absolutwillie

Tag: teaching

  • The cost and benefit of time

    There is something to be said for the fervour and energy to continue with your postgraduate career while you’re in the thick of it. Much of it, for me, can be attributed to the high of a successful run. Finishing off my PGCE on a high note energised me to move directly into a B.Ed Honnours programme in stead of going back to teaching in Taiwan (my original idea). Similarly, discovering that I’m relatively good at academic research, and wrapping up the B.Ed (Hons) with greater success than the PGCE had me flying into an M.Ed (by full dissertation) with great excitement. While that particular journey had its fair share of ups-and-downs, the string of successes leading up to it filled my tank enough to carry me through. Success is addictive.

    So why did I take a break from the heady marathon of academic meritocracy? After all, I was doing so well!

    The honest answer? I ran out of funds. My academic record was of a sufficient standard to qualify for a PhD scholarship – but I discovered that I was now “too old” to even apply. Having only survived on short-term teaching contracts (at student rates) over the last 4 years, I didn’t exactly have the kind of savings to cover the study-fees at any of my local universities. Student loans were also out of the question, for the same reason. The last nail in the coffin was being told that I was now overqualified for further short-term lecturing contracts, unless I was willing to continue working at student rates (which wouldn’t cover all the associated expenses of continuing with my studies). So that was that.

    Not diving directly into a PhD turned out to be a very smart move!

    Not only did I manage to find a pretty good job at a Higher Education Institution in the city, but my alma mater offered me a second-semester contract at junior lecturer rates. I was lucky enough to be able to work in different disciplines, whilst earning a modest living, and gaining valuable exposure, learning opportunities and insights along the way. Advancement at the HEI was also not to be sneered at, and I finally secured a full time position as Head of Academics there in 2020!

    Teaching Academic Scholarship on April Fool’s Day (2018)

    2020… yeah, that was a year. The global pandemic meant that it was probably the worst year to start as an AH of a full-contact campus, but we didn’t know that in January. What a ride that was! The so-called ‘online pivot’ was more like tipping/rolling a tractor in a muddy field, but we somehow made it work. Until, that is, burnout landed me in a clinic. Yeah, that was a year.

    I stepped back and worked online for a different HEI in 2021, which had offered me a one-year contract to help them ‘pivot’. Assisting was a good way to keep my thinking academic, and I managed to save enough to apply for a PhD-programme towards the end of that year. The circle had run its course.

    The cost of taking time out, as it were, was unpredictable and no laughing matter (to say the least).
    The benefit, however, is a far more realistic and nuanced perspective on the goings-on in Education.

    Had I jumped into the PhD directly after my Master’s degree, I would have attempted something way more idillic and naive as a contribution to the world’s knowledge. While that would have been fun, at points, I don’t think it would have been as fruitful as what I have in mind now.

    Perspective at the cost of getting it done faster?
    Worth it.

  • Preface

    Who am I? Why am I here? These are two questions that have featured in my life more often than I care to admit. The truth is that I have grappled with these questions for the longest time. First as a pre-teen gradually becoming aware of more and more nuances to the “Who am I?” riddle, followed by my teenage awakenings of (what seemed to be) fundamental shifts in reality and the (many) ensuing existential crises. For the longest while, I only ever felt safe and at home when wrapped in the embraces of stories (told by my dad), music (played by my mom on the piano) or when flying on the wings of fantasy.

    As I recall, the first place outside the sanctuary of the home my parents created, was in my reading class. Learning to read was what taught me how to relate to the strange new worlds that kept unfolding in and around me. Pages upon pages upon volumes of stories, reports and explanations drew me ever closer to some idea of who I was and how I fit into the many pictures that life painted around me. There was magic in reading, and it lifted me into the gentlest of lights.

