Over the past four months I have experienced firsthand the importance of defining one's personal philosophy of education. When I interviewed for my current position with a certain Christian private school as the junior high math and science teacher, I had some ideas and preferences about teaching and learning, but I had not merged these with my belief system about whether or not children were good or evil by nature. How I answer this question, however, is foundational in how I teach and manage my students (not my "classroom"), and in return how well I fit, or don't fit, into the mission and culture of this institution. Besides my philosophy of education, I have a particular educational psychology, what I believe about how children learn, that also influences my teaching methods. There is now no doubt in my mind that one must know their own philosophy of education and psychology of education, and be able to defend them, prior to accepting any position in the field of education.

When I enter the classroom and look out at the students who are gathered, I see a garden of roses in bloom. They are beautiful and fragrant, yet they are tender and fragile as well. I see tender shoots with thorns to protect they sensitive stems, their life lines. I see delicate petals, still partitally closed, in various colors and sizes. I notice that somecome from homes where their roots are set in healthy, nutritious soils, while others come from homes where they lack vital nutrients, which are mostly unknown to me. Finally, I see potential. I know that God has designed each of these students in His likeness and he wants them to bloom through the development of their unique and precious talents and interests, his gifts. Yes, this answers the question of whether children are good or evil; I believe they are designed in God's image and with his character and are, therefore, good. Even though, unlike God, they are able to sin, as all mankind will, they are not weeds that are eager to choke and destroy all that is good around them. I see my role as the teacher to be like that of the nurturing gardener who feeds and guides the growing blossoms, so even though pruning and weeding need to occur, that is not my primary role.

When I look out at my students, I also see just that, students. While the curriculum is important, it is to me only a tool. When I first read Guy Doud's statement that he "teaches students, not subjects," I thought that was obvious. Early on at the school, I even heard a teacher make the same statement, but after two months of teaching there I was confronted with the fact that not all educators share this view. It was at that point that I understood the need for a defined philosophy of education. Ever since, I have been refining and defining my statement through my belief system and from my daily experiences at the school. There seems to be a steady stream of challenges that are helping me through this process, but just about the time I think I've got it, something new slams me along side the head and I am once again confronted with my own beliefs and have to again question and define what has happened and why. I am looking at things from such a deeper perspective than ever before. I know that is risky because one person cannot presume to know the inner beliefs of another, and also that people often do as I had been doing, react without questioning the foundational principles of their actions. I think that often people would not react as they do if they stopped to question why they were doing it.. I have found that people can agree on methods and ideas on a surface level even while holding opposing philosophies of education at a deeper level. This can lead to miscommunication and misunderstandings that spread throughout the institution. I feel like I am preaching this, but it has proven to be critical to me in my current position; I expect it will always be so.

One important factor in education is further illustrated through the garden rose analogy; that is, that learning needs to be more than simple performance for a short time. Like gardeners who nurture their roses for many seasons of abundant blooming, teachers must provide a true learning environment, not simply an assembly line. One example of this is in the commonly used Bloom's Taxonomy. From what I have seen, the A Beca curriculum used at Trinity touches only the surface level of Bloom's taxonomy, which leaves students with shallow roots that will not hold through life's real tests. If students, like roses, are not prepared for the winter storms that will come, they have only performed for a brief season and will not be able to endure the pruning and stress that will come upon them.

The defining moment for me came when I received the following message:

"You should approach each and every class session with the idea that your students' future depends on that very lesson you are teaching at that moment, and your job depends on the success of supervising the class and teaching the material so the students grasp it. In fact, it really does!"

