The Profession Of John Dewey's Philosophy Of Education

Philosophy of Education paper
Character is defined as the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual. Teaching, unlike any other profession, requires character. I think it goes deeper than that though, and when broken down, there are key ingredients of what makes a good teacher. What does it mean, “To be a good teacher”? What does it take for someone to make a difference while still educating the populace? Students need to be shown how to be successful not only in their work, but in their life. Think upon a cookbook for a moment. This item does not just supply a list of ingredients, for how are you to know what to do with them? Rather it supplies the ingredients needed, along with the application and limitations of how to create …show more content…
Dewey said two things that really stood out to me: education should be life itself, not a preparation for living; and learning should be directly related to the interest of the child. If you know anything about this era, you would know that when Dewey presented these ideas, most everyone rejected his work. Dewey said the most important ingredient in education is interest. There’s that word again... interest. So is one way to become a good teacher is to take into consideration your student’s interest? Absolutely it is. However, without the knowledge of how to specifically acknowledge and respect a child’s interests, this is merely the sugar that no one knows what quantity to apply. Too much makes your end product too sweet, and too little creates something that resembles vomit. So how do you find a perfect medium? Taking into consideration all children’s interests result in a jumbled curriculum unfairly spread over multiple courses. Allowing no interest to be respected results in unhappy learners who dislike their educators. William Bagley thinks that he has the …show more content…
Telling rubbish from reason, having power over the inner world, and having the ability to be good (the latter I think being the most effecting) is what Mitchell said makes up a good educator/student. It is true that having the capacity to withstand listening to nonsense, and having self-control, are important qualities to have. But one of the most crucial things a person can strive to gain, is the ability to be good. In my opinion, this is the third ingredient that makes up a good educator. We teach students this ability for a craft, meaning that teachers conceive the idea of educating as an "art", or an activity in which the educator can give expression to a student’s moral values, beliefs, and intellectual interests. The “craft” metaphor can also compare teaching to cooking a cuisine. When gazing upon the ingredients, the chef organizes a menu, works with the groceries and kitchen utensils, and in what appears to be a simple transition from raw materials to a mouthwatering feast. Not to be overlooked, however, is how during the process, the chef will oftentimes make subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle adjustments to the ingredients as environmental conditions intervene and threaten to turn one 's food into a disaster. Like a chef, genuinely good teachers similarly have a "feel" about what they need to do if they are to translate their pedagogical intentions (make adjustments to their