truths a desirable and safe place to learn are true teachers indeed. I would love to say that this ideal represents me, but honestly I am a prisoner to a system that values achievement over learning. I do my best day by day to foster that safe place where students feel safe to fail and learn from exploration and mistakes, but this does not always happen. I have not found that place where this can be done regularly and still satisfy the goals being placed on me by the educational organization to which I currently belong. So while I believe that the teacher is

secondary to the student, the truth is that in my reality the student is secondary to the teacher, and the teacher is secondary to the results achieved by the student, it is a vicious circle that does not benefit anyone directly, but makes each link a target of scrutiny. I think that this is a sad place to be for a social constructivist, but at this time it is the reality for a great majority of constructivist teachers in the USA. We live within the context of standards and standardization. We follow an assembly line model of education that seeks to make everyone the same, and have followed this model for longer than most of us can remember. Our educational model is a relic from the recent past that is not based on anything that seeks to improve the individual. I believe that we need to look even farther into the past to seek another relic that has retained its value and even garnered more and more worth as the centuries have move on until today. Plato formalized the idea of Socratic Questioning,("Socratic Method," n.d., para. 5) whereby questions denoting the reasons behind beliefs and questions asking for proof of positions are posed to take a student on a logical walk around topics to solidify their ideas and knowledge. This style of learning is extraordinarily personalized and differentiated. It is intensely student centered and makes the teacher one who seeks to draw out the knowledge that is present in the student and solidify it! This is the best possible practice that can usually be done within the construct of standards and base line

MY PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION curricula, but it does require one to see the value in learning for knowledge vs. learning for achievement. It flips the current foundations of why we should educate, and puts the focus of education back onto the student, and requires the development of a sense of personal responsibility, something that is mostly lacking in todays educational environment.

If we were to move back to a place where the student was seen as the focus of education, the teachers saw themselves as coaches that seek to develop naturally occurring talents, and curriculum as a loosely structured tool that changes based on each individual students abilities and needs what would the classroom look like? Would it be the place of neat and tidy rows of desks? Would it be a place of overstimulation where posters about who knows what are plastered over every conceivable inch of wall space? Would it be a place where the teacher stands in the front of the room and lectures to a room of disengaged, sleepy, bored students who desperately want to be doing something else? NO! I have a vision that the classroom that I would love to teach in that would be a place not unlike a lounge at a university. A place where there are options. There are comfy couches, tables and chairs, bean bags, standing counters where people can stand and chat, and open spaces where students can stand or sit as they wish. I dream of a classroom that is made for student collaboration, a place where students can be the masters of their educational days. Lessons will be based on where students are at that moment, and will be thematic, event driven, global, and personal. The role of the teacher will be to foster collaboration between students, but not just in their one room. Collaboration will take place in a virtual space as well where student experts around the world will be able to share what they know and teach their peers, and learn from them as well! I firmly believe that when students are freed to make more educational decisions on their own and taught how to do this in a productive way they will be set free! The classroom will become that place of intense productivity that only

MY PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION occurs when one is passionate about the thing they are doing. This is the classroom that I want to foster and see become a reality! A classroom that is a place where students are free to pursue their own passions while becoming educated people is the crux of my personal philosophy of education. Mr. Bagley

would most likely not like my soft philosophy of education as it is not rooted in the firmament of historical tradition. Instead I look to Messers Dewey, Vygotsky and Plato to see a model that places the ideals of knowledge as the highest learning. And when the acquisition of knowledge is seen as an individual pursuit that make each one of us unique and special, we will have moved back to a place that values the student as the most valuable and essential part of the educational endeavor. I believe in my lifes philosophy that doing things for others is the highest goal of humanity. When we seek to make anothers life better and not seek any accolade or reward then we have achieved the highest goal of humanity. The same is true in my classroom. I do what I do not for the awards or the adulation of the families whose students I teach, I do it because the lives of my students can be made better because they are the most important part of my days.

MY PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION References Driscoll (2000). Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) Social Constructivism. Retrieved from www.lifecircles-inc.com/Learningtheories/social/Vygotsky.html Foundations of Education. (n.d.). Retrieved from www.siue.edu/~ptheodo/foundations/progressivism.html Plato. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved June 11, 2013, from en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_Method