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Jean-Jacques Rousseau philosophy essay
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau philosophy essay
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Ever since I can remember, I have always had an idea of what I believed made a good teacher. I made judgements on my teachers and criticized their teaching styles. While I never made these judgements or critiques consciously, my mind did note them. I never really thought about these secret judgements I have made until this semester course when we studied about different philosophies in education. I truly didn’t know what my own philosphy was until I was writing my first paper in the class. I quickly found that my beliefs coincided with that of the philosophers I compared. Haim Ginott believed strongly in the teacher-student relationship and Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed strongly in learning through experience. I agree with both of these thinkers.
Most students learn by experiencing things for themselves. Rousseau would disagree with me about the teacher-student relationship, but he would agree with me about students learning by doing and making mistakes. For example, Rousseau (1993) writes in his book Emile, “If he goes wrong let him alone, do not correct his mistakes; hold your tongue till he finds them out for himself and corrects them, or at most arrange something, as opportunity offers, which may show him his mistakes” (p. 160). If a student does not experience things and sometimes make mistakes, then he will never be able to function as an independent person. Mrs. Drigger would often uses centers as a form of letting us learn. These centers focused mainly on the student using reasoning in order to learn the material and perform hands-on tasks. If we made a mistake, we were expected to fix it. If it was beyond our knowledge to fix the mistake, she would assist us. Mrs. Driggers promoted independence, but was still very emotionally close with her students. She was one of the few teachers who could balance these two contradicting expectations that make a good
Many people would go as far as to say that a professor’s job is to deliver knowledge to students, and a student’s job is to absorb it, without reservation. Pirsig emphasizes how this relationship can fail through his description of Phaedrus’ time in the interdisciplinary Ph.D. program at the University of Chicago. One student in Phaedrus’ philosophy class questions Aristotle’s views of rhetoric stating that within the text, “‘There are some dubious statements,’” and the professor responds, “‘We are not here to learn what you think…We are here to learn what Aristotle thinks,’” (Pirsig 371). Basically, Pirsig is saying that there is a problem with the conventional professor-student relationship. This is because when a professor begins to feel vulnerable, like in the situation above, the professor transforms into a sovereign leader. When students live under an oppressive regime in the classroom they find themselves incapable to learn on their own terms. I agree that this relationship does need to change, a point that needs emphasizing since so many believe that if the system has operated this long, it can continue to work. I think Phaedrus is mistaken because he overlooks the real reason why the student is struggling with the professor. The issue that this lone student and Phaedrus both experience is that they are confronting the knowledge that the Professor has avowed individually. Instead, to gain more use out of the knowledge John Henry Newman would argue that these students should work with others. This will enable them to, “to adjust together the claims and relations of their subjects of investigation,” (Newman 77). Newman would surely extend this same argument that collaboration must take place between opinions on a certain subject matter, such as Aristotle. The adjustment of claims, which Newman discusses, improves education for the student. Their
We both reached the same conclusion; as shown by Siddhartha when he says that “there is one thing that this clear, worthy instruction does not contain; it does not contain the secret of what the Illustrious One himself experienced” (Hesse 27), basically saying no mentor is better than experience. I had many different teachers and, just like Siddhartha, reached the conclusion that there could only be so much teachers can teach you; you must experience to best learn. Although Siddhartha had to actually learn from experience, I mostly used it to help study material learned from teachers, although I do hope to one day learn purely from my
Freier stated that the educator was taking away the power of the student to think on their own which turned them into “receptacles”. Freier wrote, “Narration (with the teacher as narrator) leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated account. Worse yet, it turns them into "containers," into "receptacles" to be "filled" by the teachers. The more completely she fills the receptacles, the better teacher she is. The more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are (Freier 216). It seems like these great authors such as Walker Percy and Paulo Freier criticize the role educators play in the education system and urge students to break free the conformity of the way subjects are taught in school and truly experience them through our own dialectical
When I first decided to be a teacher I had many thoughts and opinions about teaching and education. Some of my thoughts and opinions have stayed them same; however, many have changed from the discussions and readings in LL ED 411 and 480. When I first decided that I wanted to be a teacher I thought that most students learned in the same manner. I also thought that the teacher should have power over the classroom. Likewise, I thought that technology should not be used in the classroom--except to type papers. I now know that there is not much truth to my ideas and thoughts because my thoughts were shaped only from my experiences. My experiences are narrow because they were shaped from the problems in schools and the old ideas that teachers still have. Now that I have learned the other sides to these problems I know that my thoughts about teaching and education are not fully developed.
