My Philosophy of Education

   The philosophy of education seeks to study the process and discipline of education in order to understand how it works, improve its methods and perfect its applications in society. The philosophy of education ultimately seeks to improve education and its systems and methods for the betterment of humanity. Ideally, it informs and raises the quality of curriculum, teaching methods and the overall educational experience.

   Before I took this course I didn’t know that everyone has his own philosophy of education, I didn’t know that there is a philosophy of education that differ from one individual to another according to his/her believes. I was not paying attention that in my inside I have my own philosophy of education too. I would like to start with the aims of education and I said aims because there is no single aim of education, in contrast there are aims of education which are broad statements. I think education is very different from anything in our life; it is not like something we can buy and sell for anyone using money, because educators are not costumers they are seeking for knowledge every where no matter the time or the place. For these reasons, education has a very noble aims or purposes behind it, these purposes didn’t concern one class over the other as some people believe. Education is for all people whatever their classes are in the society, it is a right for everyone and everyone has the right to fight and demand it.

   Since students are the future for every society, education came to guide these students to be effective citizens in the future and to be model for the coming generations. The aim of education is not just to prepare students for their future career but to prepare them to be valid members in the society through teaching them morals and ethics. Another point is to teach students meaningful learning, teach them something they are in need for it or teach them the importance of every idea and how it can be used in their life in order to love learning and always try to seek for more. The aim of education must be to make students always thirsty for more learning, and make them seek for information instead of making education a punishment for them. Finally, education is to help students be self satisfied and problem solvers in the society not just in their domains. It is also to help students construct their knowledge by themselves through searching and asking and not to satisfy with what they have but to continue searching for more and more information.

   After we define our aims of education we go deeper into education to define its methods. It is not an easy task to choose the most beneficial methods of education for students. It is not enough to know the aims of education if we don’t have good methods to transfer our information correctly. There are several ways that can be used with students and to lead to better results. I believe in realism method of education that the best way to teach students is to relate the knowledge to their real life by making it more applicable and by letting students experiment and apply everything they learn. From my personal experience I find that learning abstract and facts at school didn’t lead us to use our higher thinking, they limit our thinking just by memorizing idea and formulas without knowing their importance to our life which made us feel that learning is a punishment for us. So, number one according to me after explaining the ideas is to make these ideas related to students’ life and we have to make students experience them by themselves to reach better understanding. Another point that it is very important to integrate cooperative or collaborative learning to our classrooms by allowing students to actively participate in the learning process by talking with each other and listening to other points of view. This method will help students to be social members and be able to interact with each other and present their ideas and points of view with confidence not just at school but also as active members of the society.

   Curriculum is not stated by teachers, it is stated by administrators and expert teachers. The purpose of a curriculum planning is to develop well-coordinated, quality teaching, learning and assessment programs, which build students’ knowledge, skills and behaviors in the disciplines, as well as their interdisciplinary and/or physical, personal and social capacities. The curriculum to be effective must include information that are meaningful and valuable, and information that encourage higher thinking and promote students to use different parts of their brain. Also the curriculum must promote students to construct their own knowledge instead of just receiving knowledge from the teacher and store them in their short term memories. Another point which I found important that the ideas set in the curriculum must be linked together and linked to students’ real life to make them more valued for students which will also increase the love of learning inside students, and they must include each student without exclude anyone. The curriculum must be designed for all students the same regardless their social class in the society because every person has the right to learn as other people whatever his social class is.

   Now the role of the teacher came. After we define the aim of education, its methods, and the curriculum we find ourselves still missing a very important part of education which is the teacher and his great role in education. The teacher is the most important part in education and without the teacher effective learning can’t occur, but that doesn’t mean that any teacher regardless his ways and attitudes can be effective. The teacher has a very hard role in transferring his knowledge to his students’ mind and to their long term memory directly, this needs a lot of effort and planning from the teacher. Because our major role as teachers is not just to transfer our knowledge to our students, but it is to support a full understanding for this knowledge and be sure that every single person achieve a full understanding to what we explain. He must create a safe environment for every single student by love them not pretend love, by showing them care, respect, listening to them, and by showing them high expectations full of trust and confidence that they are able to do it.  The teacher must act as a guide, allowing the child's natural curiosity to direct his/her learning and promoting respect for all things and all people. On other hand the teacher must not be the only dominate at the class, he has to give his/her students the opportunity to prove themselves and express their opinions without fear or being shy. So the teacher has to help students to develop a deep love and respect for themselves, others, and their environment occurs through an open sharing of ideas and a judicious approach to discipline. One of the most important role for the teacher, in my opinion, is to instill a love of learning in his/her students by modeling this love in front of them and by making learning fun for them by using real life examples, games, or by making them practice things by themselves.

At the end I concluded that each one of the types that mentioned above is important for education and has his weight on it. And as future teachers we have to be aware of each type of them and we must be aware of our own philosophy of education instead of applying others’ philosophies, because each one of us believes in things that may differ from other people. So we have to believe in our thoughts of philosophy of education and trust ourselves and our opinions. That was my philosophy in education and I totally believe in it and I’ll try very hard to apply it in our life as a future teacher. Also, I will try to develop it as needed and according to the situation I will have.