Hello All!
I know it has been very long since I have posted, I really am terrible at this whole blogging thing, but it will get better! Today my post is about my education class. It is called the History and Philosophy of Education. In this class we have developed our own metaphor of teaching. It is now time for me to make that metaphor public. It consists of doctrines, principles, and tools for teaching. The object that I chose to "house" those three things is a tree. The roots of the tree are the doctrine. They are the basic and most important things that hold everything else in place, next is the trunk and branches which are the principles. They support and lead to the doctrines. Lastly, the tools are the leaves and fruit which are the desired results. I can't take credit for coming up with this awesome idea. My teacher developed the tree metaphor. We could come up with a different one if we wanted, or use the tree. I really liked how the tree worked for the pattern of doctrine, principle, tool, so I adopted it for my own metaphor.
The following are some doctrines, principles, and tools that I have come up with from my readings.
Education
(Rousseau says, “…all that we need when we come to man’s estate, is the gift of
education.”)
a.
A father’s duty is to support and educate his
own children. (Rousseau: A man owes men to humanity and citizens to the state.)
i.
Tool: Teach them to talk slowly with a few
distinctly spoken, repeated words.
b.
Children are the future. (Beecher: “…unless our
children are trained to intelligence and virtue, the nation is ruined…”)
Inspiration
a.
Discovery (Wolk: Help them learn and understand
things on their own.)
i.
Tool: Do hands on activities that make them be
involved and discover how things work on their own
Equality
a.
Biases based on appearance. (Perry: everyone has
these biases. As teachers biases should not be there.)
i.
Tool: students learn by example. If you want to
teach equality, then treat all students the same no matter what they look like
or what their social standing is.
True
Learning
a.
Problem-posing (Freire: This method of teaching
encourages the students to think critically, to gain a deeper and better
understanding, and to really know what they have learned and not just have
facts memorized.)
i.
Tool: A way to teach this way is to not give
them worksheets, but to ask questions that will make them think, figure it out
on their own, and even give them more questions to ask. This could be done with
some sort of research project or even just a class discussion.
b.
Skills vs. Knowledge (Perry: A summary of a book
rather than an analysis primarily develops their typing skills rather than
their analytical thoughts.)
i.
Tool: Give assignments where they have to think
for themselves and not just regurgitate what someone else has said. Using one
of Perry’s examples, have them turn in an analysis of the book rather than a
summary. Also in an analysis don’t grade too harshly, they all think
differently and will come up with different ideas. I don’t think they should
all be exactly the same.
Experience
a.
Knowledge (Addams: She says that schools, “rest
upon the assumption that the ordinary experience of life is worth little…” but
this is not true.
i.
Tool: Have students keep a journal in which they
write about things that have happened to them and what they learned from those
times.
Nature
a.
Develop the inner capacity of the child, then to
produce isolated results by my actions. (Pestalozzi: His goal is to help them
develop who they are and learn in the way that works best for them rather than
pushing them to understand and them not ever fully understanding.)
i.
Tool: Taking the child back to the beginning
points of human knowledge and patiently working on those until the child
understands.
