Philosophy of Education

Education - Philosophy

STATEMENT of EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY

The Purpose of Modern Education:

The main purpose of modern education is to provide students with the necessary skills and information to develop productive and fulfilling lives early in their adulthood.

That goal encompasses much more than conveying substantive knowledge and technical skills; it includes motivating students to discover their intellectual interests and to identify their greatest areas of academic, intellectual, and vocational potential. Even further, the goal of modern education includes providing assistance and resources to students facing additional challenges outside the classroom to mitigate the negative consequences typically associated with family, social, and other environmental influences.

Within the education system, the teacher plays the most important role because it is primarily the nature and quality of the interaction between teacher and student that sets the tone for subsequent teacher-student relationships and expectations on the part of the student. Teachers who convey positive messages about their respective roles and who create a comfortable environment for genuine communication and expression of intellectual interest in the classroom increase the likelihood that students will benefit the most from their educational opportunities. Conversely, teachers who convey negative messages about their respective roles and who create an uncomfortable environment in those respects tend to inspire the opposite response.

Historical Influences:

Twentieth-century social critics and educational theorists like Bertrand Russell have suggested that elements of the traditional emphasis on obedience, discipline, and rigid instructional methods substantially detract from the potential value of formative education. Already, by the middle of the century, the infamous physicist and philosopher Albert Einstein characterized the modern educational system as an institution corrupted by superficial societal definitions of personal and professional success. Contemporary sociologists and psychologists have even suggested that substantial numbers of students who do pursue some of the most challenging academic pursuits in higher education do so for the wrong reasons, based on perceptions about social status goals rather than on their greatest genuine interests.

Since the inception of formal education, academic success has hinged heavily on a very narrow set of abilities in linguistic skills and mathematical ability. While necessary, those two sets of skills represent only two components of a much more comprehensive set of intellectual abilities that deserve equal attention if modern education is to provide comparable benefits to all students. Precisely because intellectual interests, aptitudes, and optimal learning conditions vary so much among different individuals, one of the professional educator's main responsibilities is to identify the different types and combinations of specific strengths and weaknesses in all of their students.

Contemporary research and experience into the relationship between particular types of optimal learning situations and more than half a dozen different types of identifiable intelligences conducted by Dr. Howard Gardner of the Harvard School of Education require the professional educator to focus even more than before on methods of classroom instruction that provide comparable benefit to all students, irrespective of variation in their naturally-occurring intellectual strengths and weaknesses. Teaching Goals and Methodologies:

The most fundamental and realistic goal of modern educators for students is for every student to become aware of the full range of potential opportunities for intellectual development and vocational success. Part of that includes instilling in students an intellectual curiosity, receptivity to learning through genuine understanding, and definitions of professional success that are motivated by positive aspirations rather than by overcompensation impulses triggered by negative assumptions, messages, or early experiences. In addition to ensuring basic literacy and computational skills required by adults in society, modern primary education must dedicate itself to producing graduates who have discovered their greatest intellectual abilities and developed a genuine interest in a specific academic and/or vocational application of those aptitudes and interests in a manner most conducive to their long-term fulfillment and (ideally) to their optimal benefit to their families and communities in adulthood.

Toward that end, modern education must adapt to the wealth of empirical evidence that traditional methodologies (such as passive lecture and rote memorization, in particular) are comparatively ineffective at achieving the highest goals of education in society. Specifically, as society becomes ever more dependant on advanced technology, the field of Science becomes increasingly important. Especially (though hardly exclusively) in the sciences, academic interest and subject matter retention is tremendously increased by methodologies that incorporate active learning and inquiry-based approaches, instead. Granted, economic realities of publicly-funded education often limit the availability of the necessary material of some of the newest and most advanced educational programs available on the open market. Therefore, creativity is an essential element of modern teaching, because even without the benefit of advanced materials, it is still possible to apply the underlying principles of aptitude recognition, learning across multiple intelligences, and active, inquiry-based course design. In many cases, educators can devise methods of subject matter presentation that incorporate active participation and inquiry-based learning without significant financial costs. Likewise, the presentation methods of traditional academic subjects can be modified rather easily to make them more beneficial to students whose greatest intellectual abilities are in the areas of multiple intelligences outlined by Gardner.