Philosophy of Education

Education, today, has more to do with our failure to spark innate curiosity within students than it does with curriculum.  Children have become obsessed with their letter grade upon completion more so than the consumption of knowledge.  Undergraduates in college- completing courses solely for their credits.  Because when asked why, (a question which inevitably arises in every student), why one must memorize the Pythagorean Theorem, or the length of Genghis Khan’s reign, educators fail to provide legitimacy.  Students are less motivated to apply themselves in the classroom when they feel the information is not applicable to real life.  So we must adapt to the era of Information Technology, where Iphones and Facebook seemingly provide the public with all the information they could ever need.  Erase the mindset of, “why sit through a forty-minute lecture when I can Google ‘the Gettysburg address’ and absorb just as much” by establishing a connection with the students.  As Socrates once exemplified in Meno, certain mathematical truths can be obtained simply by asking the right questions. The conclusion, therefore, is that the student already possess the knowledge within; the role of the educator is to simply ‘draw it out.’  This is what the educational system must admit: that teachers are no longer the authority figures in a pretentious culture dominated by reality television and performance-enhanced athletes.  Children are more interested in celebrities than the founding fathers, and they obtain information through an array of outlets, the least popular being the classroom.  Yet the threshold can be crossed where students are able to identify with the subjects presented to them.  Where teachers do not carry themselves as if they are the be-all, end-all source of knowledge, but fellow human beings in search of a familiarity with the surrounding world.  With age comes experience, hence a better grasp on life, and this is the evidence that educators must provide to their students if they are to legitimize their role as guides along the educational path.