In this paper, I will define my personal philosophy of education insofar as what education’s place is in society and the manner in which it serves students. I will also supplement how William James and Aristotle helped shape my philosophy this term and where I agree or disagree with them. After that, I will cover the ways in which I find education essentially progressive and schools essentially conservative, as well as how James and Aristotle would have agreed or disagreed in terms of whether education is progressive/conservative versus whether education should be progressive/conservative. My personal philosophy of education is thus: the primary goal of education should be to educate its students in order to shape citizens of the world that
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While in my mind there was no argument whether people should or should not be good, goodness was always a general and vague quality. In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle defines virtue and virtuous behavior and how to develop virtue at full length. In particular, however, is his insistence that “[W]e are just, and capable of temperance, and brace, and possessed of the other virtues from the moment of our birth. But nevertheless we expect to find that true goodness is something different and that the virtues in the true sense come to belong to us in another way” (1144a13-b8). The idea that people inherently contained the characteristics of goodness was not an idea that was native to me. After all, there were many examples of people in the world, usually on the news, that were simply bad and arguably evil. The idea that people were naturally virtuous was something I struggled to reconcile with, because if it were true, why then were so many people not good people? The second sentence in the quote resolved the problem for me. People, according to Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics, were not born perfect, responsible, critically thinking members of society. More accurately, people were born with the potential to be just, and capable of temperance but in order to become the virtuous people Aristotle describes, a person must develop these inherent traits as if the traits were seeds that needed …show more content…
Aristotle follows up the first quote I presented with, “Virtue is not merely a disposition conforming to right principle, but one co-operating with right principle” (1144b8-36). That line, in conjunction with his arguments for habituation in Book 2, decided much of my educational philosophy— that people, having the capacity for goodness, must practice goodness aggressively. As Aristotle states, having goodness/virtue is not enough. Obediently acting out goodness is not enough. A person must go out of their way to be good and choose to do the right thing to truly become a virtuous person. This idea particularly resonated with me when I read a modern day anecdote on a social media website. The situation was the internet trope of a ‘nice guy’ who was advocating his niceness in that he was not the kind of guy who made sexist jokes or harassed women, and the commentary was a rhetorical question phrased, ‘ok maybe you don’t do any of that, but do you get up to stop it from happening when you see it?’ The idea of an education that confronted people for not being good enough was instilled in me, between Aristotle and a Tumblr post I can no longer find. This was a philosophy that was applicable to both education and life, and it is a primary goal of mine to procure students who aggressively pursue the betterment of
While in my mind there was no argument whether people should or should not be good, goodness was always a general and vague quality. In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle defines virtue and virtuous behavior and how to develop virtue at full length. In particular, however, is his insistence that “[W]e are just, and capable of temperance, and brace, and possessed of the other virtues from the moment of our birth. But nevertheless we expect to find that true goodness is something different and that the virtues in the true sense come to belong to us in another way” (1144a13-b8). The idea that people inherently contained the characteristics of goodness was not an idea that was native to me. After all, there were many examples of people in the world, usually on the news, that were simply bad and arguably evil. The idea that people were naturally virtuous was something I struggled to reconcile with, because if it were true, why then were so many people not good people? The second sentence in the quote resolved the problem for me. People, according to Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics, were not born perfect, responsible, critically thinking members of society. More accurately, people were born with the potential to be just, and capable of temperance but in order to become the virtuous people Aristotle describes, a person must develop these inherent traits as if the traits were seeds that needed …show more content…
Aristotle follows up the first quote I presented with, “Virtue is not merely a disposition conforming to right principle, but one co-operating with right principle” (1144b8-36). That line, in conjunction with his arguments for habituation in Book 2, decided much of my educational philosophy— that people, having the capacity for goodness, must practice goodness aggressively. As Aristotle states, having goodness/virtue is not enough. Obediently acting out goodness is not enough. A person must go out of their way to be good and choose to do the right thing to truly become a virtuous person. This idea particularly resonated with me when I read a modern day anecdote on a social media website. The situation was the internet trope of a ‘nice guy’ who was advocating his niceness in that he was not the kind of guy who made sexist jokes or harassed women, and the commentary was a rhetorical question phrased, ‘ok maybe you don’t do any of that, but do you get up to stop it from happening when you see it?’ The idea of an education that confronted people for not being good enough was instilled in me, between Aristotle and a Tumblr post I can no longer find. This was a philosophy that was applicable to both education and life, and it is a primary goal of mine to procure students who aggressively pursue the betterment of