From the Syllabus
This course is an introduction to philosophy of education and as such will have a rather broad sweep across time and topics. We will examine parts of a long tradition that combines philosophy and thinking with social organization, responsibility, ethics, and politics. As we read and discuss, we will cover a variety of philosophical questions, including but not limited to: what is education? what are the aims and purposes of education? what is knowledge? what is the role of education in supporting the state? what is useful knowledge? how are moral values negotiated in a pluralistic society? how are various aspects of identity related to the projects of philosophy and social responsibility? how do educational projects navigate what has come before with a hope to open possibilities for what might yet be developed?
The issues we will be covering have ancient roots and continue to flourish. Though time is limited, we will take a quick trip from around 370 B. C. to the present. Despite the whirlwind tour, this course will provide you with a sense of how social issues have been approached philosophically and encourage you to more fully engage with ideas you are very likely already analyzing.
(Dr. C. Mayo Fall 2021)
I haven’t been wrong a lot in a long time. While I have been challenged extensively in this degree program and in my undergraduate career, I have mostly been able to study hard, apply myself, and use what I have learned from fantastic teachers to better my practice. However, this course gave me a completely different opportunity- to fail and to be wrong. An incredibly humbling experience, it is so important for me as an educator to stop and learn something so completely outside my comfort zone so that I may feel and experience the raw vulnerability that comes with trying something new. It just so happens, this course also provided a space to read, discuss, and interpret some of the seminal texts of educational philosophers throughout history.
We began the semester with Plato’s Socrates. While familiar with the fictional philosopher, I had not spent time with The Cave allegory thinking about how it pertained to my profession as an educator. I will admit, at first I felt it could not be more esoteric to spend so much time on ancient writing (and what I feared was ancient thinking). However, what I realized quickly was that much of what I thought I understood or knew about the necessity and role of education in society was flawed. Prior to considering Plato’s Republic I thought of school and my role as an educator here in the United States as a separate system, independent of public opinion and politics. While I understood funding and larger issues of social inequity were largely politcal, I believed it was our job as educators to remain apolitical. However, through this reading and extensive class discussions it became clear that education is far from free of corruptness and inequality. For instance, Socrates may argue through the Principle of Specialization that certain people are best suited for certain jobs. Additionally, it might be necessary to provide a “noble lie” for societal stability. While seemingly archaic thinking, we in fact have evidence of this through tracking in our school systems. As educators, we are gatekeepers (officially or unofficially) to paths of study students take and ultimately the identities they develop. As we read on, it became clear that according to Socrates, passion and aptitude for roles within society are linked and therefore should have the utmost consideration. Yet, in a capitalist society certain passions are rewarded while others are not. Coupled with Inequality in Education (EDLP 380) I was taking concurrently, it became very clear that education can be a great equalizer in our society but more than not, it is an incredible dis-equalizer.
As we moved through the semester, we began reading more modern works from great philosophers I had never heard of like James Baldwin and Maria Lugones. Both Baldwin and Lugones challenge us to consider how education shapes and forms our identity and how liberating and yet how dangerous that can be, particular for students who identify as people other than White. Baldwin stated in A Talk to Teachers,
“The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not. To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity,” (Baldwin 1963)
Coupled with the reading we did from Paolo Freire, this challenged my ideas about education and my own teaching. I began to realize while reading and discussing with my peers, that students are influenced greatly by teachers. We have the ability to create the environment for the individual identity to be created and developed but so often, we neglect the student’s own ideas, questions, and passions in favor of what we have deemed “essential”. Students are not simply empty vessels for us to pour in information and facts we select (or the state selects) as essential to be “educated”. When writing my final essay, I focused on the ways schools influence the development of student identities, and the role of the educator’s identity in a larger system. Lugones pointed out that individuals really must “play” in other people’s worlds in order to understand their identities and struggles. Without an understanding of another’s world, we risk imposing our own ideologies and biases upon them and perpetuating an inherently unequal system. My goal as a teacher and educator is to bring both a deeper understanding of my own identity as a nonwhite teacher to my work within a predominantly white community and school. Simultaneously, I will seek to have a greater awareness of my students’ passions, questions, and ideas. Their development of self relies heavily on teachers who honor and allow it to develop, independent of the curriculum and societal pressures. I am so grateful to Dr. Mayo for the deep discussions facilitated, questions posed and left unanswered.
References:
Baldwin, J. "A Talk to Teachers," The Price of the Ticket, Selected Writing, 1948-1985, N.Y.: St.
Martins.
Lugones, M. “Playfulness, ‘World’- Travelling, and Loving Perception,” Hypatia, vol. 2,
no. 2 (Summer 1987), 3-19.
Each Week we had the opportunity to wrestle with some big names in philosophy. While intimidating at first, I found myself beginning to trust my comprehension and understanding a bit more as time went on, even to the point of disagreeing with some historical philosophers! While not included in this work sample, the best part of the mind work in response to Dr. Mayo's weekly prompts were the thoughtful responses I received from both Dr. Mayo and my peers. I have enjoyed having some of my thoughts begin to crystallize while others completely derailed as a result of the feedback received from some incredible minds.