A Personal Philosophy Of Education

A Personal
Philosophy
of Education
Debbie Barry

2 A Personal Philosophy of Education
Published by:
Debbie Barry
2500 Mann Road, #248
Clarkston, Michigan 48346
USA
Copyright © 2013 by Deborah K. Barry. All rights
reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without
the written permission of the author.
ISBN-13: 978-1490375410
ISBN-10: 1490375414

A Personal Philosophy of Education 3
Originally submitted as a college
assignment:
Ashford University
EDU360: Philosophy of Education
Keisa Williams
February 21, 2013

A Personal
Philosophy of
Education
A teacher’s personal philosophy of
education is unique to the individual, but it
is informed by philosophical activities and
theories that can be clearly identified and
articulated as parts of the whole. Stallones
(2011) defines a philosophy of education as
“applying philosophical methods and tools
to the theory and practice of education” (p.
16). As a future teacher of college-level
basic English and composition, with a
specialization in remedial English
instruction for non-traditional students
returning to the classroom as adults, I apply
these methods and tools to describing my
personal philosophy of education. The
seven philosophies of education identified
by Oregon State University for its

Educational Philosophies Self-Assessment
are: information processing, cognitivism and
constructionism, progressivism,
perennialism, behaviorism, humanism, and
essentialism (Educational philosophies self-
assessment scoring guide, 2013).
Information processing is the educational
philosophy that considers how the individual
mind interprets, remembers, and retrieves
information. Cognitivism and
constructivism are taken together and deal
with how the student responds to and acts
upon experiences in the real world. The
progressivist philosophy considers the
student instead of the subject matter being
taught. Perennialism focuses on the great
ideas and values of Western civilization as
the most important subjects to teach to
develop the intellect. Behaviorism uses
aspects of operant conditioning to teach
students appropriate behaviors and to
discourage unacceptable behaviors. The
humanist philosophy deals with helping

students achieve their highest human
potential. Essentialism promotes teaching a
core of basic knowledge and skills and often
favors direct instruction over other teaching
methods. My personal philosophy of
education is an eclectic blend of the first
three philosophies, and also including
aspects of the remaining four philosophies.
The overall purpose of education is
to prepare children to be responsible,
productive, compassionate adults, and to
preserve and perpetuate the best aspects of
society while using the worst aspects of
society as examples of what students should
not do. The concept of education goes back
to the dawn of human history with adults
teaching children the skills needed for life
through example and hands-on practice, and
with the history and spirituality of each
group of people being taught to children
through stories, music, and art. In modern
times, children still learn a great deal from
stories. Author Theodor Seuss Geisel,

writing under the well-known pseudonym
Dr. Seuss, wrote many books for children.
In his 1978 book, I can Read with my Eyes
Shut, Geisel wrote: “The more that you read,
the more things you will know. The more
that you learn the more places you’ll go”
(Cited in Hollister, 2011, para. 2). This
endorsement of education encourages
children to learn to read and to read as much
as possible to gain knowledge that will give
them success in life.
While education can be acquired
almost anywhere, teaching each child
individually is not feasible in the modern
world. Schools began to form as soon as it
became desirable to teach students in groups
instead of teaching them individually.
Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum
taught groups of students in ancient Greece
as far back as 400 B.C.. I believe that
schools are essential in an industrial society
in which the majority of adults work outside
the home and children need to receive

efficient, uniform educations to prepare
them to join the industrial workforce. In our
post-industrial world, schools are also
centers for social development, for
developing students’ attitudes and beliefs
about social justice, and places where
children can be warm and safe and can get
decent food and some health care while their
parents work. This last purpose of modern
schools is heart breaking, but it is a reality
that cannot be ignored. In order to eliminate
this use of schools, schools teach students
the knowledge and skills needed for the
students to build better lives for themselves
and their children, and to contribute to
solving social problems that lead to poverty
and hunger.
While everyone needs to be
educated, not everyone needs to be educated
in the same way. Just as medieval European
society had different types of education for
people in different career paths, modern
students can benefit from different kinds of

