What is education and what does good education look
like? I think the only way to really understand what good education is, is by
acknowledging and knowing what bad education is. In other words, understanding
what education is not. I have studied several books in depth, focusing on the
educational learning and philosophical thinking throughout each of them. What I
have come to find is that they all have one thing in common. Each book shares
views on what education is and what it is not. Through my readings of Hope
in Troubled Times, Democracy and Education, and Pedagogy of the
Oppressed I have accumulated a vision for myself and an understanding of
good education and bad education.
Education is not perfect. Education is filled with
ideologies. The authors of the book Hope in Troubled Times, Bob
Goudzwaard, Mark Vander Vennen, and David Van Heemst explain in their book what
an ideology is. An ideology is a positive idea that is founded to help restore
something bad, but then is perverted into something bad. There are many
examples of this in education. One specifically would be the idea that grades
are important and students need to focus on getting good grades, but once
getting good grades becomes the most important thing about learning, then it
has become an ideology. It is now a competition and no longer a place to learn
and grow. Education is not a place where students should feel uncomfortable. If
a student feels uncomfortable to share his or her opinions or questions in
class, then they will not get the most out of their education, and neither will
the rest of their classmates. Education is not just for the individual.
Students should not keep their own creative ideas bottled up to themselves, if
they do this then there will be no room for growing together as a class. There
will be no challenge to learning. Education is not just teachers pouring
information into their students. If this were the case, then students would
learn what they need to in order to get by and then forget it. They would not
carry the information they learn into their everyday lives and it would in some
sense be useless. Education is not a “one-way” type of learning. If there was
only one way to teach and one way to learn, then some students would have it
easy and others would struggled. This would be a boring school to attend, if
all learning was done the exact same way. Education is not just a preparation
for your career. Although preparing students for their future careers is
important in education, it is not the may focus of education. All of these
examples throughout education are merely educational ideologies. They are all
things that can be looked at in some ways good, but are not the main focus of
education and should not be the main focuses of education. All is all,
education is not perfect.
Education is good, despite the fact that it is not
perfect. Education is a process. It is a process of taking past experiences and
information and using them to continue to learn and grow and develop your
education and thinking. John Dewey in the book Democracy and Education
says, “We thus reach a technical definition of education: It is that
reconstruction or reorganization of experience which adds to the meaning of
experience, and which increases ability to direct the course of subsequent experience.”
This emphasizes that education is a life-long process. Students and teachers
both are continually pouring out knowledge and growing from past experiences
and current experiences. Education is for finding students passions. Teachers
are called to help give students the opportunities to succeed in every aspect
of their lives. Teachers do this by learning about the students, what their
dislikes and likes are, and what they desire to be. Paulo Friere talks about
the importance of knowing what your students like in order to help make
learning exciting for students by relating it to their interests in the book Pedagogy
of the Oppressed. Teachers are called to help develop students socially,
physically, emotionally, spiritually, and culturally. Education is a
comfortable place. A classroom should be open and honest always. If a student
has a question, they should always be able to ask if because no questions is a
dumb question. Teachers want to encourage their students to participate and
make them feel like what they have to say is valuable to the class and to them.
Education is through sharing individualist views with a group. It is important
for students to be themselves and have their own answers, but it is only good
when it is shared among the group to help advance the thinking of other
students and the teacher. If students have their own thoughts, but are
unwilling to speak about them, they will never further their understanding or
knowledge. They will only know things from their own perspectives and that is
limited. Education is a “multiple way” process. Students cannot be pushed into
one single mold because each student is very different. One student may learn
best by visually seeing something, while others work best by physically working
on something. We need to know our students and find the best ways to develop
their gifts, there are multiple ways. Education is developing the future of
America. Teachers hold the responsibilities of teaching and leading students,
who are the future leaders of our country. We need to raise our students to be
good leaders, decision makers, and morally correct people. There many reasons
that education is good and there are so many things that education does for us.
Overall, education is good, although it is imperfect.
Education
is very important to me. I am a Special Education and Elementary Education
double major. I love working and interacting with people and I plan to become a
teacher of some sort after I graduate. As a future teacher, it has been very
important to me to be able to reflect upon what education is and what it is
not. This has helped me shape what I want my future to look like and what my
purpose is. I find that everything is meaningless unless we do it for the Lord,
so I plan to shape my future accordingly. The purpose of education through my
Christian perspective is to prepare students with good morals, values, and
character. I wish to be a light to my students and provide not only guidance,
but a model that displays hard work, good character, hope, learning, and
values. As I continue to teach, learn, and grow I pray that my philosophy of
education does as well, shaping me into a better teacher each and every day.
In conclusion, the understanding of
what good and bad education is helps to fully understand what education is.
Education is a constant learning process that helps better people, us, work
places, objects, and so much more. It shapes our minds, our ambitions, future,
and our everyday philosophies. I plan to be a teacher that pushes my students
to be the best that they can be. I want to be able to give my students
opportunities to be themselves and to learn from other classmates. We are all
learners and teachers. The question is not what education can do for us, it is
we can do for education.