One teacher may adopt the banking concept while the other may utilize the problem-posing concept. However, while problem-posing education generates creativity by giving students the ability to communicate, banking education does not. Freire asserts that in the “banking” concept of education, “the teacher chooses the program content, and the students (who were not consulted) adapt to it” (217). Freire indicates that students, who are victims of banking education, have no control over how an instructor chooses to teach. Therefore, creativity is destroyed by the fact that it was not even permitted in the first place. Students are not able to express their opinions or solve problems using their own methods because in order to pass the class, students not only need to adapt to the teaching style of their professors but think like them too. Freire’s quote relates to experiences I have had with “banking” teachers throughout my twelve years of formal education. Those teachers only taught using textbooks, therefore, they insisted that the textbook was always right. If I were to solve a math problem using a technique different from the book, then I would not get points for the problem even though my answer was right. And if I were to interpret an open-ended essay different from how my teacher would then my interpretations would be wrong. By doing this, my teachers destroyed my creativity. I was prohibited from my own thoughts and penalized if I expressed them. The only alternative for me was to become a “robot” that followed the orders of authorities, but being a “robot” was not something I was ashamed of. In fact, my role as a “robot” led me to better understand the “drama of Education” in which teachers attempt to “regulate the way the world ‘enters into’ the students”. I was able to figure out that my own teachers had tried to handle the way the world “entered into me” by
Although I know I want to teach there is more to the teaching profession than that. First, I have to learn the curriculum and then how to bring that material across to the students. The actual learning process comes naturally for me, but I had to stop and think about how I would bring it across once I become a teacher. This involves many aspects of my life and what I feel is important. I feel ones teaching philosophy pulls from every portion of an individuals belief system. These can include your moral and ethical beliefs, your personality, and also what you, as a teacher, feel is important for the students to learn. To me this seems to be a very big responsibility, so when I started considering my teaching philosophy, I did not take the task lightly. It seems to me that there is a very thin line between fulfilling your own expectations as a teacher, and giving the children what they need and even what they want.
I believe that teaching and learning is both a science and an art, which requires the implementation of already determined rules. I see learning as the result of internal forces within the person student. I know that children differ in the way they learn and grow but I also know that all children can learn. Students’ increased understanding of their own experience is a legitimate form of knowledge. I will present my students with opportunities to develop the ability to meet personal knowledge.
Upon being faced with the task of writing my philosophy of teaching, I made many attempts to narrow the basis for my philosophy down to one or two simple ideas. However, I quickly came to the realization that my personal teaching philosophy stems from many other ideas, philosophies, and personal experiences. I then concentrated my efforts on finding the strongest points of my personal beliefs about teaching and what I have learned this semester, and came up with the following.
I know that as I grow and learn as a teacher my theory on education will change and grow with me. I know that the best thing that I can bring to the table when it comes to being a teacher is the willingness to learn along with my students on what works best for us in our classroom, what is important to us when it comes to learning, and to change what needs to be change in order to have a positive learning environment for my student. The most important thing as a teacher I will bring with me into my classroom is the unwavering desire to help to guide, shape, and above all foster a love of learning in my
Among many teaching styles and learning theories, there is one that is becoming more popular, the constructivist theory. The constructivist theory focuses on the way a person learns, a constructivist believes that the person will learn better when he/she is actively engaged. The person acts or views objects and events in their environment, in the process, this person then understands and learns from the object or events(P. Johnson, 2004). When we encounter a certain experience in our life, we think back to other things that have occurred in our life and use that to tackle this experience. In a lot of cases, we are creators of our own knowledge. In a classroom, the constructivist theory encourages more hands-on assignments or real-world situations, such as, experiments in science and math real-world problem solving. A constructivist teacher constantly checks up on the student, asking them to reflect what they are learning from this activity. The teacher should be keeping track on how they approached similar situations and help them build on that. The students can actually learning how to learn in a well-planned classroom. Many people look at this learning style as a spiral, the student is constantly learning from each new experience and their ideas become more complex and develop stronger abilities to integrate this information(P. Johnson, 2004). An example of a constructivist classroom would be, the student is in science class and everyone is asking questions, although the teacher knows the answer, instead of just giving it to them, she attempts to get the students to think through their knowledge and try to come up with a logical answer. A problem with this method of learning is that people believe that it is excusing the role of...
I believe teachers should serve as role models and be the center of a classroom. In order to maintain that students stay on task and are all on the same page, the teacher needs to serve as a guide and direct the students. I do not believe that students learn best in a textbook based setting, but that textbooks are important when referencing material. I believe all students learn differently and look for new ideas or ways to teach lessons and concepts, so that my students can learn as effectively as possible. I also believe that a teacher teaches much more than the subject. It is very important for students in my classroom to something other than the subject that I teach. I want them to learn life skills that will help them in more areas and aspects of their life other than education. I believe my students should strive for hard work, dedication, and integrity, and go beyond learning just the content of a
My personal philosophy on teaching is to inspire my students to think and to be objective thinkers. Like life, classrooms are filled with incidents on a daily basis. It 's interesting, as an active participant, to actually experience these moments shared between teachers and students as relationships are built mostly based on personality. As professionals, it 's expected that emotions take the back seat in decision making, but humans think with their heart a lot. A teacher in my estimation is one of the most human
... to interchange ideas and clarify doubts or issues I have. I have to contain myself for doing the most of the speaking in some of the classes, overcome laziness to analyze how well or bad an activity or class turned out and think of better ways to do things when they did not work as I thought they will . To conclude I am aware that the only responsible of my learning is me. “Teacher training or education is something that can be managed by others; Teacher development is something that can be done only by and for oneself” Wallace, 1991.
The one belief I had about teaching that has changed since I began this unit, is that all teachers, more or less, taught in the same way. Perhaps this is a belief that I had formed from my own time at school, where all my teachers taught in the same way; some were more or less effective, but I wasn’t aware of them using theories or methods as such, more that they were or weren’t kind people. This belief has changed and it has really opened my ideas to the many creative models, and instructional methods a teacher can use.
When thinking of a philosophy of teaching, four major issues need to be considered. Those issues are one’s views on education, the role of the teacher, teaching and learning, and on the children. This is something that someone entering the teaching profession needs to give serious thought to and realize the importance that this will hold in the future. The following essay will express my philosophy of teaching.