    But there was also a darkness that came with learning. The darkness of knowing. Knowing that the world was not the place of acceptance I had grown accustomed to in the embrace of my family. Knowing that cruelty was an ever threatening glint in the eyes of the people around me. Knowing that who I thought I was, and who I suspected I might become, was wicked and unwanted in the world. As I grew, the world crept into my home – and I feared that I would soon be discovered to be wicked and unwanted in my family…

    This is where some of my teachers came to my rescue, while others were unwittingly tightening the noose around my soul. In stead of drumming the facts of what was good and what was bad into our skulls, some teachers lifted the roof of the world to show us what might be. I will forever be thankful to the teachers who asked me to look beyond the sentences of a two-dimensional world, and to consider the endless aspects of a single thought.

    It is because of these gentle souls, and the unwavering love of my parents, that I have survived growing up. And it is because of these custodians of peace that I have found my place in the world, and that I am finally embracing my destiny – as a #wreckademic in Education.

    I came up with the idea of being a #wreckademic partly as a throwback to the “academic wreck” label slapped on me in high school; partly as an intent to wreck the ruts that education has fallen into by wielding left-field scholarship as a rust-solvent for thinking about learning. It’s a bit of a self-gratuitous way of signalling that I hope to be of use in the real world. Maybe with a hint of delusions of grandeur? It’s aspirational in spirit, though, without claiming to live up to the hype of Disruption.

    Pre-Phd proposal defence selfie (2022/05/10)

    But why pick up blogging (again)? The hope is that by keeping an open blog, as writing-and-thinking practice, I will be able to share my passion for learning and development through my own experiences – and with the insights of likeminded people from across the globe. I hope to learn from, and be inspired by fellow travelers, mentors, teachers and other souls passionate about pedagogies of hope.

    I hope to make a difference.

  • Protected: Reblog: To learn or not to learn (Afrikaans language post)

    This content is password-protected. To view it, please enter the password below.

  • Reblog: Why Teachers and Students Should Blog (via edudemic.com)

    ORIGINALLY POSTED TO EDUDEMIC: EDUDEMIC.COM
    BY HANNA SHEKHTER on May 30, 2015

    Blogs have the potential to expand student creativity, not to mention their writing skills. Language Arts and Reading specialists will love that, right? But how do I convince them that their students are thirsty for the knowledge they want to share but not the same way that they themselves obtained it? These kids are 21st century students and are adapting to a digital world that they are eager to learn from.

    Fortunately for teachers, blogs are surprisingly easy to use. They require minimum technical knowledge and are quickly and easily created and maintained. Students will be able to pick up how to use blogging platforms with minimal technical assistance and teachers will enjoy the ease in the initial setup. Unlike many traditional Web sites, blogs are flexible in design and can be changed relatively easily. Best of all, students and teachers will find them convenient and accessible via any computer or mobile device.

    Why Blogging is Great for Students


    1. Blogs Allow for Multi-Faceted Learning

    Educators need to teach important materials in several ways because each one of our students learns differently. What’s more, we also need to provide students with multiple ways to engage with assignments, based on their individual talents. Blogging is one technique for doing so, as it can allow a quieter student, for example, to feel heard online. Those shy and quiet students feel less pressure when they need to “speak” in their blog or when giving peer feedback, as they are discussing the text on their own terms. Additionally, this journaling format works great with read-and-write learners as well as visual learners.


    2. Blogs Promote Literacy and Sharpen Writing Skills

    Blogging gives students an opportunity to become published authors and showcase their writing skills. In addition, blogs give students the ability to improve communication and collaboration through the commenting feature. Peer review and feedback become an invaluable part of the writing process. Students from other parts of the world can also comment and provide a new cultural perspective to our own students’ thoughts and opinions. Students’ writing skills are vastly improved through the blogging process, since they have to work harder to hold the readers’ attention. To do that, every word, phrase, sentence, and even punctuation mark must add something to the posting.


    3. Blogs Are Accessible and Engaging

    With the availability of blog apps, blogging has become very simple and accessible to our students. They can blog from anywhere about anything whenever they are in the mood to reflect. They are not tied down to a desk and feel more free using this writing media. Also, in the age where every person has a camera in their pocket, we have become a society that journals through photography and video. Along with other multimedia artifacts, blogs become more engaging and almost interactive for the readers.

