Philosophising

My name is Laura. I spend over $5.00 on a single coffee. I spend more minutes per day on social media than I do having face-to-face conversation. I am a teacher who disagrees with the education system.

Let me ask you: which of those facts about me caught you off guard? I’m betting it’s not the ridiculously overpriced, border-line highway robbery cost of chain-restaurant coffeehouse beverages, nor the companionship that a networked piece of metal brings me. It’s the educator who has the beef with education, right? Allow me to explain:

My Philosophy of Education
Throughout the past two years – time I had spent on graduate studies in education – my Philosophy of Education has continued to morph. I have this utopic view of what I think it means to learn and to know something, and what roles ideally teachers and students (and administration and the public) should play in education. However, I also have this realistic view that is bogged down by curriculum and policy, and together they are kind of like the angel/devil characters that sit on my shoulders, fighting.
My Philosophy of Education involves constantly striving to create a community of life-long learners. The way it makes sense to me can be broken down and fleshed out into three components: (1) Individuality, (2) Community, and (3) Purpose.

Individuality
The process of learning varies from individual to individual, and I think it’s important that educators, and more importantly, policy-makers, recognize this and work to create learning environments that respect individuality and experiences that are meaningful. Students are not cookie-cutter clones who learn A-Z in the same way, so we shouldn’t treat them as such.
Community
While individuality is important, that fact is that we are constantly surrounded by community. Communities of learners, communities of friends, communities of family – and with that comes a need to take advantage of what community can offer, and how we can function optimally in a community setting. I feel while humans can act in manners that are altruistic, we are also selfish at heart (at times) and benefit from moral education. I think educators work hard as it is to include this in their practice, and it is one example of where I feel the “hidden curriculum” holds more value than the actual one.
Purpose
I believe learning to be a process that is cyclical and not linear as our current system has it laid out as. In thinking about the goal of formal education, I think that we should focus more on how to learn, rather than what to learn. The education system we have in place in Canada and the US is like a pendulum that swings dramatically from one idea to the next, without thinking through the repercussions or looking at it from a long-term perspective. It is drastic and standardized and short-term, all of which seem to go against the purpose of education.

What Should be Taught in Schools?
Excellent question. And one I fear is not easy to answer. We live in a culture of quick-fixes and generalizations which, in my opinion, are hindering the education of today’s youth. This is where my battle of “utopic” vs “realistic” comes into play. I understand that there has to be policies and frameworks and that budgetary constraints exist. However, extraneous factors like hidden agendas and politics play a profound role in what constitutes best practice and what is expected of educators. Much of my problem lies with the curriculum itself…

I think that we waste way too much time and energy filling kids’ heads with useless and often irrelevant information. Do they really need to know what we teach them? Is having them be able to regurgitate it back to us on a test or a project really a sign of them learning anything at all? Perhaps we need to find a way to start over again and figure out what it means to be a “knowledgeable” member of society and THEN figure out how to educate to achieve that. I feel the answer lies in simplicity – basic skills such as questioning, sorting, organizing, hypothesizing, verifying, criticizing, applying, etc. Maybe the focus should switch from “what”, to “how and why”. (Excerpt from my blog post August 2010 on “Knowledge, the disciplines, and learning in the Digital Age” (Jane Gilbert, 2007) http://thoughtsandviewsoneducation.blogspot.com/2010/08/knowledge-disciplines-and-learning-in.html)

True, it’s harder for students to do, harder for teachers to assess, and harder for the higher-ups to regulate, but since when is education about taking the easy way out? I don’t have answers on how this should look or how it should operate; I just feel that our current system is not optimal for inspiring and engaging student learners.

What is the Role of Teachers and Students?
I think that a fundamental role of teachers is to inspire learning. I don’t see teachers as these containers of knowledge, where students are simply vessels waiting to be filled. I see the process of learning as more organic and more of a construction rather a demonstration. I see teachers as facilitators who assist students in realizing and achieving their potential, and I see students as active members in the process rather than passive recipients. I don’t see this happening in classrooms filled with +30 students and several IEPS. I don’t see this happening the way things are now.