Philosophy of Education

Introduction: What is the purpose of K-12 schooling?

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The purpose of K-12 schooling is to create democratic, self-sufficient critical thinkers, capable of generating their own on-going projects in a way which will bring them satisfaction throughout life. For many, these projects may involve further education, paid work, or a career; for others a personal passion, or creative outlet, and various other ways of being-in-the-world. For all this will mean that they are provided with the cognitive tools with which to create the best versions of themselves, form positive relationships with others, and hopefully by extension, lead to the emergence of a better society.

Curricular Choices

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The subjects currently taught in school provide a solid foundation for a very general sort of knowledge which may enable students to get by in life. But getting by seems a very low standard for many of us. After all, do we learn to read so that we can interpret street signs? Do we learn to write so that we can fill out a job application? Are we only subjected to math so that we know how much to spend on groceries? I see no need to replace the Three Rs, but I do see a need for a more thoughtful teaching of them. Reading can enrich your life. A good reader can teach herself anything she desires to learn. Writing is the best tool for thinking outside of your own head, for examining and refining your thoughts. Mathematics reveal the secrets of nature, and the future of human possibilities. But how could students possibly know any of this, caught up as they are in the current curricular grinding mill?

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Students should be able to reflect upon and make connections between each of the subjects they learn throughout the schooling process. Their skills in reading, writing, math, social studies, science, and the arts should be augmented by their skills in recursive critical thinking. Students should be able to criticize themselves and others with a healthy emotional distance (or with authentic emotion, should the situation call for it), and engage in revealing conversation with their peers and their teachers. Students should leave school with a good grasp on general life skills such as budgeting, home and self care, responsible use of 21st century technology (for protection and evaluation), and basic mechanical knowledge (for maintenance and repair purposes). They should also obtain traits of character that will allow them to get along with others and make informed life decisions. After all, school shouldn’t just be about filling young minds with abstracted knowledge. The skills they learn in school should transfer to the larger world. 

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There are many character-building initiatives that focus on traits certain administrators deem desirable. In my own school the focus traits are currently respect, responsibility, empathy, integrity, grit, confidence, mindfulness, and reflection. Direct instruction in these concepts seems to have no effect on students unless they are already being modeled by their parents at home. Students must learn these traits by actively cultivating them. Respect, empathy, and the like could be instilled by having students engage in community clean up, or volunteering at a local retirement home. Definitions alone have no power to create values. In addition, reflection must be taught through active engagement in it. I believe that teaching students to be reflective would mean familiarizing them with cognitive biases (confirmation bias, self-serving bias, attentional bias, etc.), and giving them practice in identifying and disrupting these biases within their own thinking. I see this as a first step not only to building character, but to broader critical thinking skills as well.

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In addition to the above mentioned capabilities, and to assist students in becoming self-sufficient adults, I would shift focus away from procuring a job, and focus more seriously on how best to run a home. According to Resnick (1987) “to be truly skillful outside school, people must develop situation-specific forms of competence” (p. 11). If there is anything students should be competent in by the time they leave school, it’s self-care. Routine building, household chores, cooking, basic appliance repairs, these are all things everyone should know how to do. A single home economics course is not enough to cover all such material. I’d suggest  as well a course in responsible consumption and media navigation, given the world we live in today. Parenting skills would also be a very beneficial area of study for high school students. 

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High school graduates would hopefully develop some tools for directing their life, though the pressure to decide exactly what that will entail need not be so forceful as it is now. It is my hope that we might begin to guide students towards specific problems in the world that draw their interest, that they might be able to take steps towards solving. These problems do not have to be grand societal ills. They could be quite simple. The point is to guide the student towards a purpose of their own choosing, and to give them some of the tools which will help them choose.

Learning and Teaching

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None of these curricular choices matter if teachers do not consider the ways in which students learn best. A teacher should employ proven pedagogical strategies during instruction. Developmental psychology and the science of learning can be of great assistance here.

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First of all, we must be cognizant of student schemas. A schema is a framework of understanding. Student schemas influence what they pay attention to, impact how quickly they learn, help them simplify the world, allow them to think quickly, and change how they interpret incoming information. But they can also be incredibly difficult to change (Cherry, 2019). Being aware of what our students know and do not is important for keeping track of their learning, and for building on previous knowledge. We can take advantage of what exists within a student’s schema even as we add to and modify it. Accessing prior knowledge is key to taking on new material, and identifying misconceptions plays an essential role in the learning process. In one sense, the schema is the thing that we are acting on most as teachers.

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There are many types of schemas which may require our attention. Object schemas focus on what things are and how they work; person schemas focus on individuals; social schemas pertain to knowledge about how people behave in social situations; self schemas are all about self-knowledge; event schemas focus on proper behavior given the context of a particular event. As teachers our job is to help students assimilate new knowledge into these existing schemas, and also to assist them in the process of accommodation - altering existing schemas or even erecting new ones altogether (Cherry, 2019). 

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In order to act upon these schemas effectively, it may be helpful to keep in mind the work of psychologist Lev Vygotsky. Of particular use is Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development. The ZPD is the area of learning in which the material is not entirely beyond the learner’s ability, but cannot be learned independently. In other words, it is a field of unexplored knowledge which can be learned with the assistance of a More Knowledgeable Other (Mcleod, 2018). As teachers, we are most often the MKO, but keeping in mind theories of situated cognition and concerns about educational equity, we may want to provide opportunities for our students to be as well. 