    4. Blogs Can Serve as a Classroom Management Tool

    When used as an in-class assignment, blogs can keep your students on task and focused. The more blogs students post, the more opportunities they have for others to comment on their blog. It’s an exciting feeling for students to see proof of someone reading their published work, taking time to reflect on it, and posting their opinion or question. Creating a classroom blog instead of individual blogs fosters an online community for your students to extend the classroom beyond the 4 walls. The learning continues wherever they go and their thoughts and conversations keep going.Blogging is a great tool to create student portfolios, as it can be used both as a “learning portfolio” and a “showcase portfolio”.


    5 Tips That Will Make Blogging a Breeze


    1. Use a simple blog application

    Look for popular classroom blogging apps that have been tested in classrooms and made simple even for early elementary students. Blogger is a Google app and is completely free. It is easy and simple to use if you have a Google account you can set up your blog in minutes from a computer or mobile device. Edublogs lets you easily create and manage student and teacher blogs, customize designs and include videos, photos and podcasts. Kidblog provides teachers with the tools to help students publish writing safely online. Students exercise digital citizenship within a secure classroom blogging space and teachers can monitor all student activity. Other great options include WordPress, Weebly, and Tumblr (for photoblogs).


    2. Start with a specific writing prompt

    If you’re beginning with a class rather than an individual blog, you’ll be responsible for those initial posts, while the students will respond in comments. As students demonstrate both keenness and responsibility, give them more freedom where they earn the right to write posts on the class blog and/or get their own student blog. You can start with Sentence Starters like “Today was the best day ever…” Image-based prompts that can also be incorporated into daily and/or creative writing activities whether they are pictures you took or random ones from a web site or app. You can also invite students to create prompts for the class and use these prompts whenever possible.


    3. Create a rubric

    Providing detailed explanations of an assignment using a rubric can help students in both completing tasks and thinking about their performance. Be sure to include expectations for the first post as well as for commenting on another student’s post.


    4. Know your audience

    The audience makes the work matter to students as they have an opportunity to showcase their writing and respond to real feedback. Initially, the teacher and classroom peers are the major audience that provide the feedback. However, you may want to consider sharing the blog details with parents through the school website and newsletters to grow the audience to family members and other parents. This can have unexpected practical use. For instance, if a student is writing a piece on the topic of technology and one of the parents in the classroom is an engineer, that student may be eager to produce quality work to get real feedback — and they may find themselves a great interview source, too.


    5. Make content concise

    Tight, concise, easy-to-read pieces are ideal for most online readers. Long, complex, convoluted ones are just confusing. Very often, the longer a piece is, the less the writer holds a reader’s interest — all the more so on small screens. As such, your students would do well to get right to the point — a skill they’ll find valuable as they continue up the academic ladder.


    Takeaways


    Educators know that students write better when they have a real audience. But with blogging any student can write for the world to see. Students have an authentic audience for their writing and that has an impact on the quality of their posts and comments. Encouraging students to blog about all sorts of topics helps them see connections among subjects and different aspects of their life and realize that writing is a worthwhile skill in any field.

    Want to learn more? Visit Hanna’s blog here.

    Edudemic editor’s note: This is an update to Hanna Shekter’s original post on this subject, which first ran on January 5th, 2013. A lot has changed since then, so we invited Hanna back to update her wonderful tips.

  • [Bookmark] Dewey’s Pedagogic Creed, Article V: The School and Social Progress

    My Pedagogic Creed 
    by John Dewey


    John Dewey’s famous declaration concerning education. First published in The School Journal, Volume LIV, Number 3 (January 16, 1897), pages 77-80.


    ARTICLE V-The School and Social Progress 

    I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform. I believe that all reforms which rest simply upon the enactment of law, or the threatening of certain penalties, or upon changes in mechanical or outward arrangements, are transitory and futile.

    I believe that education is a regulation of the process of coming to share in the social consciousness; and that the adjustment of individual activity on the basis of this social consciousness is the only sure method of social reconstruction.