These words stung as I read them in an e-mail message from the following my first confrontation with an angry parent. As a new teacher of junior high school math and science in a small private Christian school, I knew that I had much to learn about the in's and out's of "classroom" management. I felt confident, however, in my ability to teach content and to interact and build relationships with my students. In just a few weeks, I felt the students were not only learning, but enjoying it more and more, and that several of us had connected as individuals. I knew that my teaching methods were nontraditional (I do not believe in the teacher standing before the class and lecturing as the primary method of instruction) and I thought I had clearly explained this during my lengthy interviews. Even before I had studied the works of Paulo Freire, I already had rejected that form of instruction Freire (1993) calls the "'banking' concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits" (p. 53). During my interviews it was communicated to me that the principal was delighted with my ideas and was eager to have me on staff, particularly as the other half of the junior high faculty (besides electives there is one other teacher for junior high students for history and language arts). And then, in my sixth week of teaching, I received this message embedded in a written message sent after five o'clock on a Friday evening so that it awaited me as I started the school week on the following Monday. Within the message, I had received further instruction to retest an entire math class because they had received low grades on the last test (a particular "A" student had received an 88%, clearly a failing grade that brought about the confrontation from the angry parent). With this, my journey into my educational philosophy plunged deep into my being.

The principal's statement focused on my responsibility to teach the course material, which I agree is of primary importance, and caused me to question my own methods and philosophy. I found that I could not agree with his view. As Freire (1993) explains, one of the problems with the "banking" form of instruction is that while the students "have the opportunity to become collectors or cataloguers of the things they store," but that "in the last analysis, it is the people themselves who are filed away through the lack of creativity, transformation, and knowledge in this (at best) misguided system" (p. 53). The seriousness of this is made clear in his further statement that "apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human" (p. 53). He describes that in the banking concept, the teacher is the expert while the students are "absolutely ignorant" (p. 53). In this way, he states, it "negates education and knowledge as processes of inquiry (p. 53). Parker J. Palmer (1998) goes so far as to accuse that "our assumption that students are brain-dead leads to pedagogues that deaden their brains .... we rarely consider that our students may die in the classroom because we use methods that assume they are dead" (p. 42). The alternative the Freire (1993) describes in Pedagogy of the Oppressed is methods that encourage dialogue "as the way by while they [people] achieve significance as human beings. Dialogue, he explains, cannot be accomplished by the teacher simply making deposits of information into the students or where one person dominates others (p. 70). It became clear in the principals note, that he expected me to employ this banking system of instruction.

Guy Rice Doud (1990), National Teacher of the Year in 1986, stated before the contest judges that "My job isn't so much to teach as it is to help students learn .... You can teach to a wall, but when you help someone learn, you have to get involved with the whole person" (p. 215). He went on to explain, "I feel that in all my classes, a relationship of trust and open lines of communication is essential, especially in a discussion class (p. 215). In his book, Doud also explained that he loves his students rather than stands in judgment of them (p. 206). Freire (1993) states that:

Dialogue cannot exist, however, in the absence of a profound love for the world and for people. The naming of the world, which is an act of creation and re-creation, is not possible if it is not infused with love. Love is at the same time the foundation of dialogue and dialogue itself. It is thus necessarily the task of responsible Subjects and cannot exist in a relation of domination. Domination reveals the pathology of love: sadism in the dominator and masochism in the dominated. Because love is an act of courage, not of fear, love is commitment to others (p. 70).

Guy Doud also describes how surprised he was with just how much he learned from his students. He describes an assignment where he had the students write about how some of societies problems affected them, He writes:

What shocked me most, however, as I read their paper's, was that so many of them wrote about being lonely. I thought peer pressure and drugs and alcohol were the most significant problems, but the student who wrote, "I feel so all alone, like there is no one I can talk to," voiced the sentiments of a majority of students in my class (p. 161).

From then on, Doud really watched and listened to the students in a way he had never been trained to do--and thus he learned volumes. Freire (1993) describes libertarian education as that which begins "with the solution of the teacher-student contradiction, by reconciling the poles of the contradiction so that both are simultaneously teachers and students (p. 53 [italics in original]). Doud was demonstrating his transition into this form of education that he had not been taught about in his preparation for teaching.

