A FUNCTIONAL PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION

With the last posting, I began a series of entries in which I will review the four prominent philosophies that dominate the literature of curricular studies.  In addition, I will add another posting that will report on two off-shoot philosophies or “sort of” philosophies.  But before I begin, I will comment on the function that educational philosophies should provide, but under the structural realities of our public school systems, they do not.  As I review the ideas that constitute the separate philosophies, ask yourself:  in a given school, how important is it for the teaching staff at that school to share in a unifying philosophy?  Much of the debate among educators over philosophy is about which one is best.  While important, a much more important concern is how unified the teaching staff of a school is in supporting that school’s prevailing philosophy.  Private schools are in a better position to insure that the teachers they hire will fall within the philosophical tradition of that school.  They are in a better position to insist on such compliance since these teachers do not enjoy employment protection that their counterparts have in the public schools.  But why is this an issue of any standing?

Consider your typical public school.  If you were to ask an average teacher what philosophy of education he or she subscribes to, you would get either a blank stare or some extended version of “I teach because I believe in education” or “I believe in the future” or “I love children” or a similar response.  If you instead ask if the teacher is a Perennialist, an Essentialist, a Progressive, or a Reconstructionist, then you would more than likely see a bewildered face.  They might have heard these terms some time ago in college, but chances are that that was some time ago and the concern has not been revisited in all the ensuing years.  But the problem is that such negligence can be the source of many problems a school is facing. 

The problem has to do with the lack of coordination in how different philosophies are implemented.  Even though most teachers in public schools, whether they know it or not, tend to be Essentialists, there are those who are not.  I would say that sprinkled among a given faculty of any size, you will find several Progressives and a few Perennialists.  To further complicate matters, you might have an administrator, even a principal, who is not an Essentialist, but a follower of one of the other philosophies.  Why are they this, that, or the other?  Because, in their teacher training programs, they were trained to be that “kind of teacher” and they took the lessons to heart.  It is their way of trying to be a good teacher.  The secret they don’t share in is that for any of these philosophies to be successful, it has to be practiced in a supportive environment.  Let me illustrate.

Consider expectations.  I have, in this blog, described education as a discipline, not a consumer service.  Education demands effort and, for many, one form of sacrifice or another.  Usually, students upon entering school do not have an appreciation for what education is going to afford them.  Parents and teachers strive to put a positive spin on the demands of education; they might put a great deal of effort in heightening the intellectual pleasures that education can provide.  Or they might offer rewards for diligent work and the like.  But the bottom line is that the student is asked to exert effort and that effort is not going to be entertaining all or even most of the time.  Under such a discipline, it is useful for those involved – both for teachers and students – to have expectations met.  This simple requirement is fundamentally disrupted when a student proceeds from classroom to classroom with various views about what the whole enterprise concerns.  This is further detrimental when the majority is of one philosophy with limited numbers being the other philosophies.  This situation makes the efforts of those in the minority subject to feelings that what they are about, what they are asking and demanding of students, is somehow illegitimate.  And since, as a group, teachers are ill-informed about what it means to be an Essentialist, for example, what results is an approach that lacks consistency.  Teaching becomes a hodge-podge of activities or a singular instructional strategy in which students are victimized not by variety, but by boring repetition as those teachers lecture all the time or pass out one worksheet after another.   None of these philosophies promote or justify such approaches.

To get back to the notion of a supportive environment, I wish that public school principals were, first, knowledgeable and appreciative of the function of philosophies and, second, in a position to hire and evaluate teachers according to the philosophy the principal espouses.  This choice should be a public one; all stakeholders should know, even before being hired, what the philosophical leanings of a principal or potential principal are.  In turn, that principal should be allowed to hire those educators who share in his or her philosophy.  

I hold the philosophy I subscribe to because I believe it leads to the best educational results.  That means, if implemented by a sufficiently talented teacher, using that philosophy will arrive at the best possible result for the student and the community in which the student resides.  But that opinion does not preclude me from believing that any of the philosophies can lead to positive results.  The advocates of each can cite supportive empirical evidence as to the viability of their preferred philosophy.  As I indicated above, what is more important than the philosophy a school utilizes is the consistency in which the philosophy is used.  So what is a functional philosophy?  It is a philosophy a faculty can implement wholeheartedly and skillfully.