My philosophy of education

Philosophy of Education

I want to be a teacher because my passion is discovering truth and sharing it. I believe that God designed the mind to be nourished by truth and knowledge just as he designed the body to be nourished by food and water. I believe that the majority of children in America are mentally malnourished due to the educational diet given them. They are malnourished because the underlying educational philosophy is flawed. This philosophy holds that “Education = workplace applicability,” and that the ultimate goal of education is enabling “companies to reach their zenith in competitiveness” by utilizing “skilled people who have the magical human touch to reach into the souls of customers in order to ensure loyalty.” This approach is hailed as “practical education.” (Alternate Scheduling, 2007, p. 2).

In contrast, I believe that education is authentic exposure to truth. Thus, I believe that my role as a teacher is to be a facilitator, a mentor, a window to truth; I would be getting myself out of the way to allow truth to shape the hearts and minds of students in a way that will naturally produce human beings that breathe humanity into the “real world” wherever they happen to be – whether inside a classroom, inside a cubicle, behind a desk, stirring soup on a stove, planting crops, collecting garbage, or at the head of a conference table – whether they are successful in terms of accumulation of money and material possessions in the “practical” “real world”, or not. Although practicality is an important aspect of education, I believe that it is “practical” only when it prepares, encourages, and facilitates the practice of being human. Such an approach strips modern education of its ulterior corporate motive and plants it firmly in a world more real than can be imagined by those motivated by power and money. In fact, knowing the truth sets one free from being another exploitable, expendable cog in the machine.