Teacher education programs are not prepared to teach this relational side of teaching. Barry Kanpol and Jeanne Brady (1997) write about their "struggle to infuse multicultural education into our curriculum, knowing that at times we are met with both overt and covert resistance form other faculty member's" as they have had to continually justify the need for a multicultural agenda in their teacher education programs (p. 1). They explain how this agenda disrupt the political agenda of traditional educational theory and practice" (p. 10). Kanpol and Brady (1997) describe six key concepts of such education (pp. 10-11):

1. Teachers to accept students as active participants in the construction of knowledge by engaging "students' experiences as central to teaching and learning."

2. Students should be offered both the knowledge and critical thinking skills thal [sic] allow them to reclaim their voice and their history so as to enable them to name new identities.

3. Students should be provided the opportunity to rewrite the relations between centers and margins as part of an effort to understand power and agency.

4. Students should be given the opportunity to understand and reconstruct cultural differences, economic inequities, and social identities so as to produce knowledge and democradic [sic] practices.

5. Teacher educators should present students with a language of critique and possibility.

6. All of this must take place within the realm of teacher educators as engaged intellectuals who question their own particular subject positions while fully recognizing the limits of their own views.

Besides failing to teach this critical pedagogy, future teachers are often taught not to

become personally involved in the lives of their students. Parker J. Palmer (1 998) states that it is fear that "encourages us to distance ourselves form our students and our subjects, to teach and learn at some remove from our own hearts" (p. 35). He explains that it is this fear that "leads many children, born with a love of learning, to hate the idea of school (p. 36). According to Palmer, The silent and seemingly sullen students in our classroom are not brain-dead: they are full of fear" (pg.45). He even refers to fear as being the standard management tool"(p.36) and that "our educational methods have marginalized students and have silenced them through giving into their fear of those with the power" (p.45). Palmer describes fear as being deeply engrained in our educational system and in our culture (p. 39).

Palmer (1998) also states that objectivism dominates education. This mode of knowing "portrays truth as something we can achieve only by disconnecting ourselves, physically and emotionally, from the thing we want to know"(p. 51). He explains that "If we regard truth as something handed down from authorities on high, the classroom will look like a dictatorship. If we regard truth as a fiction determined by personal whim, the classroom will look like anarchy. If we regard truth as emerging from a complex process of mutual inquiry, the classroom will look like a resourceful and interdependent community. Our assumptions about knowing can open up, or shut down, the capacity for connectedness on which good teaching depends (pg. 51). He explains that, "in objectivism, subjectivity is feared not only because it contaminates things but because it creates relationships between those things and us--and relationships are contaminating as well. When a thing ceases to be an object and becomes a vital, interactive part of our lives--Whether it is a work of art, an indigenous people, or an ecosystem--it might get a grip on us, biasing us toward it, thus threatening the purity of our knowledge once again" (p. 51).

How did education get to this place? How did we get to having "a culture where fear is the air we breathe" (Palmer, 1998, p. 39)? How did my principal arrive at the place where classroom management and the mastery of content become the primary role of a junior high school teacher? At first, I thought that it was a manifestation of the Christian worldview. In A Passion for Learning: The History of Christian Thought on Education, Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150-ca.215) is quoted as writing, 'With all His power, therefore, the Instructor of humanity [Jesus], the Divine Word, using all the resources of wisdom, devotes Himself to the saving of the children, admonishing, up-braiding, blaming, chiding, reproving, threatening, healing, promising, favoring; and as it were, by many reins, curbing the irrational impulses of humanity. To speak briefly, therefore, the Lord acts towards us as we do towards our children .... It is not immediate pleasure of future enjoyment, that the Lord has in view" (Lockerbie, 1994, p. 68). And so I struggle to blend. my philosophy of teaching with those who hold to traditional authoritarian views of education. I cannot accept the statements that instructors should teach through the banking system model, and I began to question whether or not I would be able to be a successful teacher in a Christian school where these methods are not only believed, but placed upon me as a condition of my employment.

