Voices of Educational Pioneers

Throughout reading this packet, I found that there was almost no philosopher that I aligned with completley, but I found a great number of these "pioneers" that I agreed with in some small way. Mostly I found that I agreed with those that had held the learner to be an individual. Piaget in particualar recognized this and understood that all students are in different developmental stages. While there are far fewer stages during secondary education, students will always be learning at different rates. Making sure that the teahcer is there in order to facilitate the learning is key. Ralph Tyler and John Dewey had similar views on education with which I highly agree. Tyler believed that the process of education had a major goal to change the way the student thinks, feels, and acts. As for this, I mostly agree that as a teacher I want to show my students that there are other ways of thinking and believing. I also want to strive to change their feelings where they have been influenced environmentally by parents and friends. I feelt aht in order to make our students ready for the "real world" we must prepare then in every single way for what they will be faced with and if they are toting around their parents viewpoints without reasonably considering another. Dewey similarly believed that we must focus on the children and the "evolving society". Educators must look to the society that is changing around them and make sure that they are helping to foster a generation that wants to do better than the one that came before. If we allow for cookie cutter human beings to be made we will enter into a cycle that will never be broken. Looking back to Jesus, had some fantastic views on education. Even though he came before a public system, he has very modern views. He uses different methods in order to rach student and motivate them. I feel that this is important becuase when you vary your methods students will be unable to check out and will be motivated to stay awake and see what comes next. My favorite quote in this whole packet came from the section on Augustine. "Having a student memorize and recite someone else's text is not teaching". I completely agree with this. Students can learn FROM what we aske them to read, but asking them to regurgitate someone else's work does nothing for us or them. We must look into what we are asking of our students and aske ourselves if it is valuable for them. School is not a Broadway musical, therefore we should not be asking our students to memorize lines.