Metaphor

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.