Deborah Katz Philosophy Statement EDU 5160 Fall 2012

The Merriam Webster dictionary defines a teacher as one that teaches and an educator as one who is skilled in teaching. Neither definition is particularly helpful when trying to discover what a teacher is and what, and why, they do what they do. Maimonides, a medieval Jewish scholar, once wrote that Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. This quote highlights the fact that giving someone a new skill or ability is infinitely more valuable than giving them a concrete gift. In the same spirit, I feel that a teachers main responsibility is to teach students how to learn effectively. There are four main skills a teacher can impart or instill in his students and they are as follows: to find information, to determine the credibility of the information, to gain the needed level of mastery of the information and to use that knowledge in novel ways in authentic situations. With the development of the internet, it has becomes easier than ever to access certain types of information. As an educator I would hope to teach my students all the different ways currently available to access information (including but not limited to hard copies of books, other people, the plethora of sources on the internet, etc.). To learn how to find information will encourage students to learn about the things which spark their interest and their passion. Most importantly, these skills will hopefully be transferable to whatever new types of technology are invented in the coming years. The deluge of information which currently bombards the people in our current society makes credibility and validity a big issue. As a teacher, and specifically as a science teacher, I

feel that one of my priorities would be developing the critical analysis skills of my students. This means that they will be able to not only take in the surface information, but will learn to question who provides the information, what the sources are, and what the words say, not just what they mean. A common example is found in advertising. The Five Hour Energy website explains that Of the 503 online and 2,500 in-person, over 73% [of doctors] said they would recommend a low calorie energy supplement to their healthy patients who use energy supplements. I would hope to teach my students so that upon reading or hearing this statement, they would be able to ask the important questions. Do these doctors recommend energy drinks at all? Is the only benefit the low calories? What other low calorie energy supplements were recommended? In the book The End of Education by Neil Postman, Postman makes the claim that people need a narrative for their lives, to give meaning to the actions they do. He extrapolates from this that learning also needs a narrative and that learning for the sake of learning is eventually harmful to individuals of society. I disagree. As a scientist, when I look at the world and see my own life as small and insignificant in the context of the entire universe, I feel not a sense of terror, but a thrill. When I question the purpose of my life and its meaning, and find none that satisfy, I feel a sense of freedom. And when I look around and marvel at all that we dont know, I am filled with the desire to learn. And that desire comes only from a curiosity of the world, a drive to learn for the sake of learning. I disagree that learning without purpose leads to aimlessness or moral ineptitude, and instead claim that learning for a purpose prevents new thoughts and reinforces the existing stereotypes. I would hope to impart this sense of self-worth and confidence, which is not based on outside sources, in my students.

A student gaining mastery of a subject is considered the primary goal of many teachers. I argue that there are two ways in which a teacher should accomplish this. The first is for a teacher to successfully teach their students the objectives set forth by their institutions. I, as a high school chemistry teacher, will try to teach my students so that they master chemistry up to the regents, SAT II or AP level. Another essential bit of educating that I hope to accomplish, that I hope all teachers accomplish, is to teach students how they should approach studying, with or without a teacher to guide them. The way I structure lessons should loosely model the behavior they should use when studying other subjects. Here, even more than my goals, I will try to live up to the ideal set forth by Maimonides, and make lifelong learners from my students. The last main tenet of my philosophy of education is that teachers need to educate their students in a way that allows the students to take the overall sum of their knowledge, sift through it to find the information required in a real life situation, and then be able to apply it in a plethora of ways, conventional or novel. This is the most difficult thing to accomplish, as it is easy to fall into a rote method of teaching, expecting students only to learn what is needed to pass a test. All these goals are worthwhile to me. Along my personal preference, these objectives are also extremely valuable to society as a whole. In a democratic society, it is very important to have a public that can verify information, learn and adapt to new technology and to see beyond the actual meanings of words to the implications behind them. Furthermore, teaching students to strive to judge the world without a need for an ideology, which is always imperfect and often harmful when applied to specific situations, will enable them to look at the world more globally, and make connections with the other, people who are not like them. Postman referred to this as Spaceship Earth, an idea that we are all connected and that all actions have a consequence in the larger world. I would refine this, and try to create a sense that while none of us are the same or

inherently connected (apart from the physical connection of all living in the same place), that doesnt preclude people from forging connections, despite differences of opinions, life experiences or narratives. To distill my philology of education into one statement, I would say that my purpose and goal in educating people is to help people mature into their own independent person, able to learn, adapt and make decisions based on their own thoughts and feelings in specific situations, rather than passively accepting information or indiscriminately applying one idea to a range of varied and nuanced situations. I hope to create lifelong learners, who have the ability and drive to explore new avenues of knowledge, to look at old avenues in a fresh way and to live with a mind open to new experiences, ideas and ways of thinking.