My school

I am not sure about the practicality of my school, but at this point perhaps that is not the point.  When I think of what my ideal school would be like, I am reminded of medieval European curricula a la Boethius; basically it consisted of a "liberal education".  A liberal education consisted of either the quadrivium which centered on arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music, or the trivium which consisted of grammar, rhetoric, and logic.  I think my model would work best in a middle school context because of its three grade levels.  Instead of  6th, 7th, and 8th being used to denote the grade level, each level would be known as history, philosophy, and social awareness.  Within each level there would be a pretty standard array of subjects- math, science, language arts, etc.  The main impetus driving this new design would be that in all subject areas of the history level or grade, history would be highlighted.  For example, maybe a science class would focus on the history of science and its progression.  In math, problems and equations will be sought after in a fashion that highlights specific historical events, perhaps learning how math was done in the Roman Empire, or the Enlightenment for instance.  Other emerging educational tools are to be welcomed- such as was seen in the lesson surrounding the Brooklyn Bridge.  The same would apply at the philosophy level.  Here a deeper understanding of each subject would be uncovered- questions will be raised and studied about the nature of each subject; perhaps math class would use logic and syllogisms to study equations.  The social awareness level would follow the same format with the emphasis focusing on things like social justice, the "politics of food"- basically uncovering social hegemony, privilege, and things that are hidden from the citizenry so as to bolster the power of one group over another.  Also, taking an idea I heard from Devon in class, each level would utilize "community projects."  The one Devon told me about centered around a garden that each class would help grow, foster, and cultivate.  In addition to the basic tending of the garden, the garden would be used in science and math classes, for instance, as a practical means to learning these subjects; graphing growth, learning about how photosynthesis works, etc.  This school would not be considered college preparatory, but would be curricula driven.  The philosophy behind this is that great curricula which inspires and captivates students would give them the tools necessary, not only to be great independent citizens, but also to go to college if that is something they desired- personal responsibility, choice, and passion for life and learning will have to be key themes throughout all levels.

My dying bias

My bias is quite extensive in my personal history, and has caused me to have some hard personal reflections recently.  I like to think that I have made some healthy progress as I sift through these dissonances.  It has a lot to do with what we have been discussing in class, and also with that struggle I've been having throughout my phlogg thread.  Basically, it revolves around the question of sameness- are we all the same?  It is impossible to doubt this when we look at the American creed of "all men are created equal."  At the same time however, those of us who are in a classroom/school environment realize that there are some students who show more talent in one area or opposed to his fellow students.  For example is a gifted student the same as a student who struggles and/or is not interested in learning, or is a student that comes from a rich family the same as a student that comes from a poor family- if only by virtue of differences in ability/interest, or economics?  Obviously, they are not the same in their contextual relationships.  Does this difference require different approaches?  Conventional thought, ironically is yes- look at special ed/regular ed/gifted classes.  Do understandings about these students require different existential valuations?  Not necessarily if we acknowledge that each student is equal with respect to his right to attain his dreams, have a life of his choice, have equal access to all that life can offer.  If this is the criteria, then sameness is relatively easy to understand; this is something which was not easy for me to understand.  By strict virtue of becoming a teacher, a helping professional, I found it necessary to modify my notions and implications of sameness- not so much because I had to (I did have to), but because in order to be a great teacher, it requires as much compassion and deep understanding as it does knowledge and passion.  This position is simply inconsistent with any valuations or implications which stem from notions of any substantial, essential differences in each of us as we move through this fog known as the human condition.

Teacher of the year

Local Teacher Wins Nationally
by Tom Hunterson
Albuquerque Journal
September 4, 2017

