Beliefs About Education

So far, I have seen a total of 3 schools that each are quite different from each other. Colegio Roosevelt was top-notch, best of the best. What makes this school be this why, is because of the funds that are being given to the school, in order for it to be constantly improving. The resources and variety of resources is abundant, and the basis of learning is something that both Dewey and Freire would approve of. The focus of Roosevelt was to get students to learn skills in the classroom that can help them becomes better people socially, and positive members of society. The structure of the classes was also mostly project and experience- based, so this allowed the students to be more independent and in charge of their learning. This idea directly relates to Dewey and Freire’s philosophy of education. Freire proposed that education needs to step away from the banking concept and make the teacher and students equal. The banking concept is basically the idea that teachers are a higher power and hold all the information who them feed it to their students. The students as a result just absorb the information that teachers give them because they are treated as lesser than. This strategy of how to teach children is ineffective. The students won’t have a complete and deep understanding of something if they are just being spoon-fed information by the teacher, according to Freire. They need to be able to critically think about what they are learning and ask questions. When students are asking questions and seeking out further information about something, is when they are successfully learning. Freire also poses the crucial idea about students learning from and teaching the teacher, and teachers both teaching the students and learning from them. This relationship between the students and teacher is what is crucial in having a positive and effective education. I wasn’t able to see how the students and the teachers interact with each other at Roosevelt, so I cannot determine if they have this relationship, but I was able to see the interaction between teachers and students at the school La Inmaculada. Here the students and teacher do not really have that “equal relationship” between teacher and student that Freire talks about. Instead it is the teacher who has the power and the students are listeners. My teacher in particular, however, has stations in her classroom because she believes in the students having a learning experience that is more engaging, creative, and gives students more freedom. She was talking to me about the problem of having such a focus on standardized testing and how it is not always the best way to educate. The fact that she is having the students do stations instead of her lecturing to the students, is an example of learning that Freire would approve of.

When thinking about Dewey, Roosevelt definitely showcases that concept of experience-based learning, which is the main theory that Dewey poses. In summary, Dewey theory is “experience is valuable when it allows us to grow and develop which makes society grow and develop, and it is valuable if it makes us understand and make sense of our world.” This theory is basically saying that students should be learning through real life experiences, because that is what will allow them to grow and develop into positive members of society. Dewey also emphasizes four instincts of children- language, social, making, and expressive. These four instincts need to be encouraged in the classroom, Dewey believes. The language means that the students should have a voice in the classroom- whether that be asking questions, communicating ideas, collaborating with other classmates, etc. Dewey even goes to say, “the language instinct is the simplest form of the social expression of the child. Hence it is a great perhaps the greatest of all educational resources.” Students should have a say in how what they learn and how they learn it. I believe the students at Roosevelt are encouraged to speak their minds in the classroom. They have a lot of independence in the projects that they do, and there are a lot of opportunities for the students to work with each other and collaborate. There also are a lot of opportunities for experience- learning. The students do a lot of service work, they have resources that allow them to learn through experiences, and even go on trips that relate to what they are learning. The students at La Inmaculada have less of a voice in the classroom because they don’t have as much freedom and independence in the classroom. My teacher in the classroom I am in, just started the station learning. She said that it used to be just lecture based usually, which makes me think that a lot of the other classrooms at the school are used to using the lecture or banking concept as a way of teaching. In fact, the classrooms at La Inmaculada remind me a lot of the classrooms in the United States. Even though there seems to be the problem of banking-learning in Peru, as well as the United States, teachers recognize this problem, and there seems to be a step towards more experience- based learning.