education. Every student should learn
reading and writing, mathematics, and some
history and science. Once these basics are
mastered, however, students should be able
to receive specialized instruction, with some
learning vocational skills and others learning
advanced academic subjects to prepare them
for careers in education, law, medicine, and
religion. This is not a popular viewpoint in
the present political climate, but schools that
offer vocational specialization are becoming
more and more prevalent. Magnet schools
and charter schools allow students to
specialize in music, art, drama, business,
health care, and even aviation technologies.
There will always be a need for general
education schools and for college
preparatory schools, but diversifying
education through special interest schools
promises to provide a brighter future for
today’s students.
Of the classical educational
philosophies, secular idealism seems to be

the closest match with my personal
philosophy. In particular, my philosophy is
similar to that of Immanuel Kant, who
“sought to bridge the divide between
Idealists and Realists” (Stallones, 2011, p.
44). According to Liz Jackson (2007), Kant
promoted the importance of the individual
and of interactions between individuals in
education (p. 336). Kant believed that the
individual needed to have the freedom to
speak freely and to explore ideas and
concepts. He is quoted as saying: “It is only
through the efforts of people of broader
views, who take an interest in the universal
good, and who are capable of entertaining
the idea of a better condition of things in the
future, that the gradual progress of human
nature towards its goal is possible” (Cited in
Jackson, 2007, p. 340). I agree that people
in society need to develop broad views of
the world, and that it is the purpose of
education to develop such broad views.
Individual freedom to learn in the manner

that is best suited to the learner is required
for this. In order to best achieve individual
learning, an eclectic blending of information
processing, cognitivism, and progressivism
is necessary so that teachers understand how
the student’s mind works and how the
student responds to the world, and that
teachers also consider the individual
student’s needs, gifts, interests, and talents.
While I embrace the idea of
concentrating on the needs of the individual
in education, there is a definite role for
education in society, as well. Education
serves society first by preparing each new
generation of students to take its place as the
next generation of adults in society.
Children need to be taught how to be
productive, successful adults, and to do
whatever good they may do for society as a
whole. Education produces young adults
who are prepared to contribute to society.
Education also serves society by
perpetuating the culture of the society

through teaching children the literature,
history, and arts of the culture. As modern
times bring people of many cultural
backgrounds together in an eclectic society,
education helps students learn to understand
and embrace cultural diversity, and to pass
on aspects of the several cultures of the
society as one larger, diverse culture. In the
United States, education serves society by
instilling democratic ideals in students and
by teaching students to use the democratic
process to solve problems.
As a teacher of college students, and
especially of adults who return to college
after being away from formal education for
a period of time, my role is to facilitate my
students’ learning. As a teacher of English,
it is my role to help students learn to read
deeply to find meaning in texts and to
employ rhetoric and grammar to write
effectively. For non-traditional students, my
role will also be to help the students develop
an academic mindset that will enable the

students to learn. One of the most important
responsibilities of a teacher of any age group
or grade level is to facilitate student
explorations and inquiries that result in
student learning. A teacher must be
responsive to the individual learning styles
of his or her students, and must take care to
employ a variety of teaching methods that
will help the greatest number of students
achieve their greatest learning potentials.
In today’s world, prospective
teachers must be prepared to deal not only
with the requirements of teaching academic
subjects, but also with the requirements of
facing a culturally diverse classroom. It is
important for teachers to have a working
knowledge of subject matter and to be
conversant with pedagogy, but the greatest
challenge for many teachers is facing a class
of students from a variety of ethnic, socio-
political, and socio-economic cultural
backgrounds, as well as students with a
variety of native languages, and also

