Philosophy of Education
I'm aware that my posts can be lengthy. A few readers have asked for "just pictures." :) So, if you don't want to read, go to the end and click on the link. That video sums up the whole thing and will hopefully make you cry. For anyone who wants to read through, have at it.
All of us "Gen Xers" have been there - sitting at dinner, reminiscing about old times with friends, and someone brings up music or style from the 90s. You all have a good laugh thinking about how different things were 10 years ago. Then, three topics later, as you're shoveling the Tiramisu into your mouth so you can get home to let Jax or Fifi out to do their business, it hits you like a ton of bricks from the Empire State Building. The 90s, at least the part of them that you were thinking about, was nearly 20 years ago! That's the moment you realize that it's NOT abnormal for you to have crow's feet. You ARE old.
When I think back to the blessed 90s, I often picture myself in different scenarios - often wearing pleated khakis and a combover hairstyle. I'm wearing a tie, matching argyle socks, and sitting in a classroom. One memory of the 90s that I think of often is my Philosophy of Education class with Dr. Salter. It was this class, a requirement for my B.A. in Spanish (any 2 philosophy courses would do), that really got me thinking about becoming a teacher.
Dr. Salter read many of his lectures. Some background - the son of a Baptist minister in Germany who fought against the ideology of the Nazi forces, he was drafted into the Hitler Youth movement during WWII. He was taken by the Allies and made his way to the US. He was in no way sympathetic to the Nazi cause. Nonetheless, his looming presence, German accent, and teaching style made many students fear for their lives. One time a student in this lecture class dozed off. In the middle of reading page 4 of his lecture, Dr. Salter looked up, paused, and said "would someone please poke the man in the purple sweater." While this student's choice of clothing may have been cause for a fashion police pat down, this didn't seem the appropriate moment. The student's eyes got wide. "Please stand up! I shall inform you now, sir, that there will be no sleeping in my class. Do you understand?" The student replied with a sheepish "Yes, sir." And Dr. Salter continued reading. The student remained standing until somewhere around page 32 of the lecture when we got a 5 minute bathroom break.
This professor meant business, and, although he did read his lectures, he did make the class entertaining, eventful, unpredictable, and meaningful. He sometimes came to life, apart from his notes, to share an anecdote or try out an interesting exercise on us. A class of 170 was hardly the place to entertain active learning concepts, group work, or a problem based learning exercise. I don't even know if those practices had been dreamt up by the educational intelligentsia yet. It was, after all, only 1999!
While Dr. Salter may not have been able to practice what he preached, he really encouraged us to look at education, not as a transfer of knowledge, but as a leading by the hand. Educators were to be seen as facilitators of learning. We traced educational theory and philosophy from Socrates and Aristotle, through Kant, to Skinner.
By the time I got around to taking classes for a Master's in Education at Covenant College, it was 2007 and scholars had finally reached the pinnacle of research telling us all that we could let our students work in groups, arrange the classroom in a shape other than rows and columns of desks, have students do activities that engaged their hearts as much as their minds. It was officially ok now.
It was here that I added to my interest in education and became rebuked. The deficiency model that I had clung to - I am the source of knowledge and will share it with you in new-fangled ways so you will love learning - had been dismantled. While I had gotten part of the equation right (you will love learning) I still thought of myself as the emancipator, the transferrer of knowledge. Now, Salter taught this was wrong, but I think every educator fights daily with the idea that our students don't bring much to the table.
My philosophy morphed and it would take more than a blog to explain. I'm always intimidated when I see applications that ask for your "philosophy of education" and then afford you 30 lines, double spaced, to explain. I would rather just write "Teaching Redemptively." But, in a nutshell, I'll write it, bullet pointed here. Again, this is the briefest and non-inclusive account I can give:
The goal of education is multifaceted but is, in short, to help students polish their gifts and abilities to redeem a fallen world
All students have value as they are image-bearers of Christ
They all bear communicable attributes of God (e.g., they are social, moral, physical)
As educators, we must consider multiple avenues of teaching and assessing - what works for some students doesn't work for others
I could literally write books expanding on and adding to these concepts, but those four are a good starting point for what I ultimately want to share in this blog post.
As students share communicable attributes with God, we should capitalize on those attributes. If my students are social, because God is social, why would I have them never talk? If they are rational, because God is rational, why would I teach them to memorize answers rather than think deeply? If my students are creative, because God is creative, why would I never allow them creative outlets to show they understand the content (e.g., drawing, singing, painting)? If the world is broken by the fall, why wouldn't I use my classroom as a laboratory for fixing and healing the world? Redemption doesn't start when you can grow a mustache or get your driver's license. (I hope it is understood that I was envisioning males when I wrote the former). Just because students don't have underarm hair (gender inclusive this time) doesn't mean they cannot do something of value. Just because I have more education at this point of my life than my high school students doesn't mean they cannot draw from their own life experiences and teach me something.
When teachers are required to prepare students for tests that apparently measure our country's economic potential, they miss many opportunities. Often students who are not white, English-speaking, middle class Christians slip through the cracks as though these students are the only ones who bear the image of God. Students themselves, start to question the value of education. Is it just to make money?
Good teachers, and I've encountered a LOT, are able to work within the public school system that has become so stifling, to embrace students where they are. My friends like Erin, Liz, Sean, Layla, and many others, have been able to humanize education despite the testing culture that exists. This educational model of redemption goes beyond the American school system, by the way. In fact, that is why I posted about this topic today. It was this week that i discovered that the Classical School of the Medes (technically a school network of 3 schools in Iraq), the schools that I had minimal contact with for a couple summers, has made sense of the themes of teaching redemptively. That is - the teachers and students have a phenomenal philosophy of education that seeks social justice and redeeming a fallen world.
This video made me cry. There is hope, friends. There is hope for our world. All the doom and gloom in the media could not cast a shadow over me the day that I watched what is going on in IRAQ! PLEASE watch this video:
Students with a vision!