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Education: A Personal Philosophy Titus Pollard

Education: A Personal Philosophy from One Who Aspires To a Greater

Understanding of the Teacher Within
By Titus Pollard
September 21, 2016

Education.
So many thoughts, directives, programs, and passions emerge from this nine-letter word.
If I had to encapsulate this term to a basic definition, I would say that Education is the
acquisition of knowledge for a student; the transference of knowledge from the teacher. There
are important elements that I believe contribute to the process of education, elements that have
shaped my philosophical understanding of teaching and learning. As an educator and a general
lover of knowledge, I commenced with this essay by asking myself, “What elements should be
employed for consummate educating to take place?”
I reference the following literature not to proselytize, but solely for the value of a
particular story within its cover. The King James Bible mentions characters who lead a large
group of people wayside to be taught. The main character, however, saw that the people were
hungry, and that teaching them anything would be a fruitless task if a basic human need was
ignored. Many centuries later, President Harry Truman must have recognized this same need on
the behalf of America’s school-aged children when he signed the National School Lunch Act in
1946. Meet the needs and then teach the people. In short, educating needs to be affectual.
It is believed by some that the human discovery of fire possibly dates back to 6,000 B.C.,
the Lower Paleolithic or Stone Age. I can envision that the humans of that age frustratingly made
several attempts to whip steel against flint with no positive result before they eventually had
success. Thus, the cliché works well - If at first you don’t succeed… True learning can come
from empirical, real world experience. Education needs to be experiential.
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Education: A Personal Philosophy Titus Pollard

I was so impressed by a particular professor in college, William Burress Garcia III, PhD.
I was enamored by his style, his facial expressions while conducting, his ability to make dead
composers figuratively rise from the textbook and come alive; even the manner in which he
would address you on the phone had such panache. He was refined and regal. One quote that I
attribute to him was, “Mr. Pollard! I . . . sir, have a PhD, which means I’ve gone to school long
enough to know that I don’t know everything!” I knew Dr. Garcia was correct; he really didn’t
know everything, but that professor was brilliant, a teacher par excellence, and a specialist in
seemingly every sense of the word. His mere presence strengthened my love for teaching. When
a student embraces the personality of the teacher, he or she often embraces what they teach.
Education needs mentoring.
According to history, Thomas Alva Edison spent many days wearily sampling voltages,
exchanging various metals and other materials before he was able to produce an electric bulb that
would remain stable for any length of time. History also informs us that he wasn’t the first
inventor to try to perfect the lightbulb. What Edison did, in fact, was build off of the efforts of
those prior. Just as a physician extracts the knowledge he gains from the textbook and brings it to
life over a course of time until his diagnosis is correct, so it is with the educator. Education needs
perseverance, research and practice.
The 1994 movie Richie Rich was a quirky, yet family-friendly movie that starred
Macaulay Culkin of Home Alone fame. The antagonist in the storyline, the character Lawrence
Van Dough, was a conniving, money-hungry reprobate who used his knowledge and influence to
kill Richie’s parents and embezzle the Rich fortune. Under the assumption that his parents were
lost at sea, the 12 year old Richie had to take charge of the massive empire, along with its
employees and the company finances. He relied on what he had learned from his father and the
trusted advice of Herbert, Richie’s personal assistant, to oversee such an undertaking. With
limited experience, Richie had to rely on his father’s transference of knowledge in order to act
with maturity, even in troubling times. Education needs trustworthy leadership.
Nothing – no thing – takes shape, comes to the forefront, or becomes accessible without
the assertion of education in some form. With Education, one is benefitted with career security,
opportunities to understand the most complex procedures . . . so many different things, but above
all, I believe that Education in all of its forms is the centrality for the survival of our human race.