students with physical, mental, and learning
disorders. Teachers must be taught to be
sensitive to multicultural classrooms, and to
avoid trying to assimilate students into a
single, dominant culture in the classroom.
Teachers must learn to respect different
beliefs, traditions, and learning styles, and to
teach in such a way that no student feels
excluded on the basis of his or her culture.
The role of the student in education
appears simple, but is actually fairly
complex. On the surface, the student’s role
in education is to learn what he or she is
taught. This is not, however, a sufficient
description of the student’s role. In some
ways, the student is a consumer and
education is a service. Frances M. Hill
(1995) of The Queen's University in Belfast,
United Kingdom, writes of education as a
service and students as consumers: “One
distinctive aspect of services is that
consumers are often part of the production
and delivery processes” (para. 4). This is a

good description of the role of the student in
education: the student participates with the
teacher to produce the education that the
student receives and the student participates
in the delivery process of education to the
student. To participate in the production of
education, the student shows up for class,
brings the necessary books and materials to
class, studies and works on projects and
assignments, and participates with the
teacher and with other students in
discussions and explorations that support the
material being taught. The student
participates in the delivery process by
paying attention, by asking questions to
clarify information, and by studying.
Working on projects that require research
and hands-on activities also help the student
participate in the delivery of education to the
student.
The student has an additional role in
education. Just as teachers must be prepared
to teach a culturally diverse student

population, so must the student participate in
the cultural diversity in the classroom. In
order to prepare to be part of adult society,
the student must learn to accept and respect
diverse cultures, and to move beyond
cultural differences to work with other
students in the process of being consumers
of the service of education.
Not every student is intrinsically
motivated to learn. Heather Voke (2002)
write that “research attests that students are
most likely to be engaged in learning when
they are active and given some choice and
control over the learning process—and when
the curriculum is individualized, authentic,
and related to students' interests” (para. 1).
Students who are interested in learning, and
who are curious to find out about the world
or some aspect of it, are motivated to learn,
but common teaching methods often stifle
this motivation. The lack of student
motivation can be seen in the results of a
recent study of student dropout rates. “One

recent study showed a 5% high school
dropout rate for gifted students compared
with a 5.2% dropout rate for non-gifted
students” (Phillips, 2008, para. 2). Teachers
have the power to motivate students by
presenting subject matter in ways that
engage the interests and attention of the
students. The specialized schools discussed
above offer an opportunity for students to
pursue an education in subjects in which
they are interested, thus providing students
with the motivation to learn.
There is no one, ideal curriculum
that can serve all students at the same time.
Various curricula are necessary to meet the
needs of a diverse student population. An
ideal curriculum would have to address the
individual learning styles, cultural
backgrounds, interests, and personalities of
all of the students who would be taught the
curriculum, and such a curriculum would be
too complex for any teacher to present it
effectively.

While an ideal curriculum is
impossible, there are certain things that
should be included in any curriculum in the
United States. Curriculum should meet the
needs of society by teaching students how to
become informed, responsible citizens who
will be the leaders of the future, and it
should motivate students to become those
informed, responsible citizens. Curriculum
should also promote and perpetuate the
values and principles of American society,
inculcating students with the concepts of
democracy, independence, and a strong
work ethic.
In the early years of a child’s
education, curriculum should include
reading, writing, history, geography,
mathematics, life science, physical science,
art, and music. Each student should receive
a firm foundation in these subjects, blending
perennialist literature and ideas with more
recent literature and ideas from a variety of
cultures. In the middle years of education,

the curriculum should be structured such
that students can begin to specialize in
subjects in which they are interested. The
curriculum needs to expand to include an
array of vocational subjects designed to
promote college and career readiness. In the
later years of high school, curriculum should
be as specialized as possible for several
college and career paths so that students are
best equipped to enter the adult world.
Schools should be structured into
three general learning periods to coincide
with the three levels of curriculum
previously discussed. The three groups that
I believe would work best, based on my own
educational experiences, are ages 3 through
7 in one school, ages 8 through 12 in another
school, and ages 13 through 18 in a third
school. Within each school, I believe the
best, most natural organization for effective
instruction is to have non-graded, multi-age
groupings in which students work together
to learn the various subjects that are taught

