Education as Empowerment

A personal philosophy of education

Sheldon Lesire

Originally written December 8, 2008

Most recently edited September 16, 2009

 Sheldon Lesire

The need for educating students is clearly obvious. One would be hard pressed to

find a country which has no form of education whatsoever. In some locations, education

may be reserved for the elite, but even that fact makes a powerful statement: education

instills power. Paolo Freire certainly believed that, and through his work, he attempted to

spread that power further down the socio-economic scale.1 Personally, I believe that the

purpose of education is manifold. Education should instill power in an individual. It

should equip them with the tools to achieve more and have a higher degree of personal

success, and to earn a living that can comfortably support a family. And it should give

them a degree of autonomy, the ability to determine their own fate, and the personal

freedom to work at the profession of their choice. When this happens in aggregate, it has

the added benefit of building a stronger society. The rise of Western Civilization has

shown that the more members of a society that are educated, the broader and stronger the

foundation for that society’s economy, which in turn strengthens a country politically and

militarily. Therefore, in my view, education is a pump, or the engine that drives an entire

society.

These are tangible benefits that produce visible results: increased gross domestic

product, greater geopolitical influence, and wide dissemination of a particular culture.

While important, I still feel the main benefactor of the educational system is the

individual. The liberty that education affords has an ethereal quality that is difficult to

measure, but no less real. Many disadvantaged youths believe that education is their

ticket out of their impoverished condition, and with good reason. It should be noted that

this is a truism for all levels of the socio-economic scale. Students from privileged

1
Friere, Paolo (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
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 Sheldon Lesire

families surely benefit from education; students from less fortunate families merely

benefit more. For it is education that provides a means obtain jobs that pay better, leave

more time for leisure activity, and have insurance benefits that enable access to quality

health care, thereby leading to a longer and healthier life.

While we as educators are focusing on providing our students with academic

content, we should also keep in mind Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. A student must have

their physical and security needs met before he or she can even hope to learn. For me,

that would mean that I will work with the school to provide a safe and supportive

environment that truly nurtures a child instead of treating him like a piece of a machine.

Countless students have negative memories from early education that relate to the way a

legitimate need of theirs was not met. While teachers have the primary focus of

educating, instead of merely operating as a “day care”, we should be mindful of the

whole child. Once the basic needs have been met, a teacher can begin to educate each

child in a way that continues to meet the child’s needs.

Students are unique individuals, and as such, each one learns in a slightly

different manner. While detractors can deem it impractical—if not impossible—to

educate to each learner’s exact needs, a certain amount of differentiation is entirely

possible and should rightly be expected. Howard Gardner developed the theory of

multiple intelligences2, and I strongly agree with this concept. Once a teacher has

determined, through observation, a particular student’s learning style and intelligence

strengths, this knowledge can be leveraged to provide increasingly effective instruction.

In my own classroom, I will strive to have activities that require skills from each of

Gardner’s intelligences. These lessons can take place in different small groups at the
2
Gardner, Howard. Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York: Basic,1983.
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 Sheldon Lesire

same time, or during a series of lessons, which each taking place on a different day.

Obviously, this can be viewed as time consuming, but I think of it as an investment which

pays exponential dividends for the student.

Personally, I feel it is very important to teach students to have a love of learning,

and the skills necessary to locate verifiable information they require. In my opinion, this

requires a blend of direct instruction and discovery, of individual learning and group

work, of research and synthesis. These activities each mirror the experiences a person

will encounter in adult life, and proficiency at each task will make for a more productive

member of society. While it is true that each student is an individual, “no man is an

island.” As a student matures, social contacts become increasingly important, and

likewise, in the classroom, instruction should also provide more opportunities for group

learning. Nancy Gibbs fleshed this out in an article for Time magazine which showed

that a person’s ability to read another’s emotions and react appropriately was a stronger

determinant of success than academic knowledge.3 When working with small groups, I

will attempt to occasionally interrupt the task and ask the groups to take time to reflect on

the group dynamics in order to understand the way each group is functioning, and find a

way to make improvements. This will allow students not only the opportunity to

construct their own knowledge with their peers, but also provide forums that teach the

skills each person requires for successful interpersonal relationships.

Hirsch believes that for a student to be culturally literate, each person should

know about a set list of facts, phrases, and concepts.4 While there is some value in that, I

think it creates more problems than it solves. If there is a set block of knowledge that

3
Gibbs, Nancy (1995). "The EQ Factor". From Time Magazine, October 2.
4
Hirsch, E. D. (1987). Cultural Literacy.
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each student should assimilate, who should decide what is on that list? What, exactly,

should even be included on that list? And does this stifle individuality? I feel that there

is a certain block of common knowledge that each student should acquire. However, I

feel that if we are instilling a love of learning, literacy, and ideas in our students, students

will naturally pick up these things from their daily interaction with their culture. Things

with lasting importance will have staying power, like classic literature, and fleeting trivia

will naturally fade away.

This, then, allows for a general body of common knowledge that is organic and

constantly changing. At the local level, school boards should trust teachers, in

collaboration with their colleagues, to determine curriculum that best fits the local

population of students, and the future needs of the community. As members of the

community, parents and teachers should be allowed an input into this determination. A

forum could allow parents the access they would need for this to occur, and in a less

formal way, teachers could actively seek parent input though consistent communication

with parents. Any curriculum should fully acknowledge the fact that there is no possible

way it could be considered authoritative, given the exponentially expanding body of

knowledge. Given the chance, any cheeky student will remind his teacher of this fact.

Therefore, the main focus of any subject should be on instilling and honing critical

thinking skills that enable a student to locate relevant and reliable information that he or

she requires to perform a task, formulate a logical and defensible opinion, or relate to

others in meaningful and authentic ways.

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 Sheldon Lesire

Finally, this leads to the nature of children. A well-educated child is a

wonderfully powerful person. However, students don’t generally enter our classrooms as

mature “finished products.” At their core, students are willful beings who are capable of

making their own choices. While the home environment certainly shapes their

personality and outlook, at the end of the day each student is individually accountable for

the consequences of their own actions. As such, yes, I do trust my students. However,

that statement must be accompanied by a raft of caveats. The level of respect, rapport,

and maturity directly influences the degree to which I can trust a child. In time, these

should increase, and trust should continue to be built between student and teacher.

Eventually, and ideally, the relationship between students and myself should progress to

the point that we jointly decide what to study, how to study it, and how to apply this new

knowledge to other content areas and to life in general. This kind of collaboration

requires a significant amount of “buy-in” by the student, and a significant amount of trust

on my part. When all of these factors are in confluence, however, I firmly believe that

the possibility exists for the student to become fully empowered and to achieve any

degree of personal success that they desire.