EDFD 201

During the course of discussing the different aspects of Philosophy and their celebrated Philosophers, as well as, the topics about the Nature of Man, I thought to myself, “Okay, all of them are quite interesting (if not boring) but how are they going to prepare me to become the educator that I hoped to be? Wouldn’t my time be better spent if we were studying successful methods in today’s classroom instead?

After much (needless) deliberation, I have learned and arrived to a conclusion. The truth of the matter is, while study and/or practice of teaching methods is a central part of teacher preparation, such methods make sense only in particular environment and in the achievement of specific objectives that may only cater to one or several groups of learners, but certainly not all of them. Further, the said objectives are not always agreed upon which then leaves the burden of making decisions to the educators.

Because of the concern mentioned above, I have come to believe that the incorporation of the Psychological and Philosophical foundations of education as applied in our EDFD 201 class with the supposed successful teaching methods will be very beneficial. Hence, the better we understood the larger society, in which schools are embedded, the better teachers we become. In considering and studying Education’s historical and philosophical insights alongside our own sociological knowledge, we will then be better equipped in handling classroom situations by understanding the larger context that surrounds and shapes the events that happen in our classrooms. Let us take this scenario as an example: How can we categorize a child with a learning disability from a child whose home culture differs from that of the school that he goes to? Unless we understand the effects, that school culture has on a child from a minority group or (to give a more obvious example) a child who came from the less privileged class of society, we will not be able to comprehend the root of the child’s academic or social adjustment problems. As a result, not knowing the problem will equal to not knowing how to address it. This cited example, however, is just one of the several scenarios that we encounter.

To cut to the chase, all that I am sharing is, it is necessary to acknowledge that the classroom or the learning setting is inevitably ingrained in the broader psychological and philosophical contexts that surround our educational system. The differing perceptions on the structure of Philosophy, theories of education, sociological contexts and prevailing ideologies are a few of the variables that we need to study in order to understand our workplace. Disregarding them will impair our ability to interpret classroom events and to construct meaningful solutions to perennial concerns.