Philosophy of Education
After the family, schools are probably the most dominant socialinstitutions in the life of most young Americans today. It is in schoolwhere many children spend much of their waking hours. It is through theformal and informal education they receive in school that children learn This places schools and teachers in an extraordinary position toinfluence the minds and attitudes of the country's youngest citizens.Philosopher John Dewey (1916) stated that the end goal of education liesbeyond teaching young people job skills. Instead, education should preparea young person to participate in "a common life" that constitutes thiscountry's democracy. Children should be taught how to think and reflectcritically. Thus, for Dewey, educators are charged with being aninspiration, in addition to teaching job skills (Dewey 1916). For Jane Addams (1910), education should play a more overt role inushering in social change. Towards this, she called attention to the factthat education can be a fundamentally undemocratic institution in itself.Addams therefore cautions that educators should take into account how somepeople may require different teaching techniques. Th
Astrong critique of rote learning, Schon recognizes that social andtechnological change is fundamental features of modern life. While educators have been working to bridge this divide, thefactors that perpetuate this gap also occur outside the school'sjurisdiction. My own philosophy of education is heavily influenced by these threethinkers. Gary Orfield and John Yun (1999) called further attention to thisproblem in their article "Resegregation in American Schools," by arguingthat a new form of segregation is emerging in the nation's schools,particularly in the South. The principles of Dewey and Addams are echoed in the more modernpedagogical teachings of Donald Schon, who further investigated theimportance of cognitive tools and reflection on the learning process. Instead, my own students are of differentraces, nationalities and socio-economic backgrounds. Gone are the days when Americanschools were a homogenous bunch. While this may bea response to difficulties of some segment of the student population, thistype of response is in direct contradiction to Dewey and Addam's call forschools as agents of democracy, equality and social change. These schools withnon-white majorities are also often located in areas with high crime andpoverty rates. In conclusion, I believe that the effective educator today should gobeyond the facts listed in the textbooks and even beyond the walls of theclassroom itself. Towards this,Schon (1968) recognized that schools themselves should respond to thechanging needs of its studentry and the community. In keeping with Schon's view on education and social change, my ownphilosophy of education states that teachers should change their tactics aswell. As a result,many cities are redefining the boundaries of educational accountability,from one that was mostly shouldered by school officials to a municipalresponsibility. This could only be done, as Schon has pointed out, by recognizing thechanging needs of the students themselves.
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