Educational Philosophy: Blockbuster or Netflix?


We must study humans as we would study other animals to discover what their “nature” is. Look among the species; see who are the thriving and successful and in what activities do they engage? For Aristotle, this is how to determine what is and is not appropriate for human and human societies.  

~Aristotle - Rejection of Plato’s Rationalism



Statement from Don Allen, M.A. Ed./MAT: Teacher and Servant Leader

Please, everyone - cast a spell, wave your magic wands, pray, rub the chicken feet (I have mine, it’s a Jamaican thing), and hope teachers don’t strike. The results from a strike in this critical moment will disrupt all levels of society. The Twin Cities are not prepared to have thousands of K-12 scholars unstructured; yes, the achievement gap is alive and growing, but educators need this time between now and June to kill it. Parents must work; childcare is critical. We are just easing back in because of COVID-19, bad Wi-Fi hotspots, we have kids who are seniors that can’t get in MNSCU for concurrent enrollment because their 11th grade was nonexistent. This is not fun anymore. We need another school district between Minneapolis and St. Paul that will cater to higher-order thinking via blended learning, self-paced structures, and mastery-based grading with one goal: to be a feeder to St. Thomas, University of MN., Metro State, St. Paul, and Minneapolis College, Concordia, Augsburg, Mankato, Moorhead, and Southwest - it’s the only way. Let’s call it the Twin Cities Public School District #700. Every teacher earns $100K per year (note: both city districts can do this now, the money is on deck and live), and seniors are given a stipend of $250 per month for 1-year (August to August, post 12); this creates ‘vision’ among our kids. The online version is ready, I need $80 million over 18-months. The Page Amendment will surreptitiously make this easy…

By Don Allen, M.A. Ed./MAT


     The philosophy of education that I represent is an overarching learning philosophy that focuses on my vision on how I see the world, where my place is in this world and the philosophical constructs about ‘who am I’ inside and outside my agency in education. My self-reflective statements or beliefs about teaching and learning are superlative or sometimes speculative for rhetorical reasons about what an educational philosophy means to me as an educator knowing that responsibility, respectability, and responsiveness are the key goals in education for me to build a philosophy based on my everyday experiences. The challenge and characteristics of my educational philosophy are surrounded by discrepancies because the educational system and all its moving parts were never created for BIPOC adults or K-12 scholars, let alone a Black American administrator; “Americans often forget that as late as the 1960s most African-American, Latino, and Native American students were educated in wholly segregated schools funded at rates many times lower than those serving whites and were excluded from many higher education institutions entirely” (Darling-Hammond 2016). 

   In my mind, this leaves a deficit in system concerns about the current state of communication supremacy inside of educational constructs that deems someone like me ‘not qualified’ or ‘not like the others,’ regardless of my academic career, degrees, and experience.  The prima facie is current and relevant; in my education-graduate school career, I have not once been under the tutelage of a Black, Hispanic, Native American, nor Asian adjunct or professor. This means that my philosophies of education must be grounded in change, sustainability, and new policies that are culturally responsive and woven into complex structures that want leaders and teachers to understand Zaretta Hammond, but on the other hand, do not want to implement change per her prescription.  

     The Greek philosopher Aristotle thought that poetry is an imitation of what is possible in real life, whereas I know education is one of the tools every person needs to seek what is possible in real life. Our K-12 buildings are full of students, staff, and administrators that need the best; the community and parents want the best - it is their highest expectation for their children. I'm attesting that we haven't seen the best yet due to the hex of generational achievement gaps, institutionalized racism, and lack of high-level modeling by minority-ethnic academics. In my philosophy, because of who I am and my passions we must talk about the political gerrymandering that sorts and categorizes different castes of students to determine how many jails to build versus using Abraham Harold Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to address issues that keep many of our students far away from self-actualization(s). If I am being explicit, I sincerely believe that regardless of teaching style or philosophy there are certain parameters that need to be a part of every classroom such as discipline, accountability, grace, tolerance, care, leadership, and most importantly today: Cultural competence and the ability to lead without having to tell people that you are the leader, by design.  

     My philosophy of education looks into the mislabeling of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, especially when considered as an academic discipline -  or my philosophies - and I find that in today’s world the pace and sequence of knowledge are piped in at super-speed digitally via social media and gives most students (and educators) access to skewed and unfiltered information that most times compete with educational ethics by using algorithms to determine what information the user receives. This phenomenon, considered to be a mismeasurement, has slowed progress across every level of education - meaning that if my philosophy of education cannot adjust to current times, work-group attitudes, culture shifts, or technology no matter how syntactically independent it may seem, then my philosophy of education becomes null and void. 

      My philosophy of education is perpetual and interactive; free of cognitive slavery by using brain power (neuroscience) to create strategies that build “information processing and intellectual capacity in new ideas (Hammond 2015). This is the case, and the work by Zaretta Hammond also draws on cutting-edge neuroscience research to offer an innovative approach for designing and implementing brain-compatible learning environments dense with information that can be an exemplar for:  “An educator’s ability to recognize students’ cultural displays of learning and meaning-making and respond positively and constructively with teaching moves that use cultural knowledge as a scaffold to connect what the student knows to new concepts and content in order to promote effective information processing. All the while, the educator understands the importance of being in a relationship and having a social-emotional connection to the student in order to create a safe space for learning” (Hammond). If learning is determined at conception by hereditary factors, and education is “teaching moves that use cultural knowledge to build cognitive new concepts and content” (Hammond), then my philosophy of education must be pliable, evolving, and top-of-mind during leadership challenges or in any classroom. What I know is that Western culture envelops us; education was never developed and implemented correctly for BIPOC teachers and students, and the worst thing to happen in education was Brown versus the Board of Education. I understand the needs in 1954, but when over 30,000 educators of color lost their jobs because of the historical assumption, the system created a divot that it has yet to recover from in 2022.       

     To see interpretations and conclusions in real-time means that my philosophy of education will not look like my peers, in some cases my peers might feel my philosophy of education is unwarranted and toxic because we (the United States of Academics) are colorblind and to hold educators accountable means to have uncomfortable conversations about historical malfeasance, and policies that hinge on Hanlon’s Razor meaning that people don’t mislabel, categorize or sort out of the malaise, it’s because they do not know any better. 

     In simple clarity as an educator, I strive to see the light in everyone; my philosophy on education is to always have high expectations for my students, and their families; treat each student as an individual recognizing their learning needs; build community inside and outside the classroom with students and their families; advance my teaching goals by collaborating with my peers to gain knowledge about what works; never to be apologetic for doing the right thing. Subsequently, my Philosophy of Education cannot be static or remain a boilerplate subject for a writing assignment, it has to change with the times by adjusting to the way I lead, teach, and interact with others. This is my opportunity to help weed out the ‘Blockbusters’ of less effective organizational communication in education while making sure the ‘Netflix’ model of success is apparent and working to achieve or produce the next generation of student-centered educational servant leaders. At some point, the status quo has to be let go to let our new systems rise. 


References


​​Ballantyne, Nathan. (2019). Knowing our limits. New York: Oxford University Press. 


Biography.com Editors. (2019, September 10). Aristotle. Biography.com. https://www.biography.com/scholar/aristotle.  


Darling-Hammond, L. (2016, July 28). Unequal opportunity: Race and education. Brookings Institute. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/unequal-opportunity-race-and-education/.  


Gould, S. J. (1996). The mismeasure of man. New York: Norton.

 

Hammond, Z. L. (2015). Culturally responsive teaching and the brain. Corwin Press.


RDR. (2021). Testing tiktok against its peers in the U.S. and China: New research from Ranking Digital Right 





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