    I believe that this conception has due regard for both the individualistic and socialistic ideals. It is duly individual because it recognizes the formation of a certain character as the only genuine basis of right living. It is socialistic because it recognizes that this right character is not to be formed by merely individual precept, example, or exhortation, but rather by the influence of a certain form of institutional or community life upon the individual, and that the social organism through the school, as its organ, may determine ethical results.

    I believe that in the ideal school we have the reconciliation of the individualistic and the institutional ideals.

    I believe that the community’s duty to education is, therefore, its paramount moral duty. By law and punishment, by social agitation and discussion, society can regulate and form itself in a more or less haphazard and chance way. But through education society can formulate its own purposes, can organize its own means and resources, and thus shape itself with definiteness and economy in the direction in which it wishes to move. I believe that when society once recognizes the possibilities in this direction, and the obligations which these possibilities impose, it is impossible to conceive of the resources of time, attention, and money which will be put at the disposal of the educator. I believe that it is the business of every one interested in education to insist upon the school as the primary and most effective interest of social progress and reform in order that society may be awakened to realize what the school stands for, and aroused to the necessity of endowing the educator with sufficient equipment properly to perform his task.

    I believe that education thus conceived marks the most perfect and intimate union of science and art conceivable in human experience.

    I believe that the art of thus giving shape to human powers and adapting them to social service, is the supreme art; one calling into its service the best of artists; that no insight, sympathy, tact, executive power, is too great for such service.

    I believe that with the growth of psychological service, giving added insight into individual structure and laws of growth; and with growth of social science, adding to our knowledge of the right organization of individuals, all scientific resources can be utilized for the purposes of education.

    I believe that when science and art thus join hands the most commanding motive for human action will be reached; the most genuine springs of human conduct aroused and the best service that human nature is capable of guaranteed.

    I believe, finally, that the teacher is engaged, not simply in the training of individuals, but in the formation of the proper social life.

    I believe that every teacher should realize the dignity of his calling; that he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of proper social order and the securing of the right social growth.

    I believe that in this way the teacher always is the prophet of the true God and the usherer in of the true kingdom of God.

    ____________________
    This piece has been reproduced here on the understanding that it is not subject to any copyright restrictions, and that it is, and will remain, in the public domain.

    Source: http://www.infed.org/archives/e-texts/e-dew-pc.htm 

    (via http://playpen.meraka.csir.co.za/~acdc/education/Dr_Anvind_Gupa/Learners_Library_7_March_2007/Resources/books/readings/17.pdf)

  • [Bookmark] Dewey’s Pedagogic Creed, Article IV: The Nature of Method

    My Pedagogic Creed 
    by John Dewey


    John Dewey’s famous declaration concerning education. First published in The School Journal, Volume LIV, Number 3 (January 16, 1897), pages 77-80.


    ARTICLE IV–The Nature of Method 

    I believe that the question of method is ultimately reducible to the question of the order of development of the child’s powers and interests. The law for presenting and treating material is the law implicit within the child’s own nature. Because this is so I believe the following statements are of supreme importance as determining the spirit in which education is carried on:

    1. I believe that the active side precedes the passive in the development of the child nature; that expression comes before conscious impression; that the muscular development precedes the sensory; that movements come before conscious sensations; I believe that consciousness is essentially motor or impulsive; that conscious states tend to project themselves in action.

    I believe that the neglect of this principle is the cause of a large part of the waste of time and strength in school work. The child is thrown into a passive, receptive, or absorbing attitude. The conditions are such that he is not permitted to follow the law of his nature; the result is friction and waste.

    I believe that ideas (intellectual and rational processes) also result from action and devolve for the sake of the better control of action. What we term reason is primarily the law of orderly or effective action. To attempt to develop the reasoning powers, the powers of judgment, without reference to the selection and arrangement of means in action, is the fundamental fallacy in our present methods of dealing with this matter. As a result we present the child with arbitrary symbols. Symbols are a necessity in mental development, but they have their place as tools for economizing effort; presented by themselves they are a mass of meaningless and arbitrary ideas imposed from without.

    2. I believe that the image is the great instrument of instruction. What a child gets out of any subject presented to him is simply the images which he himself forms with regard to it.

