Everything is Everything - my Philosophy of Education

Any Philosophy of Education that I would try to articulate would really be a philosophy of life and involves a whole lot more that what goes on in the school. If it were going to be a one sentence summary it would be that every discipline (and even within a discipline) has a slightly different way of solving problems and as society gets more complex it is the person that can bring unique problem solving methods to a given situation.

This most recent incarnation of my philosophy came from two primary influences; reading and observing, and talking to my wife. To take the second influence first, my wife is a science teacher (with a bit of a music background) and over the years we have had many discussions about students, education and the like. She summed it up nicely one day when she said that her students in chemistry had to approach problems in a totally different way that the students I had in band (and that she did as a musician). Neither was right or wrong and in fact as we compared students we determined that her chemistry students that also had music were able to bring more problem solving strategies to a problem than those that didn't have that influence. I also noted that my band kids that had science had more "tools" than those that didn't. With her chemistry students, the problems often required finding an answer using a formula given a known set of data. That skill would then be used in combination with another formula to answer problems of increasing complexity.  With the band students, it was rarely about getting something "right" but about making something "better" and when a higher skill level was recognized it opened what could be called insight to the next level of achievement. When you combine these approaches to any situation you have someone who is able to solve many complex problems and also recognize what the next level will be when the answer is achieved.

During these years of discourse I read quite a bit, usually non-fiction and often about physics and human behavior. Not the specifics of physics - my mind isn't built for that- but more of the macro result of how physics manifests itself in our universe. I started noticing interesting things. For example the membrane version of string theory is described comparing the vibration of the membrane to musical vibrations and the combination of these various frequencies of vibration are what combine to make up everything in our universe. A new branch of social science is developing that takes economic formulas and applies them to human behavior to find intriguing answers not considered before (Malcolm Gladwell and Daniel Pink, notably). The Google financial fortunes exploded when they applied (mostly unknowingly) the game theory work of Nobel Prize winner John Nash to their ad sales which changed the way others sold ads online. Steve Jobs would wander into classes on calligraphy which led to some of the iconic designs that Apple uses. There are many more examples of people bringing problem solving from one area into another and the new insight leads to explosive progress.

So, to my specific philosophy. Through my subject I want to teach them how to solve problems. Do they need to learn the fundamentals of the subject matter? Absolutely! For those that choose to pursue the subject that I teach further it is my responsibility to help them pursue that interest. After all, it is the experts in a field that will drive the progress but frankly most of my students will either specialize in something else or will use the subject as a small part of a larger body of knowledge. More importantly, using the subject to guide them through problem solving will both expose them to the subject and expand the pallet of problem solving skills.

As a practical matter, to achieve this I have to constantly refer them back to their acquired knowledge and guide them through the steps to solve the problem rather than giving them the solution and focusing on the process rather than the answer. Often, particularly in my eighth grade classes, part of that process is simply reading the instructions. For whatever reason, many of my students have been spoon fed to the point that they don't even read instructions for themselves. Contrary to a popular opinion that teaching them to follow directions is akin to "creating robots", I contend that the instructions are what sets up the problem. The problem comes when the instructions extend to walking them through the solution each time. The expertise in teaching comes in gradually taking away instructions to the point that they only have the question and not the answer so that they have to apply the problem solving skill.

Technology can be the great equalizer in this effort. The links to the world allow a person anywhere to find out how people anywhere else go about solving problems. Finding the links between people and disciplines exposes how influences affect outcomes. As an example, one of my favorite musicians is jazz guitar player Pat Metheny. I read and listen to any interviews with Pat that are available. Years ago, a subscription to Downbeat magazine was the major source. Now the Internet makes many more resources available. By using those resources I discovered that Metheny expressed a desire to someday play with the group Steely Dan, which also happened to be another favorite of mine but in a different genre. And then, strangely enough, on a visit to the Chicago Art Institute with a group of students I was taken by the art of Paul Klee and later found that Pat Metheny mentioned Klee as one of his favorites as well. How do those kind of things happen? What is it that makes a jazz great and an 8th grade computer teacher have the same influences? There must be threads that weave throughout society and culture that can bring those varied influences together to solve a problem or create something new. Technology is the vehicle to make those connections, but is only one albeit very versatile vehicle. Being able to quickly and efficiently find out what problems have been solved and being able to add them to our toolbelts without spending the time previously necessary allows us the time to use that same technology to make the connections to solve more complex problems.

In summary, my philosophy is to use my subject as a catalyst to teach varied approaches to solving problems. If done thoroughly and correctly, the students so inclined can continue study in the subject and those that aren't so inclined can take the problem solving skills to the areas they pursue. We are at a point  with technology that advances in any field are instantly communicated to the rest of the field, which allow people with varied problem solving skills to take that information and continue on to the next problem. If I am doing my job correctly, I am giving my students a catalog of problem solving skills and enough practical knowledge in the subject to become a valuable part of any number of areas that they choose to pursue either as a vocation or avocation.