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According to Putnam and Borko, “How a person learns a particular set of knowledge and skills, and the situation in which a person learns, become a fundamental part of what is learned. Further, whereas traditional cognitive perspectives focus on the individual as the basic unit of analysis, situative perspectives focus on interactive systems that include individuals as participants, interacting with each other as well as materials and representational systems” (2000, p. 4). This view is known as situated cognition. Situated cognition calls into question the efficacy of school-based learning. School gives students broad skills that we assume will transfer to specific situations in the larger world. But evidence for this transfer is slim. What situated cognition theories tell us is that in order to make instruction authentic, we must teach concepts in the way they are actually used outside of school, rather than as abstractions. This is why our current character trait curriculum doesn’t work. If we want to foster virtuous behavior, we need students out there committing virtuous acts. They will not learn the behavior by listening to us simply tell them about it. But the question of transfer applies across the board. For every lesson we must ask ourselves, how does this apply to the world outside of school?

Educational Equity

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William E. Doll, Jr. (1993) in his book A Post-Modern Perspective on Curriculum suggests what he calls The Four Rs: richness, recursion, relations, and rigor. To put it briefly, our curriculum should be full of rich content, which would allow students to reflect upon their own learning, while making connections between subjects in a consistent, thoughtful manner. This might include an integration with greater cultural content, a kind which deals with the origins, functions, and dysfunctions of our democracy. We should teach the values, accomplishments, and atrocities of our own culture, and introduce students to other cultures so that they might see ours from new perspectives. In this way we could create truly democratic critical thinkers. Such issues may be controversial, especially at the elementary level, but they can be taught responsibly and effectively if we follow the guidelines suggested by William Kreidler (1990): 

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1. Make your classroom a safe place in which to ask questions and discuss ideas.

2. Listen to the concerns students have.

3. Correct misinformation.

4. Reassure children.

5. Help them find answers to their questions.

6. Don’t burden them with adult concerns.

7. Emphasize that conflicts are opportunities.

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In addition, we should teach all that which Michael Oakeshott refers to as a student’s “inheritance.” He says, “What every man is born an heir to is an inheritance of human achievements; an inheritance of feelings, emotions, images, visions, thoughts, beliefs, ideas, understandings, intellectual and practical enterprises, languages, relationships, organizations, canons and maxims of conduct, procedures, rituals, skills, works of art, books, musical compositions, tools, artifacts and utensils…” (2001). All of these things will lead to the greater development of a student’s personal powers, and expansion of their schemas. Those with reservations regarding cultural transmission may find it useful to contrast inheritance with tradition. When we inherit something, we have a choice as to whether or not we wish to keep it. Tradition, on the other hand, is something we are usually expected to adopt regardless of our evaluations.

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It is important to familiarize students with the dominant culture, in order that they might use to their advantage what they find beneficial, dispense with what they don’t, and change what they feel they must. I recently heard a story about the great poet Langston Hughes, who while working on a ship to Africa, carried along with him the great works of the western canon. Not long into his journey he thought to himself, “what am I doing?” He wanted to familiarize himself with a different culture, one that he felt was closer to his African American roots. This was the core purpose of his journey. So he tossed it all overboard, with the exception of Walt Whitman. Our students are going to want to throw some things overboard, maybe even everything, and that’s fine. But if they connect with anything on the level which Hughes connected with Whitman, we won’t want to stand in their way. Imagine taking it further. Imagine them setting the course of the ship for themselves. They’d need to know where they’re leaving from, to know the direction they’re heading.

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Giving students this power will require us to go beyond today’s milktoast multicultural practices. As Sonia M. Nieto (2003) says in the article Profoundly Multicultural Questions, “multicultural education needs, in short, to be about much more than ethnic tidbits and cultural sensitivity” (p. 6). Of course, when incorporating texts and ideas from around the world, or from marginalized groups within our own society, decisions about what to include will have to be made, and almost by definition, a new null curriculum will take shape. It is inherent in the process of choosing that you are also simultaneously not choosing the alternative. But you cannot get around the decision. Something must be taught. The important thing is that whatever is included be supplemented with instruction on critical analysis, so that students may effectively reflect on the content, and on their own interpretations of it. If we are to empower those students which multicultural education is meant to empower, we need to do as Gloria Ladson-Billings (2006) suggests: stop focusing on short-term solutions, set our sights on long-term goals, and expect that all of our students will develop valuable higher-order skills.

Conclusion

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Schooling should foster the kinds of character traits, skills, practical and cultural knowledge that will allow students to lead harmonious, thoughtful lives. Students should know how to get along with others, and reflect on their behaviors and biases. This is essential to truly democratic thinking. Making students aware of common biases would be a big step towards allowing them to evaluate their own actions, would help them in their relationships with others, and hopefully lead to a more equitable society. These methods, as a means of engendering democratic values and productive habits of thought, would be of great benefit to everyone.

References

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Borko, H., & Putnam, R.T. (2000). What Do New Views of Knowledge and Thinking Have to 

Say About Research on Teacher Learning? Educational Researcher, 29(1), 4–15.

Cherry, K. (2019, June 26). The Role of a Schema in Psychology. Retrieved from 

https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-schema-2795873.

Doll, W. E. (1993). A post-modern perspective on curriculum. New York, NY: Teachers 

College Press.

Kreidler, William J. (1990). Elementary perspectives: teaching concepts of peace and conflict. 

Cambridge: Educators for Social Responsibility.

Ladson-Billings, G. (2006). From the achievement gap to the education debt: understanding 

McLeod, S. A. (2018, Aug 05). Lev Vygotsky. Retrieved from 

https://www.simplypsychology.org/vygotsky.html. 

Niet, S. M. (2003). Profoundly multicultural questions. Educational Leadership, 60(4), 6-10.

Oakeshott, M. J. (2001). The voice of liberal learning. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund.

Resnick, L.B. (1987). The 1987 Presidential Address: Learning in School and out. Educational 

Researcher, 16(9), 13-20.