    I believe that if nine tenths of the energy at present directed towards making the child learn certain things, were spent in seeing to it that the child was forming proper images, the work of instruction would be indefinitely facilitated.

    I believe that much of the time and attention now given to the preparation and presentation of lessons might be more wisely and profitably expended in training the child’s power of imagery and in seeing to it that he was continually forming definite, vivid, and growing images of the various subjects with which he comes in contact in his experience.

    3. I believe that interests are the signs and symptoms of growing power. I believe that they represent dawning capacities. Accordingly the constant and careful observation of interests is of the utmost importance for the educator.

    I believe that these interests are to be observed as showing the state of development which the child has reached.

    I believe that they prophesy the stage upon which he is about to enter.

    I believe that only through the continual and sympathetic observation of childhood’s interests can the adult enter into the child’s life and see what it is ready for, and upon what material it could work most readily and fruitfully.

    I believe that these interests are neither to be humored nor repressed. To repress interest is to substitute the adult for the child, and so to weaken intellectual curiosity and alertness, to suppress initiative, and to deaden interest. To humor the interests is to substitute the transient for the permanent. The interest is always the sign of some power below; the important thing is to discover this power. To humor the interest is to fail to penetrate below the surface and its sure result is to substitute caprice and whim for genuine interest.

    4. I believe that the emotions are the reflex of actions.

    I believe that to endeavor to stimulate or arouse the emotions apart from their corresponding activities, is to introduce an unhealthy and morbid state of mind. I believe that if we can only secure right habits of action and thought, with reference to the good, the true, and the beautiful, the emotions will for the most part take care of themselves.

    I believe that next to deadness and dullness, formalism and routine, our education is threatened with no greater evil than sentimentalism.

    I believe that this sentimentalism is the necessary result of the attempt to divorce feeling from action.

    ____________________
    This piece has been reproduced here on the understanding that it is not subject to any copyright restrictions, and that it is, and will remain, in the public domain.

    Source: http://www.infed.org/archives/e-texts/e-dew-pc.htm 

    (via http://playpen.meraka.csir.co.za/~acdc/education/Dr_Anvind_Gupa/Learners_Library_7_March_2007/Resources/books/readings/17.pdf)

  • [Bookmark] Dewey’s Pedagogic Creed, Article III: The Subject-Matter of Education

    My Pedagogic Creed 
    by John Dewey


    John Dewey’s famous declaration concerning education. First published in The School Journal, Volume LIV, Number 3 (January 16, 1897), pages 77-80.


    ARTICLE III–The Subject-Matter of Education 

    I believe that the social life of the child is the basis of concentration, or correlation, in all his training or growth. The social life gives the unconscious unity and the background of all his efforts and of all his attainments.

    I believe that the subject-matter of the school curriculum should mark a gradual differentiation out of the primitive unconscious unity of social life.

    I believe that we violate the child’s nature and render difficult the best ethical results, by introducing the child too abruptly to a number of special studies, of reading, writing, geography, etc., out of relation to this social life.

    I believe, therefore, that the true center of correlation on the school subjects is not science, nor literature, nor history, nor geography, but the child’s own social activities. I believe that education cannot be unified in the study of science, or so called nature study, because apart from human activity, nature itself is not a unity; nature in itself is a number of diverse objects in space and time, and to attempt to make it the center of work by itself, is to introduce a principle of radiation rather than one of concentration.

    I believe that literature is the reflex expression and interpretation of social experience; that hence it must follow upon and not precede such experience. It, therefore, cannot be made the basis, although it may be made the summary of unification.

    I believe once more that history is of educative value in so far as it presents phases of social life and growth. It must be controlled by reference to social life. When taken simply as history it is thrown into the distant past and becomes dead and inert. Taken as the record of man’s social life and progress it becomes full of meaning. I believe, however, that it cannot be so taken excepting as the child is also introduced directly into social life.

    I believe accordingly that the primary basis of education is in the child’s powers at work along the same general constructive lines as those which have brought civilization into being.

