Recently in a class I was asked, “What is the biggest problem that the world today has?” My answer is was Education. Education is so important. Some of our defining abilities as humans are our ability to Speak, read and write. These enable us to learn from others past and present. What an amazing potential our Education has!
One of my personal philosophies in life is the rejection of moral absolutes. That is the idea that nothing is inherently good or bad. Morality is always subjective. This idea guides my reasoning in all subjects and I feel it aptly extends to the purpose of education. The purpose and content of education varies between times and contexts. The basic idea is that education always allows us to learn from other’s, possibly even things that may have been hard or impossible to learn on our own.
While I believe that what we learn and think about is important, I believe that it is how we learn and think that is even more important. It’s a teacher’s role to serve as a catalyst in the learning process. Many times, it is a teacher’s role to disseminate basic information about the world that students need to learn and memorize. However, just like the common well-known proverb, “give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” I believe that the overarching role of teacher is to teach students not what but how to think, how to learn, how to reason and to develop interest and curiosity.
Our teachers seem to have all the answers but are in our lives for just a short period time and they are gone. This is why I believe that it’s a student’s role to become lifelong learners and teachers. To learn how to be a productive member of society by developing strong base of factual information and strong reasoning skills. Developing these sorts of skills facilitates a student’s ability to explore the word and seek self-actualization, whatever that may look like for any particular individual.
Well educated students become well educated members of society. Its societies role to support education, teachers, and students. This maybe by means of holding education in high regard. This may take the form of financial support. This may be helping to expose learners to a variety of subjects and experiences in the community.
Like mentioned above I believe that learning how to think, learn, and reason is generally more important than what we learn. That is not to say that what we learn is not important though. I believe that school curriculum should be comprised of a selection of topics and that the topics and the teaching of them should be unbiased. I believe that traditional topics should be taught, but I also believe that functional topics should be given more attention in school. I believe that school should include more instruction regarding physical, mental and social health. I also believe that school should help students prepare for daily life in the community by teaching them functional skills like cooking and household maintenance.
Ryan David Tuttle, MA 