In reviewing the history of American education, I have found the European thinkers to be more in line with my own philosophy of education. John Amos Comenius (1592-1670) "viewed education as the primary means for improving society" and that "all children--rich or poor, male or female-were to be instructed 'thoroughly' (McNergney & Herbert, 1998, p. 43). In addition, John Locke (1632-1704) proposed that:

children should not simply read books but should also interact with the environment, using their five senses to accumulate and test ideas. Teacher's should tailor instruction to the individual aptitudes and interests of each child; they should encourage curiosity and questions; and they should treat children as ... rational creatures." Through reason, people might unlock life's mysteries (p. 44).

Locke also saw the human mind as being a blank slate, which I do not fully agree with, but I do agree with the need for student interaction, involvement, and questioning. Another European educator who held these views was Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (I 746-1827) who "decried educational conditions that stifled children's playfulness and natural curiosity" (p. 45). He believed in developmental stages where "learning is facilitated by kind and loving educators who provide an array of sensory experiences when teaching concepts and skills rather than relying heavily on verbal instruction (Gutek, 1968, quoted in McNergney & Herbert, 1998, p. 45). The first kindergarten was established in 1837 by Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852) in which children learned through play activities. Froebel believed that "a person's senses, emotions, and reason were the critical attributes necessary for learning to occur" (Downs, 1978 as quoted in McNergney & Herbert, 1998, p. 46).

How did American education develop into a traditional, authoritarian model from its original roots in European thought? In Letters from an American Farmer, 1782, St. John de Crevecoeur wrote, "The easiest way of becoming acquainted with the modes of thinking, the rules of conduct, and the prevailing manner's of any people, is to examine what sort of education they give their children, how they treat them at home, and what they are taught in their places of worship" (Lockerbie, 1994, p. 300). So, to see how the traditional methods of teaching have developed in the American educational system we need to look deeply and critically at our culture. To begin, "the purposes of the Sunday school in America--as in England, where Robert Raikes began Sunday school in 1780--was not exclusively for Christian indoctrination; rather, the intention was that rudimentary teaching of reading and writing would be enhanced by using the Bible and other religious literature" (Lockerbie, 1994, p. 304). Thus, the "common school grew out of the evangelical Sunday school movement" (p. 304). What grew from this, however, was more patriotism and a call for "loyalty to the ruling powers" than a submission to Christ (p. 304). It was in fact the ease with which nineteenth-century Christians assumed their beliefs to be the norm that dulled the sharp-edged thrust of orthodoxy and twisted it into the heresy of defying democracy" (p. 304). What occurred was a common school where "religiously-prescribed moral expectations meant that a culture's values were indelibly stamped upon most citizens. By 1847, Horace Busnell "saw the common school not necessarily as a sectarian enterprise owned by the Protestant majority, but as an American and therefore a Christian institution (Lockerbie, 1994, p. 300 [Italics in original]). Looking back, "the nations founder's believed that education was the best hope for the Republic. Freedom had to be tempered by the responsibility to maintain social order. Education would prepare good citizens. The virtuous, the disciplined, the intelligent would know how to participate responsibly in a democracy" (Lockerbie, 1994, p. 51). During this time, religious leaders held strongly to John Calvin's view that the role of schooling was to produce literate, hardworking, frugal, and respectful men and women who might resist the temptations of the would" because it was believed that children were "savage and primitive creatures" who needed to "be trained and disciplined for a life of social conformity and religious commitment" (Lockerbie, 1994, p. 50).

Today, many Christian schools still hold to Calvin's theology. Their teaching is influenced by the fact that they believe "we mortals do not come into this world basically good" and that the "'innate goodness of mankind philosophy' leads to 'value-free' or 'value-neutral' education" (Kienel, Gibbs, & Ber-ry, 1995, pp. vi-vii). I have struggled with the fact that I am a Christian who does believe in everyone's need for Jesus Christ for the salvation of their sins, but I cannot simply accept the methods that Christians have used and continue to use because of their belief that children are evil. God also states in his word that we are created in his image from the beginning. That, I believe, should influence our teaching and our attitude of love and accept far above the forcus on the "evil" of children. I do not agree that this leads to a "value-free" or "value-neutral" education. I do not believe that love and acceptance is either of these.