    I believe that the only way to make the child conscious of his social heritage is to enable him to perform those fundamental types of activity which make civilization what it is. I believe, therefore, in the so-called expressive or constructive activities as the center of correlation.

    I believe that this gives the standard for the place of cooking, sewing, manual training, etc., in the school.

    I believe that they are not special studies which are to be introduced over and above a lot of others in the way of relaxation or relief, or as additional accomplishments. I believe rather that they represent, as types, fundamental forms of social activity; and that it is possible and desirable that the child’s introduction into the more formal subjects of the curriculum be through the medium of these activities.

    I believe that the study of science is educational in so far as it brings out the materials and processes which make social life what it is.

    I believe that one of the greatest difficulties in the present teaching of science is that the material is presented in purely objective form, or is treated as a new peculiar kind of experience which the child can add to that which he has already had. In reality, science is of value because it gives the ability to interpret and control the experience already had. It should be introduced, not as so much new subject-matter, but as showing the factors already involved in previous experience and as furnishing tools by which that experience can be more easily and effectively regulated.

    I believe that at present we lose much of the value of literature and language studies because of our elimination of the social element. Language is almost always treated in the books of pedagogy simply as the expression of thought. It is true that language is a logical instrument, but it is fundamentally and primarily a social instrument. Language is the device for communication; it is the tool through which one individual comes to share the ideas and feelings of others. When treated simply as a way of getting individual information, or as a means of showing off what one has learned, it loses its social motive and end.

    I believe that there is, therefore, no succession of studies in the ideal school curriculum. If education is life, all life has, from the outset, a scientific aspect, an aspect of art and culture, and an aspect of communication. It cannot, therefore, be true that the proper studies for one grade are mere reading and writing, and that at a later grade, reading, or literature, or science, may be introduced. The progress is not in the succession of studies but in the development of new attitudes towards, and new interests in, experience. I believe finally, that education must be conceived as a continuing reconstruction of experience; that the process and the goal of education are one and the same thing. I believe that to set up any end outside of education, as furnishing its goal and standard, is to deprive the educational process of much of its meaning and tends to make us rely upon false and external stimuli in dealing with the child.

    ____________________
    This piece has been reproduced here on the understanding that it is not subject to any copyright restrictions, and that it is, and will remain, in the public domain.

    Source: http://www.infed.org/archives/e-texts/e-dew-pc.htm 

    (via http://playpen.meraka.csir.co.za/~acdc/education/Dr_Anvind_Gupa/Learners_Library_7_March_2007/Resources/books/readings/17.pdf)

  • [Bookmark] Dewey’s Pedagogic Creed, Article II: What the School Is

    My Pedagogic Creed 
    by John Dewey

    John Dewey’s famous declaration concerning education. First published in The School Journal, Volume LIV, Number 3 (January 16, 1897), pages 77-80.


    ARTICLE II–What the School Is 

    I believe that the school is primarily a social institution. Education being a social process, the school is simply that form of community life in which all those agencies areconcentrated that will be most effective in bringing the child to share in the inherited resources of the race, and to use his own powers for social ends.

    I believe that education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.

    I believe that the school must represent present life-life as real and vital to the child as that which he carries on in the home, in the neighborhood, or on the playground. I believe that education which does not occur through forms of life, or that are worth living for their own sake, is always a poor substitute for the genuine reality and tends to cramp and to deaden.

    I believe that the school, as an institution, should simplify existing social life; should reduce it, as it were, to an embryonic form. Existing life is so complex that the child cannot be brought into contact with it without either confusion or distraction; he is either overwhelmed by the multiplicity of activities which are going on, so that he loses his own power of orderly reaction, or he is so stimulated by these various activities that his powers are prematurely called into play and he becomes either unduly specialized or else disintegrated.

    I believe that as such simplified social life, the school life should grow gradually out of the home life; that it should take up and continue the activities with which the child is already familiar in the home.

    I believe that it should exhibit these activities to the child, and reproduce them in such ways that the child will gradually learn the meaning of them, and be capable of playing his own part in relation to them.

