It appears that philosophies of education typically focus on a single disciplinary approach. Not unexpectedly, this then centers on the processes essential to encouraging learning, which in turn are based on the concepts validating education itself. Integrity, commitment, and the unalloyed determination to educate are the usual concepts, and are reliant on the presence of the teacher. There is a powerful justification for such an approach; education is virtually synonymous with a unique responsibility, certainly in regard to the role of the educator. This is the individual committed to imparting knowledge in the most effective and lasting ways possible, and with a further emphasis on the encouraging of ambitions for greater education. How this may then best be achieved through the teacher usually provides a foundation for a philosophy of education, and it is one meriting the effort. In plain terms, there can be no overstating of that responsibility of the educator, and the philosophy that embraces this reality is a philosophy likely to succeed. It is the view that demands attention to the educational experience as ultimately providing value to the student, and even those philosophies based on different directions must acknowledge this pivotal element. It is the core of education of any kind, for it is the enhancement of the student.
This noted, there are nonetheless other components to education which, in my estimation, suggest a philosophy perhaps less “focused.” The approach that is student-centered is, again, crucial to an extent because the education of the student is the primary goal. In all educational scenarios, this reality provides guidance to both teacher and student, as it provides the aim that gives meaning to the process. At the same time, this very approach may ignore the inherently exponential and interactive components of education. It may be, in fact, too purely directional, and rely too greatly on that process in which the matter – the education – is transmitted to the student. An excess of direction then does not properly take into account how all educators are influenced by students, and by the very processes of instruction. This perception in mind, then, I am inclined to offer a philosophy of education that is more expansive and reciprocal, and one that admits to the necessity of the basic purpose of education while fully accepting how that purpose is essentially defined or created within the process itself.
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This is not to suggest that the student and the instructor engage in a manner lacking a framework, or that specific goals be set aside as the interactive nature of the experience evolves. Nor does it dismiss the reality that this interaction lies within all education to an extent, no matter how it is employed or even disregarded. The point, rather, is that the exponential aspect to teaching is both paramount and inescapable. At every phase of education, the student is in some sense leading the instructor because the student is conveying their shifting levels of understanding and their potentials, or lack thereof, to acquire more. Within this lies the crucial element of inclination. As teachers know all too well, the student drawn to a certain kind of learning is the student desirous of pursuing that kind, and more eager to commit in terms of effort. What this then translates to is what I perceive as vital to an educational philosophy: receptivity on the part of the teacher, and to an extent matching the receptivity expected of the student. This essential element of education is, I believe, the most important in truly comprehending and enhancing education itself, for it translates to mutual degrees of commitment between teacher and student.
How the receptivity discussed is of the greatest import may be seen in assessing how education today so often defies traditional parameters of space and time. Technology has set the stage for long-distance learning, and the “classroom” frequently becomes separate environments vastly removed from one another. This single circumstance must alter any reliance on the part of educators to expect learning as inevitably occurring because the instruction is provided. In plain terms, action and destination are no longer connected as they were, so the traditional components of validation are gone. A written response from a student sent as a file may tell the teacher that the student does not correctly understand the subject, but it reveals little beyond this. Similarly, the student engaged in an online lesson cannot fully take in the teacher’s meaning, if only because the interaction is necessarily limited; there is usually no opportunity to pursue that invaluable option of seeking clarification. The connections are there, but they are constrained by the inescapable factors of distance and limited interactive potentials.
This being the case, then, both teacher and student must commit more to the experience, and in a way that emphasizes the interaction less available. Ironically, long-distance education requires of its participants a greater effort to render the technology as much of a literal channel as possible. It equates to the need to infuse as much of the “real” into the education as possible, and this demands that teacher and student attend more fully to what the other is providing. Each must commit to supplying to the experience what the technology hinders, which is a heightened receptivity to the thinking, intent, and ability of the other. Each must proceed in the knowledge that the education of the student can only be achieved through compensating for the limitations intrinsic to distance.
If long-distance learning serves to better illustrate my own philosophy of education, it remains an illustration, and is not required to substantiate the philosophy. The key is expansion of effort and thinking, and in terms of teachers and students understanding that education is never a matter of the transmission of learning from one source to the reception of another. It is about mutual attention and full reciprocity of interests, for only the educator who truly knows the current state of the student’s learning may correctly move that learning forward. This is a philosophy that relies in a sense on an ancient adage of teachers, that by the students they are taught. The basic processes of education, in an essential transfer of learning from teacher to student, are by no means extraneous. Nonetheless, for education to be what it must be, nothing is more crucial that a mutual sense of responsibility shared by teacher and student, which