at the given level. Whenever possible, a
classroom should have no more than 20 or
25 students at one time so that the teacher
can give each student as much individual
attention as possible. This is an organic,
natural method of teaching that is usually
found in home school situations. The older
students help the younger students learn. In
so doing, the older students develop a deeper
understanding of the subject matter. In such
situations, the overt curriculum of the
various subjects can be taught effectively,
and the covert curriculum of working
together and of each student learning at an
individual pace will also be taught.
Working in multi-age groups prepares
students for the adult world better than does
traditional classrooms in which all of a
student’s peers are the same age as the
student.
Standardized testing to assess student
learning is likely to remain the norm for at
least another generation, and it may prevail

in American schools for much longer than
that. In Finland, students were shown on the
2000 Programme for International Student
Assessment (PISA) to be “the best young
readers in the world” (Hancock, 2011, para.
7). This is significant because “[t]here are
no mandated standardized tests in Finland,
apart from one exam at the end of students’
senior year in high school” (Hancock, 2011,
para. 9). It is my view that American
schools should be run more like Finnish
schools when it comes to student assessment
and eliminate the majority of high-stakes,
standardized testing. In addition, final
exams that cover an entire semester or year
of teaching are not effective assessments of
student learning. Keith O’Brien (2010)
writes: “Across the country, there is growing
evidence that final exams – once considered
so important that universities named a week
after them – are being abandoned or
diminished, replaced by take-home tests,
papers, projects, or group presentations”

(para. 4). I agree with this trend toward
assessing students throughout the year with
smaller tests, papers, and projects.
Performance assessments allow students to
show what they have retained in long-term
memory and the assessments allow students
who may not be good at taking written tests
to showcase their talents and abilities.
When I am teaching, I may be forced
by the school to use standardized tests, in
which case I will do so. As a college
English teacher, I will assess students by
assigning papers to be written outside of
class, papers to be written in class with
advance preparation, and impromptu papers
to be written in class. I will also use a quiz
at the end of each unit, in which I will use
multiple-choice questions as seldom as
possible. Short-answer questions and short-
essay questions are better measures of
authentic learning in an English composition
class than a standardized test can be. I will
know that my students have learned when

they produce thoughtful papers that are on-
topic and that are relatively free of errors in
grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
My philosophical beliefs about
education will influence my work as an
educator by making me aware of and
sensitive to the needs of my individual
students. My belief that a teacher should
understand how a student’s mind works will
drive me to present information in multiple
formats that take into account Howard
Gardner’s multiple intelligences; it is likely
that I will ask students to complete a
learning styles inventory, such as the one
found online at http://www.learning-styles-
online.com/inventory/results.php . The
results of the inventory will help me to
present subject matter in ways that help my
students to learn. My belief that students
learn by acting upon and responding to the
world will drive me to expose my students
to research opportunities and to ask my
students to reflect on their research. Over

all, my belief that education should focus on
the student will guide me to seek my
students’ learning exceptionalities and to
encourage each student to reach his or her
greatest potential in learning and in life.
My personal philosophy of education
is an eclectic blend of several different
philosophies. Because of this, I am able to
adapt to a variety of teaching situations, and
to apply the concepts of various
philosophies in my teaching. The purpose
of education is to prepare students to be
responsible, productive members of society,
and to preserve and perpetuate the important
thoughts and ideals of the society. As such,
education simultaneously serves both the
individual student and the society. Teachers
and students have specific roles to play in
education, and neither group functions
effectively without the other group.
Teachers facilitate student learning and
students participate as consumers in their
education. Curriculum should be structured

to give every student a firm foundation in
basic subjects and to allow students to
diversify their educations according to their
strengths and interests. Instruction should
feature the organic learning associated with
mixed-age groups so that learning can be
accomplished naturally and so that students
retain as much education as possible.
Assessment, similarly, should be a natural
process of performance evaluation instead of
the artificial standardized testing that is
prevalent in the United States today. In
practice, I expect that I will have to accept
teaching conditions that do not fit perfectly
with my philosophy of education. In doing
so, I will model adaptability and acceptance
of philosophical differences for my students.

