EME 2040 - Reflection 8

I took my educational philosophy survey a few days ago. It was not a pleasant experience. My eyes began to tire from such a large amount of questions. Many of them I answered neutral to. Some of them were difficult for me to answer. I scored highest in Reconstruction/Critical Theory and Existentialism. I received an 83 in Critical Theory and an 81 in Existentialism. I find that this is true. I see the world becoming more and more of a tough place to live for certain people. I see the America doesn’t want education, they want guns. As a Critical Theorist, I believe it is important to reeducate the world. It will be difficult because one person can only reach so many people, but if those people we reach out grow up to want to do the same and reach out to people and reeducate the world to be a more livable place, then eventually things might turn out for the best. It is a little bit unrealistic, but it’s called hope. I know that hope can never replace action, but the action is education. The world becoming a better place starts with one step at a time, person by person. Seeing as we are regular people, and not anyone in power (i.e.: government) we don’t have the ability to get rid of all the violence, guns, hate, etc. However, by educating the younger society and directing them to become understanding people, we can reshape society. As an educator, I would love to be able to help my students understand the world and other parts of it, not only their own little local world to be able to reconstruct society and have them be open minded and understanding of other cultures. I can also see how I received a significantly high number for existentialism because I would definitely agree with Sartre’s “existence precedes essence.” Humans differ from a manufactured object, such as a letter opener because we don’t have a creator to tell us what purpose we serve. Man is first before all, surges up into the world, and then finds himself later. The universe cannot define what we feel, or how we should be. The idea of what is beautiful should always lie within our own minds, and not what the rest of society considers beautiful, similar to Kantian Idealism, in which Emmanuel Kant illustrates that we all live in our own world of perceptions and what is beautiful to one person, might be ugly to another. As an educator, I would love to be able to direct my students into learning ways to be able to discover themselves.