Even more importantly, God himself came to earth through his son, Jesus Christ in the form of a human being, like us, to have a personal relationship with mankind. Jesus taught through love and he taught through stories that connected with the people's own experience and lives. He is the model teacher and Christian education often has no resemblance to Christ's own example. For example, in during the early formation of the American educational system, Native Americans were converted to Catholicism. The missions "were social institutions, designed to transform the Indians from scattered hunting and gathering peoples into disciplined farmers, ranchers, and cloth weavers crusted around, and faithful to the church (Fogel, 1988, p. 53 as quoted in Lockerbie, 1994, p. 59). In addition, "the contributions of women traditionally have been downplayed or ignored" (Lockerbie, 1994, p. 61). Neither of these were modeled in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.

In the colonial schools "teaching meant making children memorize facts. To do so, children had to sit quietly in their seats until called upon by the teacher to recite. Teacher's relied on whole-group instruction and choral responses in mixed-ability classes. The entire system depended on repetition and drill, helped along with a more-than-healthy dose of punishment (Kaestle, 1983 as quoted in Lockerbie, 1994, p. 64). Here, then is the basis of the methods espoused by the principal quoted at the beginning of this essay. The expectation is that these colonial schools continue to be the model for a proper Christian education today. All of the progress that has been made recently in the understanding human learning; including, brain-based learning, learning styles, multiple intelligences, and multicultural education is largely ignored. In fact, the school is heavily steeped with behaviorist theories that temporarily get the students to perform, from fear of punishment, but that are questionable with our current knowledge about how children learn. This is contradicts my own cognitive approach as a facilitator of learning.

When I received the e-mail message from the principal, I was ready to throw in the towel as an educator within the Christian school arena. That is, until I attended the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI) Teachers Convention 1999-2000 in Anaheim, California (and before my successful parent-teacher conferences the following week). At the convention, one of the highlighted seminars (available for continuing education units) was on Multiple Intellegences. More importantly for me, however, was the first workshop I attended called "The Challenge of Multiculturalism for Christian Educators." At this workshop, the two instructor's from Azusa Pacific University, Dr. Jacquelyn W. Carter and Dr. Maria A. Pacino, were teaching the same things I have been learning at Claremont; even citing some of the same authors. I was excited to see a blending of critical pedagogy and Christianity. I felt as if there was hope for the Christian. Again and again, throughout the conference I saw and heard a philosophy of education that is empowering and respectful of other cultures and worldviews. A model can be found in today's methods of missionary training, where there has been a change from the oppressive, conquering forms of evangelism to a servant attitude where Christ is taught and the people of the culture become the teachers and leaders within their framework, not the Americanized version that has so often been sold as the Christian way.

Certainly, my studies of both past and current educational methods and philosophies have just touched the tip of what is there. I am eager to delve into this study further, but I am even more excited about learning how I can blend them with my faith in practice. I have not given up on Christian education, but I will make wiser choices after taking this journey into my philosophy of education. I believe I can teach subjects to roses. I look forward to finding a garden that is prepared to nurture me through the next step of my journey.

References

Doud, G. R. (1 990). Molder of dreams. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale.

Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the oppressed. NY: The Continuum.

Kanpol, B. and Brady, J. (1997) Teacher education and the multicultural dilemma: A "critical" thinking response. Journal of Critical Pedagogy. [On-line]. Available: http://wwvv.lib.wmc.edu/pub/jcpfissuel-2/kanpol-brady.htmi

Lockerbie, D. B. (1994). A passion for learning: The history of Christian thought on education. Chicago: Moody

McNergney, R. F. and Herbert, J. M. (1998). Foundations of education: The challenge of professional practice (2nd ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Palmer, P. J. (1998). The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher's life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.