References
Educational philosophies self-assessment
scoring guide. (2013). Retrieved
from
http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/ed416/
scoringguide.html
Hancock, L.N. (2011). Why are Finland's
schools successful? Smithsonian
Magazine [Electronic version].
Retrieved from
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/pe
ople-places/Why-Are-Finlands-
Schools-Successful.html
Hill, F. M. (1995). Managing service quality
in higher education: The role of the
student as primary consumer.
Quality Assurance in Education,
3(3), 10-21. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/
213732977

Hollister, T. (2011). Words of wisdom from
Dr. Seuss. Retrieved from
http://hobnobia.net/content/content/
words-wisdom-dr-seuss
Jackson, L. (2007). The individualist? The
autonomy of reason in Kant’s
philosophy and educational views.
Studies in Philosophy and
Education, 26(4), 335-344. doi:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11217-
007-9045-3
Learning styles inventory. (2012). Retrieved
from http://www.learning-styles-
online.com/inventory/results.php
O'Brien, K. (2010, October 3). The test is
canceled. The Boston Globe
[Electronic version]. Retrieved from
http://keithob.com/stories/the-test-is-
canceled/?/stories/2010/11/the_test_i
s_can.html/
Phillips, S. (2008). Are we holding back our
students that possess the potential to
excel? Education, 129(1), 50-55.

Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/
196417832
Stallones, J. (2011). Philosophy of
education. San Diego, CA:
Bridgepoint Education, Inc.
Voke, H. (2002). Motivating students to
learn. Student Engagement, 28
[Electronic version]. Retrieved from
http://www.ascd.org/publications/ne
wsletters/policy-
priorities/feb02/num28/Motivating-
Students-to-Learn.aspx

Debbie Barry and
her husband live in
southeastern
Michigan with their
two sons and their
two cats. The
family enjoys
exploring history through French and Indian
War re-enactment and through medieval re-
enactment in the Society for Creative
Anachronism (SCA). Debbie grew up in
Vermont, where she heard and collected
many family stories that she enjoys retelling
as historical fiction for young audiences.
Debbie graduated summa cum laude with a
B.A. in dual majors of social sciences with
an education concentration and of English in
2013.

Also look for these titles by Debbie Barry:
Books for Young Learners:
 Around the Color Wheel
 Colors and Numbers
Stories for Children:
 Bobcat in the Pantry
 Born in the Blizzard and Freshet
 Expressing the Trunk
 Gramp’s Bear Story
 When Mary Fell Down the Well
 Writing Competition
History and Genealogy:
 Family History of Deborah K.
Fletcher
 Grandma Fletcher’s Scrapbooks
 Nana’s Stories
 Property Deeds and other Legal
Documents of the Fletcher and
Townsend Families
 Property Deeds and other Legal
Documents of the Fletcher and
Townsend Families, 2nd Edition
with Digital Scans
 The Red Notebook

 The Red Notebook, 2nd Edition with
Digital Scans
 Zoa Fletcher’s Photos
 Zoa Has Her Way
Other Topics:
 A Journey Through My College
Papers: Undergraduate Series
 Advantages of Brain-Based Learning
Environments
 African Americans in Post-Civil War
America
 American Students Are Crippled By
Cultural Diversity Education
 Analyzing The Yellow Wallpaper
 Debbie’s Vision in Art, Volumes 1-4
 Debbie’s Writing
 Examining Gender in A Doll House
 Identity Within and Without
 Indifferent Universe
 Loss
 More Than Just Monogamy
 Nature in Early American Literature
 Picturing The First Writing
 Religion and Myth in English Poetry
 Responsibility to a Broader
Humanity
 Speech Codes in Education
 Symbolic Serpents
 The Evil of Grendel
 The Heart’s Vision

 The Heart’s Vision in Color

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