    I believe that this is a psychological necessity, because it is the only way of securing continuity in the child’s growth, the only way of giving a back-ground of past experience to the new ideas given in school.

    I believe that it is also a social necessity because the home is the form of social life in which the child has been nurtured and in connection with which he has had his moral training. It is the business of the school to deepen and extend his sense of the values bound up in his home life.

    I believe that much of present education fails because it neglects this fundamental principle of the school as a form of community life. It conceives the school as a place where certain information is to be given, where certain lessons are to be ]earned, or where certain habits are to be formed. The value of these is conceived as lying largely in the remote future; the child must do these things for the sake of something else he is to do; they are mere preparation. As a result they do not become a part of the life experience of the child and so are not truly educative.

    I believe that the moral education centers upon this conception of the school as a mode of social life, that the best and deepest moral training is precisely that which one gets through having to enter into proper relations with others in a unity of work and thought. The present educational systems, so far as they destroy or neglect this unity, render it difficult or impossible to get any genuine, regular moral training.

    I believe that the child should be stimulated and controlled in his work through the life of the community.

    I believe that under existing conditions far too much of the stimulus and control proceeds from the teacher, because of neglect of the idea of the school as a form of social life. I believe that the teacher’s place and work in the school is to be interpreted from this same basis. The teacher is not in the school to impose certain ideas or to form certain habits in the child, but is there as a member of the community to select the influences which shall affect the child and to assist him in properly responding to these influences. I believe that the discipline of the school should proceed from the life of the school as a whole and not directly from the teacher.

    I believe that the teacher’s business is simply to determine on the basis of larger experience and riper wisdom, how the discipline of life shall come to the child. I believe that all questions of the grading of the child and his promotion should be determined by reference to the same standard. Examinations are of use only so far as they test the child’s fitness for social life and reveal the place in which he can be of the most service and where he can receive the most help.

    ____________________
    This piece has been reproduced here on the understanding that it is not subject to any copyright restrictions, and that it is, and will remain, in the public domain.

    Source: http://www.infed.org/archives/e-texts/e-dew-pc.htm 

    (via http://playpen.meraka.csir.co.za/~acdc/education/Dr_Anvind_Gupa/Learners_Library_7_March_2007/Resources/books/readings/17.pdf)

  • [Bookmark] Dewey’s Pedagogic Creed, Article I: What Education is

    My Pedagogic Creed 
    by John Dewey

    John Dewey’s famous declaration concerning education. First published in The School Journal, Volume LIV, Number 3 (January 16, 1897), pages 77-80.

    ARTICLE I–What Education Is 

    I believe that all education proceeds by the participation of the individual in the social consciousness of the race. This process begins unconsciously almost at birth, and is continually shaping the individual’s powers, saturating his consciousness, forming his habits, training his ideas, and arousing his feelings and emotions. Through this unconscious education the individual gradually comes to share in the intellectual and moral resources which humanity has succeeded in getting together. He becomes an inheritor of the funded capital of civilization. The most formal and technical education in the world cannot safely depart from this general process. It can only organize it or differentiate it in some particular direction.

    I believe that the only true education comes through the stimulation of the child’s powers by the demands of the social situations in which he finds himself. Through these demands he is stimulated to act as a member of a unity, to emerge from his original narrowness of action and feeling, and to conceive of himself from the standpoint of the welfare of the group to which he belongs. Through the responses which others make to his own activities he comes to know what these mean in social terms. The value which they have is reflected back into them. For instance, through the response which is made to the child’s instinctive babblings the child comes to know what those babblings mean; they are transformed into articulate language and thus the child is introduced into the consolidated wealth of ideas and emotions which are now summed up in language.

    I believe that this educational process has two sides-one psychological and one sociological; and that neither can be subordinated to the other or neglected without evil results following. Of these two sides, the psychological is the basis. The child’s own instincts and powers furnish the material and give the starting point for all education. Save as the efforts of the educator connect with some activity which the child is carrying on of his own initiative independent of the educator, education becomes reduced to a pressure from without. It may, indeed, give certain external results, but cannot truly be called educative. Without insight into the psychological structure and activities of the individual, the educative process will, therefore, be haphazard and arbitrary. If it chances to coincide with the child’s activity it will get a leverage; if it does not, it will result in friction, or disintegration, or arrest of the child nature.

