My Philosphy of Education

I believe that education is human activities intended to help youngsters growing more mature and integral in all dimensions of their life (intellectual, religious, moral, personal, social, cultural, temporal, institutional, relational, physic, psychology, etc). It is an on going formation to make sense their personal life history, to be true to their selves in trustful communion with others in the world. In this trustful communion with others, they confirm their existence, affirm their freedom and express their creativity and productivity.

For the realization of their creativity and productivity they transform the existing society into a better one, more just, satisfying, democratic, egalitarian and more humane. Education for social reconstruction would be the line for developing my curriculum philosophy.

In that philosophy, I believe that schooling is to develop the intellectual dimension of the students in a way that through this knowledge they could understand and perceived better who they are and their society so that the students might participate to construct it actively.

Further, schooling is to stimulate various kinds of students’ skills so that they could be more active and creative member of the society. Schooling means preparing students to become more active and creative members of the society. In this sense schooling means to grow students’ awareness that as human being, they are actor of their own life and of the society by developing their strong moral character. To be agent of his own history (individual and social) is the purpose of schooling.

Knowledge is socially constructed, culturally mediated, and historically situated out of social interaction for social, political, economic and cultural purposes. The worth knowledge is the trustful one. It makes human being understand better their life as individual and social person, and giving them power to create and reconstruct the better world through it. Knowledge is socially constructed, but individual creates and constructs it personally to make it sense and intelligible for him or her. In this personal reconstruction, individual contributes his or her agency for the benefits of the society.

Learning is always an act of construction, simultaneously individually and socially. Thus, it is constructivist in perspective. To have the constructivist learning, students would be more capable of reconstructing their world, because what is realities is what we construct it. Thus, giving them the freedom to construct their own knowledge in the community, they would prepare their selves as agent for their life.

Child learns actively through assimilation and accommodation of experience to construct meaning based on what one already knows (from direct or indirect experiences). By this, he or she participates in construction of their world. By this I believe that learning is a natural process. We can not foster it better for their growth with a kind of acceleration program for talented students. Learning is a natural process but we should pay attention to the personal needs, because every one steps on learning is difference.

Learning is intrapersonal and interpersonal (social act), an interaction between individual with their environment, to make their life (personal history, nature, and culture) more intelligible and meaningful. Further, learning should be creative, enjoying and stimulating all children’s potentials, especially stimulating their brain to be more intelligent, their body to be more skillful, and their heart to be more sensitive to the need of others.

Child is an integrated unique person, capable of meaning maker, and potential actor in the history. To help them grow in their whole dimension of their life is a necessary condition of a good and health education. Child creates knowledge and understanding based on their personal and social experience. He or she can produce and reproduce knowledge. When it is authentic, their learning will be a productive and creative one. Education should bring their student to become an authentic learner who creates the meaningful knowledge for their life.

However, child needs others persons to guide him or her to understand their world (its heredity and achievements), their self (life history) and their society (culture) so that they could become active member of the society. Child will learn faster when there are mature and competence person who accompany them in their learning activities.

Indeed, he or she is capable to educate their selves by exercising their freedom through their creativity, in action and thoughts. Childs experiences are various. By this background, their accommodation and acquisition of knowledge is difference with each other. Giving the freedom they will grow better.

Teaching is to help students to form and educate themselves through learning relevance knowledge and skills so that they can contribute to the reconstruction of society. Knowledge means understanding the richness of cultural heredity of science. Skills means practical competency to be human in the social life. It is not only a reproductive skill but productive one. The knowledge is not only repetition, remembering, but more that this, is creative and contextual knowledge. Thus teaching them to be creative learner and competency person should animate my teaching.

Teaching means stimulating them to find the method and critical thinking to perceive and interpreting personal and social event so that they can envision the better society. It is a promotion of a personal engagement to individual life, so that through his or her personal experience he or she has the better ideal for the social living in the society. Critical thinking is very important to be developed as the contextual methods for analyzing our society.

Teaching is a trustful cooperation between individuals to grow their awareness as social agent and creator of human history. If you have no trust to your students, there would not be teaching and learning activities. The same thing happens when your students have no trust in you. Because learning is cooperative acts, thus trust each other is the key success for teaching and learning activities as teacher.

My preferred instructional practices is group discussion on actual problems in the society to get insight of what they perceived about the problems, how the people perceived it, and how they could find a better understanding and interpretation of the topic. Thus it is contextual learning that will help the student to understand better their selves as a member of the society.

The best methods are experience method, learning by experience through exposure,laboratory work, live in, or direct observation in a real social living, so that they could find the proper actions to improve or participate in the life of the society; deep critical thinking about the case study or a topic, group discussion and personal studies to make sense their learning.

It is also a creative learning by constructing meaning from individual experience on social concern. Teacher guides the students to develop their social sensibility as individuals who are also member of the society. By creative learning my students will develop their and create their knowledge which is relevance and meaningful to their life.

An authentic learning accommodates diverse learners. I will encourage the students to get involved one another so that the advance could have challenges to improve their capacity to help his of her underachievement classmates. It means that I will support my student to have responsibility to their fellow classmates in their learning. Diverse learner in the classroom is a natural setting of learning. Through these differences, then each student would be enriched.

Teaching and learning is not only transmission of knowledge. Moreover it is an active personal engagement of individual with the material in their relation with other. By these all students could gain benefits in reconstructing their own knowledge through the community. Learning together is better than learning privately. Especially where there are diverse learners, because in learning together in a group we are more enriched by the presence of others.

Every student is stimulated to help and learn each other, because by learning together, regardless of their differences they really experience of how to construct a respectful community in which every one felt that his of her dignity is respected.

Teaching and learning are always related to the knowledge that is socially constructed, historically situated. Thus they could oppress individual and do injustice. Thus, social injustice could happen in the classroom context. To be critical to the way we teach, to the material we present to the students is very important for promoting more just education.

But it is also true, because teaching, learning and constructing knowledge are located in history, they are amendable. Thus, teaching, learning and constructing knowledge could be the means for criticizing injustice and promoting social justice in the society. In this view I believe that school has great chance to promote the social justice. By doing so, education contributes to the development of the society and human civilization that is more humane.

Creating social justice in the educational context is the calling for every authentic educator. Every educator has the challenge to promote the social justice. Especially in the society that disrespect human rights and dignity, educator could contribute more grounded formation, giving them the internal capacity to select what is just and deign for human being. By considering the dimension of social justice in our teaching and learning, we will make our world better, more humane, in which every member of its society enjoy their fullness growth as human being.

By considering the dimension of social justice in our teaching and learning, we will make our our world better, more humane, in which every member of its society enjoy their fullness growth as human being. One of the great contributions of school is to realize the value of social justice in the society.

I will implement all these ideas in my works. Particularly, because my work in the future would be in school administration, I need to communicate and disseminate my philosophy to teachers who work with me in my school. Promoting the curriculum philosophy which has it main purpose to reconstruct our society to be better, more just than the existed one, is still very rare in my country. So I think, the firs implementation of my curriculum philosophy would be its dissemination and then together with the teacher I will develop the curriculum and practices that will help us to arrive at this purpose.