One of the greatest American Philosophers (and educators) was John Dewey. Although he died over 60 years ago, his thoughts are still relevant to education today. I have been reading a few of his books lately and a passage from one of those books made a lot of sense to me. The following passage is from Moral Principals in Education written in 1909:
“To an extent characteristic of no other institution, save that of the state itself, the school has power to modify the social order. And under our political system, it is the right of each individual to have a voice in the making of social policies as, indeed, he has a vote in the determination of political affairs. If this be true, education is primarily a public business, and only secondarily a specialized vocation. The layman, then, will always have his right to some utterance on the operation of the public schools.”
Why is this passage important to me? First, I truly believe that public education is the most important task of government and that teaching is the most important career one can choose. This is a bedrock belief of mine. With that belief there grows a responsibility to act upon that belief. I approach my job as an educator and my duty as a commissioned officer of the State with zeal to do good for kids and the community. Is it frustrating at times when people believe that teaching and education is “easy” and that educators do not live in the “real world”…you bet. I believe there is nothing more “real” then working with students. But this brings me to my second reason this passage is important. Education is a public business. Our public schools are educating individual students. These students come from their homes and families for six to seven hours a day and it is our responsibility to help them lead a self- directed life. I think it is obvious that the public should be very interested in what we do. First of all, parents should be interested in what is happening to their children in school and they should have a forum to express their opinions about the schools. Secondly, even if a citizen does not have a child in the system, they should be interested about what education is looking like. After all, today’s students are tomorrow’s community leaders.
Dewey goes on to say that the public should not believe that they have the technical knowledge or know-how to teach students. Dewey states,
“Upon questions that concern all the manifold details by which children are to be converted into desirable types of men and women, the expert schoolmaster should be authoritative, at least to a degree commensurate with his superior knowledge of this very complex problem.”
Our system of public education has school boards that oversee the curriculum, instruction and management policies of the district. The school board hires education leaders (like myself) to carry out the policies and to help design and implement a vision for the school district. This is simple and effective. I think the results in Penn-Trafford through the years make the point that this system works. Previous school boards and previous superintendents have worked together well to provide an outstanding education for our community. I hope to carry on that tradition. I hope this blog post did not bore you too much!
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