Apart from my own formal schooling I have had
the privilege of being in the education sector for almost 50 years. Today, as I
write seated at my desk the busy sounds of education echo down the passages of
the school where I continue to enjoy my task in attempting to follow in the
footsteps of the greatest teacher the world has ever known: "They
were astonished at His teaching, for He taught them as one having authority…"
Mark 1:22.
The life, profound teachings, and example of
Jesus Christ have influenced the whole development of education worldwide and
certainly mine.
As I reflect on my philosophy of education per
se forgive me if I do not refer to the plethora of men and women who have waxed
lyrical on what education is all about. Allow me though to simply state that
whether Plato, or Aristotle, Hegel, Kant, Scheffler or Russel or the many that
have had bearing on education generally, they too exist within me and both
sharpened the saw of my own understandings and mellowed the edges of my
youthful endeavours.
The
educational word for 'school' comes from the Greek word 'scholē' (or schola), which means "leisure."[1] Leisure for me implies enjoyment, fun and within this context
much of my own philosophy has developed. It truly frustrates and angers me when
I see a teacher leaning on a podium and droning on and on reading from a
textbook with little or no explanation and the young people before him or her
sit in silence perhaps struggling to remain focused and awake. And if this is
repeated by successive teachers it is no wonder that many of these young people
become disillusioned by the idea of school. And certainly, the example I have
given does not fit into an acceptable picture of the good teacher. Whilst I
today no longer teach nearly as much as I used to as my role is more
administrative and I spend a great deal of time writing, the words of an
English Professor echo frequently: When asked by a group of teachers as to how
he had managed to write numerous books on education his philosophical response
was: “Your job is far more difficult than mine. I write words on paper, and
they stay there. I do not have to deal with them running up and down the
corridors.”
What
though is education for? Do we furiously have to unpack world philosophies,
delve into reconstruction and deconstruction, essentialism or any other “ism”
before we understand the said philosophy?
I
believe that it is all and more than the aforesaid. I do not mean that one’s
youth has to be spent on hours reading and researching but rather as Adam
Zagajewski has quoted:
“Read for yourselves, read for the sake of your
inspiration, for the sweet turmoil in your lovely head. But also read against
yourselves, read for questioning and impotence, for despair and erudition, read
the dry sardonic remarks of cynical philosophers like Cioran or even Carl
Schmitt, read newspapers, read those who despise, dismiss or simply ignore
poetry and try to understand why they do it. Read your enemies, read those who
reinforce your sense of what's evolving in poetry, and also read those whose darkness
or malice or madness or greatness you can't understand because only in this way
will you grow, outlive yourself, and become what you are.”[2]
“Who I am and what I am is what I have been
becoming and will still be” – This is my
present Facebook status or profile and echoes part of my philosophy of life and
education philosophy as they are interconnected/twins born of one foetus!
What this means is that one never stops
learning, growing and developing. This is what I teach my young students. Or
more correctly how I educate them, for in education one has the implication of
something that they take with them into adulthood and which they can then grow
from. Teaching is something one does to impart a skill. One can teach a
mathematical skill or how to ride a bicycle, and which is part and parcel of
the teaching conundrum, but educating enables the recipient to educate
her/himself thereafter.
Ben Franklin once said, “If a man empties his
purse into his head, no one can take it from him. An investment in
knowledge always pays the highest return.”
A huge
part of education has always been to impart knowledge. Regrettably it is only
in recent times that the world has begun to realise (with the advent of access
to information via the digital medium) that knowledge is less important than
understanding how to use the knowledge and where to access it. The tools to the
building rather than the building itself is the challenge in the 21st
Century.
In essence while it was once (not so many years ago), possible
to learn all that there was to learn in terms of information, it is no longer
possible to do so.
(Data is growing faster than ever before and by
the year 2020, about 1.7 megabytes of new information will be created
every second for every human being on the planet. - 44 trillion
gigabytes) [3]
One wonders how Plato’s students would react if
they knew then when they sat at his feet on the Praesidium steps, what we know
now and what we have access to in terms of instant knowledge/information
gratification.
The challenge inherent in Education Philosophy
remains as it was though as much now as it was then and I believe it is even
more crucial now to understand how we can educate to improve the human
condition. Here I include all the imponderables that exist as we wrestle with a
pandemic across the globe and how we deal with it. The future is as exciting as
it is daunting.
In closing, some words from Milton and Kipling,
both of whom are well worth meditating on:
The Purpose of Education:
The end of learning is to repair
The ruin of our first parents
By regaining to know God aright
And out of that knowledge,
To love Him,
To imitate Him
To be like Him- John Milton (English Poet : 9 December 1608 – 8 November
1674)
IF
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on
you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting
too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your
aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the
same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are
gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance
run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
Rudyard Kipling- 30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936,
Novelist/Poet/Journalist.
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