"It was a proud day for Albuquerque Public Schools," says veteran Superintendent Winston Brooks, "when Luke Rudys accepted his award for National Teacher of the year.  It brought a culmination to, not only Luke's hard work, but also for APS since the abolishment of school boards."  Mr. Rudys started his pedagogical career at Dennis Chavez Elementary working in the special education program.  "I wasn't sure at first what I was getting into, but after the first day in the classroom, I knew my life would never be the same," remembers Mr. Rudys.  We caught up with one of Mr. Rudys' ex-students, Frederich Matthews, on the UNM campus; we asked him if he thought Mr. Rudys was a good teacher.  "Absolutely, I mean back in those days I suffered from sever emotional disturbance, and other sever behavioral disorders; I had no practical or social skills.  Now, I'm at UNM with a full scholarship studying philosophy and history- I just made the Dean's list."  Parents as well have fond remembrances, "He just really seemed to care.  I'll admit, at times I wasn't the most easy to work with parent, and at those times I think he found it necessary to not pull any punches.  He, simply put, was only interested in the well being of the students," says parent Monique Jones.  "I remember those Friday afternoons, where the shadows creeped long in the deserted parking lot- there we'd be, in my office discussing psychology or philosophy- basically trying to crack each case.  We had fun with it, which perhaps is why Luke was always so dedicated," says long time friend, ex-coworker, now administrator Hansel Christensen.  We asked him where to go from here, to which he replied, "No where and everywhere.  This doesn't change a thing for me, I going right back into the classroom."

The historical context of now

I think my ideas about the purposes of education are becoming a bit more clear.  I had a mini-epiphany this week in class during the presentation on the history of education.  When our republic was new, it seems highly necessary to teach the principles of republicanism and also of our republic in specific if our new government was to survive.  Today, it seems less crucial to teach these principles, perhaps these ideas have become a part of the popular, internalized, instinctualized consciousness.  This is not to say that knowing the Constitution is not important, it is, but this is an aspect of maintaining our republic which is different from the education which was necessary when America was new to the world.  My point is, perhaps the social end of education changes with time and in relation to a number of issues relevant to the context of today.  This leads nicely into the question of what is my purpose in being a teacher, today?

Aside from the creative ways to transmit vital knowledge and the quest to expand consciousness, I now see it as important to bring up issues that seem crucial to the attainment of a healthy society.  For example, it might seem important to have a unit on the "politics of food."  Not so much to take a stake in this debate, but to bring the issues into the light and allow the students to begin a thought process that will help them grow.

I think this practice will also inform my general educational ideas, namely, that it is not so much the object of knowledge that is important, but the ability to think critically, philosophically, and dynamically about a piece of knowledge or an issue, so as to understanding it completely and even instinctually.

The lecture on Tuesday kinda bummed me out, sent me reeling into an air of dissonance, but now I think I see the importance of the fragility of the line we walk as teachers.  The line between doing good and doing bad.  This is why it is so important to be open to painful dissonance, and the otherwise slippery slope of believing we know we understand completely things like the world, society, what's good or what's bad, or even our role as teachers.  My interpretation of something Jesse once said is this: knowing or believing, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what progress is can be a dangerous thing, but I'm probably wrong.

The perpetual debate

Even before I have found any blogs to post and share, I know what I will be searching for.  Since class started, I've found myself increasingly obsessed and monomaniac with regard to the relationship between school/education and society.  Constantly vacillating and torn to the very fibers of my pedagogical being.  Therefore, I've determined to seek out further perspectives on this issue in hopes of easing this turbulent ignorance. Specifically, I would like to find a blog that represents both sides of this issue.

Very quickly, this turned into a mini research project. The first blog I came across, http://langwitches.org/blog/2011/09/03/philosophy-of-education/, characterized the relationship between school/education and society in the manner typical of the discourse of today, namely education in this country is lacking, and we need to revamp the process of education in order to better serve our society, "The possibilities that are opening up through skills and emerging “new” literacies, often labeled 21st century, will allow us to see completely different patterns of studying, researching, connecting, creating and ultimately learning. These skills and literacies are vital in order for our students to succeed in a flattened world," says blogger Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano.


 On the other side of this issue, I found this blog: http://www.guardian.co.uk/teacher-network/2012/jan/04/philosophy-of-education.  This blogger argues that education is its own reward, and that a rich and full education leads to a more actualized and fulfilled existence, "Surely pupils should learn about Shakespeare, Darwin and personal financial management as ends in themselves to enrich their own lives. To paraphrase Matthew Arnold, young people deserve this "inheritance" as a right and treasure as its own gift – to fill schools with the sweetness and light of academic learning," says Sean Reid.

This exercise has taught me a few things.  Firstly, this debate is on going, and probably always will be- which in itself is a good thing, a mechanism for continual refreshment and invigoration of our profession.  Secondly, perhaps it has caused me to reevaluate my opinions based on new ideas and perspectives, which is exactly what I set out to do.  I now feel confident that there is some social end to education, inextricably, based in the fact that if we desire that education can even be possible in the future we need to ensure that society in some or whatever form self- perpetuates.  For me though, this is always a secondary aim; the purpose of life serves nothing other than life itself.  Consider this analogy, which I feel is exactly apt:  a student should serve the endeavor to attain good grades exactly as education should serve society.  A student should reap in the "sweetness and light of academic learning" in manners that are ends in themselves.

Evolving Education

I'm most likely incorrect in my definition, but I will start my philosophy of education as loftily as possibly and come down to meet the rigors of reality as I become more engrossed in my study. Therefore, I find education to be, primarily, an abstract endeavor. Meaning there is no end result, per se. Rather, education is the intellectual institution where consciousnesses are expanded, where students begin to escape their everyday experiences to see and think things that are not found in their dry day-to-day realities. It’s a process that seeks to expand and refine modes of thought and human existential perception. As such, education is rife with the machination of a spiritual and intellectual romanticism. Therefore, education's enterprise can be condensed to a methodology, which serves to instill interest and passion in the student.  This installation is the crux of education and the mechanism with which all other learning with take place.  It is comparable, if only in pragmatics, to Dewey’s approach when he asserts that learning can only take place if it is relevant to a student’s “interests and powers” via the immediate social context; a student will want to learn to sew because of the direct social implications.  In this I see Kohn’s warning about how education should not be directed by any other reward, other than the fruits of education itself; the reward here being social grace as opposed to the joy of sewing.  Going back to my model, if the installation of interest and passion is a success then, for example, social graces will follow.  For example, using sewing as our education analogy, once a student become so enamored with all things sewing, then not only will he possibly be more skilled than a student educated for a social end, but he will be more socially “graceful”.  This seems to make sense when we consider various passionate people in history and in our lives.  The passionate seem to be the most interested and skilled, and most possessing of broad and dynamic bodies of knowledge and culture.  This as opposed to those who are educated for a specific vocation, who when we interact with them seem somewhat angry and limited.

The social end of education

“We don’t need no education...” sang Pink Floyd.  Knowing what I know about the band and their beliefs, this quote cannot be taken at face value, i.e. that education, per se, is bad or undesirable.  Perhaps the quote begs the question: what is education?  Rather, I think the more apt question is: what is not education? 

John Dewey’s pragmatic pedagogy realizes that, first and foremost, students cannot escape the “social consciousness of the race.”  For Dewey, it seems like the process of education must conform to this context in order to prove fruitful; this is how the child learns to mold language out of babbling.  I think this circumstance leads Dewey away from what education could be, optimally.  Dewey uses society as the context in which students’ “interests and powers” are interpreted and understood. He is therefore inextricably tying the pragmatic process of education to the necessarily pragmatic end of education, i.e. what the student becomes.  In effect, this turns the student into a piece of a whole, a dependent, or to put it in more vulgar terms, a mere cog; passive, dutiful, obedient.  There seems to be two things wrong with this result.

First, it appears that Dewey’s pragmatism is rooted in the instinctual development needed for species wide growth and self-perpetuation.  Just because the transmission of, say hunting techniques or language development are facilitated in a social context does not necessarily imply that knowledge of mathematics will thus also require a social context.  Put another way, the context in which some aspect of consciousness develop, is not necessarily the same context in which other aspects will; how one learns to speak and feel emotion is vastly different than how one learns to abstract and philosophize.  Thus, I feel Dewey’s pragmatism has led him to the logical fallacy of composition, i.e. that something true of a part of the whole is true for the whole part.

Secondly, an entire society constituted of these types of former students would not be able to sustain itself just due to the fact that a society needs to be dynamic and thus made up of actors and movers; therefore the pragmatic end of Dewey’s students would create an unpragmatic society- an illogical result.  Furthermore, Dewey leaves no growth for personal ingenuity or revolutionary advancements because, for Dewey, the context is society as it is now.  Thus, we return to the Pink Floyd quote.  Maybe we don’t need the education which is geared at precise socialization; that which hinders dreaming and unfettered development and growth, not only because the process is unnecessary, but because its result is undesirable.  To contextualize education into the guise of Dewey’s pragmatism is to redirect thought, and as such, “…we don’t need no thought control.”