Educational Philosophy

All too frequently the authors of educational materials, school board personnel and politicians give us their personal visions of a quality school by first defining their own beliefs of what a quality school consists of. Then they list several common qualities of good school vision.

This often includes the belief that a good school is a community of learners. It is a place where students and teachers are encouraged to take risks, to think more inventive and adventuresome, knowing that they will not be penalized for their efforts. A quality school is a place where the educators have chosen to be; a place of great diversity, and many other positive, educative qualities.

They then go on to say that one’s personal vision is a never-ending process and that a vision of a quality school is like a compass, offering a clear sense of direction.

There is a positive side to these educational materials, the philosophies of school board personnel and politician’s point of view. It is from these and other works about quality education, as well as the opinions of numerous educators, that many teachers have obtained their own personal vision of a quality school.

From these sources on what a quality school ought to look like one finds, with rare exception, that most teachers have about the same philosophy towards what a good school should consist of and what a quality education should encompass.

A vision of a good school is one where every student in every classroom has access to a computer with Internet connections. The computers are equipped with state-of-the-art technology. The computers should not have filters or other blocking software on them that would prevent the students from do quality Internet research.

School buildings and classrooms are also state-of-the-art. Students should not have to leave the school building to go from one classroom to another. Teachers have access to a telephone in their classroom. All the students have good quality textbook and workbook material. The maximum student/teacher ratio in a regular education class is 15:1, 8:1 in a special education classroom. All teachers have an assistant to work with them in the classroom for the entire day. Teachers have more planning time to prepare their lessons.

Most importantly, a quality education, most teachers believe, should prepare a student for his or her entrance into their adult life – be that college or the work force.

The question arises: Are the above mentioned qualities of a good school to be taken seriously and should they be implemented in our schools, or are they just so much rhetoric to be used to sell books, keep the sheep (teachers and voting public) pacified and get oneself elected?

I say yes these qualities should be implemented! We should never give up the fight to make our schools the best that they can be for our children, our children’s children and all future generations. Building a quality school for our children is a goal for which we all should strive, knowing that someday we just might succeed.

But let’s take a reality check. Our government has millions of dollars to spend on useless projects, like “sound walls” along side the interstate highway. Yet our schools are still understaffed, educators are overworked and underpaid and many of our schools still have outdated textbooks.

The United States has corporations that show profits in the billions of dollars every year. Yet our classrooms are overcrowded and most teachers must work without the aid of an assistant in their classrooms.

Our schools do not have the needed funds to hire more teachers, pay those they do have a respectable wage, buy necessary supplies or pay other expenses, because grossly overpaid school board members and politicians are too busy pinching pennies, playing politics and looking at their re-election chances to give the necessary funds to the schools.

Americans enjoy the best communications network in the world. Yet most of our schools are still without computers and without Internet connections for every student.

The citizens of our nation have the greatest amount of freedom in the world. Yet a major complaint of many students today are the long hours of boring, unnecessary class work, often without breaks, while teachers complain of the numerous and needless forms they have to fill out, the many redundant accountability reports they have to write and the frequent, useless teacher in-services they have to attend.

The authors of educational materials, school board personnel, and politicians want accountability from the principals, administrators, and teachers. In order to obtain what they claim is quality education and get this alleged accountability, they set up workshops for the principals, administrators and teachers and have them fill out numerous forms, intricate lesson plans, excessive paperwork and unnecessary grade reports.

These educational authors, school board personnel and politicians endorse policies that force school personnel to attend staff development meetings and professional improvement activities. But the only thing that such activities, red tape and needless paperwork accomplish is the misuse of valuable teaching time. These irrelevant measures bog teachers down and prevent them from doing that which they are trained to do – teach children!

If the children are not in their classroom doing their class work and their teacher is not in the classroom instructing them in their lessons then they are not getting a proper education!

A Few Good Teachers