Cover photo from: https://michaelwarford.com/teacher-documents/educational-philosophy/
When I come to think of the word philosophy, it always leads to the infamous and infinite string of “why”: Why are we here? Why are we doing this? Why does any of it matter? etc. I don’t believe we are able to answer these absolutely, given that there is always another question every time we have answered one. I also believe that our answers to any “why” will change over time as our perspectives and experiences re-shape the way we think about life’s big questions.
Education works in much the same way. Why, it even is one of the aforementioned “why’s”: Why do we educate? And why do we educate the way we do? As I said, I believe that there is no absolute answer to these questions, and whatever answer I give will change over time as my perspectives and experiences re-shape the way I think about education.
That being said my current philosophy towards education can be summarised in one word: purpose. Everything that happens at school should have a purpose, every activity needs to have a purpose. If there is no purpose to something that you’re doing, why even bother doing it at all?
I firmly believe that a student who does not want to learn is not going to learn. And a student who does not believe in the purpose of a lesson is not going to gain any benefits from that lesson. So if a student asks: “Why do I have to learn about trigonometry?”, they are saying that they do not believe that trigonometry has a purpose in their lives. This student cannot be forced to learn trigonometry, because they already established that they don’t want to. The purpose of the teacher is to help this student want to. As educators we need to accept that we can never force a child to learn, all we CAN do is provide a safe environment that encourages and motivates learning.