Wow-education and learning. Very timely with education being at the forefront of the New Mexico 30 day legislative session in Santa Fe, NM.
To me, education's purpose is to expose an individual in a society to a body of concepts, ideas and subject matter (a curriculum) to prepare them for their role in society, if you will, to participate in the order of that society. Conversely, the vehicle of choice, for education in industrial societies, has been the "school". Schools have been with us since at least Greek and Roman times and permeate all ancient and modern societies. Their purpose has always been to provide the setting in which education, if you will, the curriculum is being delivered. We all thing of this school to be a building, but why can't it be open air or in a 'Kiva" in our village? What makes a school a societal vehicle is the people in it, not the setting.
This logically begs the question of how the curriculum may be delivered. The person or persons who is tasked with delivering our curriculum has many names among them "master", "sensei" , "teacher", "elder", "leader", "mother/father" or "chief". By analogy, it is said that "God has 1000 names". Their task remains the same, as John Dewey states to be the "social servant" of the society, to present and guide individuals in the prescribed curriculum. Clearly, a great and varied, number of approaches have been tried. Our class has a textbook which discusses 49 techniques. An approach, which I liked in the past for science subject matter was to make the textbook available, other reference texts and materials, photos, videos, and visual materials like slides-making the school setting available and the teacher was just in the room to guide the students to answer their own questions not answer specific subject matter experts. So, what is teaching and what is learning, do they have any similarities.
To me, teaching is underlying process of presenting the curriculum of the society, The teacher purpose is to employ techniques, learned from their experience, to prepare/prsent the curriculum subject matter, for students, who then can process, analyze, and synthesize concepts and ideas which will lead over time to understand/ their role in society and participate as a member in that society. I suggest, that "teaching" material also educates the teacher, who likewise is a student of how to teach this curriculum more effectively. Learning, therefore has not explicit purpose, but rather is an implicit process. Learning is a product of a student's exposure to subject matter and their cognitive processing of that input, thereby synthesizing a new understanding of their environment and how to react with it.
You paint the picture of education with such a conservative brush. It’s as if you believe education should primarily serve the established social order. Wouldn’t it be more ideal if education had a hand in improving and making better the things in our society which we find deplorable or decadent? This, I think, could have implications for what it means when you say, “prepare them for their role in society, if you will, to participate in the order of that society.” Our social order is never static, and as such, our methods and ends of education should not be either. This is all beyond even trying to determine the method with which to identify a student’s “role” in society.
ReplyDeleteHaving just recently decided to become a teacher, my philosophy of education is limited. The topics you are phlogging about, schools, the way curriculum should be delivered and teaching are all beneficial to me and my delevlopment of my philosophy of education. I am curious to see if the New Mexico 30 day legislative session will actually make any changes.
ReplyDeleteI think it would be fantastic if we could just sit in a classroom with a variety of material and let the students learn from themselves. How many children would be able to teach themselves to read? How many high school kids would put down their phones and pick up a textbook to read? There are definitely kids who would sit down and teach themselves, but these kids are few and far between. It seems that there would have to be some training for these kids to become used to the idea of doing it on their own. I would love to hear how this worked for you in the past.
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