    I believe that knowledge of social conditions, of the present state of civilization, is necessary in order properly to interpret the child’s powers. The child has his own instincts and tendencies, but we do not know what these mean until we can translate them into their social equivalents. We must be able to carry them back into a social past and see them as the inheritance of previous race activities. We must also be able to project them into the future to see what their outcome and end will be. In the illustration just used, it is the ability to see in the child’s babblings the promise and potency of a future social intercourse and conversation which enables one to deal in the proper way with that instinct.

    I believe that the psychological and social sides are organically related and that education cannot be regarded as a compromise between the two, or a superimposition of one upon the other. We are told that the psychological definition of education is barren and formal- -that it gives us only the idea of a development of all the mental powers without giving us any idea of the use to which these powers are put. On the other hand, it is urged that the social definition of education, as getting adjusted to civilization, makes of it a forced and external process, and results in subordinating the freedom of the individual to a preconceived social and political status.

    I believe that each of these objections is true when urged against one side isolated from the other. In order to know what a power really is we must know what its end, use, or function is; and this we cannot know save as we conceive of the individual as active in social relationships. But, on the other hand, the only possible adjustment which we can give to the child under existing conditions, is that which arises through putting him in complete possession of all his powers. With the advent of democracy and modern industrial conditions, it is impossible to foretell definitely just what civilization will be twenty years from now. Hence it is impossible to prepare the child for any precise set of conditions. To prepare him for the future life means to give him command of himself; it means so to train him that he will have the full and ready use of all his capacities; that his eye and ear and hand may be tools ready to command, that his judgment may be capable of grasping the conditions under which it has to work, and the executive forces be trained to act economically and efficiently. It is impossible to reach this sort of adjustment save as constant regard is had to the individual’s own powers, tastes, and interests-say, that is, as education is continually converted into psychological terms.

    In sum, I believe that the individual who is to be educated is a social individual and that society is an organic union of individuals. If we eliminate the social factor from the child we are left only with an abstraction; if we eliminate the individual factor from society, we are left only with an inert and lifeless mass. Education, therefore, must begin with a psychological insight into the child’s capacities, interests, and habits. It must be controlled at every point by reference to these same considerations. These powers, interests, and habits must be continually interpreted–we must know what they mean. They must be translated into terms of their social equivalents–into terms of what they are capable of in the way of social service.

    ____________________
    This piece has been reproduced here on the understanding that it is not subject to any copyright restrictions, and that it is, and will remain, in the public domain.

    Source: http://www.infed.org/archives/e-texts/e-dew-pc.htm 

    (via http://playpen.meraka.csir.co.za/~acdc/education/Dr_Anvind_Gupa/Learners_Library_7_March_2007/Resources/books/readings/17.pdf)

  • Up and running again

    After sleeping off most of yesterday, I got off to a good start today. Not only did I update my iPhone to iOS7, I actually made it outside! At this very moment, I’m sitting in a coffee shop (drinking a cup of coffee for the free wifi) with Andreas and Bernadette – working on my Portfolio! I know, right?

    I’ve decided that my brief episode of narcolepsy was just my body relaxing after two months of stress. I didn’t exactly realize just how much stress I was under until now. That’s something I will have to prepare myself for, and get used to in the near future. Teaching isn’t for sissies. At all.
    Before we get to that though, I’m still hoping to do my B.Ed. (Hons) in Language Education next year. I’ve applied for the HB & MJ Thom Bursary, and am working on other applications for scholarships for next year. My application for the actual program has been acknowledged and is currently being processed. Acceptance into the program is 98% in the bag, so everything depends on wether or not I get funding. Without enough of it, there is no way I will be able to study further. (Yes, I have considered part time studies and full time work – but high school teaching just does not allow for postgraduate studies.)
    Now it’s back to reflections for the